4 Years

That's right - I've lived in this house for 4 years today, and it's still pink.

I'm sure I've told the story of how I bought this house on the internet, because it was the height of the market - and I was stuck in Liverpool at the time - people were fighting in the estate agents as house prices rocketed and TV crews swarmed all over Hastings proclaiming it to be the undiscovered jewel of the south coast. I hope all the tossers who bough holiday and weekend homes here have suffered as the 25% drop in value bites into their bonus.

I love living here, except for the hill - which I've still not been able to manage in one go - I managed to get 90% of the way up Harold Road yesterday - and had to dismount for the last few hundred yards, it's just too steep. I love working here - if I could afford it I'd get a studio in town. I love the weather and the countryside, the landscape, the beach, the Old Town and St Leonards. I love the nutters and the dropouts - the Trust fund failures in expensive clothes and big old houses who can't afford a pint of milk. There are lovely people here, and some real Characters. There are also some idiots and some losers - but you get that everywhere.

I love the fast train to London's Kings Cross and don't mind paying the extra because it's so posh and makes me feel very flash.

I love the truly awful local papers that obviously hates itself and should be on lithium.

I love all the odd shops, the bad shops, the terrible shopping center that reeks of 'how not to do it' - I love the huge number of greyhound owners and the fact that you can, if you need to, live on next to nothing - which most people do - and only pretend they have money.

I love the fact that you can see Beachy Head, Bexhill, France, The South Downs, Dungeness and most of the way to London on a clear day from almost any point in town.

I hope we get snowed in again this year - I bloody loved it!

I love the foxes, the badgers that wander up and down my road at night, giant man eating seagulls that attack me every July. The sheep, cattle and ponies on the country park. I love seeing slow worms, adders and grass snakes. Birds I don't recognise alongside owls, woodpeckers and all manner of country life. I love the woods with all manner of strange plant life and fields of wild garlic which smell so strongly.

I love the reductions in the COOP and the strange people who shop and work there, even the scary ones.

I love not having a telly, and I love this little house... I just wish it was finished. And not pink.