Big changes are a foot

Last weekend we put our main UK house on the market for sale.

We are planning a complete change in day-to-day life.  We will split our time between our other UK house and our newly-refurbished house in France . . .

and will spend our time renovating the new property we are just about to complete on in France

It will be 20 years this August that we moved to our current house.  Though there are many happy memories associated with it, it seems that there is very little that is really holding us to the area any more.

For me, the biggest wrench will be to never be able to have a concerted period of time fishing the Thames at Duxford, like I did in 2012.  I have tentative plans for one last campaign during July and August when my hay fever has hopefully cleared up.  I had always thought I would be still fishing at Duxford when I was 75 years old - not stopping when I was 51.

For Wife, she will miss the seasonal changes associated with the birds that come to our garden

But these should be compensated for by our new adventures - or so we hope.

Bloomsday 2014

I normally try and go fishing on June 16th each year - it is the first day of the season and the day after my birthday.  But this year (like last year) I have rather acute hay fever and I have postponed fishing for a few weeks.

Instead, Bloomsday was largely spent reading Kevin Birmingham's rather excellent book about the publication of Ulysses.  I hadn't realised that the USA was such a censored country until the 1930s.

It is over 30 years since I read Ulysses, one summer break from university and I remember little of it.  The scene where Leopold Bloom is cooking kidneys which he enjoys for the faint tang of urine, for instance.  I once used that line at a lunch - it did not go down well, and no one knew it would a line from Ulysses.

And Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness soliloquy.  I mainly know that now from Kate Bush's song, The Sensual World.

We own three copies of Ulysses it seems - plus a version on the Kindle.  Maybe I should dip into to it again.  But the complete audio book is 45 hours long - so maybe a complete read isn't on the cards