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This year has been a bit different. Instead of several sporting events (mainly triathlon), I have had problems with a leg following an operation last year, so after many months of trying to build up training distances for running, I am now having to rest it till next year, so running should start in January. I have managed to get a place in the New York Marathon for next November, so I have to get distances built up early in the year, starting almost from nothing again.
I have still been swimming regularly, going to the swimming group at my gym every week, but my swimming is nowhere good enough to do any competitions, and anyway, I’m too old for all that stuff now. I am also still cycling, and I’ll try and get some triathlons in next year, now.
The swimming class also led to our trip to India, with Kiran, who was a member of the team at the gym, going back to live in India and getting married over there, but more of that later.
I have also become an uncle, and will get to be an uncle again shortly. The first time was with Kevin & Amanda, with their daughter Francheska (better known as Minky) born in April. It has been great watching her progress throughout the year, though at Amanda & Kevin’s wedding, she caused far less of a fuss than Amanda, who had managed to break her leg! Alex and Tina are expecting a boy shortly.
In January, I helped out on a community project based in South Africa, near a place called Hoedspruit. We were helping set up a market garden project for a township and the teamwork we built up in a week was amazing. It also left everyone exhausted, getting up at just after 04:00 to get started before the day’s heat, with over an hour’s drive through the bush, and normally getting back to our accommodation near 22:30. The project was visited several times later in the year and appears to be very successful.
After Hoedspruit, I went down to Umkomaas, south of Durban, to go diving for a week at Aliwal Shoal, and also getting to dive with giant hammerheads and bull sharks at Protea Banks, just off Shelley Beach in Margate, Kwazulu Natal. The biggest problem there, apart from getting through the waves, was getting my camera to turn on in time to photograph the bull sharks – they don’t hang around for long.
In February, we did our piece demonstrating against the (impending) war in Iraq and against George Bush and Tony Blair. We believed at the time that George was going to have his second war in his term of office, but at least we could make our feelings known.
March was time to visit the dive show in London ready for later in the year, particularly since I had given my fins to the dive guide in South Africa who had been eyeing them all week while I was there. That meant at least new fins, plus a new knife and a better bag with wheels and hard sides to protect the equipment in transit.
In April, I went to the self build exhibition in Birmingham. The show is getting a bit samey now, and there was not much new. At least I managed to get the planning permission through for the house in Crowthorne shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, getting builders is not turning out to be easy, particularly when trying to combine it with tenancy agreements.
My car roof also started sticking, and that led me to loads of hassle with Mercedes, who mis-diagnosed the roof problem and wanted to charge me over £1400 to fix it. I took it to a local specialist, rather than Mercedes, and it turned out that the roof switches (that cost £20 for a pair) needed replacing, so now I don’t think my car will ever see the inside of a Mercedes dealership ever again.
I did make it down to Avignon to visit the Petit family, though.
In May we went down to Cornwall for Carey & Chris’ wedding. The weather was spectacular, and we even got a visit in to the Eden Centre (a strange mixture of Chelsea Flower Show and hippy commune).
We also had Céline’s sister and (not-quite-at-that-stage) fiancé Jean-Philippe, taking them round London. Céline’s brother, Pierre, came over in November.
Later in the month we went down for the second of four visits to France (another in August then another planned for Christmas) in Bourgogne. After Christmas we should also get down to visit Benoît, Fabienne, Gautier and Noëllie in Avignon.
In June I had a really good time working with a school in Bracknell (Ranelagh School) helping with language training, showing the use of languages in the work environment. We ran a competition where the students applied for jobs for a fictional summer placement and we interviewed the competition winners in French and in English at one of our warehouse sites in London and gave them a tour around.
We also got some mountain biking in on our schedule; a one-day ride to get Céline back up-to-speed in the Chilterns, then a weekend in the Peak District. They both went a lot smoother than the Coed Y Brenin trip to Wales in October where a couple in the bed and breakfast accidentally went off with Céline’s car keys. They were from New Zealand and didn’t realise they were not for their rental car, so we had to break in to the car to get out the cycling gear, then cycle everywhere for the weekend, and finally get the car towed home again on the back of a truck. The keys arrived back a couple of weeks later thanks to the tags we keep on the key rings.
