So goodbye 2025. It was a fun year of new family, property moves and travel. Here are some memories:

I must start with our second granddaughter, Elodie Mabel, who appeared in September to Katrina and Matt. All babies are loved but Elodie came after a wait and we were so happy that both daughters had started families. Frankly, for me, it was a ‘bucket list’ moment. It goes without saying that this is another child care project for the grandparents or in reality the grandmother whose talents still amaze me, although being married to me for 38 years has fine tuned her skills in dealing with seemingly independent and demanding people. Coinciding with Elodie’s arrival we had swapped a property in York for one in Bramhall, which Anna reminds me is in Cheshire but in reality, is part of the Greater Manchester conurbation. This property is a great bolt hole as Anna floats between both households.

Holidays are always able to conjure up great memories and a trip to Texas in April was the gift that kept giving. First there was the country music: seeing Ashley McBryde outside on a sweltering night as we clutched a cold beer and sang along. This was in San Antonio and was just the best.

Visiting NASA at Houston was a boy’s dream come true especially as the tour included a visit to the Mission Control room of all those Apollo launches and landings. 

Add to this the beaches, a tour of a WW2 aircraft carrier, a ride in a driverless taxi and delightful towns in the Hill Country were terrific but as if by some divine intervention our trip provided the opportunity to catch Bob Sanders on his epic bicycle ride across the USA to achieve a world record of being the oldest man to ride to do this. My admiration for such physical prowess and determination cannot be overstated. This record should hold for decades. 

My own cycling exploits included few endurance events but cycling Hadrian’s Wall with an old school buddy, John, was fabulous. This wall was a Roman structure to keep the Picts (Scots) out of civilisation. The weather was kind, the history remarkable and the company grand. We have another adventure penciled in for 2026.

Despite the lack of an overseas cycle tour I still clocked up nearly 3,500 miles on two wheels and to my great pleasure this was mainly in the Yorkshire countryside.

As much as I would love to detach myself from Leeds United and the attendant anxiety it generates, they provided a wonderful year. We firstly got promoted to the top tier and now appear to be surviving. We got to a few games and they were all exciting but the demolition of Cardiff City will live long in the memory.

Anna’s father had Norwegian ancestry and so it’s a special place for her to visit again. I was reluctant after an earlier visit and had often stated that ‘Norway was nice but not for a whole weekend’. This time we, troublingly, enjoyed a heatwave and after spending some time in Oslo took the train to Bergen before taking a Havila ferry cum cruise ship up the coast to beyond the Arctic circle. We enjoyed a leisurely trip close to the shore where we saw stunning scenery, ate well, absorbed the culture including the Sami and their reindeers and lots of WW2 history.

We were so taken it’d be worth doing again! On returning via Oslo we found a very old gravestone of Anna’s grandparents and great grandparents in a city cemetery.

In other long lost family stories Anna found three of my cousins who I’d either never met or not seen for over 40 years. We have so much in common that is a true delight to meet up again and we do now quite regularly.

Whilst talking of holidays I got to drive ‘Samantha’ in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. Samantha is my 16 year old Morgan Plus 4. Anna flew out to join me and with the hood down we enjoyed the food, sun and looking down a long bonnet.

The rest of the year I continued to write record reviews for Country Music People, had a 70^th birthday that everyone wanted to celebrate (I’m more of the Kenny Rogers mindset – ‘never count your money when you’re sitting at the table’), enjoyed concerts, watched some cricket, repainted a telephone box, spent a week on Gran Canaria, got a new car (which was the same as the old car but new!), bought lots of vinyl records including driving to Stuttgart to buy several, saw a nephew married in a grand affair, accompanied Anna on some of her welfare visits to folk we know and pushed a swing with a toddler in it an infinite number of times.

There was inevitably some tricky moments. I approached a crossroad as a driver, opposite, inexplicably drove in front of another car, probably motoring at over 50mph with right of way, driving between us. Both cars were written off and the perpetrator shunted her wreck into my car rendering it undrivable. Fire engines, an ambulance and many police cars converged on this accident. Frankly, I could have been a heartbeat from death. Which just goes to confirm that life isn’t a rehearsal. Get stuck in…

I have more adventures booked for 2026 either on two wheels or a fly drive and so stay tuned. In the meanwhile, I hope you all have a healthy and happy new year and thank you for reading.