Everybody seems to be moving house. This past year or some lots of people have up sticks and moved. Three members of my family. Four friends. Gorgeous houses in to-die-for locations. It feels like everyone’s off to pastures new.

And so I have itchy feet.

It doesn’t take much for me to be watching the programme on TV where there’s a fabulous mystery house or Charlie Dimmock’s replacing the overgrown garden with a water feature, or I’m browsing estate agents’ websites. Looking at fresh fields, pastures new, fascinating kitchens and rooms with beams and outbuildings.

 I do like a good outbuilding.

I wish I was twenty-five and rich. I’d be in France or Scotland, choosing a chateau and doing it up. Renovating turrets, Putting in a banquet room. A wine cellar.

Or – most likely – I’d be skint and dreaming about it.

There are a lot of carrots being dangled here, and I can’t help stretching out itchy fingers.

Come and live in London, Mum.

Come up North – it’s such great fun.

Come to Hereford – we’d be neighbours.

I travel across the county quite often. And I am a wanderer at heart. I imagine loading up a wagon with my stuff on it and setting across the country and putting down new roots. For a while.

Somewhere new always looks inviting.

A little village community, people who all help each other.

A lively city with culture and innovative groups and theatre and galleries and lots to do.

 A hole in the ground miles from anyone surrounded by woodland, just the odd fox and hare.

What a dilemma.

I live in the best house I’ve ever lived in. It’s old and quirky and I enjoy sharing it with anyone and everyone. Neighbours. Special friends. Or my family. Or my cats. Or just me.

I have a wonderful writing room. A cobbled hall that used to be for pigs. An inglenook fireplace. An overgrown garden. And now I have a gym. A bar.

Let me tell you about the bar.

It was once a cider press. It was full of rubble. Now it’s a two-storey dimly-lit outbuilding with cider and whiskey and sambuca and non-alcoholic beverages available at all times. And darts and shove ha’penny and Jenga and dominoes.

And a special space for a friend who’ll sit and play beautiful music to anyone who comes round for a drink.

And a roaring fire that you can hunker over with a cup of hot spicy cider while you warm your toes.

It has been built with love and old barrels and imagination and furnishings acquired for next to nothing.

It’s comfy. It’s fun. It’s nice.

If I moved somewhere else, I wouldn’t have a bar. It’d be a small place and I’d be starting again and I’d leave a lot of wonderful things I’d want to take with me. Most of them people.

What to do, what to do?

I have a friend who’s working on the other side of the earth. How I envy that freedom sometimes, but then I suppose she just wants to come home a lot.

 I have another friend who’s just bought an orchard and is brewing his own cider.

And another friend who’s tired of moving around and is just retiring and looking forward to peace and quiet and a place to reflect.

 And another friend who moves between two houses and two countries.

What to do, what to do?

Do I listen to my itchy feet. Brush up my languages. Start putting all those books in boxes?

Or should I just be happy with the blessings I have?

I’m going to think about it for a while. But first, I’ll finish up writing the next chapter in my wonderful writing room and then pop to the bar for a 00- Guinness.