A Retirement Dream

 

Sometimes I wish we had retired to a simple house like this, built of mangrove poles and makuti thatch and raised on concrete posts to deter the white ants from eating the whole structure, and I wish....

....we'd had this view from our front veranda, looking out across a coral reef to the ngalowas passing along a distant Indian Ocean horizon, and I wish....

....we'd had a beach like this along the front of the house off which we could have swum in warm waters every day of the year, and I wish....

....that one of the coconut trees along our frontage had been heavy with weaver birds' nests so that....

....I'd have been obliged to build a bird bath for them to splash around in each late afternoon and.... 

....I wish we'd have been able to sit each morning on our veranda enjoying a cup of tea while the sun heaved itself out of the Indian Ocean and....

....sat on the same veranda each evening enjoying our sundowners while it finished its daily journey by sinking into the bush behind our house in a riot of tropical reds and oranges. 

It's where I have dreamed that we would pass our later years but.... well, the world simply doesn't work on dreams and, even if we had had the opportunity, we'd have been far from our family and good medical services and the requirements of a modern life, like the internet. So, dream as I may, I'm content that the option didn't arise though.... perhaps I wish it had.

Pictures taken in Tanzania.