My mum died in early 2012, and my dad followed suit on Christmas Day of the same year. After mum’s death, I was concerned at how long the process of probate was taking, a mix between my reluctance to deal with it, with a solicitor’s uselessness, and the pace at which external things, over which I had no control, worked. When my dad died, I decided that, rather than renew my contract with my clients, I needed to take time out to get everything sorted.

I finally sold me late parents’ house a year later, in January 2014. It was a large three-bed semi, must have been twice as large as my house, and was full to the brim with “stuff”. Once the house was sold, I had money in the bank and followed my love of cycling (doing it as opposed to watching it, although I liked that too). Since I was able, I decided to try my hand at a change of career, and in summer 2014 was training as a bike mechanic (training which I subsequently passed). Dates tend to fade in our memories, but events…..I remember watching the 2014 World Cup final from my hotel bedroon over near the course in Lincolnshire.

Fixing bikes was far harder than IT. I knew even from the training that I was slower than my 20yo compatriots, but I was thorough and did a good job. Do you remember Lance Armstrong? At the time he was being talked of in terms of the “best cyclist of all time”, and he owned a shop in Austin, Tx called Mellow Johnny’s. I guess it is still going, although I don’t know whether Armstrong is still involved. Anyway, what a good name, I thought. So I tried to think of something similar. Steady Joe’s was the best I came up with. I don’t even know anyone called Joe! but it had a ring to it. In my ears, at any rate.

Unfortunately, repairing bikes was far harder than IT, just establishing myself as a business and getting regular clients. Also, most of the money in bike shops is on the sales side, and it was repairing them that interested me.

So, in autumn 2015, I had a long hard think and decided to go back to IT. I was, after all, pretty good. But I wanted to =work closer to home, I didn’t want to spend three hours per day on the train any more. It was slow and took a while, but the UK’s Ordnance Survey (the “official” UK map-maker) is based in Southampton, twenty miles away from me, and I secured an interview with them.

Unfortunately, the day the interview was scheduled, I’d been in hospital three weeks following the stroke. I never even found out that an interview had been scheduled until I went through my emails after I left hospital, in the middle of March 2016. Timing, eh?

It’s funny, because at one of my clients in London, one of the boss-ladies shocked me in a meeting once by saying, “if you see a gap in their CV, it means they’ve been in prison!” and it kind-of haunts me now that that’s exactly how my cv looks! As a consolation, I do have a City & Guilds certificate from the Bike Mechanic course, plus of course I have DBS (criminal record) certificates from the charity work I’ve done since the stroke.Honest!