Months and months of not writing this and here I am. I've just spent the day at the first recording session for The Mr Men - we're re-voicing the American version - and I'm now In a box room, in my mum's house in Hertfordshire. To explain. I decided to move about 18 months ago, from my flat in North London to another (mythical) flat in another, nicer, part of North London. Very quickly it all went wrong. For starters, I undersold my flat by about £30,000. Then I sold the flat below mine, which I was renting out, and moved into the house I owned in Hertfordshire (also a rental investment). I hated the house, and immediately wished I hadn't sold the flat I'd lived in for 10 years. However by then I had no choice but to stick to the path. The area of London I wanted to live in, although not a lot more expensive than where I had been living, was just out of my reach without getting a ridiculous mortgage, or compromising on space. I spent the next few months looking for a flat, mostly in the area where I used to live, but nothing I saw lived up to the flat I was used to. The only one that did I tried to buy. We were about to exchange and the vendors pulled out. Hence, I had to live at my mothers for while and keep looking. Then I spotted a house for sale in the Hertfordshire village where I was reluctantly holed up. It was a lovely Victorian cottage, one of the oldest houses in the area, three bedrooms, in a quiet private road. I was panicking at this point, and put in an offer. It was accepted and I completed last week. At the start of the purchase I put in for planning permission for an extension and extensive internal improvements. I've started ripping the insides out ready for the builders, who should be here next week.
Although the house is extremely pleasant, and the work will be challenging, rewarding and possibly profitable, I'm still smarting from the mistakes I made earlier in the year. I've resigned myself to either a: living in this house once I've done all the work on it (without a mortgage) or b:selling it and moving back into a flat in London (with a mortgage). I've been trying to analyse what it is that is making me so miserable, since most other people would kill to be in this position - no mortgage on a beautiful Victorian house - but something isn't sitting right. For starters, I'd love to be back in my flat. I'd lived in it for exactly a decade. A decade in which I'd forged a career, had several relationships, two lodgers, and done a lot of work to make the flat mine. It was perfect for me, and it was simply restlessness a desire to move to a slightly better area that made me sell. But it was a rash, impatient decision. I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I wasn't ready to move, but by the time I realised it, it was too late. So, in order to mitigate the loss, I'm doing the new house up so I either live there as I want, or sell it at a small profit and get an expensive flat in London. The thing that really hurts is that I threw away 10 years of my life - my only connection to the happiest ten years I had known was that flat. I sold it for a dream, one which is taking far too long to come true. If it ever does. If I had thought about it for a second, for an instant, I would have stayed where I was. I should have sold the rental house in Hertfordshire, payed off my mortgage and simply sat at home. At this point I'd still own two flats (a converted house) in North London with a mortage of about £80,000 which was being paid by tenants. I was on easy street, now I'm on s**t street. Just to get back to where I was will require more money and more work. Idiot. Let this be a lesson to you all.
I miss London. Lovely though the village is, highly desirable the house may be, but after the builders have left, and the work is done, what will there be left for me to do? I'm used to living in a lively, densely populated area, with landscaped parks and long roads of converted Victorian houses. Familes of different nationalities, shops, bars, restaurants, and only 15 miles from the centre of town. Maybe I won't notice or care once I have a house to live in. Maybe the lack of a mortgage will be enough to keep me here. I hope so, I need to settle, to feel I have a home again. But I doubt it. I wake up every morning and after that short period of half sleep when everything is ok, I remember where I am and wince. I lie in bed and try to recreate my old bedroom in my head. To imagine myself in the back bedroom of my old house, with the trees in the garden rustling, the clock in the kitchen ticking, and the knowledge that this was my home, my own place, and it was in London.
I'd escaped my childhood by living in London. I've been living there (apart from a short period just before I bought my flat) ever since. Hertfordhire is everything I wanted to be distanced from. It reminds me of things I'd rather forget. The ennui, the sheer vacuity of the suburbs. If I end up living in the house I've bought, it won't be so bad. It has individual character, real charm, and is only two minutes walk from the mainline into King's Cross. I always said to myself that I'd either live in city or in the country. Suburbs hold no appeal for me. This at least is in the country. The surrounding area is picturesque, but then there's the myth of the English countryside. You can look at it, but you can't use it. In London, there are parks. Good ones too. There was one near my flat. I used to go running round it. It overlooked Alexandra Palace and beyond, and there was a ruin of an old manor house in the middle of it. I loved that park. It wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either. It had playgrounds and a bowling green, trees, open spaces, football pitches and ponds. Hampstead has the heath, Richmond has a park the size of a London borough, then there's Trent Park, Dulwich Park, Hyde Park, Regent's Park, and countless hundred other squares and recreation grounds. In short, there is probably more green you can walk on in one London borough than in the whole of Hertfordshire, which is mainly agricultural land or privately owned grounds. Try walking on that and see how far you get. 30 minutes out of King's Cross and it's another world.
I can see the advantages of living here. It's less crowded than London (although that's changing), the air is slightly fresher, the sirens less frequent, insurance rates lower and you don't have to take the tube anywhere. (actually, that's because you can't, so I suppose that was an irrelevance). It also depends on which part of London you are comparing it with. Much of London is awful. Dirty, overcrowded, violently expensive, just violent, and deeply ugly. But in almost equal measure, London is exciting, colourful, enriching and beautiful. I can understand why people with families like it here, it's spacious, and there is a real sense of community. We are all of a type though. I fit in, I think, because I was born and bred here, but my heart, my spirit, lies elsewhere. There was a real sense of community in my old road in London, and everyone was different. Very different. It doesn't feel real somehow up here. I'd forgotten that. London doesn't let you get complacent. You're part of a huge organic machine, a heaving, unhealthy mechanism of people that never settles. If you're lucky, as I was, you find a place to live that's quiet enough to get to sleep, but has life enought to keep you awake. I was mad to leave and will almost certainly return.
In the meantime, the process of destruction and construction is satisfying in itself, and my Victorian house is welcoming and enjoyable. The neighbours are all good people, the village is pleasant and the train links are excellent. I shall continue this until it is finished. I take pleasure and pride in working on houses, and whatever happens I'll leave this one better than I found it. Then I'll decide what I should do. I may fall in love with it, and be reluctantly drawn to it, the older woman, a constant companion and comfort. But my first love will always be with me. Good memories die hard. The pull of the city is very strong on someone brought up in suburbia, and the life I had in London was one to relish. I'm too young, even at my age, to leave it all behind.
Sorry this is so maudlin, but that's how I am. I couldnt write about this before, I was too depressed, too close to it all, and it all seemed so endless. I feel better now the work has begun, now there is progress. The housing market is settling, so maybe I can get the flat I want without too large a mortgage. I want this to end. I was immune from it all, and exposed myself wilfully to the infection of the marketplace, I've only myself to blame. Who knows, maybe this will immunise me from future stupidity. I bloody hope so.
from Sarah Fell, the aardman producer of Planet Sketch and others. She was at the ceremony on Sunday, and by coincidence, I'd been at her birthday lunch a week before. The news cheered me up, as I've been out of work and simply spending my time working on my new house. The builders are making good progress, and I've ripped out the old bathroom, tiled the kitchen floor (and my mother is cleaning off all the grout, which is a dreadful job, so I'm very grateful). That's my life. Did a TV ad today for Bullseye and Catchphrase interactive DVD games. Nice to see Jim Bowen is still working, and that Roy Walker is still alive. 
