The Time Bubble

Next Wednesday will be a landmark moment in my life. For it marks the day, some 26 years after my arrival in Bicester, that I make my departure. Looking at it another way, that's precisely 9,595 days. I found a website to calculate that for me in case you think I was sitting there like some saddo with a spreadsheet or calculator working out. Which I probably would have been if it hadn't been for the website. 9,595 days sounds huge and it certainly has been a long time. I was 21 then, I'm 47 now. Frank Sinatra sang that when he was 21 it was a very good year. For me it certainly was, as 47 is shaping up to be. The years between have varied in quality but there can be no denying there have been a lot of them. Suddenly I appear to be nudging middle-age. Here's what Bicester looked like when I arrived...has it really been that long? We've established, then, that I've given Bicester the best years of my life. So what has Bicester given me? It has given m...

So moving day finally arrived! So many things to think about, so many plans - would it all go smoothly or would the best laid plans crumble to dust? Well, I think it all went pretty well considering. I picked up the van on Friday tea time as planned and was able to get the first load in on Friday night. The kids were safely away for the weekend with grandparents so we were up early on Saturday, all set to head for the new house to check in at 10am. By the time I got there, Rhys and Charlotte, my helpers. were already there so we were able to get started nice and early. I was finding it pretty hard work, physically, but I was coping. One of my greatest fears in the weeks leading up to the move was that I was going to do myself a mischief. With Claire already crocked with a broken ankle there was no way I could afford to be anything less than 100%. Mindful of doing my back in three years ago and spending months under a chiropractor I had been incredibly busy in recent weeks with all ...

We finally did it! Yes, here we are, in our new home up on Kingsmere, a move that has been almost a year in the planning. During that time we've investigated all kind of options, been very close to relocating altogether, but ultimately decided to settle here. Why move? Well. we had been living in our house in Chapel Street for 7 years, and for a further 3 years before that in the house next door to that. Over the course of that decade, life changed in all manner of ways that I could never have envisaged when I arrived there back in the summer of 2006. Back then I was fresh out of a relationship break up and moved into the small cottage in an attempt to make a fresh start. I was 36, I had a thriving social life, and it's fair to say my new place was my bachelor pad for those first few months. Within a year or so, things had changed. I met Claire, settled down, she moved in and less than a year later we were blessed with Ollie. The house we were in was barely big enough f...

Yesterday, Claire & I walked up to the new Kingsmere estate to see the brand new school. It has been built to accommodate children from the new estate and to replace the 150 year old St Edburg's site, the oldest school in Bicester. A random picture of some houses on Kingsmere (I couldn't find a picture of the new school). As long term readers will recall, I was an opponent of the original plans to do this. Not only from the selfish point of view that the old school was practically on our doorstep and the new one is half an hour's walk away, but from a traditionalist point of view too. The thought of the lovely old building , which so many generations of Bicester children had passed through being sold off to become offices or something filled me with sadness. We've known this was coming for a long time and it's been a major influence on our long term plan to move home, but here we are, still here deliberating about where we are going to live and the new...