Nellie Moser, the pyjama flower

We came to visit the House of the Straw Rope on a bright day in June. It was the queen's silver jubillee year. The garden was at its best. with blooms bursting out in the front, and the Nellie Moser climbing the granite gable end. That the rear garden was all rockery did not dismay us, for beyond the wooden gate lay a pebbled beach, with a red rowing boat tied to the wall, and waves dwindling on the loch. A heron fished in the distance. I found a giant crab shell. We knew, then, all of us, that the end of the searching was in sight. We had found our house.

It was to turn out to be totally unsuitable. The dark, dark kitchen, the rooms facing the wrong way for the light, the low ceilings, the quarry lorries thundering past, the raw sewage that pumped straight into the loch, the lack of local shops or village....nonetheless, flaming June and Nellie Moser had won us over.

This is the tale of the house where I grew up, from 13 to 20. By the time I finished my degree in Edinburgh I had set my sights on England, though it wasn't long before I bounced back to the burgh. This is the house where my mother still lives, though in a month or two she will move, and my sister and her family will take her place. The house, as I have intimated, has its problems, but the location, on the north shore of Loch Etive, is picture-postcard perfect, though sometimes the fine views are obscured by fine rain for days on end. Argyll is wet, and not just in winter.

As for this poor-enough image, it was snapped on the canal towpath, on my way to teach at the rehab The Nellie Moser is growing in the garden of one of the little prefabs on the Hope Mills estate. Come to think of it, they too have lorries thundering past all day.