Having had my family all telling everyone how busy I am, I thought I had better catch up a little myself.

My new job entails managing all of the UK projects for the signalling division of Bombardier Transportation. In addition to the UK projects I also kept Taiwan (though I did appoint someone to replace me for the day to day work), and I have projects in Greece and Bucharest (I will get rid of the latter soon – someone else’s territory).

My UK projects include one for the London Underground, 3 for British Rail (now Network Rail) consisting of 2 in the midlands and 1 in the south, and 2 tram projects in the midlands. Also, my team in the UK is spread out between Plymouth, Derby, York and Reading. The locations are what are keeping me busiest, as getting around between all of these places has been really time consuming. Hopefully that will get better now that I have met everyone and done a very detailed review of all of the projects. The next step is meeting more of the customers.

I finally managed to get to see someone from my family this month. 7 months back in the country (in theory) and this was the first visit to Yorkshire. By God, ‘twer good ter be ‘ome! Everyone appears to be OK, and I/we will be up there again when Christina is over in the spring.

Things at home are still very hectic. I remain busy trying to get things in place from the move, and my darling wife is already taking rooms apart for decorating (Bloody Debbie Travis!)! The Garage is in much better shape now – no longer a garage, but a double workshop/laundry room as Trish said. Putting the carport roof and the shed roof – extensions to the garage – back together took all last weekend, but it’s done now. Everything takes longer than I plan, and of course, everything is also VERY expensive.

There is lots of stuff coming through in the garden. It looks great already, and I can’t wait to get out there. The birds singing are terrific. I’ve seen the deer a couple of times now, and last week I saw a lovely Blue Heron just behind the house as I set off for work. Terrific. Next job is to build a garden shed for all the power equipment (lawnmowers etc.).

Well, gotta get back to work now. Hopefully I can update this more often in future (not holding my breath though).