There's been a lot of change happening around me of late.
Firstly, you'll remember that neighbour Bev left the neighbourhood back in January. Well, for a time, a young couple seemed to be intent on sorting the flat out and making it their home.
Well, all that has come to an end. The ground floor flat seems to be completely deserted these days. It's been gutted and half of the contents have been neatly stacked in the back yard. There's little likelihood of anyone moving in there now whilst there's no usable kitchen or bathroom.
In the flat above, Keith, who suffered Bev's antics for far too long, also found himself in conflict with the landlord. He's been talking about leaving for a while mentioning a flat in Waterloo. Anyhow, his car has disappeared and there seems to be a young male student type who's suddenly going in through the front door.
Meanwhile, next door, there's sad news from No 4. Spencer and Sue have parted company. Sue has taken the kids and her possessions and moved out to family in Seaforth. Spencer is fed up of being in a big house on his own and is looking to move out to Warrington.
He's probably just going to hand the keys into the estate agents and go. He says he's got the the worst of both worlds with financing a single life plus supporting another household whilst being close enough to act as dad-the-taxi whenever called on. So, he's talking about calling it a day.
I know that it's infantile but, for us, the worst aspect of all of this is the loss of son, Shane, who is now reaching his mid-teens and is turning into a splendid, if slightly chavvy, young man. Given our luck with young men who are next door neighbours, viz Nathan and Jamie, I had been hoping for some displays of young male flesh but it would seem that it is not to be.
So, it's all change either side of us at home.
And, today at work, more news of change.
Richard, who started with us last December and from whom great things were expected, is off. He's had a much better offer from elsewhere. Good for him. But it leaves the training side of the business in a quandary.
Richard was supposed to be taking over the running of our Learning Centres, LearnDirect business, NVQ business and business with the University for Industry (UfI). It seems that there will be no move to replace him with a head of training (which is what should happen).
Rather our CEO will step into the breach.
This is potentially disastrous as he really has no understanding of what we do in training and has very few people management skills.
And the millions of pounds which that set of contracts represents has basically saved the company from going bankrupt in the past couple of years. I reckon we've got about twelve months. That's when the contacts will be up for re-negotiation and renewal. If we lose a couple of those then we should be closing down.
So, we'll see how it all plays out.
And one other thing. One of Ross's carers, Sandra, has decided to leave his employ. She had been going to leave a couple of years back but then changed her mind.
At times, I've almost wished that she had stuck to her guns because I'm not sure that she has been committed to the job for a while. So, there's going to be a change there too.