Warum?
Whenever I leave a job, people I know talk about the importance of endings. I'm always more focussed on beginnings. I tend to think of life constantly evolving. From infancy and close family, through schools and friendships, career, marriage, parenthood, mortgage and responsibility into mid-life revolution and reinvention. My philosophy is to see involution as nothing more than another aspect of life long change. whatever is happening within the cells of my body, life can always amaze, excite, reward, surprise. Having worked hard from at least the age of 11, through secondary education in an English Grammar School, Medical School, a career in Psychiatry, raising two children, I have now retired from regular employment. I am free to find out what I want to do. One thing I know is that I want to travel and to have fun.
Childhood was, for me a very mixed experience. My parents faced a lot of challenges in life, not least from the problems caused by their own personalities. Up 'till I was about 11 their individual and especially collective dysfunction was a boon to me as it left me pretty much unsupervised. Self-sufficient is my middle name. In many ways that's an asset but in intimate relationships it presents a challenge. So I accept my share of responsibility for the fact that my first marriage failed for both parties for 25 long years. Largely this was because it was based on a lie. It received the last rights many times and was finally put out of its misery in 2005. Now I am the luckiest man alive having met, in midlife, the most amazing woman and found she wants to be with me. My wife is simply the most resourceful, strong minded, multi-talented person I have ever met. She is also extraordinarily beautiful. Under her influence I have grown and finally understood the meaning of the verb "to love" (thanks Todd Rundgren).
So here we are having made the leap into the world beyond our comfort zone, together. I worked for The NHS in Britain for over 30 years and my pension (much reduced by divorce settlement) is just about enough to pay the rent on a decent apartment and feed us. As part of her PhD, my wife had an internship with a multi-national company at their office in central Berlin for six months. As a result we relocated ourselves to this gorgeous, achingly cool city and were fortunate to find an affordable apartment in what seems to me the most beautiful district of Mitte, adjacent to Gendarmenmarkt. We are committed to remaining in Germany as long as possible and if at all possible, we will naturalise as German citizens in due course. We hope to create a life of international adventure, working together domestically and in developing our own business ideas exploring all the continents, escaping from the busted flush that is the UK forever.
We are an unusual couple in some ways. Probably the most obvious peculiarity is the disparity in our ages. My wife is 29 years younger at just 26 to my 56. Shocked? We don't care. Age is partly in the head and though there are unavoidable physical changes with ageing, there are many compensations in temperamental development and a modicum of self-discipline prolongs active life. The combination of experience and sang-froid that comes with age and the vitality and chutzpah of youth is powerful. Neither of us feels attached to our country or culture of origin and we both burn with curiosity about the world and its people. Living in the internet and mobile telecommunications age makes it possible to conduct business 24/7 on a global scale from anywhere. You can run a business from a laptop in a coffee shop in Highgate or a hotel in the middle of the Indian Ocean (about which more later). We share a belief that we only come this way once and an attitude that we should get as much experience of the world as possible. We are not going hiking with backpacks though. We like comfort.
Childhood was, for me a very mixed experience. My parents faced a lot of challenges in life, not least from the problems caused by their own personalities. Up 'till I was about 11 their individual and especially collective dysfunction was a boon to me as it left me pretty much unsupervised. Self-sufficient is my middle name. In many ways that's an asset but in intimate relationships it presents a challenge. So I accept my share of responsibility for the fact that my first marriage failed for both parties for 25 long years. Largely this was because it was based on a lie. It received the last rights many times and was finally put out of its misery in 2005. Now I am the luckiest man alive having met, in midlife, the most amazing woman and found she wants to be with me. My wife is simply the most resourceful, strong minded, multi-talented person I have ever met. She is also extraordinarily beautiful. Under her influence I have grown and finally understood the meaning of the verb "to love" (thanks Todd Rundgren).
So here we are having made the leap into the world beyond our comfort zone, together. I worked for The NHS in Britain for over 30 years and my pension (much reduced by divorce settlement) is just about enough to pay the rent on a decent apartment and feed us. As part of her PhD, my wife had an internship with a multi-national company at their office in central Berlin for six months. As a result we relocated ourselves to this gorgeous, achingly cool city and were fortunate to find an affordable apartment in what seems to me the most beautiful district of Mitte, adjacent to Gendarmenmarkt. We are committed to remaining in Germany as long as possible and if at all possible, we will naturalise as German citizens in due course. We hope to create a life of international adventure, working together domestically and in developing our own business ideas exploring all the continents, escaping from the busted flush that is the UK forever.
We are an unusual couple in some ways. Probably the most obvious peculiarity is the disparity in our ages. My wife is 29 years younger at just 26 to my 56. Shocked? We don't care. Age is partly in the head and though there are unavoidable physical changes with ageing, there are many compensations in temperamental development and a modicum of self-discipline prolongs active life. The combination of experience and sang-froid that comes with age and the vitality and chutzpah of youth is powerful. Neither of us feels attached to our country or culture of origin and we both burn with curiosity about the world and its people. Living in the internet and mobile telecommunications age makes it possible to conduct business 24/7 on a global scale from anywhere. You can run a business from a laptop in a coffee shop in Highgate or a hotel in the middle of the Indian Ocean (about which more later). We share a belief that we only come this way once and an attitude that we should get as much experience of the world as possible. We are not going hiking with backpacks though. We like comfort.