My new year starts this week.

The Boywonder flew back to Montreal on Sunday armed with cornet and trumpet this time, and already has a busy programme of Fight Band rehearsals and gigs ahead. People ask me how I cope with missing him. Truth is that I don’t, really. Just thinking about how much I miss him makes my eyes well so the only way to handle the loss is by making myself think of something else. After a few weeks I’m usually accustomed to his absence but this year is going to be different and, I anticipate, much more difficult.

You see Eliza’s final year at school starts tomorrow. We’ll have the flurry of university visits and applications to contend with as well as the sudden onset of A level work. We’ll be making sure that the level of learning support offered by the school matches her needs. She’s also got a gig coming up at the Schools’ Prom and one at Ronnie Scott’s as well as being in the pit band for BYMT Musical Theatre’s Thoroughly Modern Millie.

I have another performance of Brahms’ German Requiem and then our choir concert will be of Rutter’s Requiem at the end of October. Then there are a couple of trips to see mum in India and, an important singing event about which I shan’t be saying much until it’s done.

All of which will, I hope, be a reasonable distraction from the juggernaut bearing down on us: the prospect of moving overseas next year.
John will be spending a few weeks in Asia soon and I hope that he’ll be doing reconnaissance work for the move. It’s all so uncertain and no-one knows what’s actually going to happen yet.

The new academic year seems like a good time to reassess this blog, which is why I have changed the theme to Extra, which his better suited to my capabilities, really. I’ve decided that learning to code has to take a backseat while I learn all the other things on my agenda like singing and Cantonese and Hindi and knitting.

Writing things down does help to stop things going around on your head, and I’m going to try and make this into a journal for the next little phase of my life. Maybe I’ll be able to access a different font for it. We’ll have to see.