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331of the family was down south and so we thought about selling up in York and moving. Also, Gabby had found the shift work at the ambulance service very tiring and had decided to retire a year early.We sold our York house in 2008 in the middle of a property crash which was stressful and then as Dickon had given us our first Grandchild down in Bristol We moved south. At first, we rented a house in Pilning while looking for somewhere to buy, eventually finding a wreck of a house in Backwell. This was another major project that took about 3 years. To my mind this was the start of serious marital problems. We had definite ideas of what sort of house we wanted. It had to be large enough that our children and grandchildren could all stay from time to time. And much of it open plan. We eventually realised that we would have to build it ourselves or seriously alter something. The Backwell situation was ideal with good public transport provision and a large garden. Unfortunately, I was going to have to do much of the renovation work myself and so I drove to Backwell each day for a couple of years leaving Gabby in Pilning. She enjoyed helping out with our grandchildren, but the isolation brought on depression. Well, that is my take on it anyway. She had had a drink problem for some time but eventually realised that she was an alcoholic. She went for treatment and got over that which was an enormous credit to her. To help pay for the new house we sold our house in France and bought a campervan to tour Europe. But eventually Gabby wanted more than I could give her and so we both became unhappy. I was diagnosed with Prostate cancer in 2019and had chemotherapy which was Ok, although I had one bad session after which they fed it in slowly. The nurses had to do a series of mathematical calculations to work it all out. At one point I said to a nurse that all those maths lessons at school came in handy after all. She replied %u201cMr Smith would be so proud of me%u201d

