January news

You can see from the left sidebar that I have been tweeting about running and work and life in general. The integration between Facebook and twitter that is possible – and Audioboo too for that matter means that I seem to be able to manage these three types of communication on a much more frequent, light-touch basis than I do this blog. Maybe all those people that say we will shortly witness the death of the traditional blog are on to something. You’ll see that I update this much less frequently than I used to. But there is still something quite special about having the space to reflect on things at little more at length that a Facebook status or series of tweets and links.

Running through recent events – Kate and I spent a couple of nights away in the New Forest National Park over the new year weekend, staying at a country inn and going for a couple of nice long walks. The weather has been icy for 4 weeks pretty much non-stop in London – and much worse in other parts of the country. This weekend has been a welcome respite from the relentless ice and snow, but it looks like the temperature will drop again later this week.

Work has been interesting again – I have joined the Quality Framework team at the Department of Health, which is much more NHS facing role. All the action in the NHS over the next five years will be about delivering consistently high quality services in a fiscally challenging environment – it will really be the story of the entire public sector as a result of the events of recent time. The next few months should prove an interesting challenge, and I’m looking forward it.

I’m stepping up my running again after some more physiotherapy. Things are easing up in terms of pain, and my current physio seems confident that the problem is located more in more lower back than elsewhere. I have a challenging race next weekend in Portland, Devon. The last 10km I ran was completed in 54 minutes. The average time for a man in this race is 1 hour 24 minutes! And the elevation map of the course looks positively horrific.

The latest on the accommodation situation is that we are still out in Hayes, staying at my parents’ place – who are kindly let us stay with them while we try and figure out something more permanent. As I think I posted previously, I bought a house (!) in Wellington, and this is now going through the final stages of the purchase. We’re also in the preliminary stages of nailing down a flat to buy in Isleworth – more of a modern pad for when we’re in London, in a reasonably accessible and nice part of town. I thought we were there but we might have a last minute change of mind – we’ll see what the next day or two brings.

You’ll be able to tell that I’ve got a lot on at the moment. Apart from the running, not a whole heap of travel lined up – but we’re only just back from NZ really. We’ve a trip to Amsterdam booked in for the end of this month, and then probably India on March on some frequent flyer miles, if I can get the right dates. After that – I’m not really sure. Possibly back to NZ for a visit / work in August – maybe New York somewhere along the way.

And that was the news, for now.