Brierly Hill 90210 presents... 2008

Brierly Hill 90210

As a small child, I remember driving with my parents to Evesham to visit my grandparents and seeing a hill completely covered with trees except a small clearing in the middle and down one side. I recall thinking that it would be an ideal place to build a perfect house, white and with a majestic view of the valley below. I only realized relatively recently that childhood memory stayed with me and subconsciously resurfaced when we saw a Victorian gothic revival house for sale in Pennsylvania. As 2008 began, our second child was born and our offer on the house was accepted. The high-school drop-out from the Cotswolds, survivor of Cheltenham's drug-fueled excesses of the 1980s and 90s, was happily married with two kids, working in Silicon Valley with more stock options than he new what to do with and, by April was living in his dream house, perched on a hill overlooking the Pennsylvania countryside. The job in California still meant traveling out there once a month and the first monthly trip after we moved wasn't timed well. Leaving a wife with a baby and a two-year-old in a run-down house with no phone or running water did not go down well! Like a lot of people of our age at that time, we thought we were financially indestructible. We'd bought the new house without selling our old one, thinking that would inevitably happen soon after. The global financial situation had other ideas.