A little boring catch-up... (a post that should have been posted but was sat there as a draft - so rather out of synch as this is really from October 2013!)

So I have officially left the nursing course - this was hard to do but I'd known for months that this really wasn't going to be happening. I was/am happy with this, I don't look backwards that much (or at least I don't believe regrets are much use in life), it's not that I am wonderfully forward looking, endlessly planning my direction or anything I just prefer to move on but it was still hard... Why? I think that while I don't need a strong direction I'm very aware that I am squatting in the middle of a crossroads at the moment and that rather than moving on, choosing a path to follow, I am, for a while, just camped out here. This is what feels strange, to leave the old behind but not actually move on to the new.

Current things that are keeping me at a crossroads:

• We are half-way (ish) through buying a house, exchange of contracts should have taken place every day for the past two weeks
• I have a place on a Masters in Public Health course that I can't take up due to the ridiculous way they set the fees: £4,500 for full time, £9,000 for part time. So that is deferred for at least a year whilst they come to their senses or I win the lottery!
• I've been looking for part-time (very part-time) jobs, but ones where I feel I am using my brain and are on a new path (see I just hate following old paths).
• Oli is still suffering with his CFS, but at least we have had no big set-backs since the weather became cooler (the hot summer was hell for him).

New paths or at least ones I am peering down to see if I like the view:

• Oli has now started attending The Stables Project part-time and this is going well. After his first full teaching day he came home nearly bouncing. Mainly excited about the Gold Arts Award and how it was "just brilliant" for him.
• I start a (very) part-time job on Friday; pharmacy trainee - a slightly random direction but that's nothing new for me! Just Friday afternoons and some Saturday mornings to begin with, in Knaresborough.

All change at the next stop...

Well in my last post I promised it wouldn't be a two month wait and it was not, it has been six months! Six months of bits and pieces of change. Chronologically:

The sad loss of Angela Michel, co-author and co-walker with Nick Warlow of Freedom to Rome: A Long Walk, at the end of November seemed to come so soon after hearing she had cancer. A truly beautiful spirit with the ability to create whole choirs of angels through her wonderful gifts of singing and teaching.

A new job since early October, pharmacy dispensing, just one afternoon per week in Knaresborough. I'm enjoying the learning and the doing aspects, the people are great but my mind is not inspired enough to feel this as part of my being. So learning, doing but not being... hmm I need something more...

My father turned 80 on 20th December 2013 and we managed to get the whole family together for a celebration! This was something of a feat as we have not all been together for quite some years. The logistics of coordinating travel and group hospitality from France, Germany, Essex, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire, plus life changing events such as moving home/country, babies, studying, graduating have prevented a family gathering happening. We rented a fantastic converted barn in Ludlow, little more than a stones throw from my parents new house, and enjoyed a convivial family meal for 17 which included new members as well as old.

We had our last Christmas at Fox on the Roof Cottage and a wonderfully family filled time it was, Shelly and Dean, and Tim and Anneken were able to come directly to York from Ludlow and stay with us through Christmas. It was a good way to end our tenure of the lovely, tatty cottage that has been our home for over 5 years. I expected to miss it but actually don't; proof, I hope, that our new house is already becoming the home we were looking for :)

As we were busy with our move my step-son, Rab, took the huge leap of moving cities for the first time,  I hope he takes Jamies Italian in Edinburgh by a storm! It is sad for Alastair to see his son move away but Edinburgh is not 'that' far. My step-daughter, Chloe, is back in Bosnia Herzegovina, and this is truly a world away. She is so bravely facing life and learning to be her own person whilst also learning to accept help and support from those around her in a way that belies her years. It is so hard these days for our children to find their path as they grow towards and through early adulthood; there are no certainties out there for them. While we adults might feel that the rug has been pulled from under us because the certainties in jobs, housing and financial security we were promised are proving to be somewhat elusive, at least we had the solid, stability of belief in those things to carry us through our formative years. Now our children are growing-up to meet a world that doesn't promise them anything.

So the something more...

Well this week I accepted my place on the Masters in Public Health course at Leeds Metropolitan University (about to rename itself Leeds Beckett University). I think it is this change that has encouraged me to write again, which is rather a positive sign. I'm tempted to say "Watch this space!" but hey my track-record of keeping this blog up-to-date aint very good so far...