I was three years old when, visiting family friends, I was keeping out of the way of their boisterous children who appeared to be vaulting over a wooden box. When I could get near, I saw it was a dolls’ house, fell in love immediately, and eventually became its owner when the children presumably found something else to jump on.
A bad tonsillectomy some years later gave my grandmother the opportunity to help transform the house into a home so being ill had its rewards. Years later, fate played another delightful hand when my daughter preferred jumping over things also, meaning that the house my ex-husband made for her one Christmas was ‘adopted’ by me and has flourished ever since.
One problem was finding the dolls to make the house ‘home’ again. The dolls I wanted were out of my league - then I bought a copy of Sue Atkinson’s book, made a family using ‘Swallowhill’ kits, and haven’t stopped since.