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).
上世纪50年代，我祖母买下了一幢摄政时期建筑风格的五层连体房，它位于伦敦北部肯特什城(Kentish-Town)与海格特村(Highgate village)之间，当时属无人管辖地带。房子刚买下时，破败不堪，没有浴室，全部购房费用还不到1000英镑。我祖母对房子里里外外整修一新（能直接入住），在此住了一阵后就返回墨尔本老家了。在接下来的30年里，该房子主要由我父亲居住，随后又陆续住进去了自己老婆、三个孩子、房客以及来来往往的澳洲人（年轻时找不到工作的澳大利亚演员巴里•哈姆弗瑞斯(Barry Humphries)曾有一段时间是这儿的房客）。