The two-acre smallholding lived up to its name in being very, very small indeed.
We had to squeeze around the front door one at a time to get into the entrance hall, which was also the front room and the entry to the stairway.
It was a red-brick semi in a row of cottages on a ridge overlooking a valley just outside a quaint Sussex village where we stopped beforehand and convinced ourselves we would be happy with one unfriendly café, a novelty homewares store and a hiking shop that was so pretentious it was advertising ‘directional clothing’.
The short, block-paved driveway of the house was so steep we didn’t dare drive the XC90 up on to it for fear the handbrake would give way and the Volvo would crash through the living room window of the house opposite.
While attempting to perch it in the road sideways on, we noticed that the paving of both this house and the one next door was covered in chalk drawings… an elephant, a swirly-tailed pig, a sun symbol…
They could fix the roof, but the feature grandson in shed with feet in bucket was a deal breaker
I saw chalk pavement art in India, but those drawings were exquisite and these were scary. As we stood staring at them, a car pulled up at the house next door and a harassed-looking mother and two kids got out.
They were those children with messy hair-dos and outfits that are so ill-defined they could be either boys or girls, or one of the exciting new varieties in between. She ushered them into the house giving us an accusatory look that said: ‘You better not stop my children chalking pictures on your side of the drive if you buy that house. Because Sky and Willow need to express themselves.’
As I watched them go inside, I realised the entire front of their house was covered in chalk.
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