I’m always making plans. I’ve got to start following a few of them through. What I’m currently thinking is that next year I should finally take the Interrail trip I’ve been promising myself for too long. If I start working out an itinerary maybe it will keep me focussed on getting the money together and sorting out everything else. So, places I’d like to go-

Miniatur Wunderland, the world’s biggest model railway, which is in Hamburg.

The town of Quenast, which my grandfather named his house after.

My sister and her husband, though they’ll probably put me to work building walls or cutting down trees.

The D-Day beaches.

And more. I’m going to book a month long ticket, so there’ll be room for loads more. I’ll have to find out where people I know live in Europe. Though if I tell them I’m coming they’ll probably suddenly be out of the country.

Europe by train is only one of my plans. The big one is to up sticks and live abroad for an extended period. My current plan is Paris, for a minimum of three months, starting as soon after the Interrailing as possible.

I haven’t a clue, right now, how to make these plans happen. The first step is to work out how much they’ll cost. Then I can start thinking about how I’m going to raise the money. Another part of the plan is to have as little stuff as possible in this country to put into storage when I take off. So I’m clearing out my old vinyl, finding MP3s of most of the tracks is easy enough, and offering my books to friends- or selling them on Amazon. I’m never going to be able to strip the flat down to a futon and a laptop, but I intend to offload a large pile of stuff in the next few months.