I know I don't want to live with my daughter & her family, & I'm sure she wouldn't want that either. Not unless I can have my own accommodation & my own front door which I can shut when I want to.
I also know I don't want to live in "sheltered accommodation" or anything similar, with people I don't know, in various stages of decrepitude. Ageing ghettos have no appeal whatsoever.
What I would really like to do is build somewhere designed specifically for a community of like minded ageing friends. I want it to be very eco friendly, low maintenence & high tech. Preferably a "passive haus" construction, with every aid known to wo/man, for my generation, who are likely to live for ages in various states of health. It would have broadband, hi fi, phone & TV access in every room with plugs at dado level instead of the ridiculous skirting board level we all have now. Every aspect of design would be geared specifically to us, but beautiful & pleasing.
We would all have our own ensuite bedroom, kitchen / breakfast room, sitting room / study. There would also be a communal sitting room which converted to a TV / cinema room if we wanted to be gregarious, & a communal dining room for pot luck suppers. Or if we didn't want to cook we could order in M&S cook chill delicacies / take aways to eat together. Not to mention a pool & gym complex for those of us who wanted to keep fit. (I quite fancy the idea of our own trainer too, young & fit preferably!) A communal laundry would also be good, not to mention a craft room. I imagine we would want friends & family to visit so there would have to be a few spare bedrooms.There would be pleasant gardens & a good veg patch for self sufficiency.
We would share the running costs & there would be economies of scale for heating, lighting, cleaning, gardening & maintenence. (It might well be a good idea to have a live in couple to do those jobs). You could also have various alternative therapists visiting us, so maybe we need a therapy room too. We could be as independent as we wanted to & as gregarious as we felt like. It doesn't need to be sited in a city, although I'm not averse to that, because we could have a mini bus available to take us out shopping or on trips. It should be reasonably close to a GP surgery & dentist - you've got to be realistic!
I would love to design and build something like that, I just need someone else to share the costs. It strikes me that it is the only way to go. We middle aged people need to take control of our own destiny. We have money, we know what we want & don't want. We certainly can't rely on the state any more & private developers are just after a quick buck & we are the geese laying the golden eggs.
There must be someone out there who thinks this is a good idea?
I also know I don't want to live in "sheltered accommodation" or anything similar, with people I don't know, in various stages of decrepitude. Ageing ghettos have no appeal whatsoever.
What I would really like to do is build somewhere designed specifically for a community of like minded ageing friends. I want it to be very eco friendly, low maintenence & high tech. Preferably a "passive haus" construction, with every aid known to wo/man, for my generation, who are likely to live for ages in various states of health. It would have broadband, hi fi, phone & TV access in every room with plugs at dado level instead of the ridiculous skirting board level we all have now. Every aspect of design would be geared specifically to us, but beautiful & pleasing.
We would all have our own ensuite bedroom, kitchen / breakfast room, sitting room / study. There would also be a communal sitting room which converted to a TV / cinema room if we wanted to be gregarious, & a communal dining room for pot luck suppers. Or if we didn't want to cook we could order in M&S cook chill delicacies / take aways to eat together. Not to mention a pool & gym complex for those of us who wanted to keep fit. (I quite fancy the idea of our own trainer too, young & fit preferably!) A communal laundry would also be good, not to mention a craft room. I imagine we would want friends & family to visit so there would have to be a few spare bedrooms.There would be pleasant gardens & a good veg patch for self sufficiency.
We would share the running costs & there would be economies of scale for heating, lighting, cleaning, gardening & maintenence. (It might well be a good idea to have a live in couple to do those jobs). You could also have various alternative therapists visiting us, so maybe we need a therapy room too. We could be as independent as we wanted to & as gregarious as we felt like. It doesn't need to be sited in a city, although I'm not averse to that, because we could have a mini bus available to take us out shopping or on trips. It should be reasonably close to a GP surgery & dentist - you've got to be realistic!
I would love to design and build something like that, I just need someone else to share the costs. It strikes me that it is the only way to go. We middle aged people need to take control of our own destiny. We have money, we know what we want & don't want. We certainly can't rely on the state any more & private developers are just after a quick buck & we are the geese laying the golden eggs.
There must be someone out there who thinks this is a good idea?
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