Moving On

Not from Speaking Up but from my old house to my new one. We did this ourselves, which reminded me why the removal industry continues to thrive. Our house move, like everybody's I talk to, was a bit of an on-off saga, with an added bit of last minute, solicitor-induced tension. It is not something I intend to do ever again.

Not that I should ever need to. We have moved to a house just on the edge of a beautiful public parkin the countryside just 2 miles from Bury St Edmunds. Foxes bark in the night and there's that blackness to the night that you get outside the towns. The house is an 1860s cottage which has been recently extended to create a family home. It is little short of perfect for us.

Moving all our stuff made me realise, as we all do from time to time, the amount of waste we create in the course of our lives. We did ten runs to the tip as the accumulated detritus of our lives piled up behind us. We really are high-impact beings.

All this is on my mind as we ponder whether to have a third child, where to work, how much to drive, commute, earn and consume. Even a modest life generates a big demand on resources and tons of waste, never mind a really profligate one. Will it be seen as responsible in 50 years time to have three or four kids. Will the Optimum Population Trust be seen as sages ahead of their time as we all hunker down to a one-child policy?

Becoming 40 soon (well, in a few months) is prompting all sorts of questions. I have recently decided pretty much that I won't spend my 40s commuting to London every day to head up a national)(something I hadn't discounted till now). But this raises a lot of questions about how I spend the next 20 years of my working life. Presuming that Speaking Up, at some stage soon, will require fresh leadership, I have to find a way to balance my ambition to make a difference with the needs of my family life and the fact that I want to live in a fairly sustainable way. Portfolio is one option but I seem too young for that. Another is to start a new enterprise just now is a high-commitment, high risk, low income option. Without major backing I couldn't do this just now in the way I did at the age of 25 when I started Speaking Up.


Anyway this is all a bit serious and I have two fractious kids to feed so I will go now.