Aren’t these few days of limbo between Christmas and NYE bizarre?
We are a little schlumpy after all the planning and wrapping and eating and
tidying up. I, for one, feel like a
deflated lilo at this juncture. It’s
early and I’m sitting in our kitchen with a coffee watching our moronic
goldfish swim around and around.
Pointless pets, really.
This year we travelled back from our celebrations in Normandy
with a stuffed car and barely enough space for two bickering children plus handheld
devices. I don’t know why I spend so much of the year bemoaning dependency on
electronics when those long car journeys would be insufferable without them. And no, I don’t want smug messages back from
anyone detailing the rollicking fun their families have with singsongs and
marathon sessions of ‘I spy’ whilst on journeys with tweenies.
Looking back on 2017, we remember wonderful trips to Wales,
France, Turkey, Italy and our beloved Lyme Regis. Highlights included family tennis on
Valentine’s Day, releasing paper lanterns into the night sky and watching
turtles hatch. Emily and Andrew escaped
to Yorkshire visiting his old school and other stops along memory lane. Alex and I spent a long weekend based in East
London exploring Greenwich, climbing the O2 Arena and sneaking the boy into
Kingsman despite him not being 15. The
four of us snuggled under blankets and gawped our way through another David
Attenborough series. Doesn’t he make you
want to pack up and move to Costa Rica immediately? The most outdoorsy thing I
did when gifted a wetsuit was to spend a large part of the year shoehorning
myself in and out of the damned thing, stand ankle deep in seawater and shriek
like a toddler every time I spotted a wisp of seaweed. A work in progress!
Alex transitioned from Year 8 to 9 (Grade 7 to 8) at West London
Free School and gave up table tennis for rowing. He is still into his music and is an avid
collector of random facts. Emily moved
up to Year 7 (Grade 6) leaving Primary school in the dust when she joined Lady
Margaret’s. The commute by tube took some getting used to with constant text
updates from her travel buddies along the lines of “near turnstiles” and “copy
that - heading to platform now” etc…She also confronted terror and agony by
getting her ears pierced for her 12th birthday.
Andrew started a new job at King’s House in Richmond and loves
it! Still so strange to see him head off
at 7:20am with a tie on, gripping a travel mug . He is too into his Latin derivations and
wonders why our eyes glaze over when he launches into the etymology of the word
banoffee. Although he finally resigned
from school governing, he took on a new role on the board of a local housing
trust.
I pootle along adding the odd project to my auction house consulting. The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich recently
opened a Faberge show I helped with.
Approaching contacts for loans when The Queen and A La Vieille Russie
had already committed to the exhibit was no hard sell. I’m also involved with the Gunnersbury Museum
near us that will re-open in early 2018.
So that, in a nutshell, is us. We are so grateful for our
families and friends as we struggle to make sense of Trump, Brexit and the rest
of it. We are not sad to see the back of
2017 and full of plans for the New Year.
Wishing our dearest from here to not so near a wonderful
beginning to 2018!
Much love from Cynthia, Andrew, Alex and Emily xx
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