THE HOUSE WITH THE POOL

 Shellabears, a family owned real estate company, celebrate their 100 anniversity in Cottelsoe this year. And I suspect that our family connection probably goes back to the beginning. I think that the Tonks seniors played tennis with the Shellabears back in the day. Betty and Alan certainly bought their Anstey St, Claremont house from them. Shellabears have done a great job looking after the rental and the sale of that last parental home and then they delivered the goods in terms of a finding a temporary home for us. The rental market is tough and the idea of having to compete with dozens if not hundreds of others was disconcerting. But clearly loyalty and longeivity pay off.

The joy of 51 Loch St Claremont is that it has a pool. 


And that, as you know by now, was the whole of point of moving back to Perth. The house was built in the 1930s so is solid brick with enough extensions added over the years to ensure that Susan and I each have a bedroom, bathroom and couch-lying-on/streaming room. It must have been on a large block with most of the back garden now carved out to enable another house to be built. Our landlords live next door but as we're unlikely to be putting on loud parties, I can't imagine that we're going to problem tenants. As turns out friends of ours know them (yes, Perth is small) and have guaranteed our bona fides. The rent includes a gardener and a pool man so there's not much left for us to worry about.

We picked up the keys on 13 January, decided on room allocation on 14 January, the first pieces of furniture arrived on 15 January and the main delivery took place on 16 January. Checking boxes and sorting out furniture placement was an exhausting process that took days but there was a reward at the end of each hot, sweaty, tiring experience - the pool.

Another great advantage of Loch St is that there is a shed, or rather a closed in garage. So closed in that when we did the zoom walk around of the place before committing to rent it, the real estate agent, somewhat to their surprised, discovered someone was actually slepping there. It is now full of packed and unpacked cardboard boxes. We decided there was no point in putting books on shelves only to have to reverse the process in the near future. And there aren't many picture hooks for art so most of that is still in boxes.  But we have managed to put our mark on the place and there's a spare bedroom if you want to come to visit....although you might have to share it with Indigo and Sebastian's snow leopard.



Loch St is a perfect location - train in one direction, buses in another. Close to shops and restaurants. Easy to travel north or south or into the city. So perfect, in some ways its a problem. We could never afford to buy a house in this suburb so we're being spoilt.

And each morning, just as we promised ourselves, we fall into the pool. And if it gets too hot during the day, guess what we do? Yes. You're right. Fall into the pool.



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