How I became addicted to moving house: Shona's moved 10 times in 16 years. As ... trends now

There is a man's name in my phone contacts — let's call him Dave — who was once an important person to me but who now refuses to answer my calls.

He has seemingly dropped off the face of the planet, except I often see his white van whizzing around the West Sussex city of Chichester where I live, so I know it is actually only me he is trying to avoid.

I can't really blame him. He isn't an ex-boyfriend or even a friend for that matter. He's just some poor, unsuspecting bloke who happens to own an extra-long wheelbase Luton van and who once advertised his removals business on Gumtree.

He didn't know it when I first contacted him in 2018, but he was doomed to help me move four times over the next six years — on one occasion just 50 yards down the road to a house I whimsically decided I preferred simply because it had a Jack and Jill bathroom and parquet in the hallway.

He has seen the contents of my underwear drawer more times than my husband and got groin strain twice from trying to shove our super-kingsize bed up narrow staircases it was never meant to go.

He thinks I am a loon. Which is why, just over three years since our last move and with yet another For Sale sign outside our home, he is ignoring me.

The last time I spoke to him he declared PTSD before saying he never wanted to see my 7ft Polish oak dining table again 'because it's an absolute bugger to get around tight corners'.

You might wonder why I have this crazy compulsion to keep moving house. It's not because I'm on the run from the police or been assigned to a witness protection programme. The truth is, like many people with an addiction, I just can't help myself. I'm no different to an alcoholic or someone who sniffs coke in pub toilets. At least they have support groups. I just get dented furniture and removal men blacklisting me.

Since having our first daughter Flo, in 1998, we have lived in 13 properties. That's an average of roughly one house move every 25 months. When you consider that for six of these years — 2002 to 2008 — we were in the same home, the maths makes me sound ever so slightly unhinged.

Other than the aforementioned house — a beautiful, detached Edwardian property with a wisteria that bloomed twice a year — the longest we have lived in one place is three years and five months. We've been in our current Victorian semi in Chichester for three years and four months and there is a For Sale sign outside. I'm definitely not in recovery yet.

With the first home we bought, in Haslemere, Surrey, in 1999, having moved out of London with Flo, then aged one, it was justifiable to move again three years later because we'd welcomed two more children and a black Labrador called Oscar. Then came the big house with the wisteria which I know my long-suffering husband Keith hoped would become our pension — and most definitely a home we'd still be living in today.

Instead, we have moved ten times since then — each time because I have initiated it. Eight of those houses have been rentals; two were ones we bought.

I look back and wonder why I forced us to move from that lovely wisteria house. In many ways it was the beginning of my slide into this compulsion. Certainly, my husband never wanted to sell. We'd spent £100,000 doing it up and the children all had spacious bedrooms of their own. 

There was a trampoline in the garden and guinea pigs in a hutch. He was right: if we had stayed, we would be rolling in it now as it's worth over a million. But because of me and my poor decision-making we sold it and are facing a less financially secure future.

But with three children under four and a stream of mostly useless au pairs, family life was strained. Keith worked in London all day and I was struggling to adjust to the juggle that is freelancing and motherhood. It wasn't a particularly easy time in our marriage and, gorgeous as the house was, I never felt wholly happy there.

There have been three houses where we have lasted just six months. They were all rentals but still there was no concrete reason for leaving any of them except I simply woke up one morning and decided I didn't want to be there any longer.

The first house, in 2008, was on the Foley Estate in Liphook, Hampshire, and very remote —tucked deep in the woods on the country estate.

Having fallen in love with that house as a rural idyll, I began to detest all the pheasant shooting and the fact it took me for ever to drive out and buy a pint of milk.

So we swapped for a new-build on an estate in a nearby village, which I thought would be great for the kids to cycle around safely but eventually began to irritate me because, like all new-builds, the plug sockets were in stupid places and I started to yearn for originality and period features.

There were a few more houses and a four-year stint living in North Devon before the third of these six-month rentals came about in Chichester in 2019.

This house was practically next door to the one we'd been

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