Dobbinitallin August 2016

Welcome to the first instalment of “dobbinitallin”, what you may ask is “dobbinitallin”? It is the code name by which Denise and I decided to call our change of lifestyle project and it has stuck.

If you are reading this then you will know Denise and I, to summarise we are in our 50’s been together 23 years and have a much loved companion called Jarjar Binks who is an nearly 9 year old Hungarian Vizsla. We three are the principle members of project “dobbinitallin” although some very special people have been part of the planning and supported the implementation of this adventure.

Life has been good to us, we have had the usual things happen some very good some not so good and our share of sadness but we have been blessed. Mostly we have people in our lives that we love and that love us, our families and extended families sometime referred to as friends but we consider them family.

Back in March “dobbinitallin” was born through a realisation that there must be more to the ever decreasing circle of work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep. Our escape and comfort has always been time away in Hobby our Motorhome. I made a frustrated flippant comment about selling everything and F’in off in Hobby and the expect answer from my rock was “don’t be silly Jo we can’t do that” and that was that. Except that it wasn’t, my unpredictable soulmate two weeks or so later presented me with a comprehensive project plan of how we could do it. So it began.

Emotional connections to things like our home of 19 years, our motorbikes and our careers had to be broken. Things needed selling and the task of downsizing our possessions began. I could ramble on about that but in reflection as frustrating and emotional as it was whilst in the midst of it was we did it with relative ease. Although to all of you that were around us during that time – sorry we must have been a night mare.

So here we are the end of August, September 2nd is when we hit the road and everything is ready to go. July 28th our home was sold and handed over to a couple who we hope will enjoy Limedale as much as we did. We moved in with Dorothy, Denise’s Mum for a few days and then onto the wonderful White Cottage in Pentrich. Dorothy – Mum has been so good to us, she has offered us a roof over our heads as and when we need it, an address for all of the official stuff, a place to store stuff we still need (or just can’t bear to get rid of and hasn’t gone into storage) and encouragement all the way. She is defiantly a contributor to our project.

White Cottage in Pentrich has been our home for the last 4 weeks thanks to the generosity of our friends Deb’s and Neil.