Was the day I left the UK on a one way ticket to a brighter future, well that was the idea. In Scotland I had a good life, good friends but life was just standing still and there was no future on the horizon. I immigrated to Australia, I did this because I had been there 18 months earlier and thought that it was new and exciting and so very different to life as I knew it.

34 years on I’m looking to leave Australia as life is once more stagnant to me. I am going through the motions living with the noise of a country that can’t decide to move into the future. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lovely house which I have worked hard for and many friends but there is no mental stimulation here for me anymore. 34 years ago I really wish I had the balls to go to a country that was very different to my origins.

I’ve had a fairly easy life here but I’m bored and have been for many years, hence the reason why I pissed off in 2016 and of course if the dreaded plague had not arrived I would have been still wandering the planet chasing new adventures and all the time nowhere near the dreaded accents of the Australians. I’m currently working alongside a bloke that is a fine example of an Australian that completely bastardises every vowel, he’s a lovely bloke but listening to this accent all day is like having nails dragged down the chalk board.

I’ve met many other British expats over the years and have been very jealous of some that had the foresight to create a new life in a country with a different language or where the culture was vastly different from home. At 28 I was not as smart as I thought I was, in fact I would go as far as to say that I was as thick as pig shit. I drank too much and when I bumped into other Scottish folk I gravitated towards them and so all I had really done was move to a place where the sun shone most of the time.

I don’t really have any major regrets, it’s not good to have regrets but if I had any it’s that I drank too much and should have been more independent and completely avoided many of the acquaintances I made in my early days in Australia. I wonder where I would be today if I had taken the sober path earlier in my life?

Now I am approaching another fork in the road; cash in my house and buy a new cheaper one elsewhere and then travel again or I stay where I am and rent this house out and bugger off once more. I would rather stay where I am but there is the prospect of flooding happening in the future, it might not happen for another 10 years……..it might never happen again but can I take that risk? I don’t want to be in my 70’s and having to deal with all the shit of being flooded. I’m on the edge of the flood zone. If I could move my house 4 meters higher then I would stay and have no worries about the future. Many suburbs are now unable to get house insurance or if they do offer it the premiums are exorbitant.

So after 34 years I need a change and I really wish that I had made some of these decisions a decade ago. I’ve been lucky in life to meet some amazing people that have contributed to my random wanderings which have been great. I now need some new ideas and I have a few in my head, I just have to find out a bit more information before I take my next steps to the next 34 years.