After a frankly quite challenging 2023 which involved the loss of my Father and Father in law, 2024 was a chance to re-charge batteries although it also signalled some fairly major changes in life-style most notably V’s successful navigating her A levels and heading off to the UK to University and E moving back to the England as well to see more of her Mother and to help E to settle in. A also switched courses to doing an MSc, so all change!
In consequence, after the big Summer holiday recounted in earlier posts, I returned to Dubai on my own and - apart from a trip to Amsterdam for work where E and I managed to catch up in November and a trip back for the Christmas holidays spent in Bristol and Kent - it has mainly been about work for the last part of the year with some cycling thrown in for good measure (mainly the Spinneys build up rides and my weekly visits to the Mountain Bike trails at Mushrif Park).
The Summer holiday was obviously a major highlight although the lead up was quite stressful as I tried to plan for being away from the Office for a couple of months - re-allocating cases and reassuring clients that I was contactable if necessary. If that was not sufficient to raise my blood pressure then deciding that given the forthcoming reduction in numbers at home (and the escalating rentals in Dubai generally), we would also move to smaller premises also lent a certain frisson of excitement to the Summer plans.
It is fair to say that our initial foray into the property market was not very successful (mainly I suspect due to my somewhat unrealistic budget and dabbling with moving back towards the seaside) - the contrast between our last move (some 7 years ago - where we relocated from near to the beach to the desert close to the kids school) could not have been more pronounced - pre-Pandemic there was no shortage of larger individual villas at relatively reasonable rentals whereas now there were plenty of new but very small places with no gardens and eye-watering prices.
In the end, we found somewhere relatively close by to our old place (actually closer to the the kids old school and near to where some friend’s of ours live) - still expensive but a reasonable size (although as it turned out not sufficiently large to fit in our various possessions even after some downsizing) and in a nice quiet area.
Work wise - and apart from the challenges of reorganising my caseload due to the sabbatical - it has been very busy with expansion across the Middle East - including after much to-ing and fro-ing with the powers that be - into KSA and the first part of the year included a couple of trips to Saudi and my first trip back to Hong Kong for nearly 10 years (which also took in a trip to Beijing).
The HK leg of the trip was particularly memorable as it coincided with a typhoon which certainly brought back some (dampish) memories of our 6 years there! Not a huge amount seems to have changed in the interim in terms of people although politically it is a very different place than the one I left in 2009.
I also managed a work trip back to London for the first time since the pandemic ended and was able to combine that with a trip to Kent so the Summer period was particularly busy with A levels for V. and moving/sabbatical planning.
In addition to doing her A levels and planning a move to the UK, V turned 18 - a birthday that coincided with our River Cruise which I think pleased her - normally the timing means we are en route either to or from holiday destinations so at least part of her birthday (as she has continually reminded me over the years) has been spent in the air - the fact (as I remind her) that she usually gets to spend her birthday in two countries does not seem to be of great consolation to her). The added advantage of a birthday on the Cruise was that the staff made a huge fuss (V being by some distance the youngest person on the boat) so her 18th was greeted with cakes and song.
Relocating to UK and living among students was I think something of a culture shock for V which has taken a little while to get used to. However, she seems to have made lots of friends and is enjoying her course (after much debate and applications to various different courses including Liberal Arts and Linguistics she has embarked on a Fine Art degree) and she also found time to take no less than three roles in the end of term Shakespeare Society production which we all thoroughly enjoyed when we picked her up for the Christmas holidays.
Having decided to switch to an integrated Masters degree, A has also been hard at it this term although fortunately he is studying very close to V so we were able to bring them both back to Kent at the same time for the first part of the Christmas holidays.
A seems to be contemplating a PhD once he finishes his MSc so we shall see where that takes him.
That pretty much brings us up to date - prior to us all heading to Bristol for Christmas with E’s Mother and then back to Dubai for the New Years, E and I managed to have a day in London with A whilst we were back in Kent - in the afternoon we saw the “Monet and the Thames” exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House before we headed down to the O2 Arena to see Paul McCartney - another very sprightly Octogenarian (there seems to be a theme this year for the live acts I have seen ….) - who absolutely smashed it out of the park in front of 20,000 fans.
It was my first time seeing him live and although his voice did struggle a little on the higher notes he was absolutely captivating. I have always been a massive Beatles fan and he did not disappoint with a wide selection of old favourites as well as some of his better known Wings tracks including a spectacular rendition of Live and Let Die during which the below pictures were taken.
