We British are obsessed with houses. Endlessly browsing Rightmove, tuning in to Location, Location, Location and Britain’s Most Expensive Houses, dreaming of how happy we would be if only we lived in that gorgeous property. Which is why Omaze, a company that raffles gorgeous, fully furnished mansions for charity, is so seductive. I have wasted days, not to mention £75, dreaming about its £4million house in Bath. The stone staircase, the marble bathrooms, the gardens sloping down to the river. I began to imagine living there. I even looked it up on Street View and Googled Michelin restaurants nearby; well, I’d have to spend the £250,000 cash prize somehow. I could host weddings! My own wedding, because surely a man would want to marry me if I owned such a gorgeous mansion? I watched videos of the interior on Instagram, where a young woman wafts around, exclaiming: ‘All this could be yours!’ And I’m thinking, while also manifesting like mad: ‘Why is she wearing outdoor shoes in MY HOUSE?’ Of course, I didn’t win. And so on to the next property, a £5million five-bedroom mansion in the Cotswolds with land, manicured gardens and a greenhouse (the draw took place last night). Again, it came with cash and a guaranteed £1million donation to Guide Dogs For The Blind (a different charity is chosen for each property). Hmm, I was thinking, watching the deadline for entries counting down, I hope the marble worktop in the master bathroom doesn’t stain. The heated pool is shaded by trees: the leaves will be a nightmare. And it has a cottage annexe. Oh God, an annexe. I know how much trouble an annexe can be – of which, more later. It’s so easy to succumb to the promise of living in a mansion, the thought of filling those en-suite bedrooms with their emperor beds and cream linen with friends and family. Of picking blooms, Meghan-fashion, to place in a willow trug, one of those oh-so-fashionable woven baskets. But I know full well the reality of living in a rambling country pile. And it is nothing like the dream we are fed on these raffle sites at all. It is, in fact, a living nightmare. When I left London in 2007 for a farmhouse with 55 acres in Somerset (what was it, £1.6million? I’ve blotted it out), I remember driving in my automatic soft-top BMW along the winding lane to my new house, with four cats craning their necks on the back seat. I wound down the window to breathe in the fresh air, gazing in amazement at the fluorescent green of the fields and the trees. But, by nightfall, I wanted to move back to the crime and grime of Islington. Despite being told there was a winter’s worth of oil still in the ugly tank, it promptly ran out. The Aga wouldn’t light. The vendors had dug up plants from the garden, ripped out the butler’s sink and taken the fire grates, so I couldn’t even get warm. I ordered logs, only to be told: ‘We don’t stack, and if the road’s icy we can’t come.’ I took on the resident gardener, who on my second day marched me to a garden centre to buy a huge sit-on lawnmower. ‘Why do you have to sit down?’ I asked him. ‘Have you seen the size of your lawn?’ I decided to turn the small paddock in front of the house into a wildflower meadow, but the farmer who rented my land for his sheep opened the gate, meaning the sheep ate the seeds and turned the field into something I’d not experienced since Glastonbury. I applied for planning permission to convert an outbuilding into a ‘party barn’ (then all the rage) but was slapped with a legally binding order to build a bat sanctuary first – at a cost of £26,000. When the woman at Natural England asked: ‘Do you have newts?’ I slammed the phone down. I wrote off my BMW when I drove through a flood. The locals (especially the mothers) hated the fact a single woman owned a big house with land. Worst of all, my rescued border collie dragged a sheep into a stream to drown it. Who knew sheepdogs do this? When I confessed to the farmer, offering compensation, he told me: ‘That dog would be better off living in a London flat.’ I had a gorgeous orchard but all the apples and pears I stored went mouldy. I took it as a sign. Bruised, I moved to the Yorkshire Dales in 2012, having heard northerners are friendly. My Georgian mini mansion turned out to be next to a farmer who wrote the word ‘Witch’ on my barn in red paint and promptly stalked my assistant, who lived in my cottage annexe next door. The worst aspect of living in a mansion is the bills. In Yorkshire, the FloGas to heat my house cost £800 a month. It merely took the chill off. Water came from a private well which we later discovered contained not only lead, but a dead sheep. My lawn in the Dales swept down to the swale but the opposite bank, riddled with warrens, was where the local men would come to flush out the resident rabbits then hit them over the head with shovels. Dream of walking on the purple moorlands? Think again. I returned to a note on the windscreen: ‘Keep your dog on a lead or it will be shot. Nesting birds!’ You don’t encounter that on Highbury Fields. Of course, I loved the floor-to-ceiling sash windows – just not the £150 monthly bill for them to be inexpertly cleaned. Unable to afford another gardener, I once spent 12 hours weeding my drive. My wisteria, one of the reasons I bought the house, died. The peonies kept flopping. The beautiful garden was like a tyrant, mocking my ineptitude. Trees required expensive surgeons. Sainsbury’s refused to deliver down my narrow lane, so took to leaving my groceries in a (vandalised) phone box. Oh, did I mention midnight tractors, lights blazing, diesel fumes gushing? Gunfire from a horrendous practice called lamping, which involved hunting nocturnal animals with the aid of high-powered lights. It was like living in Kosovo. I was forced by HMRC to sell the house in 2016 at a huge loss – largely due to the farmer next door, who by this time had been convicted of stalking. As I drove away, having sold it to be turned into a holiday let (I imagine Marbella is quieter), I was devastated my rural dream had ended. But, forced to rent, I was comforted by the fact that if the kitchen flooded or the boiler broke, it wasn’t down to me to fix it. I now live in a beautiful vicarage, still in the Dales, but – this time – my garden is a courtyard, so small I can hoover it. I often watch my neighbour mowing his huge lawn in a storm, endlessly leaf blowing and strimming and hedge cutting. He emerged one day and said: ‘I’ve just walked eight miles without leaving the garden. If we’d bought a two-bedroomed cottage, I could at least watch the cricket.’ So, be careful what you wish for. Without deep pockets and a huge team of staff, you will find yourself living not in a mansion at all but a very expensive prison.