I have bitten the bullet and booked my second flight to Calgary. I'll be landing in Calgary on 13th. september. This will be the real job hunting trip and I’m trying to line up interviews in advance. I have two ‘agents’ working on this, and I’m about to chase them as soon as it’s late enough in Calgary. Is 6:00am too early?

This will really be a make or break trip. If I get no positive feedback then I’ll have start looking at jobs in the UK. I won’t be available for work until late January so it’s too soon to start looking yet, but by late September it’s probably worth beginning to start to think about the possibility of looking.

I’ll be staying with my brother-in-law and his wife in their lovely new house. They are moving in at the end of this month, so I don’t even have to help with the move!

The family has returned from THEIR holiday in France, they had a great time especially the kids. They were back only a couple of days before my wife went into hospital for an operation. I’m spending far too much time hanging around hospitals lately. The op’ went well and she’s back home but already doing too much work. The kids are away at grandma’s for a couple of days so it’s just the two of us.

We are still working on tidying up the house to make it more saleable. Just had new stair and landing carpet laid and are fitting a new toilet and basin in the downstairs cloakroom (what’s wrong with avocado anyway?!). All this on top of a £10K reduction in price and still not a sniff of a buyer. The market here is as dead as a dodo. The government might give a stamp duty holiday according to the papers, “No we won’t” says the government. But with such a weak government the papers are making up the policy at the moment.

I visited my brother at The Royal Hospital in Liverpool. The ward and staff are fantastic and he’s making steady progress with the odd set back. I heard today he’s managed to get out of bed and sit in a chair for a while, a big milestone. He’s due to leave Intensive Care and be moved to High Dependency, another milestone.

Well I’m off to pester agents, that’s what they are there for!

SM