It’s 8am. Pete and I are having breakfast in bed. Bernard is on a year 6 residential trip. We are enjoying it way too much. We were talking about how old and stupid the cat is getting, and somehow get on to talking about how long we have lived in this house: over ten years now.

I never imagined we would be here this long, I say. We said it was our Ten Years House.
That didn’t mean we had to move after ten years, says Pete. I always thought of it as a minimum.
I always thought of it as a maximum, I say.
That’s because you have never lived anywhere for ten years, Pete points out. I lived in the same house from the age of 2 to the age of 22. That’s what I want for Bernard.
We should have had this conversation ten years ago.

It’s hard to articulate how it feels for me to be in the same place for ten years, even as a parent and knowing that our son has this amazing stable foundation that I never had; on the other hand, the constant moving around meant having to meet and deal with new people, learn to make friends and fit in (theoretically, anyway); and at least my family were a constant even if schools and houses changed. When choosing a university, these things were presented as important and character building reasons to go as far from away from home as possible, usually by people who had no idea how many times I had already done that.

I have a little bit of wanderlust. I may have mentioned it before.