We moved here almost exactly 19 years ago from a small town called West Malling where I had lived twice, the first time with my mother and sister along with Veronica, then about 15 years later, when Julian and I had a joint business where he had a furniture restoration business and I had a small shop selling antiques and collectables. All those years ago several things made us realise it was time to give up our jobs – people had stopped buying old stuff and, also, people had stopped having their old stuff repaired and restored. (They all started going to Ikea!)

We chose here after driving around all sorts of places. We looked at Folkestone, Lewes, Whitstable, Ramsgate but always came back to Broadstairs. Broadstairs was where I brought Veronica when she was young. Her best friend, ‘Betty’s grandparents lived here in Rectory Road and we used to come down to go to the beach just up the road from her house. That beach is in Stone Bay. At the time there were no ‘facilities’ so if any of us needed to ‘go’, we’d go to Betty’s grandma’s or to the nearest car park with a ladies’ room.

The first thing I can say about Broadstairs is that it is on the coast of the North Sea/English Channel (nobody in this house seems to known where they separate!)

We have a couple of gorgeous beaches (officially there are more which are not in Broadstairs), Viking Bay and Stone Bay and there is Louisa Bay, which is covered by the tide twice a day.

There is one main shopping street we call the High Street which runs more or less perpendicular to Viking Bay and which starts up the hill near the station and ends at Albion Street where, nowadays there are quite a few restaurants. I couldn’t tell you how many restaurants there are in Broadstairs, there are so many! I think we’ve been to most of them.

In the early 20th century, a farmer sold off some fields on the hill behind Broadstairs to an entrepreneur who built houses. In our road there are around 25, some built over 100 years ago, and a few much more modern ones. We live in quite a large semi-detached house towards the end of the road. It was built, I believe, just after the turn of the century (19th into the 20th). It has lovely big rooms and a small cellar which would be great for a wine cellar if it wasn’t full of old paint tins and tools from the furniture restoration days. We have updated the kitchen and built a wonderful conservatory on the back. I love my house and never want to move again.

It has faults – the Edwardians didn’t know about insulation so they built the house without a cavity between the two layers of brick. This leads to cold and damp walls. Also, the builders gave our houses, large sash windows and no double glazing. We’ve added double glazing but have had to forgo the sash windows, sadly.

We have a back garden which is full of shrubs and perennials and a large patch of wild flowers for the bees and other insects.

Now, there are lots of things besides the sea, all the restaurants and my lovely home, that are really great about Broadstairs. There’s the 111 seat cinema; the area called St Peter’s which was here even longer than the ‘old town’ down by the sea; Folk Week which has been celebrated almost every year for about 50 years; the Food Festival in the spring and in the autumn; the Dickens Festival, when everything Victorian seems to be celebrated; and so many other things that I don’t know about. The ‘39 steps’ are said to be somewhere nearby, though there aren’t exactly 39. There are stories about a pirate named Joss who lived back in pirate days, who smuggled stuff and has a bay named after him.

Broadstairs is between two other small towns, Ramsgate which has a Royal Harbour and Margate which has the wonderful Turner Contemporary as well as the famous Dreamland amusement park and entertainment centre. Each town has restaurants galore! (Do you sense a theme, here?)

There is also a modern area outside the towns with huge grocery stores, fast food places, and nationally known shops like M&S, Smiths and TK Maxx.

We have it all! Why wouldn’t I love where I live?