A poorly dog

There’s no sight as sad as a poorly dog – and Gravel is not very well at the moment.

It started last Saturday. After his walk across the fens, he was licking his right back paw. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, but it was clearly bothering him even though it looked fine.

He was OK on Sunday; in fact he had a really good run. On the way back, he seemed to find a second wind and disappeared into a patch of corn that the farmer has left as cover for pheasants. He was in there for about 15 minutes while Holly and I stood waiting like a couple of spare parts.

I knew he was in there because I could see all the way round it and knew he hadn’t run out; also a pheasant would rise in alarm every minute or so and I’d catch a glimpse of Gravel’s head popping up from time to time.

Gravel in the garden
chasing a ball.

Eventually he came back and went back on his lead at the big hedge as good as gold. I thought his foot was fine, but that night we spotted that he was licking it again and it was a little raw between a couple of toes. Margaret put some Savlon on, but next day it has swollen substantially and she took him to the vet.

The vet wasn’t able to see anything, but put Gravs on antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs and told us to come back on Friday. Poor thing felt very sorry for himself and he’s been struggling with one of those high head collars which stop him licking it, except that I’ve discovered he’s able to stretch his leg out, curl around and give it a good lick. He’s been bashing it into the furniture all week.

Margaret went back today and the vet said the infection still hadn’t cleared. She can’t see anything (thorn or cut) but replaced his collar and told us to keep up with the tablets and she’d see him again on Monday. If it’s not better then, she’s suggested keeping him in and examining him under a general anaesthetic. Fingers crossed that he makes a recovery over the weekend.


Update: Gravel was at the vets today (30.1.12) and didn't need to be anaesthetised for further investigation. His paw is still swollen, but less so - hopefully, he'll just get better. He still has a head collar for night time.

A day at the Straw Bear

We always have a little chat in the office on Friday afternoon about what we’re up to at the weekend. I think, because I live in the country and can often regale people with tales of long walks, gardening or parties (and perhaps because I embellish a tale), I’m often the star turn. So the other weekend, the conversation went along the lines of:

Davina (who always leads the questioning): What are you up to at the weekend Eric?

Me: It’s Whittlesey Straw Bear this weekend; I’ve been looking forward to that.

Davina: What’s Whittlesey Straw Bear?

Now the Rayner family has been enjoying Straw Bear for many years. The children have been terrified in turn by Nodger (the snapping wooden horse) and he’s also stolen my hat a few times as well as Hannah’s once; I’ve been a fire-eating juggler’s stooge and we’ve been frozen stiff and soaked through many times. We know all about Straw Bear and have watched it grow from a quirky little tradition into quite a substantial folk dance festival, but try to explain it to someone who has no idea about it and it proves quite hard.

Me: well, a chap is covered in straw (thatched basically), then he’s paraded around town from pub to pub followed by a plough and Morris dancers; there’s a church service to bless the plough on Sunday (we won’t go to that) and then they burn the straw.

Davina: With the man still inside?

Me: No, even in the Fens, we draw the line at human sacrifice. But it is basically a fertility ritual and an excuse to drink lots of beer.

Lawrie liked the sound of the drinking, but no-one really got it. I sent Davina some pictures and a video of the Witchmen, but that confused her even more. Why did the men have black faces and sunglasses? Isn’t it racist? Why were there scary-looking women banging big drums?

I’m quite pleased that no-one got it; the last thing we need is hordes of Londoners heading to Whittlesey every January and, to be honest with you, Straw Bear is already changing for the worse. We’ve been going on and off for 25 years. Time was when it was a very small event, very much of the town. When I edited the Peterborough Standard, I sent Steve Henry and Chris Lowndes to cover it. Steve was the perfect choice for a pub crawl (having great capacity for drinking beer) and he followed the Bear from pub to pub. Unfortunately the Bear didn’t hold his ale as well as Steve and ended up lying flat out in the square under the buttercross. Chris Lowndes took the picture and the scoop was Straw Bear gets plastered. Of course, we got the Bear’s side of the story. His spokesman (yes, the Bear had a spokesman) said he was suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration after parading around town on a very warm (January) day and had briefly fainted before being revived.

We knew he’d got pissed (same as every year) and needed a snooze before being carried home. We didn’t run the story. I didn’t think “man gets blind drunk at beer festival” was much of a story and we all kind of admired his non-PC actions, even before PC was invented as a term.

