Update from both of Us

 From Madam Alice,

Evening everyone, we thought we would give a short update as we are a little behind in posts and blogging.

As many of you will know I moved into my new job full time at the start of April and this has seem me become a very busy bee, with a mix of travelling between various client and project locations and also with me working back in Leicester.  

What this has meant for billie is almost a reversal of roles, with him staying and working from our home in Milton Keynes.

Over the last 6 months we have been really looking at our life and the changes - in terms of work -  and we have decided that we are at a stage where we do need to change.

For billie it is a case of him slowing down and progressing towards retirement.  so this means a bit of a transition to semi retired and phasing out the high intensity work that has been his speciality for many years.  The phase out will allow him to finish commitments and work contracts and try and create a new routine for himself.

For me I am now full into my new job and an significant part of it is client engagement with their project teams and this means lots of the working week away from home in the Leicester, Derby, Nottingham area, while up to now I have been in temporary accommodation there is a need to become more settled.

So we are moving, currently we are house hunting in the Leicestershire area, with the aim to sell and move north from our current home.

While this is a move that eliminates a 1 hour drive for me, there are times on a Monday and a Friday that this becomes a 3 hour frustration of a commute.  We have also had to look at this in terms of the fact that it will move us closer to the family, my mother in particular and also nearer to Ellie and David.

We have been spending a lot of time over the last 18 months traveling up and down to Leicester for family matters and now with work that it was becoming obvious that we would be moving.

What does this mean for our FLR - well really no change.  Both Mick and I are both in agreement that the core part of our marriage is that of our FLR, so billie and Madam will remain and continue as the main part of the way that we live.

For our relationship with John, while there is now physical distance between us, it appears that this may well be a bit of a blessing for him as it means that he will be able to have less "formal" relationship with Myself and billie, and the distance may help to calm the "relationship questions that he has with one of his daughters.  so it will still work for all of us, it's just that John will not be a regular at our new place every Friday.

So at the moment mick/billie are being kept very busy with the preparation works for getting our house ready for sale.  He has already had a detailed survey done and is well on with everything that was highlighted as being required either for the sale or to help with the price.  Unfortunately it does mean that we have more of "Mick the builder" and not quite as much of "billie the maid".

The other aspect is that we have started the search for a new home and that comes with it's own trials.  We are downsizing as the current home was originally purchased as a place where we could continue to bring up our nieces if required (as my sister was still in remission for cancer at the time).  Well we don't need that amount of space now.  So long as we have some space for billie to sleep when John or Carole visit and I have a work area.  billie has already looked at what is required for an office in the garden so we know what we are looking for.  The bit in all of this that will be the challenge is finding a place that has the right amount of privacy.  So we are being quite selective on what we go and look at.

So that is an update from us, there is lots going on and we will try and get back into a productive and settled routine for posting, but just bear with us as we try and find that routine.