THE time has come – finally, at the age of 35-and-three-quarters – to grow up and buy a house.

Regular readers will have seen my sporadic outbursts about our particularly long and drawn-out house search over the last nine months – for that is how long it has taken us to (a) find a property we like and (b) have an offer accepted.

It seems to have taken an eternity. Mind you, it is not easy finding a house when your search partner’s nickname is Goldilocks – this one’s too big, this one’s too small, this one smells funny, this one has a ghost.

I am now the world’s foremost expert in reasons not to buy a house.

It hasn’t helped that we have been looking for a house not just for us but for our little one too – and by little one, I of course mean our cat. God forbid that the garden isn’t big enough for poor old Suki. How would she cope?

But we have finally found a place that we both like. I am sure that we must have seen better places along the way but as your search goes on, the more realistic you become about your expectations – so homes that you would once have rejected outright eventually become serious contenders.

It is like Kirsty Allsop says (her off Location, Location, Location) it is all about compromise.

I did in fact become so desperate at one point that I emailed Channel 4 to ask to be featured in the next series of Location... I never heard back which is perhaps for the best.

Despite being a big fan of the show, my other half, unlike me, has absolutely no desire to be on TV.

So our home to be for the next few years at least is a 1960s semi – the property was actually built in 1966 which I quite like, being a footy fan and that being the year England won the World Cup.

It is currently decked out with all its original fixtures and fittings – meaning we are moving into a time-warp.

One of my colleagues reckons we should sell the retro kitchen on eBay insisting there will be someone out there willing to pay a fortune for it – I’m not so sure myself.

We are now just under a month from moving and Nic, being the organised one, has already drawn up a detailed packing schedule.

It means that for the next 20 days I have a very boring list of jobs to complete – why we can’t just do it all the day before I do not know.

Tonight we are dismantling the spare bed and putting all our DVDs into boxes – how’s that for a rock ‘n’ roll Saturday night?