Back in the day, the event was much smaller. It started at the Ivy Leaf and paraded through town to the square where there was dancing before everyone broke up and went to different pubs. The Bear would visit a circuit of pubs – George, Bricklayers, New Crown, Old Crown, Hero of Aliwal, Boat, Falcon – dancing at each and ending up back in the square late afternoon. After that, everyone was too cold to mess around outside, so they all went back in the pubs.

You could turn up a half ten and there would be a line of people along the route, but plenty of gaps. The Morris and Molly dancers were traditional troupes.

The first sign of change and rising popularity came when other acts started arriving – jugglers, fire-eaters, street theatre, but they were good fun and very welcome. Then the Germans discovered Straw Bear. I think a twinning party had arrived and had such a good time, they went back to Germany and started their own Straw Bear society. I’m sure the drinking had a lot to do with it. Anyway, the Germans loved it so much, they were back the next year with their own Straw Bears and we were very happy to have them.

Pig Dyke Molly

Soon there were junior bears, the primary schools started dance troupes and new troupes started arriving. Some, like Pig Dyke Molly were almost all women and were painted and dressed very creatively like glam rock bands. Pig Dyke dress in black and white and have black and white painted faces, they have a good band which includes a tuba so they create a terrific sound and they also have other amusements such as puppets and a Nodger of their own. Their dances are creative and non-traditional. Pig Dyke became a favourite, always one to watch out for.

Each year, the crowds have grown and the event has become a bit more commercialised. Elgoods brought out a special beer, called Straw Beer, and then others (including Oakham Ales) did the same. Pubs started getting in barrels and having their own mini beer festivals and the bands of dancers grew less and less traditional. There was Gog Magog, with colourful faces and jester outfits; Kettering Witchmen with black faces, sunglasses and a band of drummers that really get a beat going. The mix of new and traditional was not (and is not) a problem. Traditional dances must have been new at some time and every generation must put their own spin on things.

I wouldn’t want Straw Bear to be trapped in amber, but (perhaps it’s an age thing) I wouldn’t want it to change too much more. We can just about accommodate the Appalachian step dancers, but we don’t want Diversity (I don’t think). Tom and I decided that this year, the standard of some of the teams was just awful and we agreed that things always started to go a bit wrong when you got women involved. Morris dancing is a male pursuit and it is very much about drinking. Men tend to be happier when things stay the same – we know what to expect and whether we like it or not. In short we’re traditionalists. Women, on the other hand, are always seeking to change things. Instead of traditionalists, they are fashionistas.

You can see this at home. I’m happy with the layout of the furniture in the lounge, but Margaret always wants to move it around. And it’s not just the lounge, sometimes she wants to move the dining room into the office. Get women involved in Morris dancing, worse still, let them dance and pretty soon you’ve a new costume, new dance (with none of those crude gestures), there’s a children’s section and you’re meeting in the leisure centre not the Rose & Crown.

Of course, I exaggerate, but there were some pretty poor dancers this year, including one troupe that did a variation on a broom dance with Vileda brushes just bought from Tesco.

Straw Bear will remain one of the red letter days in my calendar – a lot of the changes have been for the better and it’s a terrific event. Just don’t tell too many people about it.

Gog Magog Molly - what happens when
women get involved

Proper blokes Morris dancing

Tom goes up the Shard

My son Tom, who works for Associated Press, the US agency, went close to the top of the Shard yesterday. When it's finished, the Shard will be the tallest building in Europe. It's based in Southwark, just south of London Bridge and has been growing steadily for a couple of years. It is visible (as you might expect) from all around London.


I quite like tall buildings, so don't mind it in principle, but there are a growing number in London and we do need to be careful not to overdo it. The Shard stands as a sentinel on the south bank, forming something of a counterpoint to the high buildings in the City to the north.


Here are Tom's pictures:

View across the Thames to St Paul's cathedral from the 65th floor of the Shard.

This would be an office with a view. Looking north
to the City from the Shard.

Dog walking, fitness training and Muntjac spotting

Gravel, our much-loved Springer Spaniel has become somewhat porky. If he was human, he might get away with being described as cuddly, but he would definitely be a candidate for WeightWatchers. Why has his waist expanded? It’s partly overfeeding (not massively, but steadily) and partly lack of exercise. Gravel’s recall isn’t very good and, if he picks up a scent, then all senses (especially hearing) are secondary to the nose.

