Anyone who knows (from experience over the years) of my relationship with this blog knows that it’s not dissimilar to that of some guy and a mail order bride; she has her good moments, but on the whole she’s cost much more than she’s returned and so I secretly never feel too bad ignoring her for a while. Tough love.

The last month – and the coming month, at least – I’ve too much on to pay much attention to her. To start with, I hold a full-time job. I also design and produce the calendar every year for one of my friend’s organisations, Second Chance Animal Aid, based in Shanghai and from which they derive some funds to keep things ticking over. What with not being much of a designer and having to relearn Creative Suite once a year, this takes up a lot of time and we’re working on this at the moment.

After that, another friend of mine has started his own WordPress themes business (not that there isn’t enough already); Inspired Themes. For my part, I’m spending (or trying to spend) some time helping him with his online marketing, site design and everything else to get this thing going.

In the middle of this, we’re currently trying to work out what to do this winter – with a move from Ireland again more than likely on the cards. Stay tuned.

Lastly, and possibly the most exciting for anyone reading this over the years, I’ve taken all the most popular of my travel posts, re-written them in full without the bothersome constraints of “will someone be bored out of their mind reading this online”, and am putting them together to make one complete (e-)book, hopefully available towards the end of July. I’ll let you know how that works out.

I’m also working on a redesign of sorts for this humble blog to keep it going into the future (5 years going as of October this year) so that’s also in the pipeline – but whatever about anything else, I promise to make a return to this by mid-August at the latest!

In the meantime, you can always catch me on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus (or the You Love Thatsh! Google Plus), or Instagram. See you soon!