We are down to only three months before retirement, not that we are counting or anything.

What will we do then?" we have both been asked over the past few months;As we now work only 2 days a week, and don't seem to have enough time to do everything we want to, "what will we do?" hasn't seemed very important, and there are lots of possibilities.

 But when I was asked again by a long-term patient last week, and answered "perhaps we'll get a campervan", I was treated to a video tour (on her phone) of their motorhome. Interesting! So we spent the weekend looking at motorhomes online; on Wednesday went and looked at one "in the flesh"; and on Friday put down a deposit and ordered one. (It's a wait of a year for it to arrive, but that's fine; we need to organise what we're doing and where it's going to live when it's not out traveling somewhere.) Covid travel restrictions, and a yen to see more of Australia but with a little more comfort than camping made self contained luxury very attractive.

 It's time for some changes. We think we'll sell Finsbury, our Airbnb house next door in Castlemaine, and stop doing B&B stuff - which is quite restrictive on our freedom to just go off somewhere at short notice let alone visit grandchildren. This will mean a re-alignment of the boundary between the two properties (we will keep a large part of Finsbury's back garden, and its big shed) and the moving of various young fruit trees. Just as well it's the middle of winter, when moving them is feasible.

At the moment we think we'll build a carport next to the big shed to store the motorhome . Being 3.1m high, and 6.5m long, it's not a small vehicle, though it is one of the smaller ones we saw at the showroom. And we'll need to replace the very open fence between us and Finsbury with something more substantial. It is perhaps just as well we'll have a year (and be retired for most of that time) to organise all this.

There will still be somewhere for visitors to stay, if you can catch us at home.

Retirement? In June, I worked my last Saturday morning; I used to do one per month, but have retired from them already. I walked into my consulting room, and....  it was full of helium balloons! I was stunned. An amazingly nice gesture, but.. this was only my last Saturday. Not my last day!

And last night, our daughter Louise produced our first granddaughter - after a very long labour and avoiding an emergency Caesarian by a hair's breadth. They are both well, though in these covid times we can't go and visit them in hospital as we did when she had Jack, only 20 months ago.