Writing this from the perspective of January 2021 it's already hard to remember the speed with which the Covid 19 story went from being an unsettling footnote to the daily news, to the shock of the UK lockdown at the end of March.  On the Friday before the lockdown I was conducting a funeral where I was in a tiny funeral director's "chapel" with a dozen or so mourners, cheek by jowl with the coffin.  Later we went on to the Tithe Green natural burial ground where we were joined by more mourners, one of whom was presciently warning everyone to take great care. Also writing this after the event I'm now suddenly aware how the pandemic has imposed a common narrative on humankind.  In that first lockdown we were allowed out for exercise just once per day and I remember that strange sense of threat I felt just walking around all to familiar places.  In fact Sue and I adapted quickly, agreeing that we would take our exercise separately, with one of us walking Poppy on al...

In early December Sue got news that her friend Annisha, who was one of the feisty group of teachers she mentored in Sarawak, was coming to the UK for a holiday with her daughter and her cousin Leeza and her family.  We decided to meet them all in London and to take them out for lunch as a way of repaying a tiny fraction of the hospitality Annisha gave to us during our stay in Saratok in 2011-13.  We met them all at the V&A and then had the tricky task of finding somewhere to take seven people who only eat halal in Knightsbridge a few days before Christmas.  As luck would have it we found a Lebanese restaurant with an enterprising Russian manager who organised a fixed price lunch for us around a big back-room table.  We had a really convivial meal and Sue and Annisha's bond, was instantly renewed, as it had been when we met for that wonderful barbecue by the South China Sea in February 2018.  We had another quiet Christmas, away from the stresses of a big fam...

In late November we had our first conventional holiday for years when we got a cheap Ryanair flight to Lisbon and stayed for a week in a pleasant city centre hotel.  It was the first time for both of us in mainland Portugal and our days were occupied by leisurely breakfasts, sightseeing and big dinners.  I became an instant convert to Pastel de Nata, the delicious Portuguese custard tarts and we both really enjoyed the food in general. We navigated the city by tram and underground and on foot.  We've both always enjoyed pavement pounding as it's down the backstreets and byways that you really to get to know somewhere, sometimes too well.  Of the several museums we visited the one that left the most lasting impression was the Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade.  Located in a former Bastille-like prison and at one time a home for the secret police, it's dedicated to the history of the Salazar regime, which had many similarities to Franco's Spain. Looking back...

Apart from anything else our recent property sales and purchases have essentially sorted out my lifetime finances, leaving me with a lump of cash and, when I start to get my old age pension in July 2021, a decent income stream.  I had no idea when we gave up our jobs and left the UK in 2002 that it would be this simple and I have to touch wood that there will be no down the line economic and/or personal catastrophes that render this conclusion hopelessly misguided.  Anyway, it seemed like the time to acquire a new motorbike and here it is - a Motoguzzi V9 bobber.  My first brand new motorbike, well almost, it had zero miles on the clock when I picked it up from the dealers in Peterborough, though it had been pre-registered the previous November and came with a stonking discount.  It's actually very similar to the Motoguzzi Nevada I used to have in Puglia and it suits me very well as it's really pleasant to ride, has some useful modern improvements like ABS and a gear...

The New Year saw Sue and I begin our new lives as a UK-based retired couple and life quickly settled into a relaxed swing of shopping, TV, outings, house hunting and eating out.  Frankly, even in January we were still good for little else, having exhausted ourselves over the move from Italy.  We spent New Year’s Eve with our old friends Carole and Kevin in their newly adopted town of Chester-le-Street and in late January Sue’s friend Sheila came to visit us in Newark. In March we went to Dorset to visit Sue’s friend Cathy and as Spring arrived we began to seriously start looking for a new house.  This was given momentum when we also put the apartment in Newark on the market.  As a result of having the apartment since 2016 Sue and I had grown comfortable with living in an English market town and decided that a town with an attractive centre, decent shops and good connections with London would be our ideal.  We checked out Melton Mowbray, Oakham and several other ...

It’s been two and half years since I last updated this blog.  I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with blogging and whether it’s an activity I do for myself or to gain the attention of others.  If it’s for others then I don’t exactly go out of my way to publicise its existence, so I’ll continue on the basis that it’s a diary which I happen to post on the world wide web. This confusion over why I blog also extends to whether my periodic breaks from blogging are a good or bad thing.  Sometimes I think that I stop blogging because I have too much going on in the real world to be bothered with it and at others I feel it’s because I can’t bear to look at my life ebbing its way into oblivion.  Anyway, enough of the musing, here is a version of what’s been happening to me… Looking back over my old posts I don’t think I mentioned that having become a Director of the management company of Dobsons Quay, where we’d bought an apartment in 2016, I became embroiled in a bitter ...

In April we finally returned to Contrada Papariello to find the place in not bad shape despite being neglected for more than four months.  The fava beans Sue had planted before we left had produced an abundant crop and the weeds were soon brought back under control with the rotovator. But the most time-consuming task in the maintenance of our little acre of Puglia is the pruning of the olive trees, an especially important task this year as the tree-killing disease xylella fastidiosa advances from the South and one of the only ways to stop the insects that spread it is to keep the land clear of growth and the trees well maintained.  This year we used a fairly new technique, paying our neighbour Paolo to help, which is like having a turbo-boost as he can prune approximately five tress to our one.  While he was at it he also felled our big old walnut tree, which was diseased and we’ve been meaning to get around to removing for years. After the big prune our land w...