In July, I had a course in Barcelona; my first time visiting the city. We were near some nice hills for me to run in (and got lost in them one day) at the time of the year when I was doing my longest distances (particularly when I got lost). Unfortunately the course chewed up two weekends to fit everything in, and we only got one afternoon ‘off’. I had to rush back on the Sunday to take a client to the Grand Prix at Silverstone, but the flight was delayed, my luggage was lost, and by the time I got to Silverstone, they had set up all the roads to be one-way leading away from the circuit, so I couldn’t get in.
Later that month we got in our ‘proper’ holiday going to Kazakhstan to visit Anne & Jonny. The aim was to cycle to Kyrgyzstan, but the bridges had been washed away in the spring rain (we saw one being re-built while we were there) so no support vehicles could get through. We walked in the mountains near Almaty, visiting an observatory and staying the night, then camping and climbing to over 2600m just on the border (with one interesting conversation with the border guards).
In September, one of the teachers from my old music school organised a reunion concert, in principle to raise money for a charity cycling event in Central America, but it was amazing to see people from twenty years back and find out what they were up to, plus hear everyone still playing their instruments, some professionally, and some having found them at the back of dusty cupboards.
That month I also used my birthday present from Céline of a glider flight with the London Gliding Club based in Dunstable on the Downs. I have even been back a couple more times to try flying the thing myself, though I haven’t been able to concentrate on it fully. It certainly seems more challenging than regular flying in some ways, though the controls are a lot more rudimentary (no flaps, engine or radio) but having to understand the weather situation in much more detail and work with it.
The last vacation was end November and December when we went to Egypt for a week diving on a liveaboard, then to India for a wedding in Hyderabad.
Egypt was, as usual, a really nice diving destination. The fish are different from the west coast of the Red Sea where I have dived before, but the sea was fairly flat, the sun shone and we got some really nice diving in (up to four dives a day, punctuated by meals and rest) including the Thistlegorm wreck that I have failed to get to twice before on previous trips and some nice turtles. It was a really good introduction to diving for Céline who has now logged 23 dives and will try to get her next qualification level next year, including decompression diving and more rescue skills.
We had a whole day in the UK between Egypt and India (except I flew off to the Netherlands for most of it) and then caught the flight to Hyderabad via Dubai. All week we had a taxi driver assigned to us, arranged (as was the hotel) by Kiran. His marriage to Suchitra was really spectacular – our first Hindu wedding. There were huge numbers of people, lots of decoration, plenty of good Indian food and many traditions. Kiran had also got us Indian clothes to wear, so we really looked the part. We also saw many of the tourist sites round Hyderabad (temples, tombs, zoo, statues, lakes and Ramoji Film City where they make a whole load of Indian movies – up to 50 simultaneously on the film lots). Most of the time we felt a little strange since people were not used to seeing Europeans, so we were swamped with people asking us questions, getting their photo taken next to the ‘Europeans’ and even being asked for autographs. The last day it calmed down slightly when we went to Golconda Fort, which is more widely visited than any of the other sites, so we were less conspicuous. The most intriguing part of the trip was probably the traffic, and how cars, mopeds, motorbikes, cows, trailers and pedestrians seem to slip amongst each other without any crashes though accompanied by a cacophony of engines and horns (encourage by the ‘please sound horn’ signs on the back of many of the vehicles) and the blue pall of smoke from the exhausts. I particularly appreciated the food, though; endless restaurants with excellent vegetarian and healthy fare, full of flavour. It’s not often you get to eat curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a whole week!
On the way back we stopped off in Dubai so Céline could see it for the first time, with its huge contrast to the previous days in India; planned highways, clean streets, stunning glass and steel buildings and American-style shopping malls, and another look at the sea that we hadn’t seen for over a week.
So that is almost another year over; we just have Christmas in France to look forward to, then on to 2004.
Yuletide Greetings and a Happy New Year to all.
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