He has been known to disappear for half an hour and he has also been known to raid a flock of chickens. Trying to catch a Springer Spaniel with a chicken in his mouth with an angry farmer’s wife at your side is not an experience I want to repeat. Margaret, after a couple of bad experiences, won’t allow him off at all.

So Gravel, an animal designed to run for hours, has not been able to run very far at all. Even with his extending lead extended by a lunge line, he’s not had much freedom. What’s worse, this year, Margaret has suffered a string of injuries that have prevented her walking the dogs. First she broke her arm, then she broke her toe and then she got a sore Achilles tendon and foot. Not a great combination – a greedy Spaniel with nowhere to run.

Over Christmas, everyone agreed he was too fat, so I’ve embarked upon a dog diet and fitness training regime as often as possible. Margaret is in charge of cutting down on the dinner and reducing the treats and I’ll give them a good walk whenever I can.

I’ve started going up the Whittlesey Road to the cemetery, through the corner, around Medicine Pond and along the field edge, though a hedge and out onto the fen. It is a public footpath, but very little used and there’s not a lot of trouble that Gravel can get into (I hope!); and so far he hasn’t. Instead of making a circuit and coming back along Great Knarr Fen Road and the old A47, I’ve taken to walking out into the fen but turning back about 150 metres short of the road and retracing my steps across the field. This gives the dogs a good hour off their leads and possibly a 10-mile run in total.

The first time I took him, it was apparent how unfit he’d become; he soon stopped running and started lolloping, but now he manages to keep a good pace going right through the walk. He doesn’t cover as much ground as Holly, but he does clock up the distance.

I’m not sure why he’s so much better off lead. He is older, of course, and perhaps not quite as manic as he used to be; also Holly’s recall is very good and perhaps he’s influenced by or learned from her? He’s seen her off lead and not run away, he’s worked out that she gets the privilege because she is good and comes back, she might distract his attention from chasing scents or the pack instinct may mean that he stays a bit closer. 

Anyway, it’s great that he can go off lead and it has clearly made a difference. Gravel has a much better defined waistline; his belly has shrunk and he’s definitely on the right track. It’s also great to see to two dogs running. There is such joy in their run, such pleasure that it makes you feel good watching them. Tom came with me at the weekend and it was nicefor me to have some non-doggy company. He took these pictures of Gravel and Holly in the long grass where there are so many tempting smells and where they love to run at the start of our walk.

It was a nice cold day on Sunday, but no biting wind and some cloud cover meant that the frost from the night disappeared quite quickly, although the ground was hard and not muddy underfoot. On my last few walks, I’ve seen muntjac deer, an owl, hares and kestrels as well as the usual pigeons, rooks, jackdaws and a host of skylarks which the dogs send shooting up into the air as they run through the grass. I was hoping we’d see some muntjac on Sunday and at first I thought we’d be unlucky. But as we got near a triangle of field that’s been left to grass, I saw a large male deer standing looking at me. I told Tom and he soon saw a couple more. As we approached, they decided to put some distance between us and a whole lot more (10 in all) headed away across the field in the direction of the old A47. I was a bit worried that the dogs might pick up their scent and because they were quite hard-faced they might have even caught sight of them – then the chase would have been on. A Spaniel wouldn’t catch a fit muntjac, but it might run a long way before it realised.

View south across the fens on our walk from Thorney to Great Knarr Fen Road.

Anyway, as luck would have it, neither dog went near where the deer had been and we were upwind of them, so they didn’t catch any air-scent. The small herd watched us for a while from across the field and then cautiously worked their way round the field edge to cross in front of us, leap the wide dyke like Wildebeest in a wildlife documentary and carry on towards Thorney Dyke. I read recently that there were about 30,000 muntjac deer living wild in eastern England. It is not a species that’s native to Britain …

This is from Wikipedia:

The Reeves' Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi; Chinese) is a muntjac species found widely in south eastern China (Gansu to Yunnan) and in Taiwan. They have also been introduced in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (south England the Midlands, and east Wales) and Ireland by 2008. It feeds on herbs, blossoms, succulent shoots, grasses and nuts, and was also reported to eat trees. It takes its name from John Reeves, who was appointed Assistant Inspector of Tea for the British East India Company in 1812.

