A Room of One's Own

We gave our landlords notice on our apartment several months ago because we could have been moving to the UK.

When we finally knew we were staying in Bangkok we could have changed our minds and stayed but we decided we wanted to move. This is a gorgeous apartment but it’s expensive and we don’t use all the facilities. (Here is a picture of our present  apartment's garden. It's from my office; I’m sorry I couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs. The tennis courts are part of our garden – I’ve never so much set food on them – and the garden itself: with a playground, a seating area and a grassy bit that's out of sight. All the facilities for which people with small kids and dogs pay a premium. I probably haven’t been down there for two years. Why? Because it’s hot people. Remember, our three seasons are ‘hot,’ ‘really hot’ and ‘hot and wet.’)

But back to the present… I was in the UK; I couldn’t look for accommodation. So I told Husband he had total power to choose an apartment. Gulp. Husband’s quite good at house/condo hunting. I reckoned I could trust him to find us a nice place to live – a nice enough place anyway.

He kept in touch, telling me what he’d seen and where they were. In the end he chose one from the short list and stumped up some money so that they took it off the market…so…you know, there wasn’t any going back. Eeek.

I went to see it this week. Gulp. Our agent was nervous because he thought I might march in and say ‘I hate it. This won’t do.’ I’d never do that. I might think it but I gave all the power to Husband so if I loathed it…well, I was going to have to keep buttoned, wasn’t I? 

I already knew the area pretty well. It’s on the green route (back roads) we use to access our current home. I even knew which building it was… I knew that there was plenty of space inside for me to have my own office (OMG *trembling with excitement*) but I had also clocked that there was going to be a disagreement with our children about who’d have the better of the two bedrooms… This was already being played out in our home and they hadn’t even seen the rooms yet!

It was very nice: older but just as much area and quite light. We have more rooms in the new place but they are all a little smaller than the present place. The minute I saw the two rooms for the kids I knew it was a no brainer. Sure, the nicer room shares the balcony with the living room but the other bedroom – OMG - had a walk in closet. Daughter has always wanted one of those…