COUNTRY LIVING

Live in the country and last three years longer than my city friends? Good news indeed, more backing for a lifestyle choice made half a lifetime ago when it seemed a good idea to exchange an Edinburgh terrace for a farm cottage.

I knew it was a good idea because I had been there before. Born and reared on a farm I had been seduced for a few years by the idea of being a big shot who lived and worked in a city rather than only going for the day to wave at the buses.

True, I was familiar with some of the minor disadvantages of country living such as an iffy private water supply sometimes infiltrated by a range of flora and fauna (including, on one memorable occasion, a dead lamb), the absence of central heating in farm houses and cottages, and a single-track farm road easily blocked by snow, broken-down machinery or escaped livestock.

But there were many advantages as I told Liz back in the mid-Seventies. Town born and bred, eight months pregnant and exchanging a warm, substantial Corstorphine terrace for a windswept farm cottage on a much lower income, persuading her that country had it over town might have been difficult.