Home Sweet Home

Much as I enjoy house-sitting, it's always great to get back to my wee flat in the village of Balfron and to be surrounded by all my favourite things - photographs of loved ones, paintings, bits of pottery that I've accumulated, my own cds, etc.

This big oak dresser has a story to it: when my mother moved to Amulree in 1971 to be the teacher there, the job came with a schoolhouse, which she had to furnish, obviously, so she took most of the furniture from our flat in Glasgow, leaving me, as a newly-qualified hard-up teacher, with a bare flat.

Around the same time a friend of my mother's was moving from a large house into a much smaller flat and was desperately trying to get rid of some of her furniture, so I begrudgingly agreed to take this dresser off her hands. It wasn't my style at all but it filled an empty space!

However, over the years it has become my favourite piece of furniture - it not only looks good (to my now mature eyes anyway), but it holds a vast amount and I wouldn't do without it. It was a real struggle for the removal men to manoeuvre it up the stairs when I came here nearly twelve years ago, and the boss man said that if I ever decide to move again, NOT to call them!