2009 - Taking Mum to Germany
Hoping to begin a sequence of sophisticated treatments for her cancer, I took Mum to Bad Berka for a week in July. To her great misfortune she suffered complications not of the German therapy but of the surgery she had had back in January. She had to undergo two emergency operations in Bad Berka and spend nearly two months there trying to recover. That recovery was so faltering that I eventually had to bring her home in an air-ambulance and she never regained any significant quality of life. Sorry Mum!
2008 - Not buying the house in Asturias
A ramshackle property which I agreed to buy in the summer of 2007 finally became available this autumn by which time the pound had fallen dramatically against the Euro and my feet had become embarressingly cold. Perhaps there was a little too much work to done on the place. Perhaps it was a little far from the village and that a little too far from town. But then, when will my Spanish adventure ever get started?
2007 - Standing still
Nothing went seriously wrong this year but then the less you do the less it can go wrong. So, perhaps going nowhere fast was the cock-up of the year...
2006 - Keeping the boy
It can be difficult coming out as straight when everyone has finally got used to you being gay.
2005 - Not buying the house in Andalucia
While enjoying three months in Spain cycling around, I stayed for a few weeks with friends who are restoring a cortijo in the Montes de Malaga. Hindering them with the work inspired me to look for a modest home of my own in Andalucia. I found a suitable small house in the excellently situated, up-and-coming town of Jimena de la Frontera. I payed a small deposit and signed a contract to buy it and then the doubting began to set in. Eventually, for no good reason as it was a perfectly sound deal, I abandoned the purchase and my deposit and fled back to the UK.
2004 - Chasing the girl
For some years now I have been spreading the rumour that I am gay. This is, of course, nonsense, probably. I stayed and got on very well with Birgitta for a few days after we met in Bavaria in July 2003 at the wedding of my old friend Jill. I was then already preparing for my long cycling trip down-under so we agreed to keep in touch and see whether our mutual regard would wax or wane in the face of half a world of separation. In April of 2004 Birgitta dumped me but by the time I was back in Britain in November we were corresponding again. I decided to go over to Germany to spend Christmas with Birgitta and her son and Jill and her husband. Birgitta still wants four more children; I still want none. She dumped me again and I fled to Spain.
