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Funny time to start a blog

 

photo by Brooks Elliott on Flickr

I recently turned 58. Not a major milestone in itself, you might think, but this particular year – 2012 – carries the promise of significant change – and not just for those with an interest in the Long Count calendar.

I have not blogged before. I am not on Facebook. I don’t tweet. I don’t own an iAnything…

This might give a misleading impression. I should own up to having worked in IT for over three and a half decades and to being an IT Director (amongst other things) – though the story of how an arts student came to be so is vaguely interesting in its own right. I write… sometimes for reward – mostly through the need to create. You are probably familiar with this.

This blog will be the record of the latter part of a journey that started 7 years ago, and which will – if all goes to plan (ha!) – culminate in my retirement and move to Canada during 2014. A journey that takes getting on for a decade to complete may appear for much of the time to be making no progress at all but, like the sands in an hourglass though little movement may be manifest my presence here is slowly slipping away even as it grows in Canada.

This journey started in London early in 2005 when I met Kickass Canada Girl. Yes – I know that all Canadian girls kick ass (though I didn’t know that at the time) but even by Canadian standards – this girl kicks ass! She had come to London for a job with the intention of staying maybe a year or two, or perhaps even of moving on to New Zealand. So much for that plan…

At the point at which things turned serious – or turned more serious – and we started talking about moving in together, she asked of me just one thing:

“Will you promise – at some point in the future – to consider… just consider… moving to Canada?”

“Of course”, I said – in the way that chaps do when they perceive a thing to be so far in the future as to not really require consideration at all. After all, I was going to die before I got old!

Then we went to Canada and I fell in love with BC and met all of Kickass Canada Girl’s friends and relations and fell in love with them as well and in 2010 we got married – in Victoria, naturally – and now… we are planning to move our home there.

So why start writing a blog now?

Well – in just over a month from now Kickass Canada Girl goes back to BC to take up her new post as Executive Director of a charity in Victoria. For a number of reasons (in-feasibly decent pension scheme – way too old to get a job in Canada) I will have to stay in the UK until I am at least 60… to be precise, until the end of the academic year in June 2014. The prospect of living on different continents for nearly two and a half years – even taking account of frequent visits in either direction – does not fill either of us with joy, though the goal will, of course, make it all worthwhile.

As I say – a significant change… and one that I want – somehow – to document.

Hence this blog…

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2 comments

  1. Thomas Cournoyer’s avatar

    Long term committments are difficult Andy, and it takes passion and determination to be passionate, to attempt what you and Linda are doing. Who could think of a man at our age (well I am somewhat older than you at 63) changing his life so dramatically, yet it is what you are doing. It is also what I did several years ago at approximately your age with Ms. Laura Swann. These journeys are fraught with twists and turns, fear and heartache and unimaginable joy and love and satisfaction!
    I look forward to your residence here in BC and hope that we live close enough to develop friendships amongst the four of us that will endure into our (actual) senior years until they beome stories of the “good old days”.

    Good luck and chin up mate! All the best ….. and God speed!
    Thomas

    1. admin’s avatar

      Thomas

      Thank you for your support and encouragement. We are convinced that what we are doing is the right thing, but of course when it comes to the actuality – living apart for two years, for example – we know that it will be difficult. We are lucky indeed to have such good friends.

      Very best wishes
      Andy

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