Alan’s Newsletter for
Christmas 2012
Hi friends,
Its
getting on for the end of November so time to write the
annual newsletter to let you all know that we are still around and what
we have been doing. To cover the health aspects first, we are both in good
shape in general, duly taking the pills prescribed by our doctor. However,
about a year ago I found that I had lost my sense of taste (a very serious
matter!), and it turned out that this was due to the thyroid not working. That,
in turn, was caused by a massive dose of iodine coming from a drug I was
prescribed to reduce heart arrhythmia. Doctor’s cure was to prescribe thyroxine, a drug to stimulate thyroid action. On my own
bat I gradually reduced the intake of the iodine-containing drug, and between
the two I eventually got my taste sense back. Beryl has been fine but is now
undergoing cataract operations for both eyes: the right is successfully done
and the left will be done in a week’s time. Both of us have been spending a lot
of time with the dentist, repairing old fillings, building bridges and I even
had a couple of implants. A lot of this is a legacy from the war.
The year started with Beryl’s trip
to Florida to see her sister Pam. This did not get off to a good start as her
flight out of Nice was delayed by a strike of baggage handlers and so she
missed her connection in Paris for her flight to New York. She was put up for
the night in a hotel in Paris but with no baggage (that had gone on to NY) she
was not so enamoured of this as she might have been.
She caught the same flight the next day and arrived Ok with no further
adventures, meeting up with Pam in West Palm Beach.
While she was off in Florida we had a spell of cold weather, unusual for here, with snow which stayed on the ground for a week. This delayed my annual pruning of the mulberry trees. Just after Beryl returned we had a very welcome visit from Shawn Charland and Paul Pulsifer from Ottawa. While here, Paul cooked a superb curry dinner for us and several curry-loving friends – quite an evening!
I bought a smartphone from a new cheap Operator (‘Free’) so as to not
get too far behind with the technology, but have been slow in making use of it
as my life does not revolve around contact all the time with friends. On this
topic, I downloaded and installed the beta of Windows 8 and played with it,
long enough to discover that I disliked it intensely and would not be using it.
I am very happy with Win 7 and will stay with that. Beryl is enjoying her
Kindle e-book reader and we got another one for me later in the year; I can
also read the books on the smartphone which is handy. Around this time, I sent
a DNA sample off to the Genographic Project to follow
up my interest in genealogy and was duly informed several weeks later that my
male ancestry was haplogroup R1b1a2(M269).
(if anyone is interested, put that into Wikipedia and
you learn all about it and where we came from).
In March our family arrived from
Ottawa for a spring break. Of course the girls wanted to use the pool, and did
even though the water was rather chilly. After a week they all left for Ferrara
in my Lexus to visit their old haunts for a week, then back for another week
with us, joined by Francesco’s old friend, Marco, from Barcelona. By this time
the pool water had warmed up a bit. Then, all too soon, it was time to return
to Ottawa. Here, it was Corso time again and Beryl
was pulled in to help with the decoration of the ‘char’ that our quartier was
entering. Happily the day of the procession was sunny and warm.
April was distinguished by a visit
from a childhood friend who I had not seen since the 1940s, Monica, who had
lived with her mother in a flat above us at 5 Earlsfield
Road for several years. She and her husband were visiting friends/relations at
Sainte Maxime, and came over for coffee and cake and
a chat. Apart from this pleasant interlude it was spring cleaning and garden
organizing time, so were quite busy. In May we took a few days off to go to Bordighera, a little Italian seaside resort just across the
border, which has the merit of being only about 2 hours
drive away. It also has a nice street market on Thursdays. It has many fine mansions
built by English residents in the early 19th century with wonderful
tropical gardens, most are now hotels.
June announced summer proper and was
warm, even hot towards the end. Lots of social activity,
gardening (planting flowers), enjoying the pool, etc. July was a hot
month, as expected here, day after day of blue skies and sunshine and virtually
no rain. We attended a Soupe au Pistou
put on by the village parish and held in Place Foch, together with a group of
friends, and it was an excellent meal and a great evening. Then it was Beryl’s
birthday and to celebrate that we lunched at a restaurant at Les Arcs called Le
Logis du Guetteur, located
in an ancient chateau on the top of a hill in the village. Fabulous
views and an excellent lunch.
August was as hot and as busy
socially as July, and we enjoyed a return visit by Christine Marwood (Gordon’s sister) from Perth, Australia. As she has
been here several times before, there wasn’t much call for sightseeing, so we
could enjoy chatting, eating, and drinking. September cooled off a little but
was a very nice month, and we took the opportunity to visit Camogli
again and while there, make a visit by ferry to St. Fruttuoso,
a 10th century monastery, accessible only from the sea. On the way
back, we stopped off at Bordighera as being Thursday
we could go to the street market and buy some tassels, which Beryl needed.
October was notable was the long
awaited re-visit of Shawn and Paul, and we were delighted to welcome also Larry
Conway (a former colleague) and his son Kevin, a Toronto chef. We had a great
time, including another memorable curry evening with Paul aided by Kevin and
Beryl doing the honours. After they had returned, I installed a pool heater
that I had bought to deal with the times when visitors want to use the pool but
it is rather too chilly. When our
anniversary came around, we decided to celebrate by going to Bordighera for lunch, as we had found a particularly
delightful restaurant there, and so as not to have to rush back afterwards, we
stayed the night in the same hotel as before and returned in comfort the next
morning (after a quick check of the street market!). At the end of the month our friends Julia and
Martin Wilson were down for their last visit to their home here which had just
been sold, and they stayed with us for the last night before driving back home to
the UK. It was nice to celebrate the sale, but tinged with sadness that they
will no longer be our neighbours.
Now it is the run-up to Christmas,
looking out the Christmas lights, buying special food, attending and giving parties,
planning what to do and where to go and so on, getting in and stacking firewood
for the fireplace, putting the pool in winter mode, cleaning out ditches, pruning
stuff in the garden, and so on. We hope all this will give us a smooth run
through with no dangers of floods. Very heavy rainfalls seem to have become a
feature of the weather, and of course, the UK has suffered a lot from the same
thing this year.
That is about all the news from here
and we wish all our friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and
good health with it.
Love from Alan and
Beryl