Mum, Dad and my two older brothers moved into this run down house about 3 1/2 years before I was born. Dad’s parents lived there too, in a mobile home in the garden. Dad had a lot of work to do in order to make it habitable, but piece by piece he turned it into a beautiful house, working all the hours under the sun to do so. Mum’s job was to keep it looking beautiful, whilst looking after (in the end) 5 children and my Dad. She seemed to work even longer hours than he did, keeping the house clean, tidy and warm. We NEVER ate a takeaway meal, everything was homemade from scratch, with as much of the fruit and vegetables coming from the garden. Dad was a gifted gardener and grew so much on that 3 acre plot, that he was able to sell some of it. In fact, for a few years they had their own little shop there.

There were tracks criss-crossing the land and us kids took full advantage of it! We had push bikes, motorbikes, an amazing go-cart that dad built for us, (which we called “the buggy” and was painted up in the same colours as The General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard), and cars. We tore around those tracks and rarely had any major mishaps, except on a couple of occasions when a throttle would jam on and the rider would end up in the hedge, and one time my motorbike caught fire!

When I was about 5, the time came that I was going to need a separate bedroom from my brothers. Not a problem for Dad – he created a bedroom for me, turning the 3 bedroom house into a 4 bedroom one! He also turned all the spindles for the staircase on his lathe in his shed.

We had a number of pets, including dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, a tortoise, goldfish and some chickens. I had a particularly favourite chicken and would pick her up and carry her around for hours. Luckily, she was really good natured and would put up with it all. We had a wild pond in the garden, which was filled with frogs and newts, and we also had a lot of slow worms in the garden, which mum was terrified of. It was an amazing place to grow up!

We had a fire in our out buildings in the 1980’s. In fact, it happened on the same night as the Lockerbie Bombing – 21st December 1988. Mum had gone to the door to let the cat out and had spotted the sheds ablaze. She casually walked back in and told dad, “The sheds are on fire…” Not even a hint of panic in her voice, like it was something totally normal! Within a few minutes we had 5 fire engines and goodness knows how many firefighters descended on the place! Fortunately it was quickly under control, but several old motorbikes and my brother’s car went up in flames that night.

Mum and Dad sold the land in the end and Ascot Close now sits where I once played. We moved out in 1990.

(I’ve heard stories that this house is haunted, but I don’t remember any weird bumps in the night while we lived there.)

I should add that my parents, older brothers and my grandparents (dad’s side) were living there from the Summer of ’76, and whilst we moved out of the house in 1990, it was not sold until late 1991.