I feel like I am getting properly settled in Scotland now. Jayne has now been up here a couple of months, and has started working, so everything feels more normal, and we are getting into a bit of a routine. Can it really only be about 6 months since we came up on holiday and made a snap decision to buy a house and move?

Talking of snap decisions, we bought a new car. At the start of the month I just had a vague idea that I needed to do something about the dodgy old Astra because I couldn’t rely on it to get to work. With Jayne starting work it was likely that we would need an extra car for those times when I have to go into the office and the weather is too shitty to ride the bike (i.e. 9 months of the year) so by the end of the month we had a nice shiny electric car! That is a whole story in itself though.

September also saw my 64th birthday. It was not quite as momentous as my 63rd which I spent visiting pandas in Madrid zoo, but it was OK. It was the day before my birthday that was special. It was a surprise public holiday. By surprise I mean that I didn’t know anything about it until the Thursday afternoon. I knew that the holidays in Scotland were different to back in England. What I didn’t know was that we worked on the early August holiday and had one at the end of September instead. Jayne was working because this holiday was a Glasgow thing and in Kilmarnock they had the official holiday instead.

I had a lovely, relaxed day. I went into Cumnock for a bacon roll, browsed the charity shop there, came home and did some pottering about and chores, then went out on the motorbike to fill it up and have a little spin. It gives me some confidence that I will not be too bored when retirement comes along. It was all the better for being a surprise to me. The experience of discovering on a Thursday that the imminent weekend is a long one really can’t be beaten. The government should take note. Forget about calling snap elections, just declare a snap bank holiday every now and then!

As the days have been getting shorter and the weather colder, I have been watching more television at last. I watched the conclusion of Ludwig on the BBC and the whole of the new series of Reacher and the Grand Tour on Amazon. There were also new series of Mock the Week, SNL UK, and Taskmaster to watch. The Grand Tour was fun. I don’t actually like driving or cars myself, but watching other people enjoy them is something I can get behind. The excellent camera work, drone shots and locations help of course. I even like the new presenters.

I only watched one film. It was Cleanskin, a 2012 film with Sean Bean. At 108 minutes it was a bit longer than the ideal for a film, which is 90 minutes of course, but it was an interesting depiction of how somebody can get radicalised.

Again I read only 5 books. They were all fiction ebooks. One of them was very confusing because it featured events from recent World Cup tournaments but was written and published well before them. It was a brilliant book, and very funny, but I really wish I had read it when it came out and all the events were a possible future and not a didn’t happen past. The book was There’s Only Two David Beckhams by John O’Farrell and is well worth a read but it does take a lot of mental effort to put the real events out of mind for the duration.

We continued to explore more parts of Scotland. We took a trip to Edinburgh, which neither of us had been to before, and I went to visit Paisley. I have to say that I did not really take to Edinburgh. I’m sure its all very good, but I did not enjoy it as much as Glasgow.

All our ties to Crawley are gradually being severed. I got my final council tax statement and a refund, also refunds from the two water companies. It is just the refund from OVO energy I am waiting for now. Despite a couple of emails and then a phone call, they seem to think I am not moving until Oct 5th so will have to wait until then for my substantial refund. I should call them to re-state that I already moved out, but I can’t face that maze of AI-assisted phone prompts, culminating in a call centre eventually.

The only loose end is our old tenancy. I gave notice when Jayne moved out and that expires about now. I’m sure there will be some argy-bargy about the settlement of it all, but after that life will be simple again.