Home is where the heart is

One of the themes in A Roaring Murder is “a place to call home”.

Ironically, while I was writing the book, I was getting ready to say goodbye to our family home—the house I grew up in and where my mum lived for 42 years and my dad for 46 years.

It’s been (and continues to be) an emotional rollercoaster cleaning out the house.

As a committed minimalist, I’m beginning to wonder if I was adopted 🙂 I’ve discovered my parents never threw anything away. From clothes to books and magazines, the things they loved to collect were neatly stacked, stored, and boxed up—everywhere!

My dad was an archivist at heart and had filing cabinets full of every letter he was ever sent, 40 years of payslips and tax returns and thousands of newspaper clippings and photographs.

My mum loved books and home decor. She worked in a homeware store before she died and has some lovely things.

As I embarked on the task of cleaning out the house, it I wanted to record it in some way.

So I created an Instagram account to keep a visual diary of the things my parents loved and collected. If you’d like to follow along its instagram.com/thestoryofnumber8

The painting below shows the house in its prime back in the 1990s. Mum loved her garden and I’m slowly getting it back to something resembling its best.

The house is about as far from an English mansion as you can get, but while cleaning it out, I’ve had some great ideas for future stories. Stay tuned for those and in the meantime, may all the stories you read be great ones.