Evening Sun

Today has been a very relaxing day, spent most of it with the kids and Sharon, just doing stuff and playing.

I am now sat with the dog (Charm) with the evening sun just chilling and reflecting on the whole week.

Last weekend i was planning the trip to Coventry which i was looking forward to as i had heard from a colleague Tim Davies that the chair/facilitator for the day Ewan Mcintosh was inspiring and was great at opening eyes around web 2 and social media. So my expectation was quite high considering most of the time my expectation is quite low for any event i go to as they tend to tell me what i already know. But I was not let down, i found myself inspired and i actually learnt new things which was great and i now find myself a week later with a Twitter account and writing a blog about, well just about anything.

Whilst i enjoy, what seems like the last bit of sunshine before the rain comes, to be honest i don’t mind as the garden needs it and as Billy Connolly once said “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes“. I find myself thinking back to when i was in a band (Redi).

I played the guitar (rhythm not lead), not great but with the rest of the band we collectively sounded good, well i thought so. We wrote a song called Evening Sun and it was one of my favourites and sat here right now i can actually remember the first timed we played it at a gig and this is the type of night that for me it was dedicated to….

The reason i am no longer in the band is that when we had our second child, we started to think about what our next goals would be. We contemplated a number of things, working and paying off the mortgage, studying, or emigrating. After some time we both felt very passionate about emigrating. There was only really one location for us although we had also considered Ireland as we had been there a number of times and just found it a wonderful place to be. But our eventual choice was Australia.

Now i have never been to Oz but was already reading every book i could get my hand on, visiting websites about all types of places and checking out property prices and dreaming about great locations close to excellent surfing beaches. Within 4 weeks of deciding we also realised that studying was also something we should do between now and when we hope to go (2-3 years) depending on application timetables.

But that meant that the band would become very difficult to manage alongside the additional study, so made the very difficult decision to quit, it was even harder than it should have been because we had just recorded our first album and were all positive about what could happen. But there were also a number of other issues which i am not going to go into detail about which also caused friction between us all and also distracted our attentions from making the most out of what we had just achieved. But that is now a different time and a different place.

Anyway, the Australia choice starting gaining momentum and we were using the web to decide on a likely destination when we “hopefully” emigrate. It was also coincidence that on the BBC at that time they were showing a programme called “Wanted Down Under” where they sent families from the UK to Oz for a week to make a final choice about whether or not they would make the decision to emigrate, to say i was hooked on all things Australian was an under statement.

We first looked at the surrounding areas of Sydney, but found house prices and job opportunities, all be it a few years in advance off putting, so we then started to focus on Melbourne and its surrounding areas. We then found a superb place, which i decided to even take a virtual tour in google earth, a place called Geelong. It is the state of Victoria’s 2nd largest city and is also very close to the Great Ocean Road and the famous surfing location of Bells Beach and surf coast.

So whilst i sit here chilling and reflecting on what has happened, my mind ponders the future and all the opportunities that could bring.

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