December, 2007
OK, mea culpa, too much work last year to get round to the newsletter so, you lucky people, it’s a double dose this year. The management has insisted on brevity, so, for 2006, here goes.
January 2006 saw us in Palma for some winter sun. Judith and Fleur went to the ballet and Graeme did his ‘Immortal Memory’ at the Rotary Burns night. In February we became honorary bellringers for a village quiz and fitted in several theatre trips. In March we had a family photo session courtesy of Rory, went to Venice with the WEA, managed more theatre trips and Graeme did e.Bay University. April saw us in Marrakech with the Luncheon Club, where we stayed at a wonderful riad, and our cultural treat was the Three Emperors at the Royal Academy.
In May Hearts won the Cup (hoorah) [wonders will never cease, Ed] and we had to exercise our little grey cells at an evening event with a Latin-speaking stand up comic, during which Judith was required to wear a fluorescent jacket for (a) blatant name-dropping and (b) displaying far too much knowledge [completely unfair, Ed]. We then took Fleur, Keith, Keiran and Joshua [the boys’ first ever flight, Ed] to the Isle of Man for the pre-TT practice week and had a glorious time staying in an eccentric Swiss chalet in the grounds of a castle. We were blessed with perfect weather and the motor bikes and sidecars were pretty good as well.
Following an unexpected windfall from Graeme’s father’s trust fund, June saw us spending some of the loot at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, and later in the year we were pleased to find that the RA had used our acquisition for one of their Christmas cards which we sent out in 2006. The month was busy for Judith in two other areas, the centenary reunion of the County High School [it’s been a great year for renewing old friendships, Ed] and after a very disciplined training programme she improved on her 2005 time by six minutes in the annual ‘Race for Life’. In July Graeme bought a Sat Nav system, and Hanoi Jane superseded Judith as in-car navigator [or so he thinks, Ed].
August saw us back in Edinburgh for our annual foray to the Fringe, this time with Fleur and Keith; our highlights included lunch with Christine and Neil Hamilton, Momma Cherri’s soul food and gospel, Four Poofs and a Piano, The Goodies, the Harry Potter books condensed into 50 minutes and a day out in Glasgow where Keith distinguished himself at the Willow Tearooms by having two breakfasts, the first involving a large schooner of Drambuie to pour over his porridge.
In September we drove to France to stay with friends in Notre Dame de Hamel, south of Rouen, and managed three good theatre trips and a few other treats during the rest of the month. Fleur and Keith celebrated their first wedding anniversary with a trip to Oxford and are clearly getting the Johnston travel and treats bug. We also noticed a damp patch in Judith’s study, the starting point for a long saga as it took some time to diagnose the likely cause and then even longer to get it fixed. Eventually the study floor had to be dug up so that the broken pipe could be found and bypassed, and then the drying team got to work and that led to the scope of the work growing exponentially until eventually the redecoration work encompassed the study, the downstairs loo, the cloakroom, the boiler room, the hall and finally the stairs and upstairs landing. Just as well we have very supportive insurers but the house has been in chaos for months!
October was a month of film, theatre and food treats, and Graeme got taken for afternoon tea at Claridges as part of his birthday celebrations. Film, theatre and food featured prominently in November as well, and we had a highly enjoyable few days visiting old friends in Weymouth, Whitchurch Canonicorum and Rustington; we are now looking forward to Terry and Rita joining us in Edinburgh next August. December was, as always, a round of parties and meals.
Those of you who have not nodded off by now will have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the young laird. 2006 has been a very full year for him as well; in addition to doing a demanding job with Cable & Wireless he sold his house in St Albans and bought another in Farnborough, Hampshire as a development project. He has also been working towards the graduate tests for fast track entry to medical school having decided that it’s now or never if he is to pursue his dream of studying medicine. In Rory’s case this meant doing the equivalent of two ‘A’ levels in about three months and the good news is that by year end he had done well enough in the tests to get two interviews, a brilliant achievement and we are very proud of him. He is living in Sandhurst with Kathryn, several cats (lost count last time we were there) and a pair of matching BMW Minis.
In September Fleur started a three year degree with Anglia Ruskin University (where she is the Criminal Records Bureau Administrator) for a BA (Hons) in Learning, Technology & Research and is loving it, so both of our children are students once again but fortunately self-supporting this time.
Judith has reduced her working day and continues to work afternoons only for a small firm of independent financial advisors in Chelmsford; she is busy training them up to do things her way [no, the right way, Ed]. Graeme’s e.Bay business is still going strong, and he is the Treasurer of a local counselling charity which has grown over the past few years into a substantial business.
2007 has been pretty full as well. January included more theatre trips (Spamalot the highlight) and a few days in the Algarve with Fleur and Keith. While we were there, their cars were both written off by a neighbour who stepped too firmly on to her accelerator one icy morning, so we returned to a serious car crisis. And Graeme was at last able to use the generator he bought some months back when we suffered a series of lengthy power cuts; it proved to have been a great investment.
In February, at long last, our redecorating work started and continued into March. At the end of the work the carpet fitters arrived, laid carpets and completely destroyed the wallpaper in Judith’s study. Back came the loss adjusters and we started the long process of negotiating which of the many subcontractors of subcontractors in the chain should be paying for the re-redecoration. While this was going on we naturally fitted in a few theatre trips as well as a trip to the wonderful Electric Cinema in Harwich, a restored 1930s cinema with films projected the old-fashioned way from reels (sometimes a reel falls off, we were told). We also had a few days in Berlin with the WEA Art History class. Air Berlin from Stansted were spectacularly good; on arrival at Tegel airport just thirteen minutes after our wheels had hit the tarmac we had disembarked, got through passport control, collected our suitcases and were standing in the airport lobby!
