It's six in the
morning and I'm on an early train to London on business. It's 8 degrees and
still dark - Sydney and our travels seem a million miles away!! We've been home
now for six weeks so we've had plenty of time to settle back to the reality of
home life, we're comfortable. We ask ourselves whether we made the right
decision not to stay in Oz and make a go of it, then we go out to one of our
old haunts and the thought becomes moot. We helped out at a hill climb
organised by the club on Saturday on a steep climb out of Luddenden. It was a
warm and calm afternoon as we looked down on the quant village below and across
the valley to mills converted to flats/apartments', it couldn't have been a
more Yorkshire view. All was well as we walked back to the HQ in the village
pub in the company of friends we've known for ever.
The trips to Samoa,
Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand were all we hoped for (links to the photo's
below). A very relaxing stay on Samoa followed by the madness of South East
Asia proved to be a good distraction from the reality of picking our old lives
up again.
The house inevitably
needs some TLC. Calum has looked after the place but it hasn't had much
maintenance work for the past couple of years. It's payback time, I've had two
DIY free years after all, so whenever I have a spare hour I now have a
paintbrush in my hand. Some of the jobs will need professional attention, we're
beginning the process of organising all that. We don't think the garden has
received much attention over the past two years either..... not that it ever
got that much when we were around come to think of it! A radicle pruning
of the borders and several cuts of the lawn have returned things back to an even
keel however.
Ros was back to work
within a week of getting back to the UK, I had a little longer to reacclimatise
but we're both now settled back. Not much has changed at Huddersfield New
College it seems but Ros is seeing the work and colleagues with fresh eyes, not
necessarily in a good way in all cases! As for me, the final phase of the
absorption of the Deanery into a large burgeoning national organisation has
happened in my absence. I'm still hopeful that I can find a place in the
machine that fits my skills and ambitions ..... and that I can set aside my
scepticisms. Time will tell.
Our travels have had
little affect on Ros' physique, she's as slim as ever. Unfortunately I can't
make any such claims. I was a stone overweight (6 kg to our Australian
friends) when we got home. A few regular bike rides has reduced the surplus to
half a stone but clearly I have more work to do. I'm riding in to work most
days so hopefully that will continue to help and when I return to training
proper in January the rest should come off - in theory!
Here's a few photo's
to finish off:
No comments:
Post a Comment