WELCOME TO OUR BIG FAT 1980s HOUSE

We had been dying to move out of London for the whole seven months we'd been together (myself and RB; the cats seemed perfectly content staring out the window onto the Streatham backstreet we lived on).  RB is from Winchester and he was longing to raise his family in the leafy middle-class idyll of his youth where our children could build dens in the bushes and shoot fireworks at passing trains, just as he had all those sun-drenched summers ago.  As I am the perfect wife, I let him have his way.

What we hadn't counted on is that Winchester is one of the most expensive places in the country to buy and while we had every intention of buying a little piece of chocolate box beautifulness, the fact that anything with a hint of character was about two-hundred grand out of our budget stumped us a little.  So, after many, many, m-a-n-y viewings and two false starts, we finally settled on this little 80s beauty because it had four bedrooms, was in our budget, is in a lovely quiet courtyard and because ... well ... we panicked ...

It's not what it looks like.  It is in fact U shaped and our house is made up of the first two windows on the right - the Master Bed and the Dining Room - the recess which has the front door (big hall behind) and the Bathroom above, and the next two windows which is Bed 2 and the Living Room.  Behind these are two more bedrooms, a downstairs WC and, of course, a kitchen.

The foreground is the communal garden. Our garden starts from the blue-green of the very LEGGY lavender. Note the abundant hydrangea bushes.  There were two of them.  And they were abundant.

Out back is this:

Note the abundant bulbous bushes. They were abundant.  And bulbous.  And let's not talk about that island of concrete ...

And the back of the house...

See. Abundant. Bulbous. Bushes.

Windows are: Far Left Bed 4, middle landing, Right Bed 3.  Then Kitchen obscured by abundant bush and sliding doors to the Living Room.  Yes those are some conifers growing against the back wall.  I know.

Next time ... INSIDE!