Bon voyage!

The day of departure is finally here! Well, I'm off down to London today - not actually leaving the country until tomorrow. It's been an odd week - nothing has seemed real. I've not been at work all week - being now redundant (voluntarily) and superannuated, but so far of course it just feels as though I'm on leave. I texted Imran (former work colleague) a couple of days ago to get his address (to add it to my postcard labels) and he immediately rang me back. In the course of the conversation he told me that 'my' office chair had been seized by someone else on the team as soon as I left, without a by your leave or any reference to anyone else. It was a very expensive chair which I was bought as a result of a workplace H&S assessment for my whiplash-related problems. Anyway, I felt somehow removed from the whole issue. I agreed that the chair should go to someone assessed as needing it, but didn't really feel that it had much to do with me - which of course it doesn't any more. Thanks Imran! - For bringing the awareness of having left the job and detached from it closer to my consciousness. I am in the process of leaving it behind me.

Oh, a vital piece of news to add to this verbal jigsaw, although I've already emailed it all over: Paul and I got married on 28^th January – a low-key, last-minute do in Leeds Town Hall, with my son, Dan, and his girlfriend, Cat, as witnesses. The suspension went on my car immediately afterwards and we came home in a tow-truck, but that’s another story! We’ll be having a party sometime in May to celebrate.

When we went to register the marriage, the registrar asked if we were having a honeymoon. We looked at each other, and then Paul spoke: 'Anna is,' he said. We went on to explain and said that we were meeting up in Thailand at Easter.

So ... I’m off on my BIG ADVENTURE! This will be the first of many, now that I’m retired from full-time employment. We're going cycle-touring in Europe in August for 3 1/2 weeks - cycling from southern France into northern Spain, ending up in Barcelona, and then getting the bus back from Roses. We're travelling on Bike Express.

I'm planning a trip to Lebanon next Spring to see where my ancestors, the Shakoors, came from. This was inspired by finding a whole chapter of a book about my great, great aunt Luceya Shakoor (or Luciya Shakkur) on the internet - see Chapter IX of link. this names the place that they lived in: Ain Zhalta in the Chouf mountains, south-east of Beirut. Since finding this I did a bit of research on the history of the area in the mid-nineteenth century. Amazingly, all of the Shakoors - who were Christians (originally Maronite, but converted to Protestantism) seem to have survived the 1860 massacres. According to newspaper reports of the time, 7,000-11,000 Christians were massacred by Druse between April and June 1860.

I digress! I must go and unpack and re-pack my bag. It's ridiculously heavy. What can I leave out?

I need to practice being present and in the moment on this trip. Already I'm planning the next but one trip and I've not started this one yet!

I've had lots of 'bon voyage!' messages lately - by text, email and phone.