This Is My House

Sometimes it can be hard to know what to write about. It doesn’t matter how many staircases you climb – literal or metaphorical, take your pick – you simply cannot focus in on that tale that must be told. You can take a walk to clear your head, surf the net to fill your head or position yourself in the way of a swinging bag to hurt your head, but sometimes the ideas just aren’t there.

Then, one day, one lonely day when you least expect it, someone knocks on your door (quite literally) and practically writes the blog for you…

‘Hello!’ he called out, my 28 year-old face staring back at him. ‘Are your parents home?’

My parents? Um. Hmm. Let’s see. Would those be the parents whose house I left over 10 years ago and who probably are at home in their house 4 hours away from here?

‘This is my house,’ I responded, confidently (because, you see, it is my house – I’m a big fan of the truth).

‘Oh,’ he replied, slightly taken aback. ‘I’m just doing a bit of cold calling and I was wondering whether you’d be interested in some gourmet fish?’

Well, at least he wasn’t trying to get me to change energy supplier. Perhaps he’d seen the glint of a Cambridge graduate in my eye or something?

After a brief exchange in which I blamed my wife’s occasional vomiting problem on fish, it was clear that the cold calling wasn’t getting any warmer and so he began retreating, speaking as he did so:

‘Oh, and sorry I questioned your ability to own a house.’

So, it seemed we had gone from me being confused for a child to now being someone incapable of owning a house. Perhaps he actually did think I was 28 – or in my twenties at least – but one quick look as the door swung open communicated quite clearly, in his mind, that this man was certainly not capable of home ownership?

What exactly is the look of a man capable of owning a house? What am I lacking that I need to start doing?

Should I be rubbing the door post with my ‘owner’s hand’, as if stating quite clearly: this is mine, or should I reach out my hand ready to shake the salesman by his while shouting ‘Welcome to my house!’, ready to follow up with ‘I bought it with my own money…and the bank’s’ as soon as that first look of doubt appeared?

I suppose the obvious answer is to get a plaque. Something that makes it absolutely clear that the house belongs to ‘people who look unlikely to own it’ (I’m unfairly including my wife in this, I know, but I banking on her being happy to stand with me in solidarity). Maybe I could even stick a photo of us on the door to lessen the shock?

And, if all else fails, I suppose I should simply nod and say ‘yes, my parents are indeed home, so if you get on the next train to Norwich you should catch them by mid-afternoon’.

Or – and this is definitely the final or – I could always grow a beard. Beards scream out home owner, don’t they?