We have no garden but can look out over other people's - which saves on weeding

Marcus Berkmann has missed too many opportunities to take another step up the property ladder, and is now probably stuck in this two-bedroom upper maisonette

(Ping Zhu)

We live in a small flat in north London, the big blonde woman, two children, a half-witted cat and I. There was definitely room for me when I was here on my own. There was room for us both before the babies were born. And now there's room for us all because we have decided there is, and because there's no real choice. I have missed too many opportunities to take another step up the property ladder, and now we are probably stuck here. Like everyone else, including the half-witted cat, I complain endlessly of the strictures this tiny property places upon the boundless scope of our lives. But I don't really mean it. In truth I love this flat, and I don't mind how small it is at all.

I moved into it on the day I went freelance, in 1988. It's the upper maisonette of two in a terraced house, on three floors with two bedrooms, the marginally larger of which we have divided in two for the kids, so they have a cell each whose dimensions almost certainly breach several Geneva Conventions. Our bedroom doubles as my office. We have no garden, although we can look out over other people's. That's not much of a consolation, although there's no doubt that it saves on the weeding.

I had been in the flat for about 10 seconds when I knew I was going to buy it. It just felt right. The rooms, though modest in size, are pleasingly configured. Though we're not far from a red route, it's a quiet flat. The walls are thick and crumbling only slightly. Our neighbours are not prone to excess. Indeed, most of the people living in this stretch of a dozen or so houses have been here a long time. We had a slightly bad-tempered comedian living down the road for a while, but he moved back north, where it's “friendlier”. Ah, but is he friendlier?

On the other side of the road are houses rather taller than ours, most of which have been converted into flats. It occurs to me now that, after 27 years here, I have never been inside any of these flats, and that the only people I know on this road live on this side. Which is stranger – that this is the case, or that I have never realised it before? By repute, these flats are small and undistinguished and people are constantly selling up and moving on. Being appallingly curious, the big blonde woman and I stare across the road into people's windows and speculate idly about their lives. For a while there was a man we called Pantsman because he wandered around all day in his underpants with the curtains open. He may have been depressed. He even washed up in his underpants, a sure sign of low spirits, especially in January.

One day, though, Pantsman went out looking spruce and shaved and came back with a rather elegant woman we soon christened Mrs Pantsman. They lived happily together until one day we watched them getting into a car, dressed for a wedding. She was holding flowers, so it must have been their own. Do you, Mrs Pantsman, take this Mr Pantsman to be your lawfully wedded husband? We did hope so.

Not long afterwards they moved out forever, but on the day of their departure I was in the shop at the top of the road and I finally heard her speak. She was Scottish! Mrs McPantsman! Where did they go? What were their real names? Did they have lots of little Pantsboys and Pantsgirls? God knows what nicknames they had for us.