We moved house last month and are just about settled in.

The main reason we moved was because it was too noisy at the old place, with teenage kids on skateboards every night, and the main road that was a few feet from our living room window often used as a racetrack. Of course, here, functioning silencers on cars are an optional extra.

We now no longer have to put up with the dogs too. There were about 15 of them (from just 20 houses) and almost all were noisy yappy things. Some of their owners clearly coudlnt care less for them, leaving them on hot 6 foot square patios for 24 hrs a day and only letting them out to either bath them in the pool or let them do their business where one of the toddlers would fall in it.

The new place is a detached place rather than a house within a complex and is much quieter. It has an extra bedroom to use as an office, is much bigger overall and has been maintained much better than our old place. The only disadvantage is that we dont have access to a pool any more (I never went in it anyway), but we do have a fairly spacious garden by Cancun standards and our daughter has a nice big paddling pool so it’s no great loss, and the new quietness and privacy more than makes up for that.