Hahahahahahaha

So my house is pristine, sparkling, perfectly tidy, all those other nice words you used to describe it? C'mon, you weren't fooled for a moment by those carefully edited and cropped photos, were you? Let's have a little tour.

We'll start in the dining room, currently my Room of Despair, as it gives access to the stairs, the hall, or the kitchen, and is in effect just a square corridor, with the old dresser looming darkly, domineeringly, over everything. This room is challenging.

At the foot of the stairs is a door that leads up from the dining room. Mind those two steps; one is fairly standard, the other is very shallow, and easy to fall up or down, as I do, frequently.

Push the door open, and we arrive at the stairs - only 9 of them, which after the 35 in my previous house, makes hoovering less of an ordeal. Notice that the same fawn ferny-patterned carpet runs through the entire house. The animals are making it their lives' mission to wreck it. I dream of finding beautiful old boards beneath (but suspect that I won't). That's another year's project.

On the bottom landing sits the still-wrapped large mirror that used to be over the sitting room fireplace in my last house. I don't know what to do with it yet.

Hidden behind the same door stand two wrapped-up - what? sheets of glass? pictures? more mirrors? I must have a look some time.

Be careful on the very steep stairs - few are the same height, so again, it's very easy to tumble down. At the top is a large cupboard.

Like the stairs, this cupboard is the only place in the house where my neighbours and I can hear each other, making us think that the staircase was divided in two many years ago, as they have the same number of irregular death-trap steps. 

The landing is irregular, with two more steps and a door leading onto a corridor for the bathroom and my bedroom. On the right, a doorway leads into a dark little lobby and two more bedrooms.

This landing is the real death-trap - it's light during the day, as there is a skylight; at night it's pitch dark, so there are little plug-in lights to save visitors from emerging from bedrooms, floundering a bit, then falling spectacularly down the stairs, and possibly damaging the mirrors breaking a leg.

Today I am engaged in emptying this cupboard, into which things were stuffed willy-nilly when I first moved here, and sorting out fabrics, bedding, curtains, pillows, making a satisfyingly large heap for the charity shops.

Its interior  is a rounded triangle in shape, going back about 4 feet at its furthest point, with crudely made shelves.

But this is no ordinary cupboard! No, it doesn't lead to Narnia; don't be silly.

It's the famous Flying Freehold - the f-word twice, as it came to be called - that caused my conveyancing solicitor so much grief. It extends into the neighbours' house, and on their landing appears simply as a curved wall. If you look carefully to the left of the interior wall, you can just make out a doorway. See it? This once connected the two houses - or what are now two houses; English Heritage's somewhat inaccurate listing states that the entire building, now next door's and mine, may have been three dwellings at one time, a malthouse at another, and possibly the local pub before then. Both our houses are higgledy-piggledy, and hard to make sense of, full of character and crumbling plaster.

But older locals tend to refer to mine as "May H's cottage" - May H having been the elderly owner at least three ownerships previously, when there were stone flags in the hall and a pervading smell of damp.

Later today, there may be shelves of neatly sorted bedding, spare duvets and pillows in the flying freehold cupboard, and if I don't manage to get low bookcases sorted out soon, the several still-unpacked boxes of books that sit reproachfully next to my desk - yes, that's more filing on top.

So, still thinking pristine? Immaculate? Tidy? Thought not.

Come back soon; I'll show you the linhay at the end of the garden one day, and destroy all romantic notions you may have about stone buildings before damp proofing.

Now back to that cupboard. I have a reputation for tidiness to live up to.