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.