I HAVE been thinking long and hard about moving home.

I’ve never been a great one for upping sticks. Why some people want to put themselves to all the bother of selling one place and buying another almost as soon as they have moved into their new place is beyond me.

But one cannot stay in the same place for ever. There comes a time when moving is the right thing to do.

Perhaps the kids have grown up and spread their wings. Suddenly, the house is too big and there is talk of downsizing (not a word I particularly like, but it is very buzzy right now).

Where to go now is the question. Does one play it safe and switch to a bungalow on the other side of town, or be more adventurous and look further afield?

Perhaps a drastic change would do the trick.

It has concerned me in recent years that the Earth is going very wobbly. Weather patterns are up in the air and out of control. Places are being flooded when they should be bone dry.

The whole place is being threatened by global warming, we are told, and it will only get worse, warn the gloom merchants.

We must make ours an eco-planet if we want to save it, but I can’t see much evidence that it is going that way.

Will it all go up in a fiery conflagration some time in the future? Maybe. So what can one do to escape this potential fate?

A possible solution came last week with the announcement that clever scientists at NASA have identified more than 1,200 likely new planets in the last year, which just goes to show what busy bees they have been.

In particular, they have spotlighted a solar system with six exo-planets (which sound almost like eco-planets so they must be similar to ours). They call it K-11 but that can be changed to something more homely.

Surely one of these half-dozen – or maybe some of the other new planets, 68 of which are thought to be about the size of Earth – would be suitable for occupation.

What a hoot it would be to pioneer a new home on the other side of the Milky Way.

Oh, that could be a bit of a problem when it comes to moving day. These exo-planets are 2,000 light years away but I’m sure one could get round that by using cryogenics. Deep freezing in deep space would do the job.

So what’s stopping us from going on an out-of-this-world experience?

The only thing likely to delay it for me is a special delivery.

Those enterprising folk at motor manual specialists Haynes have now come up with a tome packed with helpful hints on how to set up one’s own garden railway.

Isn’t it every grown-up boy’s dream to have his own home railroad, complete with sit-on loco?

Of course it is. So until I get all the parts for my garden in the sky, I won’t be going anywhere.