This post is the 225th arti­cle I have in my ‘blog bank’. 

The num­ber is sig­nif­i­cant because it is the num­ber of the house I lived in with my par­ents and broth­er for 16 years, so in my mind it is more sig­nif­i­cant than the num­ber of the flat I lived in from birth to two (No. 35) or the house in which I spent my next 6 years (No. 7). I can­not remem­ber the num­ber of the flat we lived in for a year before we moved to ‘225’.

It was the house I lived in the longest until my present home where I’ve lived hap­pi­ly with my hus­band and chil­dren for the past 26 years.

My father also named all but his last house after his first boat as in ‘boat’s name’ apos­tro­phe ‘s’. He sold that boat to pay for my par­ents’ first home (thus the boat owned the house!) – some­thing of a sac­ri­fice but since he was pas­sion­ate about sail­ing in any boat, even a leaky one (as fre­quent­ly hap­pened in our grow­ing up years!), he was still able to afford a lit­tle sail­ing dinghy to keep him amused.

I have a print he made from a lino cut of a Thames sail­ing barge. The quote under­neath the print clear­ly shows how he felt about sailing: 

“A day in such serene enjoy­ment spent is worth an age of splen­did discontent” 

That was how pas­sion­ate­ly he felt about sailing.

My broth­er and I spent many, many hap­py hours sail­ing togeth­er from our youngest years, and sep­a­rate­ly in a vari­ety of sail­ing ves­sels, some now more than 100 years old and still being sailed by their own­ers — and I mean ‘sailed’ because there is no engine in the 40 foot ves­sel I’m think­ing of! 

Of our five chil­dren only his old­est son seems to have the time for the fam­i­ly pas­sion. I’m glad one of them is car­ry­ing on the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion in earnest. 

Dur­ing my school years I didn’t spend much time with my broth­er oth­er than sail­ing. I am for­tu­nate that we have become clos­er as we have had fam­i­lies and chil­dren of our own in com­mon, despite sel­dom sail­ing together.

The years at ‘225’ are part of my school days (not great), boyfriends, work­ing and com­mut­ing to Lon­don every day then going to col­lege (yes, in that order), and it is the house from which I was mar­ried at 26. Prob­a­bly the most event­ful 16 years in my ear­ly life.

The ‘225’ years are the most vivid in my life, for all rea­sons, and thus I sup­pose the most influ­en­tial in devel­op­ing my opin­ions and views of life in general.

With this blog I am try­ing to ‘find myself’, reit­er­ate (some­times over and over again!) my pas­sions and com­ment on strange hap­pen­ings, good and not so, in my life.

Thanks for read­ing my lucky post!