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.

I write as the weather has turned decidedly wintery in Yorkshire. Snow nearly settled today and temperatures fell to freezing. As a weekly cyclist this is a blow and so I went to the gym to ‘get my fix’. As I usually ride outside in the countryside thinking I’m doing myself good there is, frankly, an absence of science to confirm this. However, the gym static bikes all have metrics to measure your efforts. So after 40 minutes of grinding through Singapore and Sardinia I was told I had burned 285 calories. My relief at learning that after this workout I could now have half a biscuit conscience free was not motivational. I look forward to better weather.

In my journey of learning to be a grandparent I need to report on two challenges. The first is the car seat. When our daughters were young there was a lightweight seat that snuggly fitted onto the backseat held in place by a seat belt. No one’s kids, that I know, were jettisoned through the windscreen like an Exocet after sudden braking. However, in the 30 years legislation has moved on such that the child seat has a similarity to a brick sh*thouse in its construction. The fact that it weighs a lot is not the only problem. Its installation in the car has it plugging into two ISOFIX fittings (buried in all modern cars’ rear seats). It is so difficult that a parallel with docking with the Space Station seems apposite. It took me 10 minutes. I had wondered what kept Elon awake at night and now I know.

My other challenge was a defective somersaulting tiger. It should land on it’s feet. After reporting the issue another one followed quickly. Isabella isn’t as excited by the leaping cat, as I am, quelle surprise. The investment was made to hopefully distract her whilst her grandparents have a cup of coffee. I will report back.

In an earlier blog I advised we had bought a place physically between the two daughters to provide child care. It takes about 100 minutes, by car, to get there from York. So rather than battle through the traffic I thought I’d let ‘the train take the strain’. I also got to the railway station from the bottom of our street by bus. A complete surrender to public transport. The result was that it took 5 hours! Firstly, it is a slow journey but when you add that the train from York was delayed by 37 minutes and then I missed a connecting train in Manchester it became comical. Being of a certain vintage I’d have to admit that with bus passes and concessionary train fares (plus the partial refund over the delay) I got to my destination for diddly squat. However, you couldn’t seriously maintain a job schedule or anything time sensitive with such a tardy operation. I’ll have to ride my bike over there and see if I can beat the train? It’ll be close.

Lastly my brother-in-law, Jeff, invited me to an evening of folk music at one of his local pubs. The two guitarists were Mark Radcliffe and David Boardman. They worked their way through some engaging tunes over the night but the between songs banter was epic. Radciffe had, and still has, a radio presence presenting many shows for the BBC; with this came a wealth of stories about his life. He’s a cheeky chap with a ready wit. So it was sobering when he recounted the recent funeral of his mother. She was an old lady and whilst sad her death wasn’t unexpected. Afterwards he was approached by the vicar who observed that he was now the head of the family. Radcliffe hadn’t realised that and was a little surprised. The vicar noting that he was taken aback volunteered some help and said did he have any questions? Radcliffe momentarily pondered this and asked ‘Do you have the wi-fi password?” The vicar was appalled at this and blurted out “Your mother has just died!” Radcliffe absorbed the blow and then clarified “Is that upper or lower case?”

I was listening to a podcast about football when in the introduction the presenters were asking each other about their week so far? One mused that on a walk he’d seen a selection of conkers (brown seeds of the horse chestnut tree) lying on the ground.

This pile filled him with some boyish glee and transported him back a few decades to when finding them would have enabled him to play ‘conkers’. You drill a hole through the centre, thread string through and in alternate swings/shots you and your opponent attempt to demolish the conker. The most intact conker wins. He concluded that this was surely more interesting than today’s boys holding a game console? This year I was too tempted to walk past them on the ground, collected a few and deposited them on window sills. Anna is now surreptitiously disposing of them!

An envelope was unearthed by Anna’s sister, Cath, that was used by my father-in-law, Eric, to write his wedding speech for our nuptuals in September 1987. In fairness, he was not a man given to talking unnecessarily but this was admirably on the brief side. As I wrote recently weddings are now packed with various participants making dreary orations. Maybe the issue of white envelopes to those inclined to talk might shorten matters?

On June 30 2021 I pedalled through Lockerbie as I was completing the bike ride from Lands End, Cornwall to John O’Groats, Scottish Highlands over a couple of weeks. It was a sunny day and the ride since crossing the Scottish border had been quite easy bar the very rough road surfaces. Lockerbie was a distant memory as a disaster as it had happened 32 years earlier and this small town seemed unremarkable except for a large Tesco supermarket in the centre. However the scale and audacity of the atrocity hung over me and I cycled a little way out of town to the memorial.

With these memories I embarked on watching Sky TV’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth that follows the tragedy from before the flight until the conviction of the Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the death of 270 people. The story unfolds following one of the parent’s children boarding the flight to his pursuit for the truth including meeting Colonel Gadaffi, British Cabinet members and attending the trial in The Netherlands. The acting with Colin Firth is breathtaking and the story is not as straightforward as you might expect. Brilliant television.

Since I last wrote quite a bit of time has been spent in Greater Manchester with my daughters and their offspring. Anna has a weekly schedule but due to my lack of child care skills I’m in attendance less frequently. There is considerable cost running two properties but that nice man, the Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, has tried to alleviate some of the strain. As a Council Tax payer I can get a free travel card for the buses and if I pay £10/year it can be extended to trams and local trains for all of Greater Manchester.

However, whilst a bargain it does require Andy to ensure that they don’t cancel the trains at the last minute, as they did on our last trip. Clearly ensuring that they’re manned must be part of his Phase Two plan.

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.