I often really want to go and live there as its so fab. There is lots of space so there is a possibility I could create a studio there quite easily. I have fantasies about setting up creative retreats there, I feel I could help my folks stay living there longer (if that is what they want, which I think it is). There is a great school for Bub to go to. We could rent our place out and make some money on it and also help my folks with paying them some rent (they have lodgers but feel too old to get any new ones as its too stressful). We could help out with the holiday let. Hub loves being in the countryside, he loves to run in the garden, he would love to help out in the garden, and we could grow vegetables, lots of them. He has friends who live nearby. I would have to make new friends, but there are a couple of nice ladies in the village I get on with, and I am still better friends with my London pals, or my best mate who lives in Cambridgeshire now would be nearish. And it seems like all the people I really get on with very well are leaving or have left Brighton. A sum total so far of 7. I do know other people, but these are the folk I already knew or really wanted to keep knowing and got on with best. Hub no longer has to commute, which was one reason we didn't do Suffolk in the first place. It would be lovely for Bub to know his grandparents and lovely for them to see him growing up.
On the down side, it has an edge of "going back to live with my mum" which means, as lovely as she is, she is my mum and she can be annoying, in that, it can send my back to feeling like a teenager! Not just that, but it would be sending Bub to the same school I went to.... which at primary, its not the same school really, its very different, but I don't know if I could do that to him older. And the whole ferrying children about thing will be massive there. There is no way it is safe to send kids out on bicycles in the same way that we did as kids, there are so many more cars on the road. Not just saying that to sound like an old person! The house is gorgeous in the summer, but can be brutally freezing in the winter. You have to have a car to do the tiniest bit of shopping. Nearest nice pub is 3 miles away. Hub was getting on with her really well last time we went up, but if he gets in a bad mood he could get riled by her, and he could be nasty to her, and I don't want to end up in a tug of war between them (been there before thanks, love em both, wish they loved each other more)
We would miss the friends we do have here, and the whole walking around the hood and being able to chat to folk we know. Pubs on every corner, shops handy and near by for everything we need. Take aways for Hub (he will say this doesn't matter, but he does like to nip out for chips and stuff)
And though it would be good to help them, it would probably mean, as the years go by, that I would become primary carer for my folks. Perhaps I would want to move there and do that anyway. I don't know. But moving back would somehow implicity be acknowledging this fact of my parents aging and while I will have to face this anyway.... tis never the less something I pretend is not really happening.
It is all musing at the moment as we haven't really mentioned it to my parents!! But Hub brought it up the other day. And it has often been in my thoughts.
2 comments:
Suffolk, no contest. Make sure the flat is sufficiently separate that Hub doesn't live with them & everyone has some space. It will be a lot less nerve racking to be there looking after them than in Brighton worrying about them, as time goes on. Additional income from Brighton house will more than cover rent to parents. I am close with my family so I could easily live like this, and have done in the past when we first moved back to the UK.
I think I agree with Lizzie, my family all live in Cornwall and I am 230 miles away and wish I was nearer, it is a difficult decision, perhaps talking to your parents would give you more clarity x
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