A month off… but now I’m back….

October was a bit of a weird month for me. 30 odd days of reflection, resolve and reinvention. Tap, tap tapping has not been a priority, hence the paucity of postings. What caused it? Dunno really, could be my age and a growing sense of my own mortality - or it might be that for the past few years I’ve not so much been stuck in a rut as down a hole. But it was more likely that at the beginning of October Mrs Alfie decided to take a bit of a look at our current financial position – and it’s not good. We owe over 40 grand to banks, finance houses and credit card-sharks…..

So, at 53 years old, is this it? Up to my eyes in debt, doing stuff I hate for a living and living on the hellish A59 uber-bahn, the most dangerous trunk road in the country?

We had to talk. A crisis meeting was hastily convened to discuss ways of getting out of debt and redirecting our lives.

We’ve decided to sell the house and move out of mad commuter belt world and go to live in the middle of nowhere. The more remote the better. I want to live a simpler, more relaxed lifestyle, so I’ve also decided to change career – as long as we can get a broadband connection we’ll be OK.

So for the last month I’ve been playing at Bob the Builder, trying to get the place in some sort of state so we can put it on the market. It’s a five bedroomed house, so we should get a fair whack. The plan is to downsize, pay off the mortgage & the 40 grand and live a simple idyllic life away from New Labour politicians, Tesco superstores and reality TV. We’ve had a look round and found some tumble down cottages with land just right for doing up – and as we’ll have cash in hand, we don’t need Building Society approval for any potential purchase.

We are just 2 of millions in this country who aren’t buying into Blair’s utopian vision of Britain, who feel frustrated and ignored by a control freaked-out government. We can’t go overseas, so we are doing the next best thing – moving to somewhere remote, far, far away from the madness of modern British life. We’re going to pay off the mortgage, grow vegetables, keep poultry, brew home made beer, build my own reed bed filtration unit for our waste and put a big sign at the gate post – ‘Dunlisteningtonulabourlies’……..

That’s the plan. We call it ‘Plan A’ – there is no ‘Plan B’….