a long strange trip indeed

You're sick of hanging around and you'd like to travel
Tired of travel, you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for trying
Get out of the door - light out and look all around

Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been

It's been three months since I last blogged which is the longest break I've taken since I started way back in 2010. I hadn't got bored with it or anything like that, I've just been very busy and the break became rather extended.

My last post mentioned the fact that I was about to retire - we were about to retire! Both Mrs Dave and I packed our trunks and said goodbye to the circus at the end of July. There were fond farewells and all that and then we had a major wedding to attend. Our middle daughter got married at the start of what we still thought of as the Summer holiday. As we were still paid until the end of August, we didn't consider ourselves retired until the first day back for everyone else!

During the Summer break we went away around East Anglia a few times with friends, enjoyed our eldest daughter's brief return from Mexico and my friend John and I also took ourselves off on a Rock'n'Roll tour of London. There will be more on that in a future blog - I also feel the need to mention the similar tour from last year in New York.

Obviously there has been far more than those few things going on. Most of May and June were taken up with exam marking and there was rather a lot of finishing off and packing up from our place of work. More recently there had been two more weddings to attend. We've had dealings with various agencies to sort out our pensions. Mine is incredibly modest but I felt it time to stop working in an environment that was becoming increasingly more bogged down in a mire of trying to outguess and impress Ofsted than actually concentrate on just educating kids. There has also had to be a gradual coming to terms with the fact that we would not be rushing off to work any more. No more pointless meetings, unnecessary admin tasks or lessons to prepare. No more lesson observations and constant criticism.  However, Mrs Dave has been very busy (indeed, still is) remarking Psychology A level exam papers. So all in all, the laptop has been pretty well taken up recently. It has been so busy lately that I've taken the step of using our older laptop which chugs along slowly but gets there in the end (usually).

So, sitting here tapping away at a laptop that occasionally misses letters and whole phrases out, I have returned and hopefully will be corresponding with anyone out there still listening.

Whilst it has indeed been a long strange trip, here's to many more adventures to come.