I’m standing outside the house of my dreams. Literally of my dreams as, over the years, I’ve often found myself mentally roaming its rooms when I’m sleeping.
It’s where I lived from my first day of school until I left home to go to university — and, sadly, rarely returned ever again. I made lifelong friends here, learnt to ride a bike, stressed over exams, fell in and out of love. But most crucially, it’s where I made most of my memories of my mum, Valerie, who, with my dad, bought the house for £15,000 in 1977 and sold it 24 years ago for £145,000, just two years, as it turned out, before she died, aged 58.
The house in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol
So these four pale-blue walls of our old
