why BIGGER and not SMALLER?

That's me! I could have carried on working after I retired early but instead my wife gave her career and we both live a much happier life on a fraction of what we previously earned.

Mother's family came from the East End & father's from Norf London - it really gets my wife going for some reason when I do impressions of my relatives.

 

Very hard to dislike this post...

 

bottom line .... we all have dreams and aspirations and that is always a good thing

make the most of what you have

and most importantly, it does not matter where you live (or what you own) ....

what matters is how you live

 

Whatever sized garden we have had (and we've had quite a few) I have always enjoed gardening. The pleasures of watching things grow, of the new years' flowers coming into bloom are not really affected by how big the garden is.
Currently we have down-sized in garden terms as the physical effort needed was becoming a bit of a burden - those of you with youth on your side should enjoy whatever size of garden you can manage........

 

I work as a gardener .... some huge gardens where I mow with a sit on and takes me 6 hrs to mow/sort the edges .... some small gardens where it takes me 7 minutes to mow with a flymo

the nicest of the bunch is the small garden where it takes 7 minutes to mow .... the garden is 'full' has been landscaped by a very well known landscaper ...

there is an antique victorian bench in a shady corner, an acer bloodgood, an idian bean tree a birdbath, and loads of perinnials that have been very cleverly planted, so that there is colour throughout the year .... plus a 3m wall covered in creepers that always have colour .... bees and butterflies are always present

and .... the house is a grade A listed with skew walls and a thatch roof .... it used to be an old sweet shop in bygone days ....

and to top it all, the young couple who live there are the nicest/most pleasant people who I work for

its always a pleasure to work there and I often just sit on the bench and have a cigarette and relax ... I'd buy that place (if I could afford it) .... there is just something about the place that 'feels right'

 

You're right, I really miss all those cold winds and rain.

Glad I was of service.

 

Exactly. I have everything I need and almost everything I want. Of the 'wants', I certainly have all of the most important ones. I want a yacht and a ferrari and a couple of million quid in the bank. I haven't got those wants, but I do have infinitely better ones. I have a spacious house close to most of the people I care most about, I share the house with my lovely wife and son, and I have a job that pays for everything we really need. I also own a patch of wide open space in the countryside, 20 miles from my house, so I don't need more garden (in fact I'm struggling a bit with what I've got).

The only thing that needs to change, and its not about snobbery or fashion, is that I need to tweak my garden a bit so that when I'm chilling out at home, I can feel as though I'm not in a large box. Between us and the old lady next door, we have the fence that I've termed the Berlin wall. Its only about 6ft high but it is made of wooden planks and it is just such a dominant 'feature' of the garden. To the other side is the church. For some reason they've felt it necessary to erect an 8ft high fence made of iron bars with spikes on top. The result is you go out there, and you sort of feel like you're in jail.

So in my case its not about actually having more space, its just about making it feel as though I have more space. In fact really its not even that, its more about rectifying the sensation that you have less space than you actually have.

 

The problem is, there are to many people suffering from what my family call 'sheep syndrome'. If somebody else has got it, they must have it bigger and better. They have to follow what everybody else does because they can't think for themselves.

I have down-sized twice in the last sixteen years, the first time, to be able to move to and afford to live on this beautiful island, where property is more expensive, and the second time to be able to pay off our mortgage and move into a bungalow which only has two bedrooms. Lower bills, less housework and more time for gardening!

No! We didn't move here for tax reasons.

People we know just can't get their heads round this. Those same people can't understand why we got rid of our television. Shock! Horror! No television, what on earth do you find to do? They'd be surprised!

 

This reminds me of an incident from my school days.

We were given some homework that required us to watch a documentary that was on that evening, and then write an essay about it.

I told the teacher I couldn't do it, because months before hand we'd made a unanimous decision in our house to get rid of the telly, because we were all outdoors sorts and really couldn't be bothered with telly.

A couple of days later, when I didn't hand in my essay, I got in trouble for not doing my homework. When I replied that I hadn't done it because we didn't have a telly at home, and that I'd told the teacher this before hand, I got put on detention for a week for failing to do my homework, and for lying. I can remember clearly one thing that the teacher shouted at me: "you insult me by lying to me, EVERYBODY has a tv at home".

My week's detention turned out to be just that first evening, because when I went home late and told my dad why, he decided to talk to the school the next day, and demand to know why they were trying to force the kids to become telly addicts.

 

$19,5 million gets you this newly listed property:

Lakefront Panoramic Views - The Waterwood Estate - neighborhood Vermilion OH 44089 - Sotheby's International Realty

What baffles me is the bedroom/bathroom ratio.

Five bedrooms ....16 bathrooms (9 full and 7 half baths)??

 

you mean the 'sheeple'