So, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher “we are a grandfather” (again). Katrina delivered a very beautiful daughter on September 13, Elodie Mabel in Manchester. Everyone’s healthy and occasionally sleeping!

Since I last blogged, we’ve bought and moved into a flat in Bramhall, which for those not familiar is in south east Greater Manchester. (This is not our main residence as our home is still in York.) It’s a smart suburb with a nearby railway station and some nearby nice amenities such as a park with several vital ingredients including ‘quack quacks’, a cafe and playground. As you can see, we hopefully have found a convenient spot for seeing and supporting both families.

To buy this we sold a rental property in York in August 2024. It took until January 2025 to complete the transaction: simply a function of the buyer selecting a useless solicitor to convey the sale. At this point we handed the Chancellor £60,000 (18%) for the Capital Gains tax. It was so high because we bought this property in 1997 and after so many years it had appreciated substantially. After a poor property search in winter the selection of properties, to buy, in south Manchester improved and we found a flat. This wasn’t straightforward as we offered and were accepted on another property but the vendor made no progress on their purchase of another property in a month; so, we looked elsewhere. We found somewhere (at a price a lot lower than we’d sold for in York.) However, we were initially passed over by the vendor for the sale. Luckily for us the original winning buyer dropped out. At this point we gave the Chancellor, again, just over £16,000 in Stamp Duty tax. This was such a large amount because of the Stamp Duty ‘premium’ on second properties. 

If anyone wants to engage with me in a debate on whether we should tax the wealthy more heavily then you have my email address.

It’s been such a long time since I blogged that I must rewind to mention a couple of memorable events. The first was a visit to the WW2 Air Raid shelter in the centre of Stockport. Still brilliantly preserved; it was very evocative and a reminder of sacrifice, danger and spirit deep in our communities then. 

On our Norwegian trip I possibly finished it one blog short. I say this because we went back to Oslo before flying out and I didn’t publish anything about finding Anna’s grandparents graves in a large public cemetery at Frogner Park. The site was massive and so we knocked on the door of the maintenance department and asked for help. The supervisor went onto his data base and we were able to easily find it. Needless to say everyone who helped us spoke perfect English.

With a family friend, Steve, we went up to Grosmont near Whitby to the Engine Shed of the North Yorkshire Railways. This facility keeps the steam and diesel engines running on this heritage line. The line has been featured on national TV but unfortunately Piglet wasn’t in on the day we visited! It was interesting to be amongst so many pieces of heavy metal!

The next day we took his Jaguar F Type to the Harewood Hill Climb at a Jaguar Owners meeting. Some the cars were to die for. When you are amongst such design beauty you have to scratch your head how Jaguar has got so ‘lost’ as to its way forward and how in the pursuit of a different type of customer the ‘baby gets thrown out with the bathwater’. Back in the day I had a couple of XJ6’s.

I looked at the total cycling mileage I’d done since 1994. It’s over 105,000 in just under 32 years. The least miles I ever did in a year was 2,031 and the most 4,294. I suspect getting to 200,000 is very unlikely but I’m working on it.