After a January that seemed to go on for ever, suddenly we are a quarter of the way through the year already, and it has been an eventful month, full of big decisions.

Jayne and I had a little holiday up in Scotland and inbetween visiting museums in Glasgow and doing a circuit of Loch Lomond, we bought ourselves a house. We have been thinking about moving up there anyway, and it makes sense as that is where my workplace is officially. Not that I will be going into work much, because the other big decision was that I will retire next year. I did the sums and I can afford to scrape by until the state pension kicks in.

Not content with those big decisions, I also decided to buy a car in the next month or so. I do not like cars and drive as rarely as I can get away with, but there will be a few visits to Scotland to get the house ready for us to move into and it will be less hassle to leave a car up there and just pop up on EasyJet.

The last big decision was to resign from the Labour party. It might not sound like a big thing, but I have been a member for 30 years and was active up until I got the cancer. Most of my friends in Crawley were made through the party. I think that the last straw was the way Labour was adopting Reform/UKIP/BNP policies on immigration. I haven’t joined any other party, and will probably vote Labour under most circumstances, I just don’t want my subs going towards it.

March started well, with a £250 win on the Premium Bonds. Very welcome after only winning £25 in January and nothing in February, and gave me a little spending money while visiting Scotland. I didn’t get too carried away though, and only bought half a dozen records while we were up there.

Despite all the miles travelled getting to Glasgow, visiting places in Ayrshire and beyond, I didn’t actually drive at all in the month. I did offer, but Jayne gets annoyed by my driving and so I stayed in the passenger seat throughout. To be clear, I get annoyed by Jayne’s driving as well, but I mostly keep that to myself. I did get out on the motorbike a few times though. Only little runs up the motorway and then back through the town but enough to make sure the battery keeps charged up.

I kept up my reading, getting through another ten books in the month, eight of them fiction. Mind you, one was a very slim volume on post-war town planning in Peterborough so barely counts.

What with one thing and another, I didn’t get to watch too much TV. After a week away it took me forever to catch up on all the recorded episodes of House of Games, the Daily Show, TOTP, and so on. The only new thing I watched was Saturday Night Live UK, which I thought was a pretty decent attempt. I certainly enjoyed it more than any episode of the US show that I have seen in the last 20 years. Of course it was a bit hit & miss. Any sketch show is, but the good bits were good enough to make it all worthwhile. And a new series of Beyond Paradise started. I was a bit disappointed to see that it was about a murder, but it turned out to be not a real murder after all.

I only watched one film in the month, which was Amber Alert. I chose it because it was only 90 minutes, but it was 90 minutes well-spent, with some real suspense involved and nothing too far-fetched. I had hoped to watch the Sisu sequel, but that hasn’t turned up on the UK Netflix yet.

Really the house purchase was the main event. Before going to Scotland we were mostly pre-occupied with anticipation and planning and after we got back we were a bit over-awed by the realisation of just how much shit we are going to have to deal with, The rest of the year is likely to be dominated by us shedding belongings whether by selling them, giving them away, or dumping them as a last resort. The last time we moved I cleared out the loft and found 3 or 4 old printers up there. This time it is going to be monitors. I already have 4 old PC screens to get rid of.