One month…

…until I retire!

Actually it is a little less than a month, being a mere four weeks… or twenty working days…

A rapid (and doubtless wildly inaccurate) calculation suggests that over the last forty years I have worked somewhere around nine thousand and two hundred days. And now I have only twenty to go!

Further – there are only six weeks left until we leave these shores and head west.

So – how is it all going?

In many ways things are going well, though there is no point in pretending that for either the Kickass Canada Girl or for I will the run in to our final days at work involve anything much beyond hard work and barely suppressed panic. Any notion of a gentle wind-down complete with much appreciative backslapping and ‘take it easy old chap – no point in busting a gut now‘ bonhomie was swiftly disabused by our respective managements on realising that some three quarters of a century of accumulated knowledge and wisdom was about to walk out of the door and that – for a variety of reasons – the ensuing skills-transfer and handover was probably not going to provide the well-oiled succession that might have been hoped for.

No matter. This too shall pass!

Other issues at the UK end are more promising. As previously reported my Canadian PR has been confirmed – our movers have been booked – our finances are as organised as it is possible for them to be.

You may have observed that I have – quite intentionally – remained remarkably reticent regarding the sale of our Buckinghamshire apartment, for fear of hexing the enterprise. I am not about to uncross my fingers – or indeed anything else – at this stage, but we do continue to be cautiously optimistic that all will be well in this regard.

At the Canadian end promising progress is being made. Our dear friends in Saanichton have already booked season tickets for us at The Belfry Theatre in Victoria and – on a completely different note – have also passed on to us details of a couple of possible contacts with as yet unlisted houses for sale. I for one continue to believe that all of this stuff will shake out just right at just the right time.

It is now up to the universe – in the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard – to “make it so!”.*

* Incidentally – I found on the InterWebNet a discussion on the origin of this distinctive phrase. It turns out to be considerably older than one might expect and is most likely naval in origin. Here it is in Herman Melville’s ‘White Jacket’ of 1850:

“The captain’s word is law; he never speaks but in the imperative mood. When he stands on his Quarter-deck at sea, he absolutely commands as far as eye can reach. Only the moon and stars are beyond his jurisdiction. He is lord and master of the sun.

It is not twelve o’clock till he says so. For when the sailing-master, whose duty it is to take the regular observation at noon, touches his hat, and reports twelve o’clock to the officer of the deck; that functionary orders a midshipman to repair to the captain’s cabin, and humbly inform him of the respectful suggestion of the sailing-master.

“Twelve o’clock reported, sir,” says the middy.

“Make it so,” replies the captain.

And the bell is struck eight by the messenger-boy, and twelve o’clock it is.”