It was 1949. Barrie was born into a homeless family in Elterwater. His parents were living in cramped conditions with friends after being forced to leave their flat in Ambleside. Is it any coincidence that 70 years later he is a founding director of a charity that serves people who are homeless in York? This was the year he had decided he would retire as Chairman of Restore (York) , standing down in July after ten years during which the charity had grown from nothing to be housing 35 people who are homeless  in 9 houses in York. He spent the last year, along with other directors, preparing the board for his departure by recruiting new board members and filling the key role of chairman. It coincided with some restructuring of the staff team and the creation of a Chief Execs post. Restore is now a well established housing provider for single people who are homeless in the city, an expression of the love of Christ in a broken world.

2020 will be the year that Barrie’s term as a churchwarden of St Michael le Belfrey (often now known as The Belfrey – belfrey.org) comes to an end. Will it be the year that retirement really kicks in? Joan is still working as a facilitator for school workshops at the York Museums Trust and she’s not yet ready to give it up completely, although she may reduce the number of days she works. 

“We’ll take the plaster off the walls up to one metre above the floor, treat the wall and then re-plaster .…” 

If that sounds messy – it was. In January we moved out for a week and stayed with Wesley in Chelmsford as the damp proofers got to work on the ground floor of our home in York. Arriving back, we were prepared for the worst – it was worse! Enough to say that it was August before we were straight and ready to live normally in our now dry home. 

The work was overdue – we knew it had to be done and finally decided to bite the bullet, obtain estimates and apprehensively give the go ahead. We knew there would be dust, damage and decorating – enough to fill the next 8 months. Thankfully it’s done.

We joined Matthew’s family and his in-laws, John and Eileen, for a week in Pembrokeshire near Tenby in July. It was great holiday. Beaches, islands, cliffs, good food and a lot of time given to Anna who was a delight all through the holiday. 

It’s at least 35 years since we last visited this part of Wales. There were no schedules, few deadlines, no hassle, we just relaxed and enjoyed each others company.

Later in the year we spent a long weekend in Coniston in the Lakes in the cottage we’d booked for the Langdale Half Marathon. While injury prevented me from participating, we watched as Mark and younger members of his family toiled around the course through the Langdale hills. We also enjoyed a walk from Coniston to Tarn Hows – it was one of the first times I realised my knee pain was subsiding. 

This has been the year that digistories was finally closed. The office that we shared at the top of the house is no longer needed, so we have embarked on a plan to turn the room, quite a large one, into another guest room. We both had/have years of ‘stuff’ to clear out. The dilemmas are frequent. What do we do with this? Keep, sell, donate, dump? Hundreds of CDs went to Oxfam after scanning them all to ensure an equivalent existed in Apple Music. A few were kept alongside even fewer vinyl LPs for nostalgic reasons.  Slowly the room is being cleared but it’s more complicated and taking longer than we would like. Eventually we will create a new office/study in a smaller room on the first floor. It’s a ‘project’.