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Sheesh, my post about a more relaxing life got me all sorts of input, from literally hundreds of suggestions to several invitations to come visit.  A couple of issues need to be addressed, however.

Because I’ve lost well over half a million dollars (failed businesses, cancer treatments, etc.) over the past dozen-odd years, wherever I end up would be as a renter.  Suggestions, therefore, of cheap real estate or great deals are of little value.

That said, I have found many wonderful places where rental property is not only inexpensive, but in fairly decent areas — i.e. not on the scuzzy side of town where my gun would often be called on, but not for recreation.

Here’s one such example:  a little town outside Morehead KY, which features scenery such as this:

And little single-storey 2BR 2BA apartments like this:

…which on the whole cost less than half of what we currently pay for our Plano apartment of similar size.

I should also point out that all this is way in the future, if we decide to do it at all.  Dallas is where (most) of my kids live, and New Wife’s kids — well, Australia and South Africa are just not gonna happen.

Thankee for all the suggestions and advice.  I should add, however, that if we ever move, it will be away from the Texas heat, so all the suggestions concerning the Hill Country etc. are for nought.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to look at maps and such.

The Relaxed Life

Old Fartism

One of the things I noticed on this last trip up to Idaho from Texas is how much I yearn to return to an older, more relaxed style of life.  To be sure, this was triggered in no small part by the very frequent glimpses into small-town life Mark and I encountered as we drove up (more on this later), but lately I’ve been hankering to get further away from not only cities, but also the suburbs, “ex-urbs” and their concomitant lifestyle.

Everyone here knows, of course, of my love for older things, be they cars, guns or manners, and maybe it’s time for me to talk with New Wife about reverting to an old-fashioned lifestyle, where life is simpler and just… easier than the rat race we have to deal with now.

It doesn’t help that Mark and his wife recently left metropolitan Houston and moved far away to a small town in South Texas.  His description of their new life made me, in a word, jealous.  He and his wife are much younger than New Wife and I, so he can handle the more physical aspects of a small farm whereas we couldn’t.  And I wouldn’t want to do that even if I were younger;  I’m still a city boy at heart, but I have to think that I would be prepared to sacrifice proximity to gourmet restaurants and Central Market in exchange for a more relaxed lifestyle.

New Wife has often expressed her desire to live in a small English village, in a cottage like this one:

(Lest anyone wonders how, I should point out that our current 2BD 2BA apartment is about 970 sq.ft., so we’ve already downsized.)

We’re not going to do that, of course — we could, as she’s a British citizen — but no, because of all the usual reasons:  expense, upheaval, weather and of course British gun laws.

She’d also prefer to live on the coast somewhere (I wouldn’t mind), but to be honest, cost is a major deterrent.

Another problem is weather.  I’ve come to absolutely loathe Texas-type hot weather, and neither of us could handle the work of living in extreme cold in, say, northern Idaho or Montana.  Somewhere, there must be a happy medium, but damned if I can find it without some serious other negatives.

It’s also gotta be reasonably pretty.  I’ve had enough of flat Texas and, both of us having grown up in hilly Johannesburg, we yearn for that kind of scenery again.

So far, the rural states which occur to me are Kentucky and Tennessee — and by “rural” I mean that part which isn’t called “Nashville” or “Lexington”, and in each case also means “eastern”, as far as I can tell.

So, O My Readers:  talk to me, in Comments and by email, and tell me where I might find that kind of life as expressed in the picture at the top of this post.

Apologies

Writing

As uploading pics is so time-consuming, I’ve had to re-post an earlier blog from 2018 for tomorrow’s Classic Beauty section.

Not that the topic isn’t worth revisiting, however.

Helping Hand

Ethics, Tragedy

I know how I feel about the man in this story:  I have complete and utter empathy.

Tender love letters have emerged that show the devotion of a British pensioner to the wife he is accused of murdering.
David Hunter, 74, is due to stand trial in Cyprus today after the alleged mercy killing of his terminally-ill wife of 56 years, Janice, 75, last year.
UK lawyers have written to the island’s attorney general asking prosecutors to reduce the charge to assisting suicide amid family pleas to ‘show some compassion’ but have received no reply.
Mr Hunter will die in prison if found guilty of murder.

As to Janice Hunter’s condition:

Mrs Hunter had been suffering from leukaemia since 2016 and her health deteriorated rapidly in the months before her death.
She was losing her sight, couldn’t eat or drink and had constant diarrhoea that meant she needed nappies – but was only given paracetamol by doctors.
Mr Hunter allegedly suffocated her before trying to take his own life by overdosing on sleeping medication in an apparent suicide pact.

And she was quite clear about her feelings:

He has since told his daughter, Lesley, 49, that his wife made her wishes to die clear and talked about it every day in the last six weeks of her life.
‘To begin with, he tried to dissuade her, then he said he would go with her,’ she said. ‘He loved her so much… I’m horrified they were so desperate they thought that dying together was the only way out.’

As you all know, I was in a similar situation when Connie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her condition worsened almost daily.  We had so many drugs in the house that it would have been easy for her to overdose;  and because she was in a drug-induced fog most of the time, she was quite capable of OD’ing through pure confusion — which is why I took over the job of giving her the drugs  — and therefore I could have deliberately given her an overdose which would have ended her life.

And I want to be perfectly clear about this:  had she asked me to, I would have, even though my conscience would have scourged me every day for the rest of my life.

As it happened, that fortunately never became an issue.

However, New Wife is a cancer survivor, which means the bastard can always return and cause her massive suffering.  We’ve talked about this often, as her late husband suffered and died from throat cancer — his last months of life having had as much suffering as Connie had from hers — and so both New Wife and I have had the most intimate experience with this situation.

And we want no part of it.

Fortunately, we’re both in decent health (for our age), so the immediate future so far does not look that dire;  but as everyone at our end of the age spectrum knows, that’s a precarious situation.  Both of us have a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) document should it be needed, and we also have a (very private) agreement to cover the “Hunter” situation.  Neither of us wants to go through a painful and irreversible illness, both for ourselves and for the strain it puts on the other spouse, and that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.

Back In Town

General

Okay, WordPress has finally allowed me access to my own website again, and about bloody time.  (Thanks to Tech Support II — I imagine — for putting things right.)

As it’s the weekend, there’s only one post today — a two-parter — but it’s about a subject near and dear to my heart.

Enjoy.