h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

> It is very difficult to balance on the line of ethics. When are you helping, when are you interfeering with independance and self-influence?

Tartaronne, the hardest thing to do is to decide when a loved one isn't able to function on their own. It's not a question of whether they're the same person they were ten years ago. It's a question of whether she'll know that the food she's eating isn't spoiled, or whether she'll pay the electric bill on time, or whether she'll remember why it's smart not to blow-dry your hair in the bathtub.

I suspect I've suffered a small amount of brain damage, and I've had some short-term memory loss from the MS. I'll probably heal up. I think I'm a little better than I was a month ago. My biggest worry is that the decisions I make won't be the right ones. With my stubbornness and general sense that I know best, chances are I won't listen to anybody and will end up making a couple of bad decisions here and there. I just hope that they won't end up killing me. As I get older, if I get any more brain damage, I'll probably have to rely on others more and more. Not cool.

> So - in twenty years' time I'll be the same.

It's not a certainty that you'll end up with dementia. Keep your blood pressure and your cholesterol down, and you just might get lucky!

Teuchter and Lentilla - - it is good to be listened to and to hear second opinions.

As I get nearer 52 I have been wondering about moving to the countryside more and more before ill health makes it less point in doing so. I am quite healthy but have noticed recently that ageing makes recovery from long walks or cycling up hills takes longer.
I realise that geting a job as you get older is more difficult but moving to where it is less crowded and more enjoyable for walking is increasingly attractive. I have also been spending more money recently as being the richest person in the graveyard is somewhat pointless if you don't enjoy the money/time while alive. There are disadvantages to living in countryside but to be honest around here is becoming less and less like living in traditional England.

[hyp]

[Lady C.]

[mr]

Can I please have a backlog exemption? I've been buying a new to me car.

Congrats, GDZ. Any details about the car? Aside from the common requisite number of wheels, a number of doors, some windows and stuff.

MUST RESIST TEMPTATION....

Nope, I can't resist...

It's a car that has been taken under the wing of another, more successful car, to be taught and mentored till it can be a Full Fledged Car Of It's Own.

Sorry GDZ, you know I had to. I will leave the rest of the details up to you.

So, MR...can I audit your class?

It's over, fg, but there's one starting in 3 weeks at the local community college...same class!

Thanks for the introduction Marv. I bought a 2002 Mazda Protoge. It met pretty much everything I was looking for. Manual Transmission, 4 doors, hatchback, and under $10k US.

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Ooh yes, that reminds me of my super-duper bargain I picked up on my hols… brown Oxfords (a type of shoe, bit like brogues but without all the decorative bits) for £25 reduced from £60! Woo! Shame I couldn’t find a nice waistcoat, though.

*s Lentilla.*

Oh, and Strangely: was there ever such a thing as 'tradtional England' in the first place? This is a mongrel nation after all.

A very quick hello from Kinsale, Ireland - in blazing sun

There are disadvantages to living in countryside...not so many as you get older...a lot of the problems of the past..lack of facilities ie post offices..shops ect can be surmounted with home deliveries internet banking...solar and windpower generators.

Yes was/is such a place as 'tradtional England' called contentment or should that be contemptment...

Sure, there's a traditional England, same as there's a traditional USA. Both ignore anyone not white, not upper middle to upper class, straight, and solidly Christian (Anglican over there, Protestant of some stripe over here). Oh, and marriage and 2 kids goes along with that.

It's easy to say that a society's homogeneous when you're ignoring some 90% of the population.

That's what irks me about the family values crowd--in promoting a return to traditional values they deliberately ignore the fact that not all, not even close to the majority of Americans lived in perfect Protestant nuclear families at any point in our nation's history.