Lifestyle Choice

Half a lifetime ago, I made a lifestyle choice to exchange a city terrace for a farm cottage. I knew it was a good idea because I had been there before. Born and reared on a farm, I had been seduced for a few years by the idea of being a big shot who lived and worked in a city rather than only going for the day to wave at the buses. That also meant I was familiar with some of the minor disadvantages of country living, such as an uncertain water supply, the absence of central heating in most farm houses and a single-track road, easily blocked by snow, broken-down machinery or escaped farm animals. But there were many advantages, as I told my young wife back in the mid-Seventies. She might have been hard to persuade as she was town born and bred and eight months pregnant. I was trying to persuade her that exchanging a warm, large town house for a windswept farm cottage on a much lower income was a good idea.