This muntjac grows to 0.5m high at the shoulder, 0.95 m (37 inches) in length, and weighs between 10 and 18 kg (22-40 pounds) when fully grown. It is dog-like in appearance but has striped markings on its face. The male has short antlers, usually four inches or less. The Taiwanese subspecies (M. r. micrurus), commonly known as the Formosan Reeves' Muntjac, is relatively dark compared to the other subspecies.

The Reeves' Muntjac is also called the barking deer, known for its distinctive bark, though this name is also used for the other species of muntjacs.

An unspecified species of muntjac was introduced to the grounds of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire in the nineteenth century by the then Duke of Bedford. While a small number are reported as escaping, it is extremely unlikely that they are the source of the current UK population. Larger numbers of muntjac escaped from Whipsnade Zoo, and they are the more likely ancestors, in addition to other releases.

Since the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, it has been illegal to release the species except where already established. Reeves' Muntjac colonies exist throughout England south of Derbyshire, and the population continues to grow. Small groupings of muntjacs have been seen in large urban parks in the London, cemeteries, parks and schools (Crosfields School) in the Reading area, the Headington Hill area outside of Oxford, Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Epping Forest in Essex, and in Warwickshire and Birmingham.

Garden is blooming early

The weather has been unseasonably warm this winter and, although we’ve had some hard frosts (down to -3.5 deg C this morning), we’ve had very few of them so far and December was one of the warmest on record. We’ve not yet had a period of sustained hard frosts night after night, so I think the tender plants which would normally have been killed off, have managed to recover and keep going.

This has resulted in some odd plants in flower. I counted 11 yesterday, including some that should really be sheltering underground for a few months yet. I’m sure we’ll get a cold snap and there will be some plants caught out. I don’t know what this will mean to them later on.

These are the flowers I have:

Geranium – this certainly shouldn’t be alive, yet alone in flower. A few years back I thought I might get a geranium to stay in flower until Christmas, but a sharp frost took them all out. Not so these; I’m now wondering if they will keep going through winter into spring. I took most of the bedding geraniums out in late October, but there was a group of plants in a large terracotta pot that were looking very fine, so I left them in. They have been a little burned and the foliage has changed colour and hardened up, but there are still small red flowers on all of the plants. If I’d had a greenhouse, I think all my geraniums could have been overwintered under glass this year.

Lobelia – this is the most surprising to me. It has been a very good year for lobelia and I’m not sure if these are new varieties or whether it was just good growing conditions. The plants seemed to flower for a much sustained period. Normally, there’s a flush of flowers and then the plants stop flowering and dies back. What I’ve done previously is to cut away the dead flowers and the plant would then have a second growth spurt and a second flush of flowers. This year, the lobelia has flowered without pause and I’ve also had plants self-seeding in lots of different locations, including cracks in the patio. One lobelia (in the same pot as the geraniums) had defied the frost and is continuing to flower. It’s not a lush plant that you’d expect to see during the summer, but it has managed to keep going and it does have blue flowers on right now.

Honeysuckle – I have an evergreen variety growing up the fence by the patio. It does flower late and you do get the odd flower in winter during a mild spell. This year, the leaves are looking very lush, it’s made some significant winter growth and there are lots of flowers.

Vinca (periwinkle) – I have a less-vigorous, variegated variety under the conifer trees by the patio and this has had two or three small blue flowers on the plants right through December. They were looking very healthy and pretty this weekend. I think the vinca normally flowers in early spring.

Snowdrop – not unusual to see snowdrops flower in January and we have clumps coming up all over the garden. I was taken by one small clump, which was a month ahead of all the others. Flowers were showing before Christmas and, this weekend; it was in full bloom with the green and white flowers fully open. When you look at them closely snowdrops are a lovely flower with a complex petal arrangement and intricate markings. It’s a shame they hang their heads and we can’t more easily admire their flowers.

Primula – I’d expect to have some primulas out and so I have. They would be much better if Holly hadn’t decided to use my biggest patch of them as her preferred toilet area! Those I have in boxes at the bottom of the garden only have one or two in flower, but they’ve used the mild weather to make good growth and there are big flower buds formed on all plants. Unless we get a spell of very cold weather, they will be a real show in a few weeks’ time.

Hellebore – this is, of course, called the Lenten Rose but my examples are always out before Lent. Last summer’s foliage has now either died back or been cut away and the flower stems are shooting up out of the ground most enthusiastically. I have quite a lot of hellebores, almost all self-seeded from one plant, but we have a nice range of colours from creamy green to pink. Some of the colours available on plants I’ve seen in the nursery this autumn are quite spectacular, but they do tend to be rather expensive.

