To all our friends and family
There has been a
pause in the nearly incessant rain and suddenly
there have been a
few cold frosty
mornings and sunshine during the day – so Christmas is nearly upon us
together
with the chance to write to our friends and family again. May we wish
you and
your family a most cheerful Christmas and a happy New Year?
The highlight of
our year was undoubtedly the wedding of our
grandson, James, to his fiancé, MJ (Mary Jane) in a field barn slightly
north
of Truro in Cornwall in September. It was a very happy occasion for
everyone,
engendered by the obvious happiness that MJ and James felt together. It
was
further enlivened for us by seeing the whole family enjoying being with
each
other on a social occasion. It makes us wish that they all lived a bit
closer
together since they are self-evidently friends. James's brother,
Charlie came
from Calgary where he is engaged with a oil exploration firm. Will is
in the
other Newcastle both teaching circus skills and performing juggling
shows round
Scotland.
Our two German
grandchildren, Sarah and Timothy seem to be
progressing with their studies of computing, in Frankfurt, and Maths
and
Economics in Cologne. Felicity has bought a house in Norwich and is
very keen
on the garden there. Felicity is the Equine Behaviour Coordinator at the Redwings Horse Sanctuary where she mainly works on training horses of all ages, the majority actually being youngsters;
our oldest grandchild, Fiona and her husband, Adam, seem to be
vigorously
pursuing their respective careers in teaching and as an actuary, and
taking
splendid walking holidays in Switzerland. Unfortunately we see little
of any of
them, but we do now seem to be serving as guarantors for various bits
of real
estate in both the UK and Germany!
Our three boys
now straddle sixty in age and it amuses us to warn
them about taking it easy at their age! It also emphasises how old we
are – if
I make it, I shall be 85 by the time you receive this! Paul is doing
well on
his own as a management consultant. Stephen still travels regularly to
the far
east for his firm – his responsibilities have widened to looking after
the
firm's subsidiary in Milton Keynes and he has visited us a couple of
time on
visits there. And Michael continues as a Senior Vice President with
Total Oil.
He is still in Copenhagen with frequent excursions to Paris, Moscow and
the
Yamal Peninsular among other places.
We have actually
seen both Mike and Nicky a couple of times recently
and did so again this week. Sadly Nicky's Dad died a week ago and they
were
here for the funeral. It was not a surprise; happily John was able to
get to
James's wedding (he is the other grandfather) but deteriorated after
that. It
is nevertheless a sad happening, and yet another mortality reminder as
he was
almost exactly the same age as Peter. There was an nice service in
Whitmore
Church and a lively wake at Slater's, since John had been very active
in
village life. Nicky rotates between Copenhagen, Paris and Bristol
keeping a
home together for her scattered but mobile family.
Conny is busy is
Duesseldorf providing help for a refugee family
and also helping with what appears to be the citizen's advice bureau.
New
arrivals in Germany have added trouble since few speak the language and
there
is a fair amount of form filling (and understanding) particularly with
the
children starting school. Having access to someone like Conny must be a
real
help.
Rosalind and Paul
continue to care for the girls' ageing horses
which involves five mile drives, morning and evening, as well as the
hard work
involved. Unfortunately Ros has had back troubles recently and been
unable to
function so Paul has been looking after much of it.
After the wedding
we had a short holiday in St Ives from where we
visited Lands End, the Telegraphic Museum at Portcurno and St Michael's
Mount.
It was our second time this year at the seaside as Stephen and family
invited us
to meet them at the Hague in May. The beaches were lovely, as were the
spectacular fields of Tulips.
We are both
reasonably fit, although I did spend four days in
hospital with a mild heart attack about a month ago. An angiogram
showed that
not much had changed in the main vessels over the last couple of years,
so the
pain was in minor heart arteries. Contrary to the doom and gloom on the
news, I
was well looked after by the NHS here and rewarded with still more
medication.
We had the
feeling that we were doing less walking this year but
the web site still shows a lot of activity although we probably walk
shorter distances
now. We have had some memorable trudges up Shutlingsloe and over the
Great
Orme. There is however an all pervading weariness that follows any
activity.
Some of our walks
are linked to opera trips so you will find on
the web site that we still make use of our opera season ticket by going
regularly
to Munich. We also saw a couple a Wagner operas in Bayreuth when our
names came
up in the ticket "lottery" there. While we usually go alone to the
opera, we occasionally meet Christa and Paul from Garmisch in Munich –
we met
Ian and Richard from London for an Opera North production in Nottingham
and, on
Sunday, we went with Susan and Tony for an emotional production of
Poulenc's Dialogues
des Carmeliten at the RNCM in Manchester.
Having stopped
after sixty years, I was inspired by Greta Thunberg
to return to lecturing and gave a talk to my Probus Club on why we need
to be
doing something about climate change now! Having made an injudicious
remark to
a colleague, I was responsible for some heated exchanges for which I
feel
ashamed. But I am still down to give another talk at a neighbouring
club in
April. While I hope this will be more amicable – I still hope the
message goes
home – something must be done now about fossil fuels if our
grandchildren are
not to suffer inordinately for the lack of foresight of, and waste by
our
generation.
We are invited to join our Düsseldorf family for Christmas but, unfortunately, we have decided to heed the medical advice and try to take it easy at home instead.
Once again: our
very best wishes to you and your family.