Well another year has crept past! Main news ... I've Retired!! and bar 3 short trips into the office during the pandemic, I worked from home till the end. All be it the actual retirement ran over by 3 months. My employer asked if I would stay on, dropping to a 3 day week, for a further 3 month period to help my replacement settle into the estimators position, I was asked in to the office for a chat in May, to discuss my replacement, who was due to start at the end of June early July. Which was when I was also asked to stay on for a further 3 months. I was back into the office for a few hours on the Monday my replacement was starting to welcome him into the fold and ensure he had an early grounding on the basics of our department, then a final visit the Monday after I finally retired on the 12th November 2021, to hand over the companies property that I had been using. I was shocked and astounded, as our MD gathered the office personnel around to make a retirement presentation, after all I had only been working for the company for 4 years and certainly hadn't expected any fuss to be made by my leaving, it was humbling, to say the least.
Some further updates; the motorhome sat awaiting the resolution of the failed diesel pump for over a year it was only in late February 2021 that it was finally repaired with the replacement of the diesel pump. Trying to get someone who would sacrifice the use of a ramp for the 2-3 day duration of the repair had been a nightmare, anyway our local company BS Autos finally came to the rescue. Kev and Leah had their bathroom totally overhauled, knocking the separate WC and bathroom into one room, repositioning the component parts and doing away with their bath in favour of a walk-in shower. Simon decided, being the 'dedicated gardner' that he's not, that he would like to try and find the boundaries of his ever diminishing rear garden again. Jane and I put a full weekend aside and moved to Dalgetty Bay from Friday to Sunday in the autumn, we ransacked his back garden demolishing many featured plantings that he had inherited when he bought the property, but which had now become an encumbrance. We generated a mini Everest on his back patio area which is still diminishing slowly, at the rate of one garden waste bin full, every second week, these past few months since and for the foreseeable future.
We got away for a 2 week holiday in the motorhome over the summer, when the restrictions of the lockdown we'd all endured eased substantially. We also did a one day visit (down and back to Kendal) for the christening of our Nephew Lawrence and his partner Sinead's young lad Aidan in November. I've also retired from the kite buggy scene, all be it, it's so far not recovered from the onset of the Covid19 pandemic, not totally given up on the sport as I still have all my own kit that I've used over the past 20 years but certainly handed over the reins of the SPKA to the others.
My garage has had a 'makeover' some of you that have witnessed its state over the years may be shocked to hear! As I knew all along, there wasn't a lot of 'junk' (well not in my eyes at least) it just needed better managed within the confines of its 400²ft. I had always said that my retirement would see my old motorbikes come back to life again from the dark corners of the garage that they had sunk into. After most of the past year of trying to prepare the internals of the garage such that the bikes could come back into the accessible central area (YES!, there is now such an area within it!!) I've now got them all visible and accessible AND recovered the two that have for years sat under a disintegrating tarpaulin at the end of the house, back in under cover too. Thanks to my old employer's generosity in their retirement gift, aside from the large wall clock they presented to me, I have also purchased a nice shiny bike lift that will adequately lift any of my bikes. The first to be worked on, my relatively recent purchase of 10 years hence, the Kymco 125 scooter that we used as auxiliary transport carried in the rear garage of the motorhome (now redundant these past 4 years since the advent of our 4 legged friend Harvey) is now sitting on the lift awaiting the replacement of a new exhaust system. Once that is done, it will be MOT'd and sold on which will free up some more space for the ongoing onslaught of the old bikes revamping.
Plans for this year are a spring trip with Jane's brother Stuart, we're heading across the sea to Ireland to do the 'Wild Atlantic Way', a 1600+ mile trip following the Atlantic coast line of Eire (Republic of Ireland). No doubt more will follow on this subject in subsequent blog posts.
Some further updates; the motorhome sat awaiting the resolution of the failed diesel pump for over a year it was only in late February 2021 that it was finally repaired with the replacement of the diesel pump. Trying to get someone who would sacrifice the use of a ramp for the 2-3 day duration of the repair had been a nightmare, anyway our local company BS Autos finally came to the rescue. Kev and Leah had their bathroom totally overhauled, knocking the separate WC and bathroom into one room, repositioning the component parts and doing away with their bath in favour of a walk-in shower. Simon decided, being the 'dedicated gardner' that he's not, that he would like to try and find the boundaries of his ever diminishing rear garden again. Jane and I put a full weekend aside and moved to Dalgetty Bay from Friday to Sunday in the autumn, we ransacked his back garden demolishing many featured plantings that he had inherited when he bought the property, but which had now become an encumbrance. We generated a mini Everest on his back patio area which is still diminishing slowly, at the rate of one garden waste bin full, every second week, these past few months since and for the foreseeable future.
We got away for a 2 week holiday in the motorhome over the summer, when the restrictions of the lockdown we'd all endured eased substantially. We also did a one day visit (down and back to Kendal) for the christening of our Nephew Lawrence and his partner Sinead's young lad Aidan in November. I've also retired from the kite buggy scene, all be it, it's so far not recovered from the onset of the Covid19 pandemic, not totally given up on the sport as I still have all my own kit that I've used over the past 20 years but certainly handed over the reins of the SPKA to the others.
My garage has had a 'makeover' some of you that have witnessed its state over the years may be shocked to hear! As I knew all along, there wasn't a lot of 'junk' (well not in my eyes at least) it just needed better managed within the confines of its 400²ft. I had always said that my retirement would see my old motorbikes come back to life again from the dark corners of the garage that they had sunk into. After most of the past year of trying to prepare the internals of the garage such that the bikes could come back into the accessible central area (YES!, there is now such an area within it!!) I've now got them all visible and accessible AND recovered the two that have for years sat under a disintegrating tarpaulin at the end of the house, back in under cover too. Thanks to my old employer's generosity in their retirement gift, aside from the large wall clock they presented to me, I have also purchased a nice shiny bike lift that will adequately lift any of my bikes. The first to be worked on, my relatively recent purchase of 10 years hence, the Kymco 125 scooter that we used as auxiliary transport carried in the rear garage of the motorhome (now redundant these past 4 years since the advent of our 4 legged friend Harvey) is now sitting on the lift awaiting the replacement of a new exhaust system. Once that is done, it will be MOT'd and sold on which will free up some more space for the ongoing onslaught of the old bikes revamping.
Plans for this year are a spring trip with Jane's brother Stuart, we're heading across the sea to Ireland to do the 'Wild Atlantic Way', a 1600+ mile trip following the Atlantic coast line of Eire (Republic of Ireland). No doubt more will follow on this subject in subsequent blog posts.
