In the interest of balanced reporting...

Husband has always read my blog. After yesterday's post - which you should probably read before this one if you haven't already - he sent me by email his own brain dump of Poole memories. He has given me permission to reproduce it here.

"Just checked your blog and I wanted to comment, saying all the special memories I have of Poole, of you bringing two wonderful babies into the world, walks along the promenade, strolling up the high street most weekends, trips to the private beach (Studland) just over from Sandbanks, our little workshops on the top floor of the house, your Amstrad, my lathe, the pew we bought at an auction, where I learned what a galley kitchen was, trying to park in our own street and using the cones to reserve a spot, having a "real" fire but in a kind of little iron house, gym membership at Racquets where we ate bigger lunches than the workout in the gym removed, ruining our new mattress by leaving it in the bedroom when they repaced the ceiling, M and T (friends), late night shopping at the garage only to re-meet the Katie as a nanny at Racquets a year later, Wimborne, our first Christmases as a family and leaving the turkey to defrost in the oven until it went off, Mothercare (we should have bought shares), planting vegetables in the second, walled garden out through the back of the shed. The poor bloke next door slowly losing himself to Alzheimer's, more basil and tomatoes than we knew what to do with. You telling me you were pregnant in the same rear garden, propping Son up for photos because he couldn't sit up yet, on that little green iron garden table set we bought in B&Q, Daughter's frogs legs as she slept. Pepper (the dog) on the beach in winter, the leaking roof, cosmetics to go, the playground in Poole park, the noise of the speedway track one evening a week, your little car crash on Ashley Road, Corfe Castle. Our first real family home with the red door and lots of stairs. "

And that, reader, is why I married him.

Becoming grown ups

Last week, on our driving trip west, I took the kids to Poole in Dorset. We had our children during the five or so years Husband and I lived there.

Son was nearly four when we moved from there and his memories extend only to our having a red front door. Last week we drove past number forty three and now the door is green; a sludgy, dull, army shade.

I have odd memories of Poole. Although we were married by then, it is where we made the transition into proper grown ups. We moved to Dorset from our university town, Hull, for Husband's second post-doctoral job.

We sold our two up two down (to a friend) and set off south. It felt a bit like coming home. We bought a three storey Edwardian town house - "big enough to sprog in" my sister said. We both went to work and then, after nearly two years in Poole, I got pregnant.

I struggled with postnatal depression through the following period. My brain has rewritten some of my memories during this phase: emotionally I don't remember it as a dark time but intellectually I know it was one of the toughest times of my life so far.

I showed the children around, remembering stories and people. It felt very strange, as though I was experiencing a vague sense of deja vu over and over again. We had fish and chips on Poole Quay, ice cream and then we went to Poole Pottery.

That was enough. I didn't know if I wanted to remember any more.