Hang on a minute, lads…

…”I’ve got a great idea.”

At the fag end of January 2013 I wrote – in my second ever post on this blog:

“About this time last year Kickass Canada Girl and I came up with a plan. It was a good plan. In fact, we were so impressed with it that we thought it might be The plan!”

That post was entitled “…gang aft a-gley” – a reference, of course, to the immortal Rabbie Burns’s poem “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough”. For those – should there conceivably be such – not acquainted with that timeless ode,  the verse in question runs thus:

“But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!”

I wound up my post with the observation:

“I’m sure you know the Woody Allen quip: ‘If you want to make god laugh, tell him about your plans’…”

At the time of writing I was – naturally – merely referring to our initial unforseen departure from the script – which arose both from our unexpected inability to sell our Buckinghamshire apartment and, thereafter, from the Kickass Canada Girl’s accelerated appointment to her much anticipated post in Victoria – considerably in advance of the migration date that we had originally intended. As it turned out my sentiments on that occasion proved prescient – and then some! I could have re-used the title for any number of subsequent posts as the edifice that was our beautiful strategy was systematically reduced to rubble – stone by stone. No mere chuckles for this god – he/she was definitely rolling on the floor laughing his/her a*se off!

Soooooo! You would doubtless expect us to have learned from our experiences? Ho, ho! Not us! We are such stuff as… should you slam the door in our faces, when you open it again we will still be standing there – smiling at you…

Yes – we thought that it was time once again to formulate a plan. This time – however – we are going to be a little more devious – to see if we can’t outwit the gods. Foolish we may be – but you have to give us marks for perseverance.

Here’s how it goes:

• We have set a window. At the near end of the scale I retire at the end of the academic year in 2015 and we move to BC in the summer of that same year.
• At the far end of the scale we aim to move to Victoria in May 2016. Under this strategy I would probably retire at Christmas 2015 – but could stay on until Easter 2016 if it were to appear advantageous so to do.
• Either way we will look to re-market the apartment within the next 6 months – probably next spring. The housing market seems to have picked up considerably and – mindful of the UK government’s latest scheme to guarantee mortgage deposits as a way to encourage another housing bubble – it would be madness not to jump aboard the bandwagon (mixing metaphors furiously as we go) with the aim of launching into the market at a relatively high point.

That is the plan, in any case – and as we all know by now…

The title for this post comes – as you are doubtless aware – from the celebrated final scene of that classic of UK 60s cinema – ‘The Italian Job’. Michael Caine announces his ‘great idea’ lying on the floor of a coach which is balanced teeteringly on the very edge of an Alpine precipice.

Let’s hope that is not an omen!