After a month between places living out of suitcases and never quite getting our washing dry.

It feels good to be here at last.

Sometimes it seemed some crazy slip of timing, an unresolved snag in the survey, or a stall in a process designed for lawyers not people would scupper the whole sale.

But I always knew things would go OK. I knew the moment we arrived to view the house, before I liked the light in the hall, before I saw the trees.

It was the address.

Back in 1987 I drove across the Pennines with my Mum for an interview to be the director of a literature festival. I’d been bumming around on the dole for a while, it was the longest of long shots.

As we came into town, we passed a road that had the same name as the road I grew up in. Then we turned into the main street which had the same name as the main street in my home town. I knew at that moment I’d get the job.

Just as the day we came to view this house, seeing it’s address was the amalgam of the road I grew up in and the main street of the festival’s and my home town, I knew that sooner or later, no matter how long it took, this place would become our home.