The house I currently live in is the one I've lived in since I was five years old. My parents built it themselves (not with their own hands, but you know... it wasn't bought built-already). Over the last seventeen years, all through primary school, high school, and my medical degree, this house is the one I've come home to. It's the one where my dogs have lived and died, the one with the garden my mother planted, with plants inherited from my grandmothers. It's the one with the swimming pool I shrieked and splashed in as a child, the same swimming pool I hurriedly ate hotdogs next to so I could jump back in and play marco polo with my brother. It's the house my brother and I played hide-and-seek in, the one with the mulberry tree in the garden (planted for the feeding of the silkworms that were a seasonal feature in primary school), the one I practised playing my violin in for years and years, driving the neighbours insane. It's the house my friends slept over at, the one I had parties at that drove the neighbours to phone and complain the following morning. It's the house where my brother burnt holes into the kitchen counter whilst trying to make his own firecrackers. It's the house I know I can always come back to, and it will always be home, and I will always feel safe and comfortable in it.

This weekend, for a whole pile of reasons, my parents decided to sell this house.

There have been estate agents in and out since Saturday, but today, for the first time, I was the one who had to show a pair of them around. Estate Agent-in-chief was a miserable looking woman of about fifty. Her sidekick was a fairly attractive young thing a few years older than me. We started at the main bedroom and worked our way through the house, the chief asking various questions, the sidekick taking various photos. I love this house a lot, and it is beautiful. But suddenly, I felt I had to explain to this pair of women why the paint was peeling here, why there were no cupboards in that room, why there was no grass there.

The estate agents didn't see the mobile we hung in a tree when I was twelve. They didn't see the huge cycads my mom took from my late grandmother's garden to take root in ours. They didn't see the blue paint my brother chose for his bedroom walls when he was eight, and they didn't see the giant Tracy Chapman poster I hung on my wall in my first year of university. They just saw that we don't have electric gates or motorised garage doors, they just noted that the pool's marbalite was a bit damaged and that the bedroom cupboards were rather small. They thought the carpets needed changing, the light fixtures were old-fashioned, and that it was a shame the pool wasn't heated.

It's really hard to sell a home - to see the place you've lived and breathed in for so many years, to be turned into somebody else's cash cow. I hope I don't have to do it again soon.

OK, I'm aware of the commenting problem created by my changeover to Beta Blogger.

To comment on my blog now, you need to follow one of three options:

Don't use your old blogger login - use the login you do to get into Gmail, or your google account.

If you have no Google account:

You will have space to type in your name and your own URL, so I will be able to visit you from your comment.

Obviously the least ideal, but you can still leave your name and URL in the comment body itself.

Please try these options out - I've tested them myself and they do seem to work. Let me know how it goes - and send lots of complaint letters to Blogger!

Also, I'll send out invites to people wanting to join Gmail (I think you can join by invite only) - send a request email to littlkaren[at]gmail[dot]com.

OK, I'll admit I only watched about ten minutes of the first episode. That's for two reasons: firstly, I only started watching forty minutes in, because I forgot all about it. Secondly, it was appalling.

Survivor South Africa, well, sucks. From poor sound quality, to disjointed scenes, to boring, bitchy, pretentious contestants, to hundreds of super-corny super-sentimental shots of clouds and water and clouds and water and clouds and water, to an abominable soundtrack - Survivor is another brilliant example of why I'd really rather just watch American TV.

My Post of the Month for August comes from a blog called

by a man who currently calls himself ducklet

I've been enjoying this blog for a while, because he just writes so.... differently. Have fun!

About Me

Name: Karen Little

Location: South Africa

Community Service - hurrah! One more year of compulsory government service and then I'm a free agent. Read all about it...

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