The Wonderings of Wibble: May 2021

A few weeks ago Dan was told that he is going to be made redundant in September. It was weird news, his job which is writing procedures for a housing company is all he's ever wanted to do since he was 5. Jokes. Ok it's not the most inspirational job but someones got to do it... Actually thats not even true they've had a big restructure and decided that no one needs to do that job.

It was a good job though, it was quite well paid and very flexible and he liked his team and since the pandemic he has worked entirely from home, which has made things even more flexible with childcare and homeschooling stuff. If this had happened a year ago it would have been a much more worrying situation because I lost all my work from March to October. Then I worked 3 jobs until January when everything closed down and I had to homeschool again. So Dan's income kept us afloat in all that time. At least now I have lots of work and hopefully I can continue working in September.

Dan's been thinking about all his options. We don't want to rush into any old other job just yet. He's been considering the police. He always wanted to do something active and physical and thought about the police when he was 18 or so, but the anti-social hours and pay cut he'd have to take are a bit off-putting. If only criminals could keep their law breaking to 9-5 Monday to Friday it would be much more convenient. They should make that the law. But the big plan A idea that we've talked about for so many years is moving country.

There's been so many times before when we've considered it. When we got married we saved for 2 years to go on a massive trip cycling though Europe to the Middle East. On that trip we went with a view of trying out countries for living in, but actually much as we had an amazing time we missed our Liverpool community, and decided to have a baby here.

Cycling on a nice Swiss road in 2013

The next time we thought about moving was when we suddenly became homeless after our house sale fell through. We had all the money for the deposit still in our bank and thought maybe this is the time. In the end we found the house we currently live in which has been really great, and for a good few years my desire to leave went away. I would still be gutted to say goodbye to our friends and family and home but it's got to the point where we think we would if we got the chance.

Finally getting a house in 2017 a few months before Eric was born

We've been in many circles with what country, but it's been narrowed down a bit by Brexit to France. Dan is half French so him and the boys could live there, the same as French people and I could get a spouse visa. I actually remember saying in the last general election that if Labour won we'd have a third child (because we might be able to afford it) and if the Tories won we'd move to France because we wouldn't want to live here anymore. Sort of a joke but a little bit true.

We also thought about going further afield, like Australia or something, but I wouldn't want to go anywhere that far for more than a year. For a year we'd go almost anywhere though, apart from the south. We decided if we were going to uproot ourselves there's no point doing that to go somewhere where it still rains a lot. So we've narrowed it down to Liverpool, and the rest of the world except the UK, and space, we haven't ruled that out. If you know of any jobs let us know!

In national news hugs are back from Monday. I'm personally not going to hug anyone on Monday though, because I don't like the idea of hugging people when Boris tells me to. So I'll be giving out hugs to anyone who wants them on Sunday and Tuesday. This is the day I've been waiting for since they announced the lockdown easing in February: The day you can have another human in your house. I'm going to go so crazy with seeing people and I've just finished decorating the dining room so we can have people round for dinner.

Before...