All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In

The launch of my first home décor book in just a month’s time has got me nostalgic for my very own history of rented bricks and mortar…

Restore to me that little spot,
With grey walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.

Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,
And though its halls are fair within--
Oh, give me back my HOME!

Anne Brontë

If you hadn’t already guessed, I am pretty obsessed with the idea of home. Winding nostalgia, poetry and romance in an uneven plait, the abstract notion of anchorage within four walls has always had the power to squeeze my heart. For a Sagittarian who loves to travel, my clinging inclination towards my very own sanctuary is perhaps cosmically misplaced. I should have been born a Cancerian with my own very little shelter grafted to my back, scuttling here and there but never far from my abode.

With just over a month until the publication of my debut book on home décor, I thought it would be an opportune moment to meander through my Rolodex of previous addresses. Taking in the bigger picture, the red thread that connects them is that they were nearly all dumps for one reason or another. I wish I had lived in properties of architectural significance or even local renown. I recently had dinner with a woman who regaled me with tales of living in a boathouse on the banks of the Thames. I have nothing like this to bring to the table, but each address etched something in vivid colour to my memoirs. In fact, as there have been so many, I’ve got a veritable rainbow back there. So, let’s split the seams and get reminiscing. 

1. Arabella Park, Munich

My parents were living in Munich when I was born, and my first home was a spacious and well-appointed rental apartment. I’ve seen pictures of a spiral staircase which I always used to think very sophisticated, and I still have a yen for them to this day. Munich is generally verdant, clean and prosperous as well as snow-locked in Winter. At full term, I was under 5lb and sickly, and as it was a particularly icy winter, mum was ordered to keep me indoors until I was three months old. In my mind that would have made this apartment feel claustrophobic to the nth degree, but mum says it was actually just very cosy. She has fond memories of Munich in general (outside of the whole marriage implosion obviously).

2. Chislehurst, Kent

In our galley kitchen which had all original 1930s tiles

After my parents split, mum brought us back to Kent. We moved into a 1930s semi-detached house which my dad had managed to buy on his civil service clerk’s salary. How times have changed. Back then it was on the wrong side of the tracks of this now affluent village about 3 miles from Bromley on the Southeast London/Kent borders.

We lived off a parade of shops with a chippy, a well-known ‘rough’ pub which I can remember having a sign saying ‘NO STRING VESTS’ hanging in the window and a corner shop which sold boiled sweets in paper bags by the quarter. I remember coming back from Uni, all hoity toity and a lad I’d known from stacking shelves in Sainsburys shouted across the street, presumably amused at my snooty nose high in the air, “we all know you’re from Green Lane Katherine.” He wasn’t wrong.

The house itself was modest but charming, all original features with basically no updates. We didn’t have a shower, the galley kitchen was so narrow you could touch both walls and it was generally a mess. But my mum fostered a sense of fun in the décor. One Saturday when I was about 9, I remember going to B&Q with her to buy some canary yellow gloss paint before she painted the back door to look like sunshine. Nearly everything was covered with some kind of patterned throw.

Art Deco a go with a tiger print bag I’d made and the first shelf I hung

She also let me have free rein in my own space and when I was 13, I stencilled a black art deco pattern around the picture rail and slicked black gloss on to all the woodwork. I thought it was incredibly chic. As I was at school with wealthy girls who lived in mansions with ‘Christmas Rooms’ (for wrapping) and 8 bedrooms all with en suites, looking back it’s amazing that I already felt like my taste brought anything worthy to the table.

After I left for Uni, my stepdad moved in, the kitchen was extended and a conservatory added on before they sold up and emigrated to South Africa. I remember thinking how incredible the transformation had been, but also strangely mournful for all those bricks consigned to the skip with their sense of a lost history. If sentimentality were an illness, I would certainly be most unwell with it.