Home or Away?

I have an addiction to programmes featuring people wanting to buy houses in Spain or France.  In fact it is becoming a source of amusement as I have a rant button that is pushed any time I hear the phrase "expat community" or "don't need to learn the language" or, one recent statement "I prefer egg and chips to Spanish food"! 'Sake!

Cue gasp of frustration and quick tweet of annoyance.  I can't help it.  My tolerance levels have completely bottomed out and in a way I'm jealous that these people are getting the opportunity to move abroad.  Although some of these retired expat stuffed estates would be a fate worse than death.

If I were in this situation when the boys were still in primary school, both parents gone, nothing and no one keeping me here, we'd already have made for somewhere else.  Am I using their proximity to important exams as an excuse - maybe?

It is scary, it is daunting, the fact there is only me now.  I have no one to discuss these matters with, no one to advise or help plan.  So it's all on my shoulders.  I just know the few times I have gone somewhere warm my ME/CFS hasn't been as nasty to me, or perhaps that is because I'm relaxed anyway.

Once the exams are done the mortgage will also have been paid.  Could I leave, the desire is strong.  After the referendum last year I gave up on seeing a progressive Scotland, one I'd be happy and proud of.  Instead it's wallowing in the misery brought by a selfish government we once again did not vote for but that is what people bizarrely chose.  I don't feel any wish to stay here for the rest of my life now. I love Lanzarote but could I live there permanently amongst the volcanoes, embarrassing the memory of Cesar Manrique with my dabblings?  I don't have the money to travel as extensively as I'd like, to see as many places as I could with the boys, so researching places is limited.

I watch these tv shows; I sigh at the lovely homes, cringe at the "made for expat" ones and the whole idea of owning a property rather than a home.  I dream of moving, learning to speak the language properly, perhaps for once fitting in somewhere.  I wonder if I will ever be brave enough.