London (Again)

Between you and me, Wainwright is a bit of a whinger. He was fine last week when it was warm and sunny. He was quite happy to spend his time sunbathing on the lawn. He even hit it off with Terry, who has been fishing in my very small fish pond for about 5 years and never caught a thing.

But now the weather has turned he has begun to moan and whenever I go out to feed the fish or tend to the garden all I hear is 'Go south, go south' in his high pitched, reedy voice.

In the end I got fed up with it and so it is that Wainwright are setting off on our first journey together and once more I will be boarding the early train to London in the morning.

There isn't a plan as such. My thinking is we'll take the tube to Westminster and then stick to the river from there. Always plenty to amuse in that area in my experience. I'm taking my camera so I'll publish a shot of Wainwright on location on here.

Other news - this is essentially a blog about my last few weeks at work and my first year of freedom, so I think it is appropriate to bring you up to date with my thoughts and deliberations.

The main item is that I have decided not to purchase a round-the-world ticket and backpack for two months or so in early 2010. The reason for this decision is that I don't feel it is very good of me to leave my youngest son at home on his own for such a length of time (although he could travel with me if he didn't want the money for driving lessons or whatever he's going to spend it on). I'm still intending to travel to New Zealand though. I just won't spend two months on the journey.

As I have considered my plans for a gap year I have realised that I am in danger of wanting to do everything all at once on the assumption that at some point I will have to take up some form of employment and lengthy periods of time off will become a problem. This is a faulty conclusion and I have begun to think in terms of how much money I actually need and the fact that I probably don't have to work all year round to get earn it. My gap year may well be an experiment that sets the course for a whole new way of living for me. I hope so.

The downside to this epiphany is that I am already looking for sources of part time work - opportunities to work for anything from 2 weeks to about 3 months. Ideally I would like to spend as much time each year travelling or doing my own thing as I do working. And, for the first year at least, this feels like a bit of a cop-out somehow. I've lured you onto here with my desire to step off the treadmill for a while and here I am saying that I might hop back on it now and again. All I can say is that I will try to keep such interruptions to a minimum for the next 12 months. It's all part of the metaphoric journey.

Fortunately I have discovered that there are ways to travel and experience other parts of the world that don't cost very much or are entirely free, so I may not have to earn as much money as I think. I am looking into these possibilities and I will share them with you in a future blog.

I also need some help in setting my performance objectives for the future so I hope we can have a chat about those too at some point.

For now though I've got to find something soft and comfortable to wrap around Wainwright for his journey tomorrow. I definately don't want him whinging all the way to London.

Live long and prosper.