In 1950 my Australian grandmother bought a five-storey, Regency terraced house in what was then the no-man’s-land between Kentish Town and Highgate village. It was dilapidated, had no bathroom and cost slightly less than ￡1,000. She tarted it up enough to make it habitable, lived there for a while herself, before returning to Melbourne. For the next three decades it was mainly lived in by my dad, who in time filled it with a wife, three children, lodgers and itinerant Australians (including, at one point, a young, unemployed Barry Humphries).
上世紀50年代，我祖母買下了一幢攝政時期建筑風格的五層連體房，它位于倫敦北部肯特什城(Kentish-Town)與海格特村(Highgate village)之間，當時屬無人管轄地帶。房子剛買下時，破敗不堪，沒有浴室，全部購房費用還不到1000英鎊。我祖母對房子里里外外整修一新（能直接入住），在此住了一陣后就返回墨爾本老家了。在接下來的30年里，該房子主要由我父親居住，隨后又陸續住進去了自己老婆、三個孩子、房客以及來來往往的澳洲人（年輕時找不到工作的澳大利亞演員巴里?哈姆弗瑞斯(Barry Humphries)曾有一段時間是這兒的房客）。