Blogging resumes......

All is not lost. There is still life to report - though the past six months have been, shall we say, challenging.  Mostly challenging on the other side of the pond, needless to say, and somewhat less so as far as our Gabriola life is concerned.


In February, we put our Aylesbury home on the market and, to our relief, found a buyer within a few weeks. Next we embarked upon the search for a house in Coventry which turned out rather less straightforward, with a deal teetering on the brink right up to 36 hours from moving date. And so we became interim Coventrians awaiting our departure back to Gabriola in July. With renovations (almost) complete, the temptation to get away early became stronger and, to our amazement, it became evident that flying was not always the most economic means of crossing the North Atlantic. And so, the concept of embarking on our new life by ocean liner was born.

We were, as far as I can detect, the only passengers travelling to Gabriola aboard the Queen Mary 2 - and clearly she was not going to take us the whole way. After seven days of benign ocean, we sailed into New York Harbo(u)r and bade farewell to this little bit of the Carnival Corporation still masquerading as a traditional British liner. She may no longer be the largest passenger ship afloat, but she is among the most impressive - especially within in the confines of Gabriola's twin land mass, Manhattan.

After two days R&R in the big apple, the time came to forge westward to British Columbia. No so glamorously this time, departing Newark Airport between thunderstorms aboard one of Mr Boeing's flying machines.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Our home on Gabriola had survived the mild ravages of a gulf island winter and recovered from a springtime ant invasion. Since my brief visit in April, the vegetable garden had flourished - as had the half acre of grass, which was by now approaching shoulder height for a basset hound. Clearly this must be our first priority, to ensure safe passage for visiting bassets, so six hours (and several tanks of gas) later, the jungle was tamed.


Time to relax? Well, maybe. A veritable library of good ideas emerged as we whiled away Atlantic hours and some will no doubt need to be progressed to meet the expectations of management. Meanwhile, there's still time to breathe in some real Pacific air as we relax into our first full Gabriola summer.

And so, Island Blog is back. And the critics who decry the lack of effort in maintaining this unique commentary on a life just slightly more adventurous than their own may, for the time being, fall silent. As for me, I'm off to the dragon boat races. Farewell!