Long time no blog – so here’s a quick recap of what has happened since the last one:

The days before Christmas Kate had a couple of gigs to do at the RFH so I just tagged along. They were Christmas carol-singing gigs and she had her own solo line (albeit for four bars) but at least we can say she had a solo at the RFH! I spent most of the time in the artistes’ bar reading Tom Clancy’s Every Man a Tiger and doing pressups – since some members of the orchestra popped in and out of the bar continually (trumpet or percussion players not needed for a few songs) and I was a bit shy about being caught doing pressups, I had to sneak to the loo and do them there. Ridiculous, maybe, but all you need for pressups is a floor! I once contemplated doing pressups on a plane too, but decided that would have been too extreme and unnecessarily hardcore. Anyway, I got 100 pressups per gig, and I was happy with that.

On the last day at the RFH, there was an afternoon show as well as an evening one, and midnight mass followed after that, so Kate had to do singing for three sessions that day. There was another session of singing on Christmas Day, so by the time all that was over, she was pretty tired, and I had finished my book, and had lots of pressups. We definitely enjoyed my Xmas meal and opening pressies – she’d got me pyjamas, an electric tootbrush, Nivea for Men, and a calendar with Horses on it (private joke). There was also a copy of Men’s Health. I found it quite interesting how we’d got each other PJs for gifts.

We had a bad journey on the coach on Boxing Day to her parents’ house – the coach arrived but had been wrongly numbered, so we were looking out for the 843 that came as 561. As coaches were less frequent and more booked up over the Xmas period, we had to wait 8 hours for the next one in the evening that would have arrived there after midnight. Lovely. Anyway, we expect to get a full refund – each time we called the “Emergency Helpline” we stated the time and number of the coach as well as the stop we were at, but were told each time by three different customer service reps that the coach was on its way and to wait for another 20 minutes. They might as well hire jellyfish to do those jobs.

Opening my Christmas pressies, I had a jacket from Kate’s sister and brother-in-law, a jumper from her mum and dad, as well as chocolates and alcohol. They’d also got us a magnetic dartboard which we found to be very entertaining. Unfortunately they could have got me some brains, because I stupidly stepped on my glasses and am hence walking around with an A-shaped cut in my glass lenses, until my replacement contact lenses arrive.

While there, I made sure to get my pressups and crunches in. The loo, once again, seemed to be the favourite spot for exercise anonymity.

I’m not happy to have little work in the new year, but I suppose I should be glad not to have to go back to the awful school tomorrow. Today I went for an interview at another school, but they were only looking for someone to do an after-school “club” for younger students on Mondays, and didn’t seem to think I had enough experience with young ones. I suppose so – in any case the pay was quite pittance, and I could foresee some problems - students drift in and out of the club during the 2 hours for instrumental lessons, and it would be hard to do group work involving everyone and maintain control if people keep coming in and out.

I’ve been reflecting on my life these last couple of days – I think in some ways the quality of my life has gone down, and in other ways it has improved. It’s nice to have evenings with Kate instead of having to see each other for a week every three months for six years, as we had done. I’ve lost a bit of myself; I don’t go out to exercise as frequently as I used to – those 4-mile evening runs, occasional 6-mile runs and even less-occasional half marathons (which I used to plod around for 2.5 hours to complete) are a thing of the past. I’d like to do more exercise, join a gym, run indoors or something like that, but unfortunately that will have to wait until I can find a regular job. I need to spend time trying to sort out my career before I can spend money on those things, and that’s the approach I’ve decided to take – sort myself out, job-wise first, before the luxuries of joining a gym or things like that. I don’t think I’d be comfortable going out on long runs when, at the back of my mind, I feel I need to get sorted out first. So exercise is on the back burner a bit, but hopefully not for too long.

I read somewhere that two of life’s major stresses are moving home and switching jobs. Well, I happened to do both at the same time when I moved to this country. There’s also a bit more complication with working in a different country because of visas and stuff.

Anyway, I’ll spend the next couple of days helping Kate with her work, looking for jobs, looking for gyms etc, but still keeping up with my indoor exercise – ie pressups and crunches and weights. I hope to get a proper job soon and get sorted out.

Have a good year, all!