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Dear Grandad,

I thought it would be a nice idea if I wrote and told you a bit about our new house because you haven’t been able to see it yourself. It’s a big tall house, much bigger than the one we used to live in, and my bedroom is right at the top so that the ceiling is all slopey where the roof comes down. It has one window that looks out behind the house but the view is not very nice because the only things that you can see are the backs of the houses in the next road and the backs of all the shops at the top of the Plain (that’s the big road that runs close to the house with shops and estate agents on it). I don’t mind that I don’t have a nice view because I like my room and I like the house and best of all I like the garden.

I asked Mum and Dad how old the house was and they said it was built sometime around 1870. This means that it is Victorian. I’ve learnt about Queen Victoria in school so I know she was the queen of England and she was very old when she died and this was around one hundred years ago. My school was built 100 years ago so we found out all about this area when we celebrated the centenary. They built lots of houses in this area around that time so this house must have been one of the first. Actually, our house is the first, because it is the first one in the street, number one! I like living in house number one and it’s good because it means we don’t have so far to walk to school in the mornings because we are at the right end of the road! The house is much bigger than our last house (sorry, I told you this before) and has five bedrooms. Downstairs there is a hallway and then two rooms joined together which are the living room and the dining room. Then at the back of the house there is the kitchen, the utility room where Mum keeps the washing machine, and a toilet. It smells a bit in there which is not very nice but Dad says that it is just a bit damp because the room was built by joining the main part of the house to the wall that runs between the house and the back lane. From the hallway there are some stairs – in fact there are 42 stairs in all if you include the two that lead up into the bathroom. They twist up the house in four little stairways. At the top of the first section is the bathroom, then you go up a bit more to the spare bedroom and Mum and Dad’s bedroom and then (this is the best bit) you go up two more sets of stairs to the top floor of the house where Annie and me have our bedrooms. There’s also another small room on our floor which is the office but no-one ever really goes in there because it is too untidy. Sometimes Dad tries to sort out the mess in there but he just gets cross and says that it’s no good and that he can’t sort it out because there’s nowhere to put anything.

I’ve already told you a little bit about my bedroom. Annie’s room is basically the same except that it faces towards the front and has two arched windows. She has bars across the windows so that she doesn’t climb out onto the ledge and fall off. She’s lucky because she can see the garden but I’m not really sure if I would like to have her room because she can also see the house over the road which is really messy because no-one has lived in it for ages which makes it a bit spooky.

Anyway, I can’t believe that I have written so much already because I only meant to write you a short letter. I think this is a good place to stop so I can tell you all about the garden the next time I write.

Love from

Kate

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