New beginnings

 I've been shamefully absent from this space, and I will completely understand if there is no one out there still reading! 

How much has changed in the world in the last year.....and how much has changed in our lives. 

I am one essay result away from saying I have passed my course at the college in Birmingham, and the OH and I will be moving to my first position in ministry in August - all the way to a town close to the south coast in West Sussex! From Carlisle to the south coast couldn't be much further apart, but that is the way it works and that is where we are going.... going to be quite an upheaval. There is no job on the horizon for the OH just yet though he is working hard to make connections down there as his time here comes to a close.  I am very excited about it all and can't wait to start work - it seems (it has!) taken years to get to this point!

The YFG is going to teacher training college in Cambridge so she is going to live with UJ at his house, and the EFG is going with her in the hope of looking for a job in science communication in that area - there are going to be more opportunities in that area than there have been up here. They will be just over 2 hours away from us so I think we will see them quite often.

The OH's son is hoping to be at uni in the north but will travel down to see us, and his father will travel up to see him and go on to Glasgow to see his parents as often as he can. We have to find ways to make this work for the next five years anyway.

The sad news is that my dad died on Christmas Eve, and since the coroner and Covid delayed the funeral, it didn't happen until the end of January. Covid made travelling difficult so we decided, with sadness, not to go down but to watch via the crematorium livestream facility. My sister arranged with the coach company that Dad worked for to take his last journey in one of their coaches, and it was a very special day.  The OH's aunt died in America shortly after that and that was very sad - we had seen her on a Zoom call with her doctors just a few days before she died, but it was not Covid related - she had cancer. We were also able to watch her service of thanksgiving on livestream, but we were grateful to receive a transcript of the service from one of the relatives a few days later as the sound was not good.

Those are the headlines of our lives in the last year - there is SO much more, but not the headspace to delve into it all. I want to start another blog to move into some recording of my thoughts as we move house and start a new life in the south, with all the changes that that will bring. I will think about that some more and see how it goes!

My love to you all - I have been pottering around a few of the blogs in my sidebar occasionally over the last few months and I am so pleased to know your news.