It's no Holiday living in a 'perfect' Cotswolds cottage

If the classic Christmas romcom makes you fantasise about moving to a beautiful old house in the countryside, then Simon Mills, who just did that, has this warning for you

- Simon Mills

"So, I hear you've moved to the country," people would say when I bought my house in West Oxfordshire 10 years ago. "Do you have any pictures?" Gamely, I'd pull out my phone, swipe through my photos and then choose a nice, pretty, Christmas-y shot where snow covers the front garden and clings to the roof. Nine times out of 10 the reaction would be the same.

“Oh my god…” they’d say. “It’s just like the house from that Cameron Diaz film… The Holiday.”

This happened time and time again. Most often at Christmas time, almost exclusively women excitedly point out my home’s remarkable similarity to the country cottage in the Nancy Meyers romcom starring Kate Winslet, Jack Black, Jude Law and Cameron Diaz.

(I say, mainly women because most men have never actually seen any romcoms, never mind one set in Surrey that has male characters saying stuff like “I sew and I have a cow in the backyard” and features the most spectacularly unlikely “meet cute” of all time – a drunk but collegiately dishy Jude Law, who after finding a gorgeous, sun-kissed Cameron Diaz answering the door, somehow persuades this complete stranger to let him stay on what he claims is his sister’s sofa, for the night and then, almost immediately, sleeps with her.)

Details, details. Eventually, I did watch The Holiday and discovered some remarkable similarities (with the home, that is not seduction techniques).

Okay, so my own honey-coloured stone cottage is in the Cotswolds, not Surrey like the one in the film. Mine is also in a small village and is semi-detached, while the house in The Holiday has no party-wall neighbours and is in the middle of a field, but otherwise, it’s pretty much the same deal. Same four windows drawn on its corners like a toddler’s artwork, same gabled front door, same age-sagged, stone-tiled roof.