Christmas 2023

It's been a long break since I last did one of these, but I am late with Christmas cards this year after "family issues" and falling ill with the lurge, so here goes. This Blogger format is not a good one for putting photos in. I had intended to put more of the everyday in. You will have to do with links to the intermittent and scattered contemporaneous blogs below.

This photo is from a Christmas Party in 2022 organised by our Ukrainian guest Nataliia - I put on a "magic" show. The "magic" was Mobius strips and flexagons. Some people were fascinated and I am sure the kids were just baffled. I had hours and hours of absorbing pseudo-creativity preparing the paper strips. 

  

In February I went to Valencia when Rowena had a wisdom tooth out. Any excuse for a a few walks though. Less happily I had a phone call with the news that Mum had a heart attack and was in hospital. My long-suffering (and I mean: he's a bloody hero) brother Owen then provided full-time care for Dad, and then both of them for a few weeks at my parents' flat. I did a mere week, but living quite a long way away*, I cannot frequently help. 

In April, over the Easter weekend, a trip to the Isle of Wight with Penny and Clara. I did a bike ride from Bristol to Bournemouth just beforehand.

May marked the start of my 10th year of retirement! In 2014 I saw it as "a gift of time". Well, I have done quite a lot I think: several long walking trips; finished the Munros; four house clearances; a programming development project now in its 5th year that has received no commercial or academic interest beyond nice words of encouragement. I haven't done much this year, but I basically need to pack it up and put it in the public domain or it will become my permanent Sudoku puzzle.

Our street had a Coronation street-party, less than a year after the Platinum Jubilee party. Very Groundhog Day really. 

In June Penny and I marked 25 years of marriage by a trip to our favourite location: the stretch of coast between Robin Hoods's bay and Ravenstor. Fabulous weather, wild flowers and walks on the beach.

I took members of Nataliia's Ukraine scouting group on a day walk around Hebden Bridge. An old school friend, Jon Owen, joined me for a chat at our lunch break.

In July, a 3 week return to Iceland (links to blog) to trek in the lesser-visited far Northwest, and the classic Laugavaur trek. The former had abundant orchids and other interesting flora, the latter a march through fields of ash!

yes, the hat looks daft

An unexpected bonus was the Litli-Hrutur eruption that began about two days after I arrived, Rowena flew out from Spain to join me on a trek to see it live. While I was away, Nataliia and Masha moved out to a flat nearby, with Masha's older brother joining them.

Rowena returned to Manchester from Valencia University, graduating with a Masters in translation, but left again in August to take up a full time job in Madrid. So the house was quiet again once more.

In September, I unwittingly selected "the hottest week of the year" to walk The Ridgeway  (links to blog)  I thought I had set myself a moderately challenging agenda of daily distance, but with several successive days officially exceeding 30C when I was walking on unshaded lanes, this was little short of madness. 

Penny reached her 60th birthday in September, and the four of us went to the South of France, staying in Maresille, Avignon & Menton. Once again, unseasonably high temperatures made this something of a daily challenge to reach spectacular sights like Pont Du Gare, Canalaques, and Grand Monte on the French/Italian border. Penny, Clara and I travelled all the way there & back by train.

The Roman Aqueduct at Pont Du Gare

I took a stopover in London on the way back to see New Scientist Live at Olympia, taking in a view of the nearby Thames Barrier for the first time.

In November, partly to make up for the Ridgeway disappointment, and inspired by a short visit to Whitby in October, I took a few days walking "The Jurassic Coast" of Devon & Dorset, as recorded in my cakewalks blog

Masha & Nataliia, came for dinner on 2nd December, where Masha enthusiastically decorated our Christmas tree and declared my home-made trifle "the best trifle I have ever eaten". 

Our usual pre-Christmas treat of a visit to London included taking my Mum and Dad to lunch on Mum's 89th birthday. 

Then a visit to Tate Moderns to see "Infinity Rooms". As good as they were, the plurality implied by the title, only reached the minimum quantity to qualify, no more. A pity because they were rather impressive and there was room in the vast space for at least two more. A second immersive experience that had several more rooms, was The War of The Worlds. Set in a Victorian London under attack by invaders intent on destroying everything, it was hard not to think of current Earthly World events.

Gardening and jam making:

For the last several years I have grown potatoes and beans. The hot & dry weather and constant watering demanded in 2022 put me off this year. So, of course it was different this year. But I got a decent harvest of blackcurrants, gooseberries and plums: so many that I invited a neighbour to share and made jam with each.  The oddest though was my 2022 discovery of a lone, very productive, damson tree with which I made lots of jam. This year, after repeated visits to this tree I only recovered 700g of fruit, popping the small gleanings of each visit in the freezer. This gave me 3 jars of the fruitiest, jam ever. Plenty of apples too: no russets last year, but some good ones this.

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* I get to see them about every 3 months now, after they chose to move from living just a 5-minutes-walk away from me in December 2019. They will think I somehow harbour a grudge by recording this, but in terms of sheer practicality, moving away was the daftest decision they could have made. I am frustrated that what was obvious to me, seemed less so to everyone else when they announced their move "back" to Hertfordshire without asking my opinion. The reason given (to me) was "the traffic on the roads is too busy in Manchester". 

Penny and I had committed to doing whatever was necessary to provide care for them when M&D moved nearby in December 2016. The frequency of their needs (doctors visits eg: specialist eye appointments) had begun to increase in frequency in the year before they left. This when Dad's ability to drive was already at danger levels, and I had refused to be a passenger in the car for several years. After Mum's heart attack this year and understandable lack of enthusiasm to drive, with Dad's now-awful eyesight he was finally persuaded to give up ownership of the car entirely this year. 

Owen is regularly at Mum & Dad's several times a week taking them to medical appointments of various sorts.  It takes him 45 minutes travel each way from where he lives; quite a burden that.

I have decided that I am going to stop driving once I reach 70, to give me time to get used to the idea and managing without it.