I reckon on being one of the lucky ones! I mean I've lived a long life, enjoyed a challenging, interesting and varied life.
 I've not managed to keep much of the money I've made and I always reckon I made much more for other people than for myself, but that's life. I'm rich in health and experiences. 
I found Janet, my life partner when I was past thirty at a time when I was beginning to think my companion on life's passage would be a bottle- Thank the Lord we got that sorted out. 
We're a forward looking couple and when the time came they wouldn't let us work anymore and forced us into retirement, we saw that as another challenge.
The choice was simple, shut down and do nothing except wait for the  call to the hereafter or do something. So we sold up in England and moved to France- new people, new culture, new language, new friends! 
Like I said, I've lived a long time. My earliest recollections is being held in my mother's arms with neighbours outside our house looking at the red sky to the south - London burning in the blitz. Of course I didn't know it at the time. Then when I was four, this was  just before what I learned was D-Day- but when I was much older. 
That trip on the train to scotland and those GI's who sat opposite. Do you know I can see their faces now! all these years later. How they laughed when I said 'Give us some gum chum,' when they asked me to talk. It's what the bigger boys in the street said. I often wonder if they made it? 
I'm so grateful to them and the thousands like them that gave us our freedom today! 
I hope they were lucky ones too!

The earlier chapters of The ‘Cousins’ have now been extensively revised and published on KIndle and Amazon as an e-book and paperback under the title ’The Stopover - A New Road’.

Links:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00V2B3KNK 
www.amazon.com/dp/1507768540 

The second revision will follow in Sep 2015 as ‘The Stopover-Potholes’ Watch this space for news!