Completo

COMPLETO.

About three pm today I got a call from our solicitors to tell us that they have finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our house in Sun St. We won't be moving this weekend but next, the 17th.
That's the day we hand over the keys to what has been our house for the last 13 years. The tiny Larch that we planted in our back yard of a garden back in 2000, and should have grown to 15ft is now mature and more like forty foot high. The bloke at the garden centre told us a little fib there, but we have loved watching it soar into the sky marking our time here. It's the only tree in the street, except a squat magnolia that is next door. The postage stamp that is our garden is abundant with bluebells, that are just going over now, and the weather has turned to summer at last. The drystone wall that divides our domain from next door with it's collection of mini ferns that are drying out in this dry spell. Our next door neighbors have just recently moved to another part of town, neighbors for the last 13 years, gone, and soon we too will be gone. Everything changes, and it feels good, exciting, and the butterflies are swirling around. Is this the right thing, no turning back now. That plan that we cooked up about five years ago is about to happen and all we can do is hang on to that tigers tale and go with it. Committed,
The last time I did this was when I was thirty years old, but then it was a rented flat in London to go travelling to South America, Equador, Peru, Muchu Pitchu. And when I came back I thought that we would be soon on the road, that open road, where adventures were the only way. No more humdrum life for me.
And thirty five years slipped by. Families, divorce, new life away from London and eventually, meeting Jackie .
We made a great team, we made a difference to our little town that we adopted. We immersed ourselves in the " community" and bit by bit became famous. We didn't set out to be, it just happened that we did what we did and eventually we became the face of our adopted enterprise, the saving of Ford park.
We took over the reigns gifted to us, and turned a derelict nine acre waste land into a beautiful park for Ulverston. A legacy that we will be proud to leave behind. They all say they will miss us, and we will miss them, but adventures beckon. We are about to take that leap of faith, to venture into an unknown future in the Dominican Republic,and a sailboat, me at 65, jackie almost 60. Is that foolish, not at all. Now is our time to grasp the last of the summer wine, to boldly go, to spread our wings and feel the spirit of adventure.

This house is not our home,although it has been,  home is wherever the wind takes us, wherever we drop anchor in the next few years. This is a new chapter, new horizons, dangerous, unknown waters, and uncertain futures.

But one thing is for certain, we are now committed, no turning back, Contracts have been exchanged, we no longer own 45 Sun street and the Caribbean is our next port of call. It's all so scary, but at the same time so liberating.

Looks like August  will see us on our way, after we tie up the loose ends in England.

Can't wait, can't wait.