355 Amhurst Road

Stoke Newington

LONDON N16 7UX

11th December 2000

Dear All

I'm early!! Last year I wrote this missive on 15th December. We haven't made the cards yet and the Christmas cakes are but a germinating idea in my head. We have got the tree up and it's got some new, rather fetching twinkling lights on it - despite unscrewing every bulb at least 3 times, checking the fuse, the plug, replacing each bulb in turn, etc, etc, the old set could not be resurrected. Good old Woolies - a tenner for a set of 80 twinklers. Well, on with the show.........

Now, I don't write this letter to tell you lot what we've been doing. I write it to remind us what we did. It's great reading through the previous year and remembering what happened and writing the new year down reminds us of the recent past. This year happened much faster than previous years - the years really do accelerate as one gets older. It started with the "New Millennium." We didn't go away for New Year, deciding to stay in the Smoke and see it in amongst the hoards of fellow Londoners. From about Christmas Eve we started to keep Hetty and Emily up later and later to train them into keeping awake into the small hours. There wasn't a lot of opposition to this plan from them!! It worked too as they managed to stay awake well into the New Millennium. We had bought my Mum a mobile 'phone for Christmas but borrowed it to enable us to meet our friends Lindsey, Tim and their children George and John. I had always been a bit snooty about mobile 'phones up to this point but discovered how very useful they are. We met up along the South Bank, by the LWT building, and hung around for about 4 hours waiting for the big spectacle. The crowd were great. The countdown commenced and the "River of Fire"swept passed us - well, something went bang anyway and someone said they saw something - it didn't really matter though. The following firework display was really amazing and the girls loved it. Unfortunately, George, not going through the late night conditioning regime fell asleep at about 11:45 and couldn't be roused at the opportune time. Nevermind, there's always next time??? We trudged home through a mass of champagne bottles and happy revellers. We even managed to get a train home from Liverpool Street although how we got there has slipped my mind.

We had decided that rather than pay some ridiculous fee to rent a cottage for the Millennium (funny how we can all spell that word now!!) We would go away in February instead. We found a lovely sounding Hall in the North West Lake District on the internet and booked it for a song. The drive up was very long but the weather was very kind - bright sunshine, dry roads and not a police car in sight. Modern cars can go quite fast when they want to can't they!? We stayed in a little village near Cockermouth in a beautiful 15th Century grade II listed building which slept 15 people very easily. We had a mixed bunch of people with us again: Lindsey, Tim, George and John, Andrea, Alex and Coral, Alfiah, Simon and Bethia, Dave and his sons Noel and Conner. The kids were much impressed by having Dave along as he is a London cabbie and brought the taxi along. They could all pile into the back as a group without having to be split up amongst the adults. Another reason for going in February meant that it might be cold - perhaps even snowy. In the end it was cold but the snow didn't appear. I had got a telescope for Christmas and was hoping to use it in the crisp, clear Lake District skies. The first night was perfect with a huge full moon. The telescope was expensive and I hadn't bought the tripod to go with it. The salesman said it was possible to use the instrument without one but it would be better with one. He was right - balancing the thing on a flat surface and trying to look through the eyepiece was difficult. Looking at the full moon was quite amazing but actually almost blinding. We all felt we needed sunglasses to look at it with - goodness knows what looking at the sun would be like!! We found Jupiter but I was a bit disappointed with the view - I naively expected to see the rings and the giant red spot. Instead I saw a reddish (that's from someone who is colour blind!!) smudge with some points of light around it. Furthermore: it was February with a cloudless sky. I think we lasted about 20 minutes before the cold drove us back in beside the roaring open fire - pathetic really!!! That's the last of the telescope adventures so far!! I'll get the tripod this year I think..... The rest of the holiday was great. As on previous years we split into a girls walking day out and a boys walking day out. In a stroke of divine retribution we, the boys, had the perfect weather this time and the girls nearly got washed into Yorkshire!! We tried to climb Hellvelyn and had a long drive in the taxi to the start of the walk. Before we set off I was feeling a bit out of sorts. By the time we arrived I was feeling very out of sorts. Still, the show must go on. I bought a large bottle of mineral water and set off with the others. To cut a long story short, we climbed up into the icy snow and ascended a dangerous ridge in our unsuitable footwear. We were passed by other climbers with ice axes and crampons and I wondered if we were being altogether sensible. This nagging doubt kept gnawing at me as we got higher and higher. There was quite a drop either side of us and each footfall would dislodge a cascade of ice which skittered down over the ice sheet to the valley floor below. In the end, with perhaps just 50m left until the summit I decided that enough was enough and turned back. I think my balance was a bit off with the car sickness which made things worse. Simon turned back with me but the others went on and reached the summit without any trouble. Actually, coming down was the worst part. We had a celebratory cup of coffee and cake in the local tea shop before the (long) journey home. The views had been quite spectacular - even without reaching the top. Noel is in Hetty's year at school but in the other class. It was interesting to see how they interacted with each other - they actually got on very well together. In fact, all the children got on well together.

