This post should cover most of 2015. You'll have to excuse the lack of photos, I don't have them with me right now so I'll see about adding them when I can.

We eventually got away to the Lakes for a well-earned breather. A weekend in Patterdale just before Easter. We were both surprised by how well I coped on the fells, knocking off a couple of the lower Wainwrights (Longlands Fell and Brae Fell) was a doddle when the walking was properly paced. Only three more to do! We also nipped up to see the recently deconstructed Hayeswater dam area, it'll take some time for nature to reclaim what it had lost, but it was looking good.

Summer hols saw us back at Ty Llewelyn, and pottering about the mountains and the coast. Me and Chris went up Tryfan via the Heather Terrace, and it was a major triumph for her. She's tried before but had to stop just a few tens of feet of alt from the top due to health issues, this time she went all the way. I didn't top-out, I'd done that three times before and considered the possibility of a fall from the "bad corner" to be too great. I'm good with mountains but I'm shite with unsupported exposure to Sir Isaac's greatest discovery. We also pottered around on Moel Siabod... again. Top mountain, best there is.

Ella did better than she thought at uni and went on to start her second year on a high, and Anna got a great set of GCSE results and started what is now compulsory 16-18 education doing a bunch of A-levels at the local Sixth Form college.

After a few mini-extensions, my contractor job at TNT BICC came to an end in September, when all of their work was subbed out to an Indian company. Of the TNT "permies" a few were mapped to different positions but the majority were made redundant. That was a sad day for everyone there. They all had "TNT" running through them like "Blackpool" through a stick of seaside rock, it was a tragic waste of talent.

Our Bonfire Party was exceptionally "in yer face" - plenty of guests, lashings of hot food (courtesy of Chris), and a major surprise - my pyromaniac nephew Luke turned up with his car full of HUGE fireworks from http://www.ghengisfireworks.co.uk/ , we reckon he must have spent about £500 on them. The ground and the windows were really shaken that night!

I've probably missed a bunch of other notable things, but that brings us more-or-less up to date.

One more post should do it.

2014... unexpected things happened between August and the end of December...

First up, in September I landed myself a job. To be fair, it was handed to me on a plate - a full-time 3-month contractor position in the TNT BICC in Ashby, where Chris works. Simple stuff really - processing requests for users wanting access to BI reporting systems, sending them their access credentials, and being the unofficial Office Joker. So, nothing new there 🙂

The next good thing was that I was given the all-clear and final discharge from the Glenfield Cardio Unit. Statins and mini-aspirins daily forever, and that was all.

By way of a celebration, me and Chris booked a November weekend away at Patterdale YHA, with the intent of bagging a few of the Wainwrights still on my to-do list. What we didn't foresee was that Rab, my trusty Octavia vRS, would suffer catastrophic and terminal oil-system failure while we were on the way there, so the weekend was abandoned, we were rescued from the dual-carriageway by the Police, and the car expired in a mess of mangled piston-rings and fried shell-bearings. R.I.P., Rab, you are sorely missed. The Kia Cee'd SW7 that I bought to replace you will never measure up.

The next good thing was corrective butt-surgery, at long last they performed the minor surgery needed to repair the damage caused by the original piles operation back in 2012.

So, November wasn't too bad after all, and December was even better - TNT extended my contract by six months, which provided a little more financial security.

More soon.