LONDON: A 102-year-old man was setting sail on Saturday to start a new life in New Zealand, becoming Britain’s oldest emigrant in the process, BBC television reported.

Eric King-Turner and his New Zealander wife Doris, 87, have decided to leave their village in Hampshire, southern England, for the city of Nelson on the South Island, seeking adventure and a cure for her homesickness.

“I think I possibly like wandering about a bit. I somehow thought that it might be rather fun to move to New Zealand,” said sprightly retired dentist Eric, who served on HMS Invincible during World War II.

“We haven’t seen all the things in England we would have liked but we’ve also seen a lot on the continent and in the Mediterranean and I thought she was a little bit homesick.

“I have to live from day to day. I can’t seriously look past tomorrow morning because at my age, at 102, people go to bed at night and they don’t make up in the morning.

“I am resigned to that but I’ve made no arrangements to die at all,” he joked.

“When I’m 105 I don’t want to be thinking, ‘I wish I had moved to the other side of the world when I was 102’.”—AFP