April, and Easter, saw us on another holiday. This time to Cornwall for 2 weeks. We weren't quite sure why we were going for 2 weeks really. I think it had something to do with the fact that we were thinking of going to the Azores or perhaps the Canaries where 2 weeks would be more appropriate in April. When we realised that it would be rather too much money to go to these glamourous places that we settled on Cornwall and hired an appartment in a barn conversion by Cape Cornwall. In the end we were glad of the 2 weeks and had a simply fantastic time. The weather was brilliant, we had the most beautiful view from our living room across a golf course to the sea and were able to watch the sun set into the sea each evening. The apartment's perks included the use of an indoor heated swimming pool. The girl's simply loved it and we had to go swimming twice a day for the whole 2 weeks - once before breakfast and then as soon as we got back from wherever we had been (I think we did miss a couple of sessions!). It was a perfect pool - not too big, not too small and a constant 4ft 6in deep. Emily learnt to swim while we were there and the rest of us swam more than we'd ever swum before. We had the pool to ourselves most of the time too. We did lots of walking along the coast and bumped into our next door neighbours - we did know they were going to be in the area but it was still a coincidence. We walked around to Lands End and visited the Theme Park which actually isn't that bad. I had visions of Disneyland but it is quite small and unobtrusive really. We flew across to the Isles of Scilly in an 8 seater plane which was great fun. We all had to be weighed before the flight and were allocated which seat we should sit in to balance the plane - Carrie had to sit in a seat all by herself!!! - ha, ha, ha only kidding!!! We didn't have long on the island and the weather was a bit rough that day. We hired bikes and toured the ancient burial mounds. We also went out in a boat to see the puffins except there weren't any to see and it was bitterly cold on the water. I really like Cornwall and will be back soon!!

Somewhere during the year we decided it was time to get a bigger home. Prices had started to rise again after the long depression and we found ourselves sitting on a little goldmine - the only trouble was, anything bigger was priced as a large goldmine!! We looked around and didn't really see anything we liked. We dropped into one of the Estate Agents and the whole picture changed. They were very "pro-active" (what a horrible word!) unlike most of the other agents and actually 'phoned us up if something suitable came along. We found our dream home - a 4 bedroom house, nice west facing garden, just refurbished, huge basement - you name it, it had it. And we could afford it. Well, we lost that one!! We got ourselves into a contract race and lost the race due to our buyer's dozy solicitor. That was about £1000 down the drain!! We looked around and found almost our dream home - a 4 bedroom house, just refurbished, huge basement but an east facing garden. Mmmmm, well, it was cheap. OK then. Off we go again..... We lost that one too. The builder seemed to want to sell it to someone else rather than us. That was another £1000 down!! I wondered if the Estate Agent was just a little too pushy and was selling us properties which perhaps we had little chance of buying. We changed agents and, after more anguish, we found our real dream home. No, really, we did. It is a 4 bedroom house, west facing garden, huge basement, lovely big rooms, nice features.... sounds familiar, eh... The trouble was, we had lost our buyer. We didn't seem to have much trouble selling ours so weren't too bothered and, soon, we had another one lined up. The trouble was that they needed to sell their property and this coincided with a world shortage of first time buyers. Well, eventually, they found a buyer and we have a completed chain. Things are bumbling along slowly. We have a perceived damp problem in our basement - perceived by the damp proofing contractors that is - which is being investigated and some other bits and bobs might need looking at. By next years missive we might have some news to tell you all!!

