I'm with this guy. (sorry about the adds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_a2-Pve4g
I agree. When I look back over life my earliest years are highly influential but cannot be revisited or relived. Childhood until leaving home cannot either, nor would I want to. Of the time I spent in one region, I spent almost exactly 30 years in one village but I could never return and take up where I was before because too much has changed. I have, as of the last decade and a half, someone new in my life, we have a family and now live in a house into which our combined character has merged. Culturally I have roots and am proud of one and say it, over the many years the cultures I have lived within and that have been a major influence on me have blurred my ability to say where I belong. That includes me being not at all inclined to say that because of my roots I belong where those are. That is the difference between identity and where that identity is taken. Home is where I am in the heart of the family in which I feel happy, that has no tensions or disagreements. If that ever fell apart I would probably move on with a heavy heart but I could never go back, that would mean revisiting things that led to this falling apart on the way in one sense or another. Thus, home is an abstract idea that is where I feel it is right and not I imagine it might be.
I think many people, many more than know that, are comparable although the details are different. It is when components of the 'safety blanket' our minds wrap around us fall apart and people look for an easy solution that many people think that home is a particular place. Returning to look after elderly parents is a social duty that custom has psychologically placed on us in European society that marks the difference between people who move on after that 'responsibility' has ended and those who are thrust into it. In much of the world a community assumes that duty, therefore the individual does not need to return for that reason, albeit thy may remit money home to help sustain their elderly relatives. We have lost that, showing how weak the notion and reality of community has become and making it a place rather than a group of human beings. Thus said, our ties to these places are probably more wishes than that community 'needs' us, so even then it is not really going back.
It is very complicated and I imagine that in that complexity many people seek what they see as simple solutions. Ultimately they are not. Whoever is unhappy here has a reasonably equal chance of being as unhappy or unhappier when they return to their notional home because, for right or wrong, they do so carrying a sense of failure in many cases that colours their immediate futures. There is also, if looked at objectively, often resentment about ruined and possessed lives that comes out in people who are themselves elderly who have given years looking after family members one they are gone. Late life marriage break ups because of tensions with in-laws are very, very common too. The picture is no more rosy than the one here when people think it is not work. There is no guarantee there either.
I don't believe home is a 'physical' place at all, but one that is in the mind. If you live in house for 50 years, and for whatever reasons it becomes unhappy - marriage break-ups etc., then no way does it remain a home, it just becomes a house.
Ha ha, Brian, you know me too well, yes if I ever did leave that's where I'd go. I often wonder how things would have panned out there, it was after all a 50/50 call!
Doreen, so this is home - this part of France, surrounded by family etc, where OH and kids were born BUT we nearly "left" for a different business venture miles from home... in the Lot et Garonne but apart from the figures not adding up, we felt a little foreign there! No, I don't think we'll be leaving France, I wouldn't ever want to put my OH and kids through what so many expats have to go through here - move to a foreign land without the language or the cultural baggage.
But as Brian says, perhaps they'll think about following me to il bel paese...! ;-)
He would secretly prefer Italy. True or true Andrew?
That's a really difficult one - where you're born, well if you stayed there for years and grew up there perhaps it is. I left Buckinghamshire at 10 grew up and went to school in Oxfordshire, but then travelled so much and lived most of my adult UK-based life in Devon (and a spell in Cornwall) that that, if anywhere? is home in the UK yet family are scattered elsewhere. Now I've been in France for years, met OH here, she and our kids were born just up the road, all our french family live near here so this is home, well it is for the moment anyway...!
and I understand that that difference must be a real bummer :-(
where is home?
What is home?
Is it where you were born?
ah, but you haven't had to pay the rediculously high charges sociales etc. working here but still get all the extras France offers based on minimal UK contributions so it's swings and roundabouts! I used to work on 25 to 30% to the state in the UK. Here I work on 50% minimum - this year the figures are 18k€ pay and 12k€ charges sociales plus impôts on top of that...! :-O
I wouldn't generalise about house prices either side of the Channel, however usually prices in the UK are much higher, especially in London and the SE where even well paid couples (possibly earning £200k a year between them) can't think as my generation did of buying largish London houses and "doing them up". They are all moving well out of London, leaving it to the foreigners and singles. Certainly here in central Brittany house prices are significantly lower but not usually quoted at double their actual value. You can get a reasonable two bed house with garden and garage for about £60k in a nice village set in a national park. Is there any part of the UK that you would want to live where you could do the same? On costs in the UK are also frequently higher; simple things like paying for parking, often pretty high council tax etc, and yes diesel as noted below (shortly to be victimised in the UK). French retirement homes are under half the monthly cost of a UK one, and you are looking at possibly £50 to £70k a year of taxed income or capital in the SE of England. It's way under half here but pretty few of our locals go to them for very long as family and social services are well organised. My family experiences of the French health system, covering everything from birth to death with lots of other things in the middle, exceeds the quality of those parts of the NHS that we experienced in the UK. Any way, wherever you are, and whatever your circumstances, there are things that happen in life that raise challenges. When I bought a holiday home in France in 1972 I didn't have any idea that it would become my permanent home. 19 moves in the UK, three marriages, a career, and lots of events, all influenced my eventual decision to retire here a few years ago. I haven't had any regrets, far from it. I have one son in the UK, another in the USA and a daughter in France, so going back to be an unpaid baby sitter doesn't make sense. My former London home is now apparently worth about £2.5 million whilst my Breton home is worth about £110k. There is not a single property in my village worth £250k. House prices have dropped a little here, but people tend to sit on them rather than drop them much. As for building new extensions etc, it's frequently more expensive per square metre than it's worth if you use local tradespeople and they are often booked up months, even years, in advance.
yep - some of us have no idea what the exchange rate is as it has no impact what so ever on our lives here ;-)
Yes Ken, prices have increased at a high rate in France and even for someone like myself, working full time, the standard of living has dropped. I think you hit the nail on the head for the "majority" of expats on the exchange rates. Either for the retired or those that have kept something for a rainy day in UK bank accounts.
Hi Ken
I'd just like to pick up on one detail; the price of diesel. I'm in the UK on holiday and I'm paying 30% more than France.
I agree though about housing prices, well at least in some cases the prices are way over value.
I would set my own price and not rely on the agents.
Reminds me of the lady who asked a Scotsman if anything was worn under the kilt, to which he replied ' 'Noo lassie, everything's in purrfect working order!'
Boom, boom!
:-) xx
Sir's office is very happy to have you on our radar Vic. No defrocking for you my boy... xx
Interesting. So if I want to delete all of my old drivel & start a renaissance I just resign, tick a box & 'Hey Presto' all the drivels gone. Hang on though!, if I did that, & based on present form, the chances of me getting MOM or even back in again would be slim to none. On refection I'll take me chances with Sir's office & keep the honour you folk so graciously bestowed on me until I'm officially defrocked or whatever the SFN equivalant is. :-)
As a point of clarification and to avoid any repercussions, when you left SFN earlier this week you chose to delete your previous content, it is an option afforded to you during the process of your account deletion. It was not an automated process nor was it something the admin team did.
The admin team on SFN have a very light touch and we would like to keep it that way.
The reason you need to be 'friends' with someone on SFN before you can send them private messages is simply an anti spam measure.
Left Debra? Was that recent 'cos it seems like you've always been around. What did I miss?
Seconded.