There ain't no going back from living in a cottage

Giving up a semi for something with more personality has its ups and downs, but there's no going back

WE'VE BEEN having a tempestuous affair with a cottage for three years now.

Some days we're madly in love with its peculiarities and its crabby, eccentric personality. Other days the cottage seems to resent our very presence and petulantly throws up interesting experiences (a leak in the roof or a draughty window) to show its displeasure.

Sometimes I shake my fist at the cottage and mutter dark threats: "We own this land you crabby old git! If you're not careful, we'll knock you down and build a bungalow!"

It might seem odd for people to have a relationship with bricks and mortar but then cottages are notorious for having more personality than most dwellings. We lived in a three-bed semi and, while it was a fine house, it didn't seem to have much of a personality - perhaps it had an identity crisis, being surrounded by hundreds of other three-bed semis that looked just like it? Anyway, we had a perfectly ordinary relationship with it - perhaps a little bland, as relationships go, but surely, that's how it should be? It's only a dwelling after all.

The first day we saw the cottage, I knew we were home. As we went from room to room I had a big goofy smile on my face and Mrs Kelly had to give me a dig to play it cool in front of the estate agent because I was saying things like "wow, that's lovely" instead of being critical like you're supposed to be.

The realities of cottage living soon hit home. For starters, cottages are typically not as big as regular houses - we're not after a McMansion or anything but we really could do with it being just a little bigger or for us to be just a little smaller, one or the other. We have two little box bedrooms upstairs under the rafters which are incredibly cute - if you saw a picture of them in some country-style magazine you would think "Hurrah! How adorable!" but unless you're Frodo Baggins or an Oompa Loompa they're just too small for comfort. We've tried all the clever space-saving optical illusions - they don't work.

Secondly, cottages are not as toasty as regular houses. Ours is leaky, draughty and prone to damp and I expect The Consumption to set in any day now. We put in a solid-fuel stove and (environmentalists look away now) keep it lighting for most of the winter.

There's a certain rustic, even romantic, charm to snuggling up in front of a stove on cold winter nights but sometimes you just wish it was 25 degrees so that you could sit around half naked. I've done what I can to improve the heat situation with various DIY insulation jobs, but there's a fundamental reality you have to deal with when it comes to cottage living - there have been serious advances in building and insulation technology and all of them happened after your cottage was built.

There's an unwritten rule about cottage life - all manner of little critters have been using the floors, walls and attic as their home for almost a century so they have more right to be here than you do.

At one time or another we've had mice, shrews, bats, rats and spiders in, under and over the house. When I get up in the attic, I do so with my heart in my mouth, half expecting to disturb some bears or a herd of caribou. We've even had a ghost in our sittingroom, though there was a lot of drink taken that night and he seemed of benign temperament.

For all its faults, we could never go back. There are just too many things about cottage living that I love.

I love that the stone walls are about a metre thick with bumps and hollows rather than a smooth plaster finish. I love those old-fashioned light switches and the half-door front door. I love the old flagstones on the kitchen floor and the wooden beams on the ceiling.

I love the feeling of warmth (metaphorically speaking), comfort and contentment that it evokes. I love that we have a duty of care to maintain this building which holds many memories for people in the area (we still meet people who know of someone who grew up in it, or picked mushrooms in our garden as a child). I love that it has history, provenance. I love that it has a story.

Now that summer is here - a time when cottage living really comes in to its own - our relationship enters its annual purple patch when we forget its foibles and fall in love again. No doubt we will fall out again when the winter returns - but we'll never go our separate ways.

Michael Kelly is the author of Trading Paces - From Rat Race to Hen Run(O'Brien Press)