The girls have been doing well at school. Hetty still excels at everything without really trying - I think she must take after me! - while for Emily it is all more of a struggle (wonder who she takes after!!!???). Emily falls into the "average" group in her class which I think makes it all rather more difficult. The teachers cannot possibly spend enough time with all of them - the very slow people get the help they need, the bright ones don't need so much attention and those left in between get left to their own devices where a little encouragement might make all the difference. Emily is now reading quite well and loves maths which is great. She did well in the KS1 tests. Her new teacher is new to local authority work. He used to be a fine artist, then taught it to adults and decided on a career change to teach children. As such, he is fresh and new and has a lot of enthusiasm for the job at the moment. I went to see him at the parents evening and was very impressed by how much work he'd put into the evening and he obviously new each child's strengths and weaknesses. The school seems to have struck some deal with the local cinema as Hetty and Emily have both been to see "Chicken Run" and "Dinosaur" as a school outing. I'm not sure they quite fit into the National Curriculum but they were much enjoyed - and it meant we didn't have to sit through the syrupy sentimentality of the Disney dinosaur film. We did see "Chicken Run" though and enjoyed it. Just to prove that the school isn't completely against teaching, I went with Emily's class to the National Portrait Gallery. It was really nice to see how the children interact in a school situation - Carrie often helps out at the school on Fridays when she doesn't work (perhaps I should rephrase that and say when she doesn't earn money!!) so that she see that quite often. Hetty is still a member of the Reading Gang - they meet about once a month usually - and I've been reading their books. Children's books these days are really good and really complicated. In fact, I'm not really sure what constitutes a child's book anymore. They seem to be adult books except without the sex and violence. I've read the latest Harry Potter, which was really good and quite disturbing at the end - can't wait for the next one! I read a book about Time City which controlled all of time - the trouble was it was wearing out the bit of time it was existing in and everything nearly came to grief - it had some really difficult concepts in it - like Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh I guess children read the books one way and adults read it another.

During the Summer we had the Stoke Newington Festival followed closely by the William Patten School Fair. Hetty has been learning to play the steel drums - which we have to call steel pans these days. She performed at both events which was nice. I was the badge maker again - and again for the Christmas Fair more recently. I think I'm an institution there now, one of the kids asked me if it was my job! - I told him it was!! I wonder if he's going to tell his careers advisor that he wants to be a badge maker when he grows up?? This year the barometer of pop culture, i.e. how many badges I made, has indicated that Britney Spears and S Club 7 are the big movers and shakers - oh dear, there's no hope for pop music again!! The most radical badge I made was for Eminem, a white American rap singer whose songs have to be bleeped for radio play due to the colourful language and dubious subject matter! Don't know what happened to Natalie Imbruglia!!

Our jobs have taken a bit of a back seat - both being busy but the stress of trying to buy a house has overshadowed most of the work related worries. I have had a bit of a problem. My boss was suspended for 5 weeks due to certain allegations made against him by a member of the team. He was exonerated in the end and the staff member left to get a job elsewhere. At the time I supported my boss but he has since been rather unfair to another member of the team and this time I had to support her because I saw it all happening. I'm not sure what is going to happen but something will sooner rather than later or we will all be on our proverbial bikes!! There is a real problem in the country with a shortage of key staff groups. You've probably read about the shortages of nurses but there is also a shortage of radiographers and physicists who treat cancer patients in Radiotherapy departments. The Government is making all the right noises about increasing the number of treatment machines but there is no mention of where the staff to run them is coming from. The situation has become quite ridiculous as the departments are employing agency staff who now earn a substantial premium over the permanent staff. The permanent staff are leaving in droves to become agency staff, not surprisingly, and are then being re-employed back into their original departments and into their original jobs.

