Mid-March brought our farewells from work.  Susan on 17th and John on 18th March.  We were both touched by the enormous effort that people had put into marking our leaving from Kingston Hospital (Susan) and RSL Awards (John).

Susan with specially commissioned life ring and cake.

With Chairman Sian Bates and Chief Executive Jo Farrar - Susan waxing lyrical about something!

A global send-off for John with colleagues joining his farewell ‘do’ from just about everywhere.  At least some good things have come from Covid - it would never have been done this way without the pandemic!

Many fabulous cakes, presents and good wishes...

John with.his business partner, Norton York.

Then we were ‘retired’, but setting our alarms to get up so that we didn’t waste good sorting time.  Loft, garage, cupboards, drawers, strange boxes lurking in long forgotten corners.  “I didn’t know we still had that!” and “Why on earth have we kept that?” Messages to Tom and Alex “do you still want your old Cub uniform - university notes - school reports?" More trips to see our friends at Household Waste, dustbins filled to ‘jump up and down on it to close it’ stage.  A new relationship with Facebook Marketplace - FREE in the title works wonders!  John hired a van and did a mammoth road trip delivering furniture.

We had a break from sorting to make sure we still remembered how to work the boat and had put her new sails on the right way up!

And then it was the final few days and we sorted, sorted, sorted until finally all rooms were empty, tenants for renting were found, and we moved onto the boat.  

We’ve reduced from 3,300 square feet of living space to 500 square feet so it’s been a bit of a jigsaw fitting everything in but finally we are …… daren’t say it ….. READY!!!   

We’ve completed our Covid Safe travel forms for Jersey and have a marina berth booked.  All being well we should arrive there over the weekend.