When the children were young a favourite book was The Trip To Panama by Janosch. It's a beautiful picture book about a little tiger and a little bear who one day spot, floating down a stream, a piece of a banana crate printed with the word PANAMA. They decide that Panama must be a wonderful and mysterious place (after all it smells of bananas) and the book charts their adventures in trying find the land of their dreams where they hope to settle.
When we retired we started telling everyone who would listen that we were going to leave Southport and move down to London which became our very own Panama. After twenty years of living in a small northern town we felt it was time for a change and, with the business sold and our children settled at opposite ends of the country there was nothing to tie us to what has become our home town. We were fascinated by the lure of the big city and the opportunity to take in its museums, galleries, restaurants, exhibitions and everything else that goes on there 365 days of the year.
But first of all I had a hip operation to sort out and the move to London was put on hold until I had made a full recovery. The op went well and I was completely back to normal last spring. By then another distraction had arisen. Our daughter Sarah was pregnant and our first granddaughter Rose arrived in July. We spent the rest of the summer travelling backwards and forwards between Southport and our newly acquired caravan in St Andrews to make sure that we saw the most of our family. So the London move was again put in abeyance.
We were still telling everybody that we were off to London - our Panama but, in the autumn, Marion's mum Flo's memory deteriorated very suddenly and we started to spend time trying to help her and plan her future. She's now settling down in a care home and once again our thoughts have turned to that move. Why do we want to leave Southport? It's a pleasant enough town and we've been happy there but we're getting on a bit now and it would be good to see more of the country while we are in still in good health and the town is too big for us to feel part of the community and too small to compensate for that by having plenty to do. So we stared to look at London again.
It was a bit of a shock to find that housing prices in London have risen tremendously since we retired whereas housing prices in Southport have fallen back. This has now made the sort of modest London property that we had in mind prohibitively expensive and we have missed the opportunity that was just about feasible in December 2010. We'll now be telling our friends, who have listened patiently to our claims to be off to London for the past fourteen months that it's no longer on the cards. No doubt our claims to be going there were, like the boy who cried wolf's persistent claims, starting to raise hidden yawns or knowing nods.
But all is not lost. We've been doing our research on the internet and made lists of the top places to live (there are plenty of reviews). Suffolk comes up regularly in these surveys so now we are thinking about moving down there. And we aren't just saying that. We've booked a holiday cottage in February in a small town that has all the features we want - good local shops, good cycling, plenty of local activities and a pleasant climate. So, will Suffolk be our new Panama? Or will our friends, this time next year, be nodding patiently as we tell them for the twentieth time that we are off there? Watch this space.
When the kids were small the favourite book in our household was The Trip To Panama by Janosch.
It charts the adventures of loving couple Little Tiger and Little Bear who discover a fragment of a banana crate on a river bank. It bears the word "PANAMA" and they immediately decide that they must find this wonderful Panama because "Panama is the land of our dreams. Panama smells of bananas". Since then, another loving couple (us) has used Panama as a metaphor for the place of our own dreams and yesterday, being in Manchester, we decided to have a quick look for somewhere to settle for the future.
We chose Didsbury for the first step into our own adventure as we had read that it is vibrant, lively and a little Bohemian with excellent transport links to Manchester and the motorway system. It was certainly lively with plenty of pavement cafes and a great range of local pubs, restaurants and shops - butchers, greengrocers, cheeses, books and much more. It's so trendy there's even a cup cake shop. There's also plenty of green space and the place has a well maintained look to it. The only drawback for us was that the traffic was constant and very loud with the fumes to go with it. So sitting at the roadside enjoying breakfast in the sunshine was spoiled. We looked at a property that is an apartment within a beautiful old mansion that has been done up to a very high standard. It has super gardens. The only snag was that it was bang on the main road. It was worth going to look at Didsbury but we had to conclude that it's nice - but it's not Panama.
Marion's going away for a weekend in early June. Our God daughter is getting married in July and she is having a "hen weekend" at Center Parcs near Nottingham. I've decided to go metal detecting while she's away and I emailed half a dozen hotels in Yorkshire enquiring about the price and availability of a single room for two nights. I didn't get a very positive response other than a welcoming email from the owners of this farmhouse B&B. I have never tried a B&B before but, being on my own, it's not a problem if it's not up to expectations. And judging from the extremely pleasant responses to my emails, I've got a feeling that they will make me very welcome. I will let you know. Being on a farm they might even let me have a look around their fields.
After a couple of weeks where we have been away for days on end we've nothing much planned now for three weeks so it's time to get back into the habit of the gym. I'm aiming to be able to do this by Christmas.
Last night Marion and I were flicking through the Sky Plus planner in a desperate attempt to free up some space in time for the holiday season. As we have a copy of virtually every episode of Paul's programmes, Magic Numbers and A League Of Their Own on the Sky box (in HD) we're almost always down to the last 25% of space. We decided it was a toss up between watching Jimmy McGovern's The Accused (feel bad) or Sam Mendes' Away We Go (feel good) and I'm delighted to say that we opted for the latter. Telling the story of a young couple expecting their first child and looking for the perfect place to live, this gentle and very funny movie left me with a warming afterglow that was deeply reminiscent of the times when we read The Trip To Panama to the kids.
If you haven't read it, this out of print book is one of the most joyful picture books ever. Like Away We Go, the book charts a couple (Little Bear And Little Tiger) in their search for their own Nirvana. They go looking for Panama - the land of their dreams, after finding that a broken packing crate stamped Panama smells of bananas. In the end, like Burt and Verona in Away We Go they find that their Panama is closer to home than they thought. Note to any publishers out there - get this back into print my (two) copies are battered.
And just to keep that feel good factor going, Film4 have got the wonderful Juno showing tonight at 9pm. Anyone who used to read my old Instanta blog will know that this was my film of the year when it came out. Why? Because it's just so nice and whilst you cringe at me using the word "nice" hey what's wrong with that it's the most appropriate word that I can find for the film. Watch it and I guarantee you'll be happy tomorrow.
All I need now is for the nice Amazon postman to deliver my copy of It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit (a guide to all things nice) to carry my pre-Christmas spirits through to the New Year. Written as a riposte to best seller Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit this should be the ideal light relief after my ten day marathon book reading. Today I'm reading a biography of Bess Of Hardwick one of the most interesting women in British history as research into the possibility of one day writing my own historical novel.
Life's all about choices. No doubt if we had chosen The Accused last night I would now be trying to work out how to hang myself from the bannisters with my dressing gown belt. But I'm not. So happy Thursday to one and all.
I'll leave you with another way to feel good. (Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this one @AmandaSweeney)
