Retrospecticle

As another year waits in the wings, I look back and see just how much has changed this past twelve months. Some good, some bad as in all years. However, this year, mostly it was for the better.

After two years of misery following the loss of my work and having to spend three nights a week stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s to make a living –  and hating every minute of it –  I had found myself a sponsor to get me back into track safety training. This process was fairly long winded and didn’t start bearing fruit until May. In the meantime, a flash of inspiration saw me resume a path I had left decades previously; motorcycle training. I took to it so easily that I almost felt born to it –  breezing through my CBT1 assessment at Cardington in November. No, I’ll not become wealthy doing this, but I enjoy it and the railway training provides a top up, so I’ll get by.

At the beginning of the year, we were facing repossession of our French house and only staved it off by paying the bank €390 a month. An arrangement we had offered the previous year but was rejected. As the bank would only talk to us through the medium of solicitors, we had no option but to run up expensive legal bills on top of struggling to remain within our overdraft. In June we secured a buyer; completing at the end of September. So, on the one hand, it was farewell to a cherished dream but on the other, Barclays France was off our backs –  even if they did rip us off for another €5,000 in the process.

We are not fully out of the woods in that while we are now debt free (apart from our UK mortgage), we still have to do something about that UK mortgage and have to be careful while I build up my work and repair our trashed credit ratings. In the meantime, Mrs L managed to get her old job back –  so, another plus.

On the downside, we lost Isis to cancer, but her replacements were two ginger fur balls who are still charging around the house, bouncing off the walls.

This blog is still plodding on some eight years after I started it as a bit of an experiment, while others I have enjoyed reading have drifted away. The joint enterprise of OoL seemed to be building steadily, but as the year came to a close, I felt it necessary to move on. The original ethos of talking freely about liberty became a platform for attacking those of us who do not believe and I felt that religious propaganda just wasn’t what we set it up for, and as that made me feel both uncomfortable and unwelcome, it was time for me to depart. I do so amicably, but with a degree of disappointment and sadness.

So, all in all, the changes this year are matched by those of 2008 when we moved to France and 2010/11 when it all fell apart and we had to return to the UK. My sister who reflected on the sorry mess of 2010 that it would take me two years to dig myself out was proved correct.

On balance, I am hoping that 2013 will be less eventful. If I can look back this time next year and say to myself that nothing much happened, that will do just fine.

And, finally, a happy new year to all of my readers –  whoever you are and whether you bother to comment or not.