3 year anniversary

I should have bought a cake.

I've been resident at Offa Towers for exactly 3 years today. Quite a long time really - lots has happened, and then again lots hasn't. The first time I walked through the door with the keys, and the previous owners had removed all their junk ( there was tons of it, and they left 2 skiploads for me !) I was shocked at how dirty, smelly and damp it seemed. Quite dingy too - they had odd tastes in colour and decor and the house was a very odd collection of unnatural colours. Everything was done really badly. No shelves were straight - a problem because they were obviously obsessed with putting them up, quite often with nails rather than screws so lots of chunks of plaster had been sellotaped back to the wall. The strange demon child who lived here was obsessed with writing messages on the skirting boards and little 666's everywhere.

The kitchen was an absolute shit hole - it had units packed in so tightly that you had to stand to the side of the cooker to open the door or grill and I found a fully grown potato plant behind a cupboard. They had also covered all the downstairs floors in the worlds cheapest laminate and nailed loads of mismatched carpets upstairs. Everything was ingrained with dirt. The bathroom was larger than the small bedroom -- and had a pink plastic 80's suite. The corner bath was fixed to the floor by tons of expanding foam filler behind the panel - and all the taps were hanging off. The electrics and plumbing are an abortion - in fact the whole house needs stripping down to the bare walls and starting again.

I really like this house - if it were in Brighton or Pimlico - it would be worth a fortune, but it's in the boondocks, which I quite like. Sadly - I'm not flush enough to do much of the work yet - and I really need to paint the front of the house - I hate pink. I love having the garden, although I've not been too clever with it this year - and it's just the right size for m - after always living in big houses - I'm much more comfortable with less space. I actually bought it on the internet - it was the height of the market and Hastings had been really flagged up on the telly as the last undiscovered hotspot on the south coast - houses were selling at a premium in under 2 hours - so by the time anything became available it was sold. I saw this online and made an offer of the full asking price, someone else offered 10k more but pulled out at a late stage so I snook back in. I was stuck in Liverpool that day so I sent someone I knew round to have a look and he reported back all the details I needed and took loads of pictures, I did actually get over here to check it was what I wanted - but it was a bit of a risk. It's so small I was able to layout a full size floor plan in the top floor office of my house in Liverpool and check where all the furniture would fit.

Despite the fact it's worth quite a bit less than I paid for it - I count myself lucky that I actually have a mortgage and it's fixed for another 7 years at a really good rate - and although I would have liked to spend the money on the house - I'm in a lot less debt that I used to be.

There is quite a lot of work that needs doing urgently - and if it wasn't for the revenue wanting their money back - I'd have done it by now - but I can soldier on as I am for a bit longer.

It's really 'safe' up here. No fuss or bother - one weirdo neighbour but that doesn't bother me - not like Liverpool where it was like 28 days later or Brighton where it was like living in the back alley behind Stringfellows.

I have a few things I'm planning on doing this year - but it's not such an uphill struggle anymore - and I'm going to start doing things cosmetic soon..... like decorating.

Anyway - glass of wine tonight top toast the ancestral pile....cheers!