I feel like I am getting properly settled in Scotland now. Jayne has now been up here a couple of months, and has started working, so everything feels more normal, and we are getting into a bit of a routine. Can it really only be about 6 months since we came up on holiday and made a snap decision to buy a house and move?
[Read more →]The last lap
September 29th, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
Today was my birthday, and I reached the age that the Beatles were singing about on the Sgt Pepper album. Yes I am now 40 (in hexadecimal). My current plan is to retire when I hit 65 so this is now my last year of working, at least my last year of working full-time. I might try to get a part-time job or do volunteering if retirement turns out to be too boring.
Actually, I think it means I have 9 months of full-time working, because my company does this thing where you gradually reduce your hours over the last 3 months. So that will be more spare time during the summer.
There will be lots of milestones now. Last annual appraisal, last objective setting, last training needs assessment. It will be very liberating to not have to even pretend to be engagaged in the process!
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August 2026
September 2nd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
August was a very busy, eventful and momentous month, and very different to July.
In July I was mostly in Scotland on my own. At the weekends I was really bashing my bus pass and going into Kilmarnock and Glasgow at weekends. In August I did not visit Glasgow at all – not the city centre anyway – and did not get on a single bus. All of this was because Jayne finally moved up here properly, having finished up with her job.
[Read more →]July 2026
August 3rd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
July was a strange sort of month and quite lonely for me really. I have been up in Scotland while Jayne was in Crawley working out her notice. In some ways I had the better end of the deal because I was in a fully-furnished house (well, no sofa yet but enough furniture for one person) while Jayne was in an increasingly bare house. On the other hand I was up here on my own, knowing nobody at all, while she had friends and family available.
It wasn’t all bad though. Jayne came up to visit and I got a lift back to England with her. I took a couple of days off work and got to experience the empty house for a couple of nights, then we both went out to Essex for my sister’s 60th birthday party. While I was back in Crawley I went down to the Harley dealers with Jayne so I could bring her back after she sold them her bike, and I dropped into the Crawley record fair for the last time. I was quite pleased to pick up a Stanley Clarke LP and a live LP by the Crusaders with BB King featured. After the weekend I flew back to Glasgow.
[Read more →]June 2026
July 3rd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
June is the month when I think it is fair to say that I really moved to Scotland. We are still in the process of moving bit-by-bit, but in June I spent most of the time in Scotland, while Jayne was mostly in England.
She has been unhappy because she just wants to get moved, but until she finishes her job she can’t do it. One downside of being a bus driver is that you can’t work from home like I can!
[Read more →]May 2026
June 2nd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
May was a mixture of being busy and of spending a lot of time doing not much at all.
A lot of the busyness was to do with driving. After going up to Scotland to pick up the keys to our new place at the end of April I drove back down and immediately we had to go up to Norwich for a grandson’s birthday celebration. During the month I drove back up to Scotland to take a few belongings up – a few basics for the kitchen, my computer gear and a comfy chair to sit in. I had to go up ahead of Jayne because I was having a bed delivered, the assembling of which kept me occupied.
Jayne came up on her rest days so she could meet with the people doing our kitchen. After that we had a visit from Virgin to install the broadband, and then we went into Kilmarnock to order a new sofa. Jayne had to go back to work but I followed a couple of days later for a flying visit where I did a tip run, packed up more stuff, and then filled the car to the brim and drove back to Scotland.
All together I made the 400+ mile journey between Ayrshire and Crawley three times in the month.
[Read more →]Zobitour
May 3rd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life, Music
I can’t believe that I wrote my little monthly summary of April 2026 and missed out the major event of going up to that London to see Les Négresses Vertes! I saw LNV a few times in London back in the day, but the last time must be more than 30 years ago. I knew they had split up but I wasn’t aware they were back together again. Actually they re-formed in about 2018 but I suspect I was too pre-occupied with cancer to have noticed.
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April 2026
May 2nd, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
April was quite an expensive month. I finally got round to getting Jayne and I new phones, I bought myself a car, and we bought a house! The house is a big deal, obviously, and I will probably go into all that in a separate post.
The rest of the month was pretty much business as usual. There were a few record fairs, in Horsham, East Grinstead and Crawley. I bought a few records at Horsham and East Grinstead, but none at Crawley. I think I have started to realise that each record I buy is one more thing to move to Scotland.
[Read more →]Comments Off on April 2026Tags: Driving·Films·Motorbike·Scotland·TV·Vinyl
New Phone Who Dis?
April 12th, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life, Technology
I may have noted how it feels like the more trivial a purchase is, the more time I spend agonising over it. In the last month I bought a car and a house. In both cases I got the first one I saw.
In contrast I have spent a month or so dithering about getting a new mobile phone.
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New Wheels
April 12th, 2026 · Posted by Skuds in Life
I make no secret of the fact that I do not enjoy driving and avoid it as far as possible. I maybe drive a car once a month on average and will usually walk, ride the bike or take a bus before I resort to driving. I do have a car, but Jayne uses it all the time and that is fine with me. The last time we had two cars was about 16 years ago when I inherited my Dad’s little Seat. At the time it was handy because I had to travel round Horsham a lot in the run-up to the General Election, but when I got rear-ended and the car was written off there didn’t appear to be any real need to replace it. Until now.
[Read more →]Comments Off on New WheelsTags: Cars·Electric Cars·Scotland
