One Year Back In UK

Back in September 2018 I posted about our decision to base ourselves back in the UK, a decision we had made earlier that summer, but held off telling anyone until we had found the property we wanted.

Fair to say that we made the decision to move back pretty easily (and quickly) and although we spent some time discussing the type of property and location we wanted we settled on the property pretty easily as well (was the second one that Sandra came to see, and she had the offer accepted before I had even seen it).

And whilst moving back to the UK wasn’t especially daunting as a) we had always planned to and b) we had been frequent visitors back to see family and friends, we did put a lot of thought into how we wanted to furnish and use the property, which is bigger than we had previously had and I think bigger than we had planned on having.

Today it is a year since we walked through the door: Sands and I, along with our 3 dogs and 8 cats, which makes it as good a time as ever to reflect back on the year.

This is not the first post on the blog about life back in the UK, so feel free to browse previous posts, but for now ….

First thing really is this last year hasn’t just been an adjustment to being back in the UK, but also adjusting to less pet transports in my life, and a scaled down cat re-homing project for Sands. I certainly have enjoyed not doing the EU to UK pet transports, and whilst ‘never say never’ as they say I am in no rush to start them again. I am happy with the Romanian pet transports and Charters and am not adverse to doing a little more in the UK with our UK Pet Transport Services, but for now I am in no rush.

Fair to say that I am in no rush for anything at the moment! I have not done any work, or anything really about doing any work, although we have started working on taking the family educational business (Marshall Innovations) online and have set up a few new consultancy services that I will look at over the next year or so. This has actually been one of the unexpected highlights of the year: working with my father on his archive material and updating a lot of the material and games, seeing Sands working alongside my father and visiting old colleagues and friends of my my parents.

This year with my parents has been brilliant: birthdays, football, cricket, meals, the ability just to pop in for an hour or so, it really couldn’t have worked out better, and for all of us having lived for the majority of our lives in different countries it has been a very welcome ‘first’.

It has certainly worked well for Sands being able to see her Mother every week, and we have managed a couple of visits to the Cottage for her.

We divided the year into four quarters (not exactly rocket science) in order that we could keep some focus on what we needed to do: first quarter was very much making sure we were comfortable with the Cottage, catching up with Family and Friends and settling the pets in (they have been nothing less than perfect). The second quarter was really all about Sport – cricket and getting into routine of Old Trafford with my parents, and quarter three was mainly Christmas. This fourth quarter we have been a lot quieter and have taken time to complete all the things that we either hadn’t got round to (importing the van for example), buying the few things that we sort of knew we would probably need but wanted to make sure, and doing some reflecting and planning.

Overall I give us 8/10. For me we are not really as fit and healthy as we should be (have certainly not made the most of the Gym), and we are not spending as much time over our meals as we would both like. We still have some work to do on adjusting to using the Cottage more, especially the Garden come the better weather and early evenings are a struggle as everyone else seems to be eating and we are not even finished with our day! We have both been back to Spain once which was enough this year, but we do need to get back a bit more, probably twice a year each.

As for this next year? More of the same: am looking forward to more cricket, an improvement at Old Trafford, developing Marshall Innovations, continuing to spend time with my parents and Sands Mother, just been with the animals, enjoying the Cottage and getting fitter.