A house not a home

I have never really had much connection to bricks and mortar. Perhaps it was inevitable from very young. My parents lived in India, Pakistan and Singapore during my first five years. When they moved back to the UK we had four different addresses in the first four years we were back and by the time we settled down, relatively speaking, in the house I spent the rest of my childhood and teens in, a house was just a place to live.

Whenever I tried to think of my perfect house, and I suppose I must have done, it always had other children in it. I was an only child and I wanted a sister when I was younger because I always enjoyed the company of girls more than boys because they were happy to talk and they were nicer. However, I always preferred the company of the confident outgoing and adventurous girls because they were the qualities I felt that I lacked myself.

The outside of the house, and to some extent the inside never mattered, just the inhabitants. I am still bored by the house buying or renovating shows I see on television because as long as it is watertight and possible to heat during the winter, anything else is irrelevant to me. The concept that always baffles me in these shows is ‘kerb appeal’! Why on earth does it matter? You are inside the house so you don’t see it from outside most of the time. It’s not remotely important to me and no one has explained to me persuasively why it should be.

I admit that since we bought our current home outright – and notice I used the word home there – I have given more thought to the concept, but it is all about the family unit we have of myself, my wife and my daughter, and the visits from the other children. It is only a home because of the family. If I have a dream house now it would perhaps be in Australia, but that has been the case for 30 years! As usual, the bricks and mortar don’t matter so I don’t care what it looks like as long as it is sturdy.