Well, that’s the theory, but my sixtysomething parents are doing the opposite: selling up the family home in rural Northern Ireland and heading against the flow of city runaways to live in southeast London.

And why not, I suppose? My father is soon to retire from his university job, and my Mum is winding down her work with the Czech Embassy to spend more time on her silk-screen printing. Now that their “dependants” are independent, a world of possibilities can open up before them: my parents — young 61-year-olds — are far from ready to go out to grass. Their dreams and desires for retirement are different from those harboured by tired-out city dwellers who have worked all their lives in order to retire to the country. My parents want to be out there enjoying the show, and for them that means being in London.

But there is no denying that it is a remarkable decision. For a start, they have not moved house in 25 years, and they have lived in Northern Ireland for 30. They are packing up a lifetime’s worth of belongings and leaving the four-bedroom bungalow that they designed. They are turning their world on its head — some feat. The house-hunting process has been of huge significance — a means of separating themselves from their old lives and exploring new ones: trying out different properties to see if they felt right, like new clothes.

They are also moving to one of the most expensive parts of Britain from one of the cheapest. They may be downsizing physically, but they are upsizing financially: their new two-and-a half-bedroom home in Crystal Palace is £50,000 more than their old home.

What’s more, they are leaving a 30-year-old circle of good friends. However, since my brother and I left home over a decade ago my family has been scattered all over the place. With no blood ties in Northern Ireland — my Dad is English, my Mum from Prague — the impetus for them to stay put is not as strong. And though my mother denies it, I suspect there is also some desire to be near future grandchildren, not that they are yet even a twinkle in anyone’s eye.

From my and my brother’s point of view it will be great to have family within five miles — long-distance Sunday lunches having been a regular feature of the past. But it is going to be strange to be “homeless”, without roots in the place where we grew up; no reason to get on a plane and see places that formed the backdrop of our childhoods. No more bumping into familiar faces in the pub at Christmas.

London life will be an enormous change from the more laid-back pace they are used to: in Ballyclare, traffic jams happen only when drivers stop their cars to have a chat in the middle of the high street. But I can already picture my Mum whizzing around town with her free bus pass, going for coffee here, popping to an exhibition there; my Dad, when prised away from the newspaper, will, I hope, be on hand for DIY emergencies and can get on with the various projects he has been planning since 1975. It is their time now, and city living is glinting promisingly at them in the distance.In the end, I suspect I will be quite envious of their new lives.

Keith and Irena Adams’s home in Co Antrim is for sale for £205,000. Contact: Eric Cairns, 028 9066 8888, www.ericcairns.co.uk

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