Number 2

Perhaps there's a point in all of our lives when we find the benefits of being an adult perfectly balanced with the hedonism of our youth. At last, you have the money and freedom to consume what you want. Consume all that you can, if your so minded. Yet because of youth, you can get up the next morning, dust yourself down, and get on with pretending to be a grown up.

For me this year was 23. Miche and I had been together for some time. We'd had enough of the pretense of living separate lives in rented accommodation and had bought our first house together. It was a modest home, small and to the point, but it was ours to do with as we pleased.

I have fond memories of that place. Like the intimate dinner parties with close friends, when we pretended to be intellectual. Only to descend into drunken debauchery by 12am.

Like the fortnight that we'd decided to stop smoking, only to be given a carrier bag full of weed by one of our more 'interesting' friends. We agreed then, only to only smoke when we were 'smoking'. There were some Carl Sagan insights in those weeks, I can tell you. I've rarely touched the stuff since.

We adopted our first child there and called him McLeod (pictured left). I don't care how mushy this sounds, that scruffy mutt was our Son. We loved him dearly. Still do for that matter. He's twelve years old now and getting a bit dog eared. Bless 'im.

We also got married whilst we lived there. Though this story will be recounted, perhaps predictably, in number one of this top ten.

There was a lot of music in that house too. Our combined CD collection burgeoned. Also, I still had pretensions of being a musician, so had a ramshackle studio in the spare bedroom. The place was packed full of guitars and old synths. Happy days indeed.

There's one track that epitomises life in our little starter home - Björk's, Hyperballad. Both Miche and I love her music. Which says a lot, as our tastes for these things converge infrequently. In this house we danced together occasionally to this song, just the two of us. Simply for the hell of it.