Comments

Good foundations — 16 Comments

  1. "nice lovable old pensioner"

    Airs and graces?

    Just because we love you doesn't automatically qualify you as 'lovable' and certainly not as nice.

    We love you for your qualities of being a cantankerous old grouch with honest and insightful opinions of the world , humanity and the follies of 'the gub'mint'

    • Of course I'm lovable.  Just ask Herself or Penny [especially Penny].  Half the women in the village stop me when I'm down there just to chat.  They say they want to just chat to Penny, but I know the truth.

    • Actually I could now nearly pass for my Dad.  When the photograph was take he was the same age as I am now.  Weird thought.

  2. But in that pic it's not raining – you are sure it was really Wicklow?

    I built a conservatory on my house in Staffordshire a few years ago (my get-fit or die campaign after bad health problems) and it rained every bloody day I was home to work on it.

    • My delay in replying is that I have been out in the sunshine all day.  Long walks followed by relaxing on the terrace.  The lake has dropped by a few inches too so doubtless it's time for a downpour.

  3. Oddly enough, I have no foundations in my life at all. My father was an army officer, and my awakening years were spent in Singapore. Then back in UK, we moved around a bit. I left school at 16, worked on a building site for 6 months to get some money, and then spent the next several years trawling around Asia, ending up in Australia for 7 or 8 years. Since then, I have spent more time living in Greece than UK. All that notwithstanding, I have a solid and comfortable existence.

    I just need the stimulus of a challenging situation, otherwise ennui takes over.

    In some ways I envy you your stable environment, but realistically, I know I would never be able to cope with it. I really need that constant challenge to keep me motivated.

    We all have a different approach to life, I guess. I know not many would want mine, but it suits me.

    • I haven't traveled as much but I did have a strange history in that I never really knew what I wanted to do next.  I accidentally drifted from job to job [hard to explain but opportunities just seem to arrive out of nowhere].  Each job was better than the last, and each one was in a different direction.  It was just pure luck and circumstance without any goal.  I thought I would be bored after retirement but the opposite is the case – time is flying past and I never quite seem to have the time to do stuff.  No ennui here!

  4. Happy memories.  A few years ago we bought a Victorian cottage, which needed extensive renovation.  First was to stop rainwater dripping through the roof of the dining room, then substantial flooding from rainwater running through the below-ground kitchen door.  New foundations had to be extended to 2.5 meters down, for a single 8ft wall.

    Ten years and extensive work mean we now have a dry, warm and very comfortable cottage.  I thought we had a home for the rest of our lives.  Pity the wife now insists we move somewhere else, so it's up for sale.  I want to stay.  Any advice?

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