Hi Keith
Thanks for your good wishes and I very much hope to enjoy lots more good evenings in Diones's bar. For those who don't know it I thoroughly recommend it as a really pleasant venue on Mactan Island, Cebu. Largely populated by ex pats it is not at all a "girly" bar but serves really nice, western style food and has a live band on Saturday nights. The band are relaxed and friendly and encourage "guest" singers to come up and join them. As Connie has spent 3 years in a band herself, and is now gigging regularly here in the UK on her own, this is a way for her to keep up to date with new songs etc.
Regarding the NHS issue, this is really important and I invite the input of anyone with direct experience. My understanding is that once you have spent more than 3 consecutive months out of the UK you lose the right to free NHS treatment, other than for emergencies. This applies irrespective of whether your NI payments have all been made, have a UK residence and pay UK taxes. We can of course, fly back and forth, every 3 months but that gets expensive and was not what was planned. We planned to spend October through to April/May in Cebu and the summer in the UK. However if I need regular treatment, or even monitoring, then I want it done by the NHS and may have no choice.
David
