Nine houses in five weeks, and on the ninth, standing at the top of a street so steep that I had to lean back slightly to stay upright, I said, "Matt, I think this is it." He was looking at the view and didn't hear me, which is also how I knew.
The places we crossed off
We looked all over the north-west of the city. Hillsborough was Matt's childhood patch, with decent houses and a proper park, and his mum and dad still live there, which was both a point in its favour and the reason we didn't buy. Crookes we already knew, since we live in it, but the end-of-terrace houses we could afford there were smaller, or needed more work, or cost noticeably more than the same house a mile down the hill. We also went to see one in Stannington on a whim, because it had a bigger garden and an extra bedroom for the money. It felt like a different town, and every errand we imagined living there involved a car.
What Walkley had
Walkley is steep in a way that's hard to describe if you haven't climbed it. The streets run straight up or straight down the slope, and the terraces step along it like a staircase for giants. Walk to the end of nearly any road and the Rivelin Valley drops away in front of you, with the hills on the far side going blue in the evening. I'd like to say that was the deciding factor. It was the first factor, which isn't the same thing.
The deciding factor was the library. Walkley Library is a 1904 Carnegie building, run these days by volunteers, and I've been going for years, mostly for the book sale and the quiet. It's a mile from our flat. We'd walked down more times than I can count, always coming back up the hill with a carrier bag of paperbacks and a stitch. So when the details of a house at the end of a terrace dropped into my inbox, I'd already half decided.
It was practical too. A mile from the flat means the same GP surgery, the same dentist, friends we can still reach on foot, and the same bus into the city centre on the three days a week I'm in the office. Prices were a bit lower than in Crookes for what you got: an end-of-terrace with a passage down the side, a long garden, two decent bedrooms and a box room. We could afford it with a little left over to do some work, and a house that needs work was always going to be part of the deal.
Matt's mum Pauline grew up a few streets from the library. When we told her, she said, "My mother took me every Saturday and the librarian shushed me for singing." I think that did more for Matt than the view did, because he's Hillsborough through and through and doesn't change sides lightly.
The ninth house
At the first viewing, on Saturday 7 September, I noticed three things: the woodchip on the front room walls, Maureen's radio coming faintly through the party wall, and a hall that smelled of polish and tobacco and a lifetime of Sunday dinners, which I found oddly comforting. We went back on the Thursday evening, the 12th, and Matt took a tape measure up to the box room and announced that a desk, a chair and a filing box would fit if the chair went in backwards. That was when he stopped being cautious. On the way home we took the long way, down past the library and up the far side, and Matt counted the steps. I didn't ask him for the total.
The hill, honestly
There is a cost, and it's in the legs. Everything in Walkley is uphill from something. The walk back from the shops is a workout whether you've asked for one or not, and I've already worked out that a bag of shopping weighs more at the top of the hill than it did at the bottom. Parking is a three-part routine of handbrake, first gear and wheels turned into the kerb. I drove the Fiesta up one Sunday to practise a hill start on the street itself, stalled twice and, as far as I know, nobody saw.
We haven't seen what ice does to all of this yet. Ask me in February.