In August we were holiday bound again - this time with a purpose. Our friend from Switzerland via Africa and England, Elisabeth, was getting married. She decided to marry Andy in Switzerland - which suited us just fine. We used some of our British Airways airmiles for the flight - so it was worth shopping in Sainsbury's all these years - and Elisabeth organised our hotel accommodation. Telling people one is visiting Switzerland in the Summer and they give a quizzical look. In fact, we arrived during a heatwave and had a great time. We went out about 10 days early to explore - we were staying near Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland. The area is famous for two things: the invention of the meringue and as the site of the Reichenbach Falls where Moriarty despatched Sherlock Holmes into the icy depths (only for him to re-appear having miraculously grabbed onto a convenient twig when Conan Doyle's publisher persuaded him that he should write some more Sherlock Holmes mysteries!!). We hired a car and spent as much time as possible out in the mountains. A ski lift was virtually attached to our hotel and took us right up into the peaks affording spectacular views. We spent a couple of days at high (above about 10000ft) altitude and felt the discomfort of oxygen depletion. I've since read a book about climbing Everest - it's called Into Thin Air and is a cracking read (recommended by Stephen Pollard - thanks) - reading this would put almost anyone off venturing anywhere near a mountain top!! The views from the peaks are so beautiful though. At the top of the Schilthorn there is a revolving restaurant as seen in the Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The view across to the Big Three, the Eiger, the Jungfrau and A. N. Other was stunning. There are many souvenirs(??) available celebrating Bond which we left well alone! The wedding went very well too. It was spread across two days: first a civil service, conducted in English by a very accommodating registrar and then a church service up amongst the mountains. The civil service was followed by a meal in a hotel next to a waterfall and overlooking Brienzersee - one of the lakes straddling Interlaken. We took a funicular railway down to lakeside and took a short boat trip around the lake. The weather was very kind with temperatures in the 30's (that's celcius not the 1930's!!). The church wedding was quite involved: we had to get a cable car down to the valley floor, pick up a coach to take us to the church (a lovely 16th Century building). The service was conducted in High German and immediately translated into perfect English by a Dutch friend (I thought she was English!). Hetty and Emily were 2 of the 4 flower girls - similar to our bridesmaids. After the service and some photographs we re-boarded the coach and were driven up to a glacier view point for more photographs and snacks along a road which only buses were allowed to use. From here it was back to the Hotel, in the coach, for more drinks and eventually dinner. It was a super day but the weather appeared to be changing. The views were much hazier, clouds were gathering and there was an uncomfortable mugginess about. Sure enough, the next day - luckily our last - was wet with low cloud obscuring all the peaks. The drive back to Zurich was quite unpleasant and slow due to the torrential rain and streams of traffic. A great time was had though and the kids want to go back in the winter to see how it all looks clothed in snow.

Even though the year was drawing to a close we still had time to fit in another couple of foreign trips. I managed to swing a conference trip to Madrid in mid-November. We were presenting some work carried out at the Harley Street Clinic. Cleverly, I got my colleague to give the presentation while I just went along to give "moral" support. Carrie and the kids came along as well. Hetty and Emily were quite impressed because it meant they missed out on a couple of days of school. I did go to some of the conference but also spent hours in the art galleries right by the Hotel. The Prado houses the classics - especially Spanish masters. It's too big to see in one go, which is all we had time for, so we must have missed some cracking things. I went to the Thyssen museum while the girls went off to the zoo. This is a couples' private collection spanning art from about the 12th Century right up to the most modern works from today. It's just about the right size and laid out chronologically which makes it very interesting to relate art from different periods - I'm sure I saw works which looked as if they could have been done in the 19th/early 20th Centuries but which were actually 15th and 16th Century. It only goes to prove that there is nothing really new in this world!! Carrie had agreed to go on a shopping trip to New York at the beginning of December with some of her work colleagues. I had to stay behind and baby sit - reckon I earned a few brownie points there though!! I think she had a great time although I don't think sleeping came into the equation much - what with the time difference, fitting in Broadway shows, meals, trips around the harbour, the Empire State Building, etc, etc not to mention the shopping!!

I mentioned last year that Hetty and Emily had joined a dance class run by Yvonne, the practise manager at Carrie's work. Well, Carrie joined it too in the end. Yvonne had great plans for this year with all the hard work culminating in a Christmas show. They all worked incredibly hard. There was a show in the Summer, which Carrie didn't dance at as she hadn't been dancing long enough, at the Shoreditch Festival. It was run like an old Music Hall show with some very odd turns. There used to be a set of twins who were married to another set of twins who trod the Music Hall boards. There claim to fame was the Egyptian Sand Dance. Well, they are still treading the boards except, unfortunately, one of the women has died and the remaining three are well into their 70's!! They still did the Sand dance although their hips and legs looked a bit worse for wear. They also kept shouting out "oggy oggy oggy" - it was slightly amusing once and highly irritating after that. The show was great fun though and Hetty and Emily enjoyed the stardom. Around that time they all went up to the NEC in birmingham to dance for a World Record: the most people dancing a set routine - or something like that. They were all prepared like a military campaign and apparently came back with 3 World Records. For the last couple of months there has been a lot of extra work being put into the christmas show which was to be put on in the Theatre attached to Queen Mary and Westfield College in Mile End.