Balloon house with 'Adventure is out there' quote

The balloons arrived on Thursday, forty-one of them, from the fancy place on Deansgate that sells them by the bunch. Mrs Okafor across the road thought I'd gone mad when I dragged the bags up our front steps, and perhaps I had. Pink, teal, a lemon yellow that hurts to look at, and one green that Dad would have called sickly. I tied them to the chimney stack after dark so nobody would see, which was daft, because the whole street saw them at dawn.

You'll say I'm not made for leaving. You're right, I never liked the taste of motorway services. But the house is still the house. Every brick of it is ours, the pink front room where Mum kept her sewing, the yellow kitchen with the crack shaped like Wales. I didn't want to sell it to strangers who'd knock it flat for flats. So I'm taking it up instead.

Here is the plan, and I know how it sounds. The wind off the moors is strong enough after midnight, and I've checked the forecast four times. I'm going to float it over the reservoir, out past the pylons, and set it down wherever it wants. Not far. Just far enough that nobody can tell me the view is the same.

Keep the kettle on for me. I'll write from wherever I land, if the post goes that far.

Love, Ruth