I am currently reading about some couple in their late fifties who chose to leave their urban New York life behind and start anew in Sayulita, a small Mexican beach village just a bit north of Puerto Vallarta. It is called Gringos in Paradise.

The author talks about how his friends wonder if he is crazy, how he wonders if he is crazy and how the transition from one life to the other is made through colourful-but-mild anecdotes that confirm his craziness.

Barry and Thia also, natch, build their house and that, in essence, is the bulk of the story. They have to find architects, don’t you know, and builders and potted plants. So stressful. They don’t actually build anything and, for the most part, seem to spend a great deal of time worrying and fretting about colours and plants and copper pots. Still, even tho our story is considerably more macho, skilled, daring, heroic and bloody it is – as much as I hate to admit it – much the same.

I hate him.

To be fair, running away to join the squirrels or parrots is not new and neither is building your new house once you get there. This retirement journey has been told before. But Barry tells the story with much the same wide-eyed wonder about the ‘new life’ as I do and, even tho he is considerably more useless at building (he is a New York writer, after all), we are both still telling similar tales of being out of our elements and hurting ourselves while our wives blossom and grow more beautiful in the sun.

Worse, his book seems to be loosely based on a journal-cum-diary. It is largely chronological and loose-boned, having no real theme except ‘look at me’.

I hate him.

Clearly, I am going to have to kick this blog thing up a notch.

We got blood. We got pain. We got life threatening accidents. But he’s got sweat. Barrels of it (especially in the Mexican summer). He’s got foreign government red tape and a different language to deal with (tho my new neigbours are mostly odd, monosylabic or both and so we are pretty close on that one).

He is also retired-before-his-finances-allowed and, given their penchant for shopping, his financial predicament may be a smidge worse (hard to imagine). Plus – this idiot figures to earn a a few bucks now and then from his writing!

I hate him.

We don’t share a lot in the background but we seem to share the basic story: couple leaves familiar for unfamiliar and finds life lessons for the umpteenth time.

Sheesh! Life as a cheap B flick, subcategory; romantic comedy for him, romantic action comedy for me.