Pansy – winter pansies are about the one plant (apart from snowdrops) which I would expect to see. They’ve been more damaged by wind breaking them than by cold this winter and we’ve had a decent show of colour from all the pots. I bought a few boxes of a purple and mauve variety – quite unusual and very showy. They should keep going well into early summer.

Crocus – Just one creamy white crocus with a beautiful deep orange stamen was in bloom this weekend. Some afternoon sun on Sunday saw it open up. There are others not far behind, but this is the first.

Cyclamen – these are coming to an end now having been in flower for a couple of months.

Delphinium – not strictly in flower, but it is in bud. It’s a new plant, grown from seed in late summer. Some of its siblings managed to bloom in the late autumn, but this clearly thinks it is spring and has made good growth and a healthy flower spike bud. I’m pretty sure it won’t flower (it must get burned by the frost) but you never know.

Catkins – they are sort of flowers and the corkscrew hazel is covered with them. I am planning to cut the tree back quite drastically this winter so they will be thinned out by me. We had a big crop of hazelnuts on it last autumn. Gravel was picking them out of the border and cracking the shells in his teeth to get to the nuts, which were quite nice. My sister Margaret picked up a lot which fell into her garden and she used them in a stuffing which she brought round on Christmas day.

Last, but not least, I should mention the hybrid tea rose in Margaret’s garden. It’s a very vigorous pink variety and has been carrying a decent number of flowers right through the winter.

After two really hard winters, I’m quite pleased to have had it easy so far. We’ll probably have the coldest February on record … that would teach all these ‘early birds’.

Resolutions for 2012

The beginning of the year is a good time to set out what we want to achieve during the year. I have this daft idea that, if I write them down and share them with others, they will be easier to achieve.

Expect progress reports during the course of 2012 …

I will lose weight: I guess this is on the list of 75 per cent of people’s new year resolutions. I gained a stone (14 lbs) every seven years between the ages of 21 and 49 and I’ve been chugging along at 15 st (210 lbs/95.5 kg) since then. I don’t feel bad, but truth is that it’s a bit too heavy and I know that I eat far too many biscuits and far too much chocolate, crisps, nuts and alcohol.

Losing weight will entail cutting down on the chocolate (cutting it out altogether if the plan doesn’t work), eating no salted peanuts and only the odd biscuit. I will eat more fruit and eat only bread that I’ve made myself. I’ve been making bread from spelt flour to a recipe dating back to the Romans. It’s very tasty, gluten free and is a wholemeal product so it fills you up for longer and is better for your digestion.

I will have at least three drink-free days per week and I’ll aim to make it four most weeks. I’ve got into the habit of having a glass of wine, a gin and tonic (or two) every day and it is a habit. I will try to drink to socialise and not just for the sake of having a drink.

I will exercise more. Time is always against me, but walking is the key to improving fitness and I’ll try to walk from Victoria to King’s Cross at least three times per week. It’s hard in the morning because I’m often pushed for time. However, I’ll do my best and also strive to give the dogs a couple of good four milers at the weekend. I’ve been walking them across the fen to Great Knarr Fen Road and back the same way. That means Gravel has maximum time off lead and a really good run. It seems to have paid dividends – Margaret and I can see a difference with his doggy waistline even after just a few weeks.

I will buy a motorcycle – not sure which one or how much I will spend, but I will get another modern bike. I will also strive to get the two classics back on the road this year. I just need to make more time. I’ve really missed having a modern bike. The classics are a good idea, but they’re more for tinkering with than for riding. I wish I hadn’t sold the GS, but then I wish that I hadn’t sold every bike I’ve ever owned. You should never sell a motorcycle; stick it in the back of the garage if you’re not using it. They always come in sometime and the Lambretta SX200 I had when I was 16 would now be worth about four grand! I’d really like a BMW R1200ST, but we’ll have to see how the bonus pans out. I’m watching this month’s (and the year’s) figures very carefully.

I will get on top of work. It has been a really hard year. There have been so many distractions and so many people leaving that we seem to have been doing more fire-fighting than properly planned campaigns. I think we’re now getting a really good team together and a few extra hands, so I really hope this year will be more structured and I’ll be able to do the role I am supposed to be doing. I’ve not got that many more years until I retire and I’d like to enjoy the last few and feel that I’ve really achieved some things.

