Dementia assessment?
Sorry, someone had to say it. 
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Bonjour. I would never live in a place called Bagshot!
Who the heck named it that!! I was brought up in a tough Liverpool environment, later in Moss Side, Manchester. I do not need anyone telling me what it is like living in a city or town, thanks. I have got the tee shirt. I am a confirmed Anglophobe and I am not ashamed of that. I did my bit for that country. I have nothing more to give. France is my country of choice now. No parole from rock and roll.
I spend my winters in the Algarve with my daughter and family. No currency exchange probs. No borders and stupid passport controls.. I just drive straight down. Why would I live in Bagshot? I don’t even know where it is! Passez-vous une très belle journée.
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Sorry I didn’t make it clearer, you are enjoying France because it’s away from the busy towns and blocks of flats. You might think differently if you were living in a town amongst the blocks
Unfortunately the number of minor conditions left untreated at COVID time then turned into extremely serious events later …This was one of the themes of the COVID inquiries ..how much worse they got because they were untreated . I was one of the lucky ones ..and my symptoms only arose during a lull between lockdowns .. Who knew that belching was a symptom of a probable imminent heart attack ?. or that a tired jaw was another sign?. Clue my GP because I was tired of belching ,I contacted her and She diagnosed either ulcer or heart
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That’s rather the same as the COVID situation here - I absolutely loved being at home with almost all of my children and attached personnel, in lovely peaceful countryside, great weather, all marvellous, all right for some, eh - and then the terrible guilt when I thought of people stuck in tower blocks with small children or all alone.
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It’s very strange but we hardly noticed covid here at all. I remember having to print and sign some document to carry with me when I walked the dog each day (in woods and fields) and the little bossy boots on the cash desk at Auchan who used to shout at me for forgetting my mask on entering the store, but apart from that it hardly registered.
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Strange times then. I worked throught it all as a truck driver.
Getting to work in a car I needed either self declarations or ones stamped by the company as rules evolved all the time.
Everywhere had different procedures about safety and separation.
Having non medically trained A.N.Others sticking swabs up your nose to gain access to a port was horrible. Driving past the Stade de France riding the speed limiter at 9 in the morning was a unique experience!
Us too, no traffic and we created some new rando routes from our village that we still use today.
One item on the to do list is debrousse a stretch of the chemin, cos it’s an unofficial, one so not maintained by the commune. Hopefully we’ll be walking it in a couple of weeks’ time.
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London was surreal, going to work seeing hardly a soul but abandoned blue surgical masks blowing around
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I was in rural S Devon and loved it. I walked 6 to 8 miles a day with my dog, often trespassing in woods that are part of the pheasant shoot which vandalises our part of the world. They had to close down for a lot of Covid. I collected a lot of dead ash timber on my walks and carried up to 25kg home on my back most days. So I got to know every nook and cranny around me. I still collect, but due to an arthritis/trochanter problem limit distance now. No trees are bring replanted.
After Covid, everything has gone downhill, apart from the Tories being thrown out. The pheasant shooting expands every year. 4 years ago 35000 birds were released locally. Now the farmers are combining their own shoots to make bigger ones and sometimes joining with the main estate shoot which is even bigger. This is happening all over the country.
The local farming is changing too. Pasture has been ploughed up and old hedgerows have been opened up to permit combines to pass between fields. Most of it is industrial farming, not in any way sustainable. A few weeks ago we tested our stream and the results show it is now high in phosphates. The stream floods quickly now too as the rain flushes straight off the depleted and compacted soils. I could go on…
The same story of changing farming patterns is also very evident in the Boçage in Calvados. In a very short time the biodiversity has also tanked and the fields have got bigger every year. It’s actually worse than in S Devon. Our stream here dried up and in any case has had no fish in it for 4 years since a farming coop bought out the paysan farmer who retired (with neuro problems likely from chemicals). We had red squirrels, hares, rabbits…none have been seen for 3 years. Here too, no tree planting.
There’s nowhere to run, it’s happening under our very noses but no one seems to care. People just diss the Greens, they are the only ones prepared to call it as it is.
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It’s complicated having a foot in two camps. For a long time we’ve done so, though 90% France. Some things are relatively simple, like tax or cars in both locations, but other things like medical care can be complex. For example two cardiologists you have to keep in sync plus, plus, plus. Easy when one is young, but more problematic as one gets older.
I did it for over 10 years until my mother died and I could move here full time.
Well then you know, but how long ago was that? Visiting regularly is one thing but a foot in both camps is another. Have you ever had to “sync” your consultants. Not easy. 
For 4 years. It’s doable but then I was travelling several times a month. Not for everyone.
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But I would never live in a town or city, so the “ if “ does not apply. I have done all that. Let’s just leave it at that Corona. Je vous envoye des photographies de mon chien Walter. Il vous souhaîte une très
belle journée. Dérnière photo de moi en “concert” au Sud de la France. ( Camarès)
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We feel very much the same, to be fair we have few ties to the UK except for 2 rental properties for income, we pop back for a couple of short visits a year to check on these and I don’t feel I recognise the place as having been home once anymore, returning here is coming home although much has changed here too. I fully get the “other life” part a bit like being a student in the 70s, not part of life anymore, more like something once read in a book. For my wife who grew up in Canada before moving to the UK and now France who will tell people life in the other countries are remembered but now feel like they have no context its the same. Yes we do talk about good and bad things from the past but the geography is relevent only to the events. First came to France on holiday in 1980, bought holiday home in 1998 and moved definitively in 2015, may move again but we see no reason it would be anywhere except France although pre Brexit we did ponder on a “lock up and leave” small holiday home in Portugal or Spain, not to be now but no problem we have already won the prize.
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A move to Sussex to get away from crowded Oxfordshire is interesting to me. It all seems a question of perception. We moved from the Weald in East sussex, although we still have a flat we rent out in Heathfield. If we returned to the UK, we would sell the flat and move to the West Country as we find East Sussex desperately crowded. The roads are so clogged up and people queue everywhere. It felt like half of London had relocated to Sussex, so much new house development and sprawling estates of battery farmed people. We even considered moving to Oxfordshire at one stage!
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They are building a lot of houses in Devon too, small ticcy tacky estates in general in margins between settlements…and adjacent to the celebrated Wolborough Fen (SSSI), which is currently subject to an Enquiry and crowdfunding to force the developers to properly engineer the water which feeds the fen.
The infrastructure remains the same…in fact it’s limited in many ways but the housebuilding continues because the governments won’t grasp the nettle about housing shortage which is that the builders only build for profit and where profit is most easily made, while holding huge landbanks with existing permissions while asset prices inflate.
The solution to that is council housing funded by a national investment bank which the BoE are forced to supply.
We’ve been here since 1990, and the area has transformed with a guarantee of lots more on the way. I accept that parts of Sussex will be crowded in summer, which is the opposite of here, but visiting recently made me remember how the countryside used to be. I’ve always had a soft spot for Sussex - it’s how country should be.
Probably anywhere within the outer circular these days, all the way out to the airport (and possibly beyond into the central belt. Having been to and fro to Edinburgh from Stirling in recent years, I was quite shocked to see how much properties cost in the area.
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