Mike. The problem is i do not have time to play many cds in a day. and i have been retired for
15 years. Iam lucky to play a 1 or 2 cds a day. The same with reading books. I thought when i left
Work i would spend all day playing cds.
Ah yes, the loft in the garage. Last time we looked was filled up with other relatives storage - both alive and dead. A big box of aunties collection of teapots. Uncles big box of old Spode China ?
Could be worth a good rummage.
1 Like
Funnily enough, I’ve been glad there are no vinyl versions of some releases lately - I just get a hires download if available from Qobuz.
1 Like
Was there a reason for downsizing so severely? (Not prying if you’d prefer not to go into)
In an effort to make a long story short…
We’re looking for a larger retirement home in the country - well a lot more in the country than we already are. However we also need a home in our current area due to needs to pop back to see parents and also work: What they call a ‘lock-up-and-leave’. Ultimately we would have larger retirement home in the country and small LuaL. To make life easier we got the LuaL and then sold our old larger house. We thought it was going to be a doddle to find the ‘larger in the country retirement home’. Unfortunately the combination of covid and stamp duty holiday has made it crazy trying to buy the retirement home and so, for the foreseeable future, we’re stuck in this tiny house 
I’m hoping get June out of the way and the housing market might start to get more sensible.
Is that as in both alive and dead storage - either unwanted pets or home now to wildlife?
As far as I’m aware there are no dead relatives up in the loft garage space, although I once detected some nibbling of the box corners and old newspapers that had been got at.
We really fancied a retirement home in the country, nice and peaceful etc - but reality is somewhat modified by the realistic need for a final residence dictates being within a mile or so of at least basic shops, not too far from a doctor or other medical facilities, and with, and likely to continue having, reasonable public transport availability. The difficulty in finding a suitable property is quite another matter - we’ve been looking in our chosen areA for several years, and three years ago found a possibility so bought it - it is some way from ideal and needs a lot of work, but since then nothing at all suitable has appeared so it was right to grab it.
4 Likes
I’m more adventurous than SWMBO. For example I’ve got my eye on a farm house up a hillside what you need a 4x4 to get to! It’s cheap enough for me to buy a 4x4 to facilitate it! 
However, as you can imagine, SWMBO is not so keen 
We have seen properties as you describe coming up but the always seem to have something not quite right. For example one had a land locked back garden. This makes it really hard for things like wood deliveries etc… Mind you we did ‘bid’ at 10% over asking price and didn’t get it
Another property was, again, almost right but you had to park your car 50 yards away with no where to even wash it and, as I’ve pointed out on another thread, no where to charge any EV that we might be forced to buy in the future.
The most recent property was nearly right but it was a shared drive and also parking issues. Also the bathroom was 1.5m by 2m with a sloping ceiling and no way to change it…
We’re getting close to finding the right house… it’s a case of being patient. A fixa-upa isn’t an issue. Heck every house we’ve ever purchased we end up gutting - except a Barrett house we had for less than a year. We couldn’t stand it but we doubled our money in less than 12 months!
1 Like
Hi, I have a strange story about my grandfather’s attic. He used to find dead animals in there all the time, there were squirrels, and one day he smelled a stink and found a little fox in there. Everything was boarded up and there was no way the animals could get in. So for three years in a row there were periodically dead animals there, the fourth year it stopped. Very strange, I think.
3 Likes
Sounds my kind of place …but not as time passes with possibility of ceasing to able to drive, and walking or cycling limited and impossible up a steep hill, etc. For us its a last home so we have to take tgese things into account, otherwise risk having to move again when old and feeble, head has to rule over heart!
1 Like
tbh you’re probably right.
I live in a village in the countryside. It’s far from peace and quiet, tractors, farms in general, chainsaws etc.
1 Like
It is a tad depressing. We have had our planned move postponed due to events of the last 18 mths and were talking just the other night and wondering if we still have 2 more moves left in us.
I presently live in a small 1970s housing development, otherwise on its own, backing onto farmland, a bit over half a mile from a village store and a bus route, half a mile further to a hospital with A&E. It is 3 miles (and on that bus route) to centre of a medium sized town with supermarkerts and our doctor’s surgery. Our dentist is further, 15 miles away (but used because NHS!), however reachable by 2 buses). The farm is noisy for a week or so every so often, e.g. ploughing, sowing, harvesting, but mostly not. Much of the time we can sit in the garden on a nice day and the only traffic audible is the occasional one on our own road, or a noisier one on a more distant road, though there are two fortnight-long periods when there are road racing events and lots of visitors, bringing traffic noise - but even then nothing like the constant background roar of even a distant motorway.
It really is an ideal location, and we have a decent sized garden, and a good house with only a relatively small amout of work to do on on it to make it nigh-on perfect, being already made very comfortable and energy-efficient following work we did when we moved in 10 years ago. The spanner in the works is that my wife really, really wants to live close to her sister - which is presently involves a 7 hour journey, with an expensive ferry, and impossible to do on the spur of the moment. The same limitation affects any wish to travel anywhere other than locally, something we would like to do in retirement.
1 Like
We moved closer to my mil, who has since died, as she and my brother in law needed help.
Currently on the way to see number two son 2.5 hours away whilst number one son is 3.5 away.
Difficult choices, especially when you like what you have.
Unless it is a book i wish to keep. I give the books to charity. over the years i have given over 400 books. Otherwise it takes up too much space especially when you live in a small bungalow.
Books are great for lining a music room on open shelves, looking good, while providing some diffusion and some absorbancy to sound. A house without books to me looks bare. However, a problem with open bookshelves is that they collect dust and are fiddly to clean…
That said, we have only a couple of bookcases, keeping only books of (potentially) continued use, and I fitted glass doors some years ago: much less of a dust trap, but not so good in a music room!
1 Like
Yes you do get a bit of that Tractor with trailer loaded with cow poo just gone past 10 ft from our living room
However it’s better than emergency vehicles rushing past and the sounds of sirens all the time.
2 Likes
This exact same discussion and sometimes research as well comes up almost every week between my wife and myself, and even with friends at get-togethers. Has been, for the last two or three years. My old business partner always said that living in the country was a young man’s game, and then when you get older move back to town or city for the healthcare and living conveniences. Anyway I guess we’re all going through the same thought processes these days in our age group.
We still haven’t figured it out yet, and the pandemic of course has altered the landscape a bit.
We are a tad limited just at this point, as we are still assisting a few days a week, my 98-year-old cousin who is living in a nearby retirement home, and we still want to be fairly close to her for a while.
We have a basement full of her stuff, and my parents stuff, and some of ours as well, which will take a lot of going through when we do move. Almost looking forward to that actually. But both my wife and I also have a hard time pitching things that are perfectly good and someone could be using.
1 Like