We are now fully ensconced in the UK in Braintree. Essex, been here two years now. We bought the house in 2015, rented it out for a year, and moved in ourselves in 2016, it has now been done up a bit and all the main work has now been completed, with new kitchen and a conservatory added.
I am still writing songs and recording and have now started since end of 2017 playing live in the local pubs, which I was a little nervous about to start with, not knowing what sort of reception I would get, but it has been great, its a very friendly environment.
I will be 72 this February, doesn't seem possible but not a lot I can do about that!!

As some of you may know, before our UK holiday we managed to 'misplace' our driving documents, including driving licences and car insurance and log documents, this has meant that we are unable to drive here in China until we get them replaced. Today we started the recovery process, going to two local police stations, as one does the licences the other the car documents. For a change, it seems to be going to plan.... so far... I apparently have to have a medical test as I am over 60, well when I got the licence initially I was already over 60 and the only medical I got was an eye test, so what they want this time I don't really know as we have to trot off to the local hospital for it on Monday. We had to supply a new photograph of our car for the documents (your car docs have a photo of it here) this has to be taken at a 45deg angle and slightly high of the car, our first efforts were rejected but they seem to have accepted our second try.
There is some 'internal dispute' here at home as to how the documents became lost in the first place, I maintain that I put them where I always do with my wallet on the shelf in this room, my theory being that dear Rose on realising that we were going away decided to put them away in a 'safe place' and now cant find them!
I will not be surprised if they turn up after we go through the rigmarole of replacing them. We should be up and running again by sometime next week. Fingers crossed.

2013 as I know from a lot of my friends all over the world, has not been the best year going. must be the lovely lucky 13 tacked on the end of it! So i think the least said about it the better, suffice to say I am glad to see 2014 arrive. The only good event we had was a trip to the UK for 3 months, something we will probably be repeating in 2014, due to the fact that I need to get some inter ocular surgery done on my eyes to make them young again! Well part of me has to be. The year at least ended with a nice cruise around the Med.

Earlier in the year we had a short 4 day trip to Soul in South Korea, we got to go because Rose's daughter who works for McDonalds auditing team had a job there and we went a shared her hotel room.
The first impression of Soul was that the country was nearly all bridges of some sort, as we drove from the airport that was just about all we saw. Overall South Korea is pretty much like China, except that the language is even harder to read than Mandarin, it looks like a Tetris game to me. 
We had a trip up the Soul tower which has a great view of the city and surrounding area and shows just how big Soul really is.
We also had a trip to the DMZ (De-militarized Zone) on the border with North Korea, This is a very odd experience, it is kind of like watching schoolkids facing off to each other, the South's soldiers stand in an 'aggressive' mode all the time wearing sunglasses, they wear these to stop the two sides 'eye fighting' in other words glaring at each other. While there we had a trip down one of the Tunnels that the North had dug ready to invade, the joke in the south is, "Wasn't it nice of the North to build us a free Theme Park that we make money out of", there is also a theme park on the land next to the DMZ, I doubt that the North has such a thing.
Overall it was a pleasant visit, Soul is a girls shopping paradise and the folk are friendly enough. I'll post pictures when I get back home, as I am in the UK at the moment.

The Chinese New Year of the Snake, has now come and gone, we had your usual trip with our friends from the hospital etc, and went to a Hotspring in Longman district. Usually we go somewhere reasonably interesting, this year however the hotspring was basically in the middle of no where, with only the scattering of building along side the road where the springs were located. The springs itself was still in the process of construction although not in the part we were in. This is located in the Ethnic Minority area of the Hakka minority of China.
The springs are about a 3hr drive from where we are and a lot of it this time was on brand new roads that were not there last year.
I went for a walk outside the resort to see what was about, to the left, there was only a cement factory! and to the right just a few buildings that were either cafe's or just shacks, there were a couple of 'proper' houses set back off the road but this is a very rural area with rice fields all around. One houseowner was reasonably well off as they had the latest Audi in the driveway.
While walking I was stopped by an old lady on a motorbike who had chickens on the back and other stuff tied on precariously, one item was large, live, turtle in a bucket slung over the handlbars which she did her best to try to sell to me, needless to say I didn't buy it, mind you if the sea had been nearer i would have and just put it back again. We were only there a couple of days and it was quite pleasant as they always are, some photos to be added soon.

One of our last trips out with Roy was to the Nanshe Ancient Village, located in Dongguan which is about 1 hour from here. We managed to get just a little lost on the way with Rose's normal argument with the SatNav, but we got there eventually. The village is mostly unoccupied but with the buildings mostly preserved, the only folk around seemed to be old ones which is quite normal for most of the ancient villages we have been to so far. 
Roy unfortunately got a bit sick while we were there vomiting quite a bit, his stomach had a bit of a disagreement with something he and in combination with a painkiller he was taking and after being sick a few times when we got back to Shenzhen we took him to the hospital to check him out and they put him on a couple of drips and after that he was fine again ready for his trip back to Hong Kong and home again.
We also had a couple of short trips to the local theme park, 'Splendid China' which is China in miniature and also we went to a water show at Shenzhen bay and also to the local zoo to see a panda, (we were told they had some) but it turned out they didn't have any after all, only the small fox like red pandas.
All in all he enjoyed the trips despite the sickness, we tried not to wear the old boy out so we didn't go out every day, having a few days rest between trips, which seemed to have worked out OK.

The show ended up being at the Shenzhen Technical College not the the university as I was first told, but that didn't matter, it was a good night, I didn't get booed off stage and they seemed to enjoy my songs. Rose did a video for me, which unfortunately wasn't very good but its all I have, I have managed to get it to look a little reasonable.