Kevin Boyd - Geographical

That, as they say, is an interesting question! I started work in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire in September 1988, thinking I would be living in London forever! And that may have been my home forever if it hadn't been for April, getting married and requiring a family home. At the time (2000) April came to live with me in a one-bedroom flat, with her dog Azuki joining us after his six months of quarantine. It became obvious that the flat wasn't big enough, and equally obvious that my salary would not stretch to a mortgage on a house in London. So I elected to move my job with ALSTOM to a place that was more affordable, and it so happened they had an office in Birmingham. So the hunt was on to find a nice place not too close to Britain's second city but within easy commuting distance. We set our sights on two places - Solihull to the south-east, and Sutton Coldfield to the north. We never actually looked at houses in Solihull, so home became Sutton Coldfield. Actually we live at the very top of this area, and technically Sutton Coldfield is part of the City of Birmingham, the largest local authority in the country, but you wouldn't know it from our surroundings a stone's throw from green belt land.

Here are links to a couple of internet maps - you can pick which one you like, but they are all reasonably good.

- this is rather clever, as you can ask it directions to or from the marked address.

- a more conventional street map, if you can stand the advertising.

This is a picture of the house in the sunlight, taken from directly opposite by April (before I got a digital camera). There is a cherry tree in the front garden. You can see the red garage door, the Rover 25 parked on the drive, and the brown window frames. What you can't see is the plate with the house number on it, which also shows a depiction of a Shiba Inu - our dog Azuki.

The house has three bedrooms, is detatched, and largely double glazed now.