This area probably still. I'm not particularly mad on the location. I'd like to be near the water. That's my ambition.
If you were able to change it, in what ways do you think your housing situation might be improved?
By moving to near the water; I'd love to be able to move. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
Yes, that's exactly it.
I've always wanted to live near the water. I find it very relaxing; and a view of the sea. I just love that.
So if you were to come into some money that's what you would do?
And it' still not out of the question, because I have thought of leaving and going part time next year and actually selling it and buying a little place down on the water. I don't know where.
Were you thinking of Dodges or Primrose Sands?
No Opossum Bay, South Arm
Yeah I like it there but houses are very expensive down there.
Yeah they are, that's the only catch but I was even thinking of buying a block of land and just building a little cottage on it. But I'm a bit reluctant, scared I guess because I've always worked full time and I've never not had responsibility for another person and now I can sort of plan my life to do things for myself.
But you don't think your finances'll go that far.
I've been and seen about it with a financial planner and there's an option there to go part time.
Wouldn't that affect your super though?
I'd have to take all my super, that's the only thing so I'd end up on a little old age pension when I'm sixty five but I'd have to work part time though. I could never stop work until I was sixty-five. It's just all about my re-assessing the situation. It's in the pipeline but nothing definite yet, but yeah if I had a choice and my finances allowed it I'd love to be near the water. Somewhere I could walk on the beach.
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My health; if my health deteriorated at all it would certainly change the situation inasmuch I probably wouldn‟t be able to, well I could keep this house but I'd be on a much lower mortgage repayment; it would only be $50 a week and I could live on that.
So why would that happen?
I'm just saying if my health deteriorated
You'd retire.
I'd leave work and I'd get the majority of my superannuation and I'd pay it off the house and I'd have a small mortgage.
It'd be less than rent.
Fifty dollars a week is manageable no matter what sort of benefit you're on and I think yeah that's the only thing that I could think of that would affect …
Can you tell me how you feel about growing older?
I don't feel anything about it. I'm not worried about growing older. I just hope that I can do some things that are in my master plan before I get too old to enjoy them. I want to learn to play the piano and I want to go to U3A and hope I'm well enough to do them as I get older and I've got the time. No I'm not worried about getting older at all.
And do you ever think about living in a different sort of living situation, like in communal or congregate or something like a retirement village?
I wouldn't go very well in a communal place because I like my own company and I wouldn‟t always want to be seeing people. A retirement village?
Well that's one of the …
That'd be okay because you're self-contained. I suppose you can be self-contained in communal housing.
It depends on the design of it.
I couldn't bear this sort of communal get together thing. I wouldn't like that; no, because I like to be quiet a lot of the time, just with my own thoughts.
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It worries me though that I might be coming a bit anti-social though, because I can go weeks without sort of seeing anyone apart from going to work. I can go weeks without catching up with people and sometimes I think, it's all too difficult with my friends that've got problems and I think I'd rather not know about them. So I tend to do the old ostrich thing and stay by myself. No, I don't think I'd go very well, but if I had to I'd obviously have to ...
But that's not something you've given thought to …
No, not planned it. No.
Other than to think it wouldn't be for you.
Not for me. No. I can see myself in a nursing home though when I'm incapable of looking after myself. I'd much rather that than having my children look after me. I couldn't stand that. I'd much rather professional people look after me than my children. I'd do exactly what Mum did. She had five children and chose to go into [name of nursing home deleted]. Yeah. I wouldn't like to live with either of my kids when I'm older. Yeah I think they need to live their lives the way they ought to lead them too because having an elderly person around the home isn't such a great thing.
Usually a parent, who can't help treating people as though they are still their children.
I wouldn't like to be programmed every day to do things. Come on Mum we'll do this today or that today. At least in the nursing home you have a choice whether you go and join them. You're not railroaded into it. At least Mum wasn't. She thought it was marvellous. She had a choice at [name of nursing home deleted], if she wanted to go and sit and have a sherry at four o'clock she did and if she wanted to sit and read her papers she did.
I suppose they're not all like that.
No. I think it was marvellous down there. They didn't come and jolly her and say come on we're having a party up there today and you should come. She would have just gone shut up
You reckon?
She's a bit like me or I'm a lot like her. She liked her own company sometimes and other times she liked to be with people, and that's just the way you are.
As long as you've got the choice about it.
Yes. She had the choice. I thought it was absolutely marvellous. Might have helped that my sister was on the auxiliary down there and made sure she was all right [Laughing.] But no they seemed to give
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them a choice and there were a lot of people like Mum who just wanted to be by themselves sometimes; be with their own thoughts, and that‟s fine.
It might be a particular thing for women. I mean women. The picture we have of women is that they are people who like relationships and company and have people as friends and talk to friends about things.
I do sometimes and other times I prefer just to keep myself quiet and just work my way through things because I've had to do it and some of my friends are very busy, talk a lot and I can't bear it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you've had a lot of stress in your own life and your friends are having stressful things to deal with …
And they don't want to do it either. My friend is very mentally ill at the moment and has been for a long time. She hasn't rung me for a long time because she wants to be by herself. We had an arrangement where we say okay, you give me a call or she say I'll contact you and that suits me just fine.
So you respect each other's need for space.
Yes. I understand she may want to be on her own or she may want company.
Yeah but you can't always be sure you find this with people you meet. Do you find that you are wary of making new friends for that reason, because you think they might start intruding too much on your life and might not respect your need for space and privacy?
No, when I make friends they just seem to be acquaintances really and that's quite good. People that I work with, and that's good.
I think that's more appropriate when you're older. I mean when you're an adolescent you have best girlfriends but I think that changes when you get older.
Yes. I see looking at [younger daughter‟s name deleted], it seems really important to her to have lots of contact with her friends.
My daughter's like that.
She says oh I haven't seen [friend‟s name deleted] for a while or I haven't seen [other friend‟s name deleted] for a while and she gets all withdrawn if it's not happening, and I said oh you'll sort of
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come out of that later on, appreciate friendships. It's all part of being a teenager I think. It's not that I don't care.
My daughter used to do that when she was at home. Spend hours talking to her friends at night. I can't stand talking to people on the phone at night.
I can't either and funnily enough [laughing], I have two friends who talk incessantly on the phone about nothing and I think we could have covered that in the first two minutes and it takes 20 minutes to tell you, and it's just amazing. Actually I've got three friends like it and it's just incredible, it just takes so long to describe something.
Oh that's so interesting.
It's just different personalities. It amuses me really.
[Conversation deleted.]
It's a two way street; talking flat out about yourself for 20 minutes, I don't think it's appropriate really. My grandmother was like that; incessantly. She'd already be starting to say something as you were starting to talk, ready for the next blurt about herself. She was pretty wrapped up in herself, old Gran, but she was very kind.
Interesting
But I also don't like being a burden and that shows through my life, not being a burden to anyone so I don't tend to ring people up and say oh I'm so sick of myself. I'd just rather sit here and think oh bugger it it's a bit lonely here but let's just crack hardy. This morning I woke up and thought it's raining, why I don't just get up and get out of bed and go for a walk, so I did. And I walked in to
[suburb name deleted] and once I'd started I was right. I called in to a couple of places and went to
[shopping centre name deleted] and I felt fine when I got home.
Yeah.
You've got to make it happen, don't you sometimes? Or I could ring someone up on the phone and spend twenty minutes on the phone saying how miserable I was. It's a choice. You make your own choices.
Yeah. Get out of yourself and sort of open things up.