My first house.

Bought this house around 23 years ago, at a time when banks would lend you 100% of the purchase price (or more!) and give you up to five times your salary - and not helped by the subsequent addition of these windows and the associated further debt! Biggest mistake I ever made. It was a long way from where I worked at the time and, after only two months of spending hours every day crawling along the M1, for sanity's sake I quit my job and took a huge pay cut to work closer to home. Hopefully I'll be able to convince my children to enjoy their lives and see a bit of the world before they get saddled with such a millstone.

It was a long time before I could even bear to think about the place as it was full of bad memories (hopefully the next new owners will have a better experience there) but we were visiting friends who live just round the corner and I thought I'd go and have a look. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier than I expected. Time is certainly a great healer!

After that, had a lovely day visiting friends yesterday who I've known for over two decades - so great to catch up over a lovely buffet lunch!