In April Graeme was asked to take over until year end as Chair of Trustees of his charity due to the ill health of the then incumbent, which meant a double load of work as he is still Treasurer. After interviews Rory received two offers of medical school places; he accepted the offer of a fast track place at Nottingham University which meant that both Rory and Kathryn had houses to sell in order to move to Derby, where the medical faculty is based, by September. And we fitted in a few theatre trips including a day in Brighton to see a memorable, if somewhat unlikely, play about Mother Teresa and Robert Maxwell.
May saw us in Benalmadena with Fleur and Keith for a week of sunbathing and sangria [some of us overdid both, Ed]. Meanwhile, Rory and Kathryn headed off for San Francisco and Las Vegas and liked LV so much that they will be going back next year. June had the sadness of the funeral of Graeme’s cousin Paul, but it did provide an opportunity to catch up with other cousins that he had not seen for many years. We also went to Bruges with local friends for a few days of relaxation and spent some more of the children’s inheritance at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Judith completed another ‘Race for Life’ in rain, cold and mud but improved her time yet again; if she can improve as much every year from now until 2012 we may be seeing her at the Olympics!
In July we watched some of the Tour de France time trials along the Embankment from the new Skylon restaurant in the South Bank before watching Bryn Terfel cutting throats in Sweeney Todd, an incongruous set of experiences. This was the month when it seemed to rain non stop so we didn’t get in the swimming pool; the rain didn’t stop us going out to cinemas, theatres and art exhibitions, however. More painfully, this was the month when Rory had his car written off in a flash flood that inundated his company’s car park, so that is a dismal hat trick of sorts.
August saw the re-redecoration of Judith’s study finished and the long saga brought to an end just in time for us to set off to Edinburgh for the Fringe with a welcome stopover at Neville and Lorna’s house in Yorkshire on the way up. Really nice to have Terry and Rita in Edinburgh with us this year, though they embraced the opportunity so comprehensively that we saw much less of them than we had expected. The highlights for us were the Andy Warhol exhibition, Debbie Does Dallas, Pam Ann, a spoof Eurovision contest and a midnight feast with the Hamiltons, whose show this year (fortunately, we didn’t know beforehand) featured the Boyz in the Buff, the Naked Comedy Duo and Puppetry of the Penis [more dangly bits on stage than one could shake a stick at, Ed]. We were both on stage a bit as well during the week, though not with the Hamiltons, thank goodness, and we fitted in a fine day out in the Highlands on the only day it wasn’t raining. Good as well to have time to catch up with family and friends, and time to look at art exhibitions, though that proved expensive this year [we need more walls, Ed].
September brought the joy of a friend’s daughter’s wedding, an occasion made memorable by the groom having four best men. We also fitted in an anniversary lunch at Fortnum & Masons followed by a tour of London in a yellow amphibious ‘duck’, all planned to give Judith a good day out before an operation which left her foot in plaster for eight weeks [all better now, Ed]. At the other end of the spectrum we visited Jimmy’s Farm for a ‘Sausagefest’ and met a Hairy Biker! Rory and Kathryn moved to Derby, Kathryn having sold her house easily, but Rory’s still needed some work done before it could go on the market; his estate agent subsequently arranged for it to be one of the properties featured in a morning TV show and it has now sold. Rory started his course but has so far resisted Graeme’s offers to buy him his first skeleton on the amusing but spurious grounds that he doesn’t have a closet to keep it in [in retaliation Graeme is now threatening to leave Rory his own skeleton when he dies, now wouldn’t that make an interesting talking point, Ed].
In October we all went to Chester for nephew Jamie’s 21st birthday; we do seem to have become a very large family but it was a joy to observe how relaxed and comfortable we all are with one another across a wide range of ages. As part of the weekend we managed a day out to Llandudno which was a delight, can’t wait to go back to North Wales, and on the way home we visited Rory & Kathryn’s house in Derby which abuts the hospital grounds so that Rory has just a ten minute stroll to get to the faculty. They have great plans for modernising the house and it has the potential to be quite special in a few months time.
For his birthday Graeme was taken to see La Bayadère at the Royal Opera House [he understood little but is a ballet virgin no more, Ed]. Judith’s birthday was, however, a much more flamboyant affair. To begin with, after having the date in her diary blocked out, Judith was fed snippets of disinformation, over time, about the shape of the evening; this led her to an entirely plausible but entirely wrong conclusion. It was in fact a Black & White party organised in devious secrecy by Graeme, Fleur, Keith and sundry friends; this allowed everybody to dress up (mostly in DJs and LBDs) except of course for Judith who had been persuaded [with extreme difficulty, Ed] to wear red. The element of surprise was maintained right to the end, to the point at which she opened the door to a roomful of friends and family, some of whom had come from distant parts of the UK. Fleur managed to keep a couple of party secrets from Graeme, and Fleur and Keith also produced personalised party bags for guests. A few days later, for the birthday itself, Judith got taken away by Graeme for a mystery weekend; Compton Verney, Warwick Castle, Ann Hathaway’s Cottage and a nice spa hotel with electric beds [make up your own jokes, Ed]. Later in the month we drove to St Omer with Fleur and Keith to stock up with essentials for Christmas, and the four of us also saw ‘Hairspray’ which was one of the best theatre nights we can remember, can’t praise it too highly.
So now it is almost Christmas and the party season is in full swing; wherever you are, go out and enjoy it, but let us first wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous year in 2008.
