We bought 55b Howe Street, Edinburgh. It was a top floor flat offering amazing views of the breakers and puffins on the beach (far better than North Berwick), and a route so short to Glenogle Baths that many of the neighbours popped there and back in their dressing gowns.

My parents visited on the first day that we had access to our new home. Both healthy and slim, they managed the complicated black painted iron-work access to the top floor. I struggled a bit with my bike. In the end I took the advice of a another cyclist and abandoned it in the vast hallway next to a pharmacy/post office counter. I also agreed to help the cyclist save tax on a parcel that she was posting by signing a receipt to say that it would be sent to Oxford.

Despite the purchase of our new pad in town, we held on to our old basement flat down the road. It would have been folly to abandon the garden after all the efforts of the past three years. I could also now take great pleasure joining in with my ‘old’ neighbours whenever they said ‘I have another place the city centre’.