I will be nicer to people in London. It isn’t easy because London really does bring out the worst in you. I will try not to push people on the Tube and I will try not to kick pull-along cases. I pushed a nun last year, not hard, just enough to get her out of the way. Mind you, she had just come out of the station entrance stopped dead and was talking on her mobile phone (probably lost and asking directions, poor soul).

I will enjoy my garden. We have worked hard in the garden this year and we’ve spent a good £4-5K on summerhouse, decking, sets, bricks, pots, furniture! 2012 is the year we get payback – we can sit and enjoy it. Here’s hoping for a nice summer!

I will see more of my family. Family history work has also taught me to appreciate my current family more. We will visit the children in London; I see them regularly and often stay over, but Margaret hasn’t been to Tom’s since he got the house straight and she’s never been to Max’s new flat. I also want to visit my surviving aunts – Aunt Pam, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Joyce – and talk to them about my mother and father. It would be good to record that conversation and perhaps get Tom in tow, so that he could video it. How amazing would it be to have had some video of my dad, let alone grandparents or great grandparents?

Highlights of 2011

Happy New Year – it’s 2012. I thought it would be a useful to have a report of 2011 and so these are the main events.

Max started the year dreading the return to Leicester university accommodation. The apartment he’d rented really was awful. He had his own room, but shared kitchen and bathroom with around 12 others – a couple of Indian guys and the rest Chinese. Culturally, it was something of a challenge, but the main problem was hygiene. The Chinese just had no standards – the kitchen was filthy and smelly and the fridge was appalling.

Anyway Max had had enough and I can’t say I blamed him. We decided that he should live at home and travel in by car when he needed to. He was placed at Syston for a short while after Christmas and then had a week at uni’ before his final placement which he managed to move to Casterton, which is just north of Stamford on the old A1. The commuting worked out OK despite the harsh winter weather and Max didn’t miss any placement or lecture time. Casterton turned out to be a really good placement, with a committed and inspiring mentor who became a good friend to Max. He thrived there and had loads of encouragement. Max was applying for jobs in London so that he could move down there later in the year to be with Inna. It proved harder than expected to find a place and the first half dozen applications didn’t win an interview. Eventually, he got an interview at St Joseph’s, a Roman Catholic school in West Norwood, south London, and was offered the job.

The winter of 2010/11 was the harshest on record in some respects and the worst since 1963 in others. I remember 1963 quite well; in Manchester Road all the pipes froze and we had no water for several weeks, there was ice on the inside of the windows and lots of people lost their gutters when heavy snow sliding down roofs tore then off. Most of the spouts on the houses near us were cast iron and would have been around 80 years old. My dad had a busy time as a plumber, unfreezing pipes, fixing bursts and putting up new gutters and spouts. I was coming up to 10 and spent quite a lot of the holidays and weekends standing on the bottom of a ladder while dad was up at the eaves. 2011 might have been a worse winter, but in a modern house with central heating and deeper, better insulated pipes, it didn’t seem so bad. Driving was a little more difficult with minor roads being sheet ice for several weeks. It had seemed a novelty when we got the first snow at the beginning of December, then we were all looking forward to a white Christmas, which came and went. By the time the weather improved and a thaw came (in late January), everyone was heartily sick of the cold. I also lost my agave and all the dahlias in the garden.

My trains were pretty reliable, which was good, but the cold did have other effects. The hardest thing was walking on the pavements, which were sheet ice in many places until late in the month. I wore my mountain boots for a good part of December and January, but I did take a real tumble on the ice along the top road at Toneham when walking the dogs. Fortunately there was no damage, apart from a bruised back. Margaret was not so lucky; she fell on Church Street and fractured her arm (see footnote).  It wasn’t a good start to the year and it wasn’t a good year for Margaret health-wise. She has had a problem of one kind or another right through the year. We’ve been to casualty three times – fractured arm, stomach pain and broken toe (when she stepped off the new decking and fell). She’s also had issues with reflux and Achilles tendon and a dreadful cold running since early December.

