Some homes matter more than others.

An essay on home, family, nostalgia and moving lots of times.

I’m eight years old and home is my sanctuary.

We live in a terraced house on a road in north London with a nice garden that has a gate at the end leading out to a communal green space we call The Hundred Acre Woods, although it’s probably less than one acre.

There, we meet with our neighbours’ children and swing on the swing, tend to the rabbits and try to sell bags of soil to each other.

I go to school and I have a best friend and three other close friends. We make up dances and plays and perform them in assemblies.

I’m shy and I’m not a natural performer, but I like giving it a go.

Sometimes, I skip lunch because my best friend tells me that’s what we’re doing.

Sometimes, a boy in my class runs across all the desks and I feel scared.

Sometimes, a mobile phone rings in a girl’s bag. She has moved to this country from a war-torn country and tells me she might have to leave school quickly if her mum phones.

I walk to school on my own, with my four close friends, and I help myself to a couple of coins from a pot of money my dad keeps by the side of the bed.

We pass a sweet shop on our way to school and go in to buy strawberry bonbons, aniseed balls, Fruit Salad sweets and blackjacks.

I eat a few of them on the way to school and then, when I get home, I secretly store the rest in a box in my room, tucked away.

A box that was once filled with Christmas cards my mum bought from the charity shop, because that is where she always buys her Christmas cards.

One day, my parents tell me that we’re going to look at a new house.

I don’t want to look at a new house. I like our house. I like where we live. I like taking my bike out on the pavement and cycling it downhill, with the wind in my hair.

But when they take us to see the new house, I look in the air-raid shelter in the garden and decide that maybe this new house is actually quite nice.

There are three huskies living with this couple at their house and I ask them if they might consider leaving the dogs.

They laugh, and say that they will be taking the dogs with them.

Apparently they like this question, though, and decide to sell us this house that has been in the woman’s family for many years.

Now, it’s the summer holidays and I’ve just turned nine. We have moved into the new house and my bedroom has plum-coloured walls with the same coloured carpet.

The air-raid shelter has been removed.

I wonder how we’re going to get to school every day, now that we’re not living near it?

That’s when my mum tells me that we’re actually moving to a new school.

My sister is starting secondary school, so she’s prepared for that but my brother and I do not want to move to a new primary school.

Mum tells us it’s the school at the end of the road and that we can get there in about 30 seconds.

That’s not what matters to us. Familiarity matters, so do our friends.

We write an appeal, listing the reasons we should not have to move to this new school.

I say ‘we’, I expect it was most mostly me. Letters were my favoured form of communication through childhood. (They still are now.)

My mum has a friend whose daughter goes to the new school and she arranges a play date for me with her. I like the girl, we get on well.

In September, I start at the new school and develop a nervous cough.

I am well-behaved (other than stealing money for sweets) and compliant. I get on with it. But underneath my mask, I’m very, very nervous.