Property No. 8
After my other homes in North London, Muswell Hill seemed quite a way out, especially as it wasn't on the tube. But I soon learned a short-cut through Cranley Gardens of multi-murderer Dennis Nilsen fame, (last year, I saw a lovely looking flat on the market, rang the agent and lo and behold, it was Nilsen's old flat. No way!), which got me to the station in about fifteen minutes with a few creepy shudders along the way.
It was an end-of-terrace three-bedroomed ex-council house with the most spectacular garden, with a pergola that ran up the side of the house and was draped with clematis and jasmine in summer. It also had a raised pond with a brick surround where you could sit with a glass of wine, watching the... well, watching nothing, actually, as there were no fish in it and it didn't cross my mind to buy any, so it was just water and duckweed.
My long-suffering boyfriend laid a laminate floor in the living room for me. I bought a comfy, squishy orange sofa and armchair as I had donated my previous sofa to my god-daughter. I made my own curtains and bedspread and transformed the smallest bedroom into a study.
Within weeks, it all started to go wrong. The house faced onto a small green with a huge holm oak on it, right in front of my front door, to the right of which was an alley leading to the next street. I soon realised that after dark, that tree was a meeting place for the local hoody brigade and I witnessed spliff-smoking and various drug deals going down. It got so that I was scared to come home and would literally race to my door, heart hammering as I yammered ostentatiously into my mobile phone, hoping that it would put off would-be muggers.
There was also a lot of noise from the house adjoining mine, which housed a tenant who looked after a mentally ill relative who did a lot of shouting. The nail in the coffin was the wretched steep hill itself, up which I had to climb in order to reach the shops. It went on and on and on. It felt as if I was toiling up Everest without crampons. It did my ankle in. A ligament got stretched and I wore an elastic bandage for months - and God, I was too bloody YOUNG for an elastic ankle bandage! It didn't suit my hip image one little bit. After all, I was only 50!
After a year, I realised I simply had to move again, but not before I was filmed there as part of a Channel 4 (I think) TV series called Home Stories, about serial house movers like myself.
I wasn't sad to bid that house farewell. I should have listened to my dear, sensible friend who, when she drove me there while the purchase was going through. so I could show her where I was moving to, said, "My God, that's a hell of a hill. Are you sure you're not making an awful mistake?"
She couldn't say that about my next purchase. Not only was it in a non-hilly street, it was in a part of London that was to capture my heart - a place I yearn to return to, though the lottery win is taking a long time coming: Highgate.
