...work in progress

.....look at how warm that sky looks! gonna be a nice day ...and we've got a chilled weekend in store in the mordue/hill household, which is nice

i turned 45 last weekend and what a weekend it was.... caught up with friends and their babies which was lovely on the friday and had food and drink with those good people and my mam and dad. on the saturday me 'n' pete rehearsed covers all day and then drove to leeds and played to a receptive crowd at the garden party of the wife of one of pete's guitar pupils. it was great to play with pete. although our lives and friendship is full of music we have seldom played together. i can recollect playing as the "one way cafe" band once or twice and other than that it would only be playing together - just the two of us. so it was great to blast our way through some great covers - highlights for me were "never tear us apart" (although we kept going round and round with it 'cos we couldn't remember how we'd decided to end it), the bruce springsteen songs "i'm on fire" and "dancin' in the dark", and despite my lack of love for oasis i enjoyed playing "the masterplan". sunday morning saw breakfast in leeds at a wonderful cafe food emporium near pete, jacinta, and peg's house with good talk about all manner of stimulating things and then the drive home, very tired and very happy

despite my advancing years i still feel as though i am work in progress. developing, changing, emerging. is this how everyone feels? i think as a youngster you think at some point you grow up and that's it - job done! well let me tell you it's not. i'm not the person i was at 35 or 25 or 15.... and thank goodness. the shy 15 year old turned into the quiet but slightly confident 25 year old into the confident 35 year old into the self assured 45 year old. but in all of these phases i've always had to work at maintaining my confidence. i think we are actors on the stage because deep down i'm still that shy 15 year old but i've learnt how to mask that and be a self assured 45 year old... but it's all often very fragile.... (honest!)

i find myself at a crossroads. i'm about to embark on a new role of life. that of educator. my post as lecturer at the university of sunderland starts on the 3rd of september.... and this in many ways feels as different to social work as social work did to IT. yes, the subject matter will be very familiair - as the post is lecturer in social work - but the daily and weekly routine that has been established over the last 10 years as a social worker and social work manager is about to change. gone is the cycle of assessment, the cycle of wednesday morning team meetings, the cycle of supervision - to be replaced by the cycle of the academic year.

excited? yeah just a bit! terrified? yeah a lot! sad? yes. because there are lots of wonderful people where i work who i will miss having daily contact with, and who have helped me develop as a social worker and a person.

there is a new horizon
a new sunrise
a new chapter