It’s that time again. Some thing has gone wrong with the system, because it is still November and I am starting to write the infamous Christmas newsletter.
I believe that, when last I wrote, we were dealing with the flood in our lovely bedroom in
New Hampshire. This bedroom always has water views – somehow we didn’t really want the water we were viewing to be coming through the ceiling in a torrent. Jay insists that this only happened because I wanted a tower on the side of the house which resulted in an odd roofline, water seepage etc). This may be true, but I remember telling him at the time that building a tower would be less expensive than a divorce.
Snow in Fairfield - December 2007
and in New Hampshire...
March and April passed relatively uneventfully. I kept up my contributions to the coffers of Broadway producers by going to about five plays, ranging from World War I dramas to musicals, and Jay started limping. Not much of a hobby if you ask me, but it takes all sorts. By early May his limp was so bad that he decided to let the local sawbones fiddle around with his knee, and from then on limped with crutches. Only for a couple of days, though, he wants me to say.
Fearing that I would have to spend the rest of the month fetching things that he’s left upstairs, or making him cups of coffee, I decided to go to Europe, so see the battlefields of France and Flanders. This was actually my mother’s idea. As a veteran of WW2, she is one of the members of her wartime corps who is still mobile and with it mentally. So, when they were planning to celebrate their 100th anniversary, they asked her to come along to add a bit of class to the whole thing. I simply stowed away on board, as it were. We visited Ypres, scene of horrific World War I fighting, then spent three days in a crumbling but charming chateau in Normandy, following the trail of the 101st Airborne and other D-Day heroes, something my mother swears she would never have done in real life. She always waited for the armed forces to follow her.
June arrived, as it does, and with it the first of the visitors to Mere Cottage, our stately manse in
New Hampshire. While other people look for the return of the swallow, we keep a weather eye out for the greater (or sometimes lesser) crested summer visitor, and then we know that the summer hols are here. We had visitors from
California,
Arizona,
Connecticut,
Texas and
London.
Greater Crested visitor with Jay
Fred and Bert, determined to escape from all these grown-ups, spent several months working at Jay’s Golf Club.
And it wasn’t anything sissy like caddying or polishing golf clubs. No, they were up shortly after five every day, to work from six until two, when they would return to the family fold, eat whatever wasn’t nailed down and crash wordlessly to the ground. This was the result of hours spent behind lawn mowers (walking, sometimes driving), fishing snapping turtle eggs (the turtles were snapping, not the eggs...) out of the sand traps (bunkers to my British readers), and weeding, fertilising and so on. I have never managed to get them to do this sort of work in our garden, but to his credit, Fred, on walking onto the front lawn in Fairfield, kicked idly at it with his toe, before saying, helpfully: “Nasty looking thatch you’ve got there. You’ll have to do something about it.” But before I could secure their services, they left for England, to visit their Dad, as they do every summer. Some people, and I mention no names, will go to any lengths to avoid taking care of the lawn.
By September, I’d had enough of trying to look after the lawn myself, and departed for
South Africa with Jay in tow. As I was saying, some people will go to any lengths...As a matter of fact, Jay almost didn’t get to
South Africa. As we walked up to the check-in desk for South African Airways in
London, Jay asked me whether I’d got my South African visa. I know his wacky sense of humour, so I told him I’d had it arranged months before. The check in clerk took one look at Jay’s passport and asked him if he had another one. It seems the South African government requires one whole clean page in a passport before they’ll let you into the country. So we had to go back into
London, stay overnight and get new pages stuck into Jay’s passport at the American Embassy next day. (No, sir, we cannot take a spare page out of your wife’s passport and stick it in yours....) We got to
South Africa eventually, and met friends – old college roommates and new friends of friends.
Friends old...
Friends new...
Friends newest...
We had the most wonderful time, visiting Capetown, then a private game reserve in Botswana, another private reserve in Kruger National Park, then to Johannesburg and home. Our new definition of luxury is a room with three course dinners served on the deck as the giraffes wander by...
As a last fling, we decided to take an elephant safari (riding them, not shooting them...). These are rather controversial, because people believe that elephants shouldn’t be trained for such frivolous ends. But since our elephants had been rescued from possible death in Zimbabwe, where the country no longer has the resources to feed them, and they were already trained, we bravely clambered aboard with our elephant keepers. We got the elephants we deserved, of course. Mine stopped every five minutes to eat something, and Jay’s was large and wouldn’t do what it was told...
You may be wondering why there are so few photos of our trip in this letter. That’s because there are so few photos of our trip, period (full stop). In a moment of enthusiasm, Jay had bought a new video camera the day before he left for
London en route for
Berlin (still working!) and
South Africa. As he went out of the door he suggested that I get Fred to tell me how the camera worked, so that I could teach Jay. Naturally I didn’t have time to do that, so the result is that we have quite a lot of film of Jay’s thumbs or knees, with a voiceover which is saying “Where the @#*! are the animals? I can’t see any animals.”
We had a still camera with us, but Jay had left the charger for it back in
New Hampshire, so once we had taken eight photos, we had used up all the power, and were in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of finding batteries. Ah, well, we are relying on the kindness of strangers friends, actually) who have promised us copies of their photos, so that we can prove that we were only inches away from lions, rhinos and the rest of the cast of The Lion King.
Back home for the Autumn, which had kindly waited for our return before producing one of the most gorgeous displays of colour we’ve had for several years. Locals predicted a hard winter as a result, and here we are, in mid-December, with snow falling all over the place. Being
New Hampshire people for voting purposes, we went to see John McCain at our local town hall, and we’re hoping to catch some of the other candidates as they rush around looking for our vote. Jay is being rather coy about his choice, but then he has to choose from an all-male selection. I, as a registered independent (of course) am spoiled for choice, but my hairdresser tells me it should be a Clinton/Richardson ticket, and he’s got friends in Washington, so who knows?
We’re hoping for a lovely Christmas season. We’ll be in New Hampshire, surrounded by all that snow, and our children and grandchildren have promised to visit (sequentially, I hope). My mother is here from London, my sister is coming for the New Year, and we’re all well, especially Jay, who has been seeing a personal trainer in between sports injuries (some connection there...?).
Have a very Merry Christmas
and a Wonderful New Year!