That's Val Thorens down there (the grey bit in the centre) with no snow lower down the valley.
The high mountain on the horizon is Mont Blanc

Sam at a cafe next to the nursery slopes in Val Thorens

With such a bad winter, it was appropriate that I should try skiing for the first time. I’ve wanted to have a go for a while, but Margaret is not keen and so when Sam suggested I went with him, I didn’t need much persuasion. He normally goes with Lucy, but they’d been with Tom and Hannah before Christmas and Lucy wasn’t able to go again as she’d arranged to go to Sweden with a friend and was running out of holiday. We were going quite late, so Sam chose Val Thorens, which is at 9,000ft, so you’re pretty certain of snow. I had planned to get really fit and lose a bit of weight, but my regime was hit by a really bad cold and cough and I didn’t get the exercise I wanted to. My fitness wasn’t helped by Val Thorens being so high and the air a bit thinner, but it was technique, rather than fitness which proved a struggle. I didn’t move out of the bottom group in ski school and I became really concerned about falling over – not because it hurt but because I found it so difficult to get up again. I started to get control of the snowplough after a couple of days and some of the slopes which seemed really scary were starting to become quite ordinary. I never went above blue, but the ski instructor said the people who graded the runs in Val Thorens had graded lots of reds as blues.

With me changing my workplace from Howden to London, I have found that we’ve too many cars and they’re somewhat over-specified. My mileage has reduced by more than half and I’d bought a big car that would be comfortable for long journeys; now all I do is go back and to Peterborough Station. We decided to sell the Mercedes and make do just with the BMW estate. I’d never really liked the Merc; we bought it from Chris Coakley and he’d got an Evo suspension package fitted which meant the ride was hard as iron; also I never really took to the electronically controlled gear-change. Anyway, I put it on Autotrader at £2,500 and we were inundated with calls – all from dealers and all Asian. I guess this is a model that’s in demand. One guy rang me, drove up from London and paid cash. I was worried to death in case I had an envelope full of dodgy £50 notes. I was very relieved when the bank took them without blinking.

Big news with Tom and Hannah was a new job for Hannah (at the Financial Services Authority, the industry regulator) and a new home. They’ve moved out of rented accommodation in Bow to a ground-floor flat in a large house in Shepherd’s Hill, Highgate. It means they’ve got their own place, it’s a much nicer area and they also have an extra bedroom. Tom has worked really hard on the place – painting the whole house, drilling walls, putting up shelves, laying tiles for a little patio. He’s got very good at unblocking drains and all the other little household jobs. I stay with them quite often, especially during the bike racing season when I can catch all the racing on his Sky+.

Max qualified in the early summer and was able to get a two-bed flat in Balham, which is handy for Inna’s job (Victoria) and also means he can walk to work; although it is a three-mile walk. It’s a really nice flat, purpose built and very well fitted out. You certainly get a lot more for your money south of the river. I’ve stayed over a few times and Balham to Victoria is only a couple of stops on the overground. It would be quite a handy flat for me as well!

View of the garden with the new summerhouse in the far corner.

This has been a really busy year for us in the garden, but we have completely transformed the look of the place. Where the old den used to be, we now have compost bins, a wood store and work area (all neatly fenced off), we’ve also erected a summerhouse and built a decking area in front of it; and flagged an area around the washing line.

View from the decking looking towards the house. There's a little dog
watching me from the bottom patio.

I think we’ve used the garden and sat outside more than we ever have before – mind you G&T consumption has risen in accordance. It’s been good that everyone has been able to help – Margaret with painting and chopping up conifers; Max with screwing and painting; Tom with tree felling and Sam with some lawn levelling, patching and seeding. I’ve also planted blackcurrant bushes, loganberries, a redcurrant bush and two gooseberry bushes. The blackcurrants were in early enough to bear a small crop and we just about had enough for Margaret to make four jars of jam.

Summerhouse and field border. We've levelled, reseeded
and edged the lawn with blocks. I've also inset
flags so we can stand pots for extra summer
and winter colour. 

Summerhouse and decking. The decking is fixed to a
wooden frame with brickwork on two sides for
decoration. Animals can shelter under the decking
and there's a hedgehog refuge under
the summerhouse.

Footnote: Margaret disputes this. She says that she slipped on ice and broke an arm some years back, while she was still working at Moore Stephens. I think that maybe both our memories are playing up. When I think about it carefully, she didn't break the arm this year; it would have been 2010. We certainly had Gravel and so she would not have been working, but we didn't have Holly (which, of course, we did this year).  Anyway, that's one problem crossed off the list. I think I must have confused the dates and got my cold winters mixed up.