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John, Margaret and Jonathan’s archived news page
January 2001 to December 2002
Written by John
My dad died in March 2001 and this proved to be a trigger which made us re-think what life is all about. We had a largish house in Stokenchurch near High Wycombe, but had little time, energy or indeed spare cash to decorate it to our taste. Life was just work – collapse at the weekend – more work. We weren’t miserable, just stuck in a rut. Margaret was about to leave work after her third job redundancy; I was unhappy with the 3 hours or more spent in the car each day – just travelling to and from work; Jonathan had left home to live with a girl friend; all our furniture was tired and needed replacement.
We decided to come back to the north-east to be closer to our respective mothers and took the opportunity to ‘downsize’ and ‘de-clutter’.
On June 1st 2001 we moved to a new estate near Consett, about 2 miles from the house I grew up in. We own the house – no mortgage! I do some work for my old company on a consultancy basis. Margaret’s job is currently based at the local college; she is an administrative assistant to the manager of the ‘Durham Hub’. This small organisation promotes e-learning and works closely with ‘learndirect’.
Margaret’s mum’s health went rapidly downhill and she died in November 2001. This decline in health came as no surprise though, so it was not a great shock. At least Margaret was able to spend some time with her in the months prior to November – which would not have been possible if we had still been in Stokenchurch.

We wanted to do all the decorating and gardening ourselves in our new home, but I have been given more work than we anticipated, so the decorating is going embarrassingly slowly. We have made a start on the garden though – it’s the first time we have been particularly serious gardeners and we have found it to be very rewarding. It’s a good way to get some exercise and in the evenings we can relax and just watch the garden from the comfort of our conservatory (which was built soon after we moved in).
On the days when I’m not working or decorating (!), I clean the house and do most of the cooking – so we have free weekends and evenings at long last, which is nice (!)

Jonathan rents a house in High Wycombe with three friends. The first serious girl friend (mentioned above) did not work out and he moved on to a series of short term relationships but has currently found a new partner called ‘Trish’ who is from southern Ireland and is a nurse. Jonathan works for ‘Rombull – UK’ in Thame, he sells nets and netting accessories. This involves quite a bit of travel which he likes. So he has been changing jobs, changing women – Margaret and I would like to see some signs of him settling down and trying to save a bit. He is forever on the edge of having no cash. He goes to quite a few concerts – went to Glastonbury in July and reckoned his mum and dad should go next year. I think our camping days are over though – we like a comfy bed too much.

We are both in good health, which is a real bonus – however we both still smoke. We both use reading glasses now and I have lost a few teeth. We like to think we are still young at heart.

John, Margaret and Jonathan’s Davis’ 2002
Margaret is still working with LearnDirect but her office is now in ‘Steel House’ – still in Consett and only five minutes drive from our house. It is a smaller office though and she gets to meet less people. She is currently well on the way to achieving her ‘European Computer Driving Licence’ which will allow her to do I.T. training.
John has continued to receive a considerable amount of work from his old employer – so the decorating is still falling behind schedule. His mum is in good health and will be 80 next May.
This year we made a start on the garden; it’s a pleasant way to get some exercise and in the summer evenings we relaxed and marvelled at the colours from the comfort of our conservatory.
We finally took our first holiday in the sun since we moved to Consett – flying out to Fuerteventura on the 11th of September! As usual we enjoyed it thoroughly.
Jonathan rents a house in High Wycombe with two friends. He has a new girlfriend called ‘Trish’ who is from southern Ireland and is a nurse. They visited us in August. Until recently, he worked for ‘Rombull’ in Thame, selling netting products – mainly to the building trade. Unfortunately, he was made redundant on the 16th of December - past experience says he will find another very soon, but it's a weird world.