You can never tell...

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This is for @AmbiePam A long time ago one couple from our ‘friendship group’ as they call it nowadays took a big plunge and bought a house. This was long before anyone else could afford to even think of such a thing. They borrowed the max. they could and bought a fairly ordinary but nice enough three-bedroom house. Fast forward about ten years and house prices had really shot up. They were able to sell that house and buy a lovely old converted chapel in a little village for an astronomical sum. We were all invited to the house-warming and it was beautiful, with the big windows of course, full height entrance hall with a huge chandelier, galleried landing, a big kitchen, several bedrooms, a nice garden with a pizza oven…we were all suitably impressed. Eight years later and another one of the group was planning a birthday party. Since he was a single man living in a little house, and most of the people he would be inviting were mutual friends anyway, the friends with the chapel suggested he hold the party at their house, and we were invited. We hadn’t been there since the house-warming as we had only met up in other places. I was a bit shocked to find it was completely unchanged from the first time, everything was exactly the same except covered in dust and dirt – I swear they had not cleaned in eight years! There was even cat hair in the fridge. The kitchen was full of dirty pots and pans. Little One (who was actually little then) asked to go to the bathroom but then came out again saying she couldn’t possibly use it! These are respectable professional people who don’t have children (but they do have several cats). They are always nicely turned out so you would never guess what chaos they live in, and don’t seem bothered about! A similar thing happened when we bought our previous house. The couple selling it were middle-aged professionals. The house was very full of clutter because three of their four parents had died, leaving lots of stuff, and their children had grown up and left home, leaving lots of stuff, so it was full of boxes and we were not able to really see all that much of the house, but it was the right size, in the right area, with a nice big garden and within our price range, so we bought it anyway. On moving-in day we arrived with the removal lorry and when we went in we found the house in a quite disgusting state. There was a sort of tide-mark of dirt all around the bottom of the walls, the carpet in the front room was definitely the colour of misery and there was even carpet in the kitchen which appeared to have strange white lumpy stuff growing out of it. It was utterly disgusting. The removal men were trying to cheer me up. I found that the loft had been converted but then that didn’t appear to have been used, it had brand new carpet and nothing else. We hadn’t planned to use that as a bedroom but we quickly changed plans and moved in there, and for about a week I put my wellies on to go downstairs! How can people live like that? Obviously the number of outwardly respectable people who live in utter chaos is much higher than you might expect. Obviously I don't have a photo so here's an unusual flower arrangement instead! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.