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…
Received today from the UK Pension Service – under the auspices of the Department for Work and Pensions – a notification of the change in State Pension age. The notice contains the following priceless text:
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