More Than Just a House.
This was it. My family home, that I left for the last time this evening. Everything inside was in boxes, and the dogs looked worried. I haven't lived there for over 5 years now, but it was always a place filled with fun, laughter and some fantastic memories.
Stability in youth is a rare thing. I was lucky enough to live here with Mum and Dad, and my 2 brothers. Yes, there were fights and drama (and many wrestling matches on the couches and in the gardens) as well as arguments and stony standoffs, but my overriding memories will be of a family that genuinely enjoyed one another’s company.
Summers spent playing in gardens and floating in the garden centre pool, Jumping on trampolines (and having more wrestling matches on there, too). We were lucky, me and my brothers, to all have close circles of friends that amalgamated into one big gang. This house was the base of operations for birthday parties, gatherings, game nights, anniversary parties, and BBQs on a hot weekend.
My career as a musician began in this house, and was where me and James wrote music, recorded albums, and rehearsed with bands. It was where I taught music from in the early days before I could afford to move out. we would put on gigs in the garden that all the neighbours came to, or would scowl at from their windows. We were notorious for being ‘The noisy house at the top of the hill’, and it was a reputation I was proud of.
The Christmases we amazing. The house would get a complete festive makeover every year (much to the dramatized distain of my father) and the last week of December was always a cavalcade of gifts, extended family visits, friends moving in and feasts that would make Nigella Lawson envious. They would make everyone in the house swear that ‘The diet begins on Monday’, and we would all break that promise without fail by about the 3rd of January.
I always just assumed that as an old man, I’d move back in, and make this house my own. But now, it is not to be. The house is sold, and the exodus has begun. I am now the last of my family in south London, and those meetings, parties and BBQs will never happen again.
In the words of Andy Bernard,
-‘I Wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days, before you’ve actually left them’
Thanks for an excellent childhood, and memories I will cherish for a lifetime.
