to want to go and live on an island somewhere with one shop, a pub and nothing else.

[Ormirian]

I hate shops, shopping and shoppers. I hate the way a simple trip into town turns into an epic struggle at this time of year. I hate the bloody queues, I hate the cross miserable faces. All I wanted to do was take a christmas present back. Hideous depressing experience!

And no I wouldn't care about being miles from anywhere, and not being able to buy things, and having to walk, and not being able to go to the cinema/bowling alley/burger bar/discount stores. Those three things are what towns seem to major in these days. I know there are nice little shops left but fewer and fewer.

I avoid shopping like the plague - nearly all of mine for christmas was done on-line or quickly during my lunch hour. How can anyone do it for pleasure?

Bah! Humbug to post-christmas sales!

Loads of Tesco. Even Campbeltown is getting a massive one.

If you don't like shopping, well, um, don't go.

And yy, the pub in such places often shuts for winter.

Hope you never develop a health problem, either, if you're living in such an island in the UK.

Or have kids in secondary school - they often enough have to board.

Or have to work.

Or like high speed internet.

Or don't have a lot of money - food choice/travel costs are staggering.

Oh I didn't say it was sensible expat, just my dream!

I never went to any post-Christmas sales even whilst living in town centre Edinburgh or in a city where shopping is a pastime.

It's easy enough to avoid, but, having lived in a rural area for 3 years, there are some definite downsides.

There's no way I'd ever live in the Isles, tbh, because of that.

It's not so easy to avoid in small towns though expat. If you want so much as a pint of milk and a loaf of bread you get mixed up in it all.

And make sure you love living in a goldfish bowl where everyone knows your every move and discusses it in great detail at every opportunity because there is f**k all else to do....(have just left small island and never again - and that was 160,000 inhabitants and several supermarkets but a very small expat community).

I would probably spontaneously combust with boredom. Or fling myself onto the log fire. Not the first week, but almost certainly sometime in the second.

quattro - it does if you live in a small town. That's what is so depressing about it! The town we visited was the one I was brought up near until I was 10 - it had a real market, mostly independent retailers, a huge library. Now it has supermarkets, chain pubs, clothes shops and phone stores. And a big out-of-town shopping area.

I meant that it's easy enough to avoid in a big city/larger town, Orm. The shopping bit.

But there's a reason why most of the homes on islands are holiday homes.

And what Quattro said. YY. Being urban has a great many advantages, tbh.

Hmm.... OK I need to get very rich then. And I can have my house on an island. And a helicopter.

See, you need to move to a larger city, Orm. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wearing a slightly stained Arran jumper. That look is ruinous with a bulgy tummy (mine, not yours. Yours is probably as lean as a washboard).

Agree with you about sales though. Only go into town in the evening when the mad people avid salesgoers have gone home. That's my top tip.

Hi, I quite agree, towns have become clones of each other, there are far too few individualistic shops of character left now, thanks to the might of the BIG four (Tesco's et all).

Have you considered opting out of "society" and live in the forth dimension, which is over looked by so many, and yet is on most folks door steps - the canals?

Here, you live with nature, you experience the subtle changes of mother natures seasons. We feel far more fulfilled since we bought our 57 foot narrow boat.

Lucy