The end of the blog

5 years ago today I started this blog and have met some truly great bloggers that have stayed and quite a few that have moved on OR is it that I moved on?

I think that I moved on and stopped reading and getting so involved with blogging, WHY? I hear you cry, well time to be honest. I don’t get enough time to blog all the time (5 posts in a year is not good), I am hitting twitter a lot more now @simmo1972 is where you can catch me and my life has moved on from being a Palace Fan thats a new dad. I haven’t stopped being a huge Palace fan but I have given my season ticket to my brother to get it out of my system and I’m a still a dad to two brilliant and amazing kids.

The reason for giving up my season ticket was to ensure that I wouldn’t get too hung up about Palace when we made up our minds to move to Australia from England and to give my time to my family.

Palace have had a shit time of it recently and it still does not look good for my team. This though will not be a post of who is to blame and what went wrong (SJ not getting the ground and playing a silly game with city investors (Agilo)).

I have grown up with Palace with my granddad taking me along with my dad, my whole childhood revolved around Palace matches with my dad and granddad. My granddad needed a reason to stop going so that he could get his time with his wife, my nan, back and he used the sale of Jerry Murphy to do it. He never went to another game after that.

I have had so many up's and down's being a Palace fan that I would never change that for any other team. It’s in my blood and it it will always be and whilst I feel sorry that I will not be taking my boy to a Palace game, just yet, I feel as though I saved him from many “wasted” weekends of not doing things as footy is on. In the last year I have spent so many weekends with my family that it has been really good and positive for us all. Whilst I have made a few games this year and I have missed the time with my dad, the group around us and with Palace. I still feel as though it was something I needed to do after 30 years of going, the last 20 years as a season ticket holder, and it was good.

The last year has had many highs with the top being that I have got a visa to live in Australia and quite a few lows including redundancy, tough first contact and struggling to get my foot back in the door working.

So what next? Well we have moved from Berkhamsted and I am moving the family to Brisbane and looking forward.The house has still not actually exchanged but our possessions are heading off to Brisbane. I will be starting a new blog about how I made it there and what is happening with the great move. I am still yet to sort out the domain and get writing but I will. As soon as I have a new link I will post it here.

Thanks for everything and this is the end of this blog on the 5 year anniversary........but the start of a new chapter in the life of a Palace Fan thats a new dad.

James