Skiing at Super Devoluy

It was a long 750 mile drive, plus a ferry crossing, and a night in Dijon, but it was worth it. The snow was good, weather perfect and scenery fantastic.  Super Devoluy has this big chalet block that on first sight looks pretty gross but by imagining being in a 1960s spy story and appreciating its design, it begins to grow on you. 

We all squeezed into a small but good apartment behind the big block, thoroughly enjoyed the food, especially the baguettes, crepes, pate, cheese and cheap wine, and didn't like lugging our skis to and from the slopes morning and evening. But hey, if that is the worst part of the holiday, I can live with it. 

The best thing was to see the improvements the boys made. They all did ski school and really seemed to get a lot out of it.  Enjoy a selection of photos and film below and if you really want to see more photos, click here.

The English Channel in Feb is windy;

We picked up breakfast in Dijon after our overnight stop;

This is the view from our balcony;

The 1960s spy set;

And some pictures of ski-ing and slopes; 

Unfortunately I can't load any film of the boys skiing up yet. I will do so as soon as possible. Cheers for now. 

We had the most snow we have had for 18 years last week. London buses were kept in their depots, train services were scant, at best, the whole country seemed to go into a paralysis. But it was very pretty. Here are some pix. First, our back garden;

Two halves of a giant snowball from a short walk near Colman's Green;

And the insides of one of the halves;

And some rather pleasant views on our walk; 

Ollie's Birthday Sleepover

This weekend was Ollie's birthday sleepover. Yes, it was a little late in the day, but that is one of the drawbacks of having a birthday five days before Christmas Day, sorry Ollie! His guests were Adam, Daniel, Doran, and Eddie. They were quite a little gang. I haven't got any decent pix of the crowd but they did a replay of what Ollie did on his real birthday, namely to go bowling, eat and have cake, like this. They also played some fusball, made slushpuppies using the snow and fruit juice and watched a Simpson's film. They also woke Jill up at 3 am. She went into Ollie's room and found them playing game boy on the top bunk. Hmmmm. 

Reporting Dad's Death

At the inquest for Dad's death, there were two journalists present. I didn't mention them in the post, here, as they didn't play a significant part in the inquest. I exchanged a few words with them; enough to find out which papers they represented and that they often spend days sitting in court inquests like this. They gave me the impression that they would file a report of a few sentences that might appear in a far flung column of their papers. 

Not so. 

The Herfordshire Mercury reported Dad's death in the 5th Dec 2008 edition, in a prominent place on page 3. Go here for the edition and hit 'next' to turn one page to see it (oh, and click on the back arrow twice to get back to this post!).  I wasn't too impressed with their reporting, nor was Anna. They got Dad's age wrong, they wrote 60. The headline; 'Widower unable to cope with onset of Parkinson's' offended us. Admittedly we are a little sensitive to this type of headline which is not exactly untrue, but our belief, given the notes he left, was that it was more a deliberate act of someone who knew what was going to happen to them taking a decision about how to end their life before being unable to do so. I rang the Mercury and suggested that their reporting was factually inaccurate, that as he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1999 the use of the word 'onset' was probably incorrect, and three, it conveyed what we believed to be an incorrect perspective on the death.  I spoke with the reporter, who after initially seeming to be a little defensive listened to my idea that if my father's death is to be reported, I would far rather be used as a springboard for a useful discussion about assisted suicide, euthanasia, etc. than it being portrayed as another sad old man killing himself in his garage. 

They printed an apology about Dad's age and the reporter did go off and write an article as I suggested. Given the number of programmes recently on the subject, most notably Julie Walters starting in the drama 'A Short Stay in Switzerland' about a Doctor going to take her own life in a clinic in Switzerland, it is a subject that has been given a fair bit of oxygen recently. The article appears in this edition, on page 16 and even gets teed up on the front page. 

So good for the Hertfordshire Mercury. I hope they do manage to start a debate on the subject. I understand that society has to be very careful about legislating in this area, but for those people who do want to end their life due to a terminal illness it feels right to me that they should have more provision that what is currently available to them. 

George's Birthday

George's real birthday was on 21st January. We celebrated it with a little family gathering. 

But this weekend was when he had his mates around and played War Hammer for most of the afternoon and evening. I can't pretend that I have any understanding of what War Hammer is about beyond a kind of Airfix meets Lord of the Rings meets Risk in a five day test match way, but these kids are totally immersed. And good on them. Next time we might get them to set up in George's attic room and send some food up once every few days.

Many happy returns George

Kir and Ian and Poaching

We had a lovely lunch with Kir and Ian on Saturday. A super little Georgian fish restaurant in Highgate. When Ollie saw 'Poached Salmon' on the menu however, he was a little worried. "Isn't poaching illegal?" he asked.

Morgan Snr

It was so good to play host to the wonderful Morgan McGrath, who paid us a visit last Friday night for dinner whilst in UK on business for a week. It was really interesting to see the kids wide eyes (they love Morgan) when he arrived. On one level it was a mixture of bashfulness and intimacy. On another level it seemed to be the realisation that the Chappaqua part of their lives is not a separate 'compartment' from their life in St. Albans. Morgan's appearance seemed to link the two worlds powerfully together. And this validates one of the reasons we went to the States; to show the children there is a bigger world out there and that its all connected up. 

So a big thanks to Morgan, not just from coming and making the boys' light up with the delight of seeing an old buddy again, but for helping to make them start to make those connections. It's a great thing. 

North Wales

We set off briskly on the morning of the 27th December for a week in a remote Welsh cottage. The boys have not seen lots of the UK and North Wales is full of good stuff, easily enough to fill a week. The cottage looked idyllic online and the prospect of turning a generator on and off was intriguing and made us feel like it would be a little 'back to nature'.

We arrived before sunset, and we were right to do so. The cottage was the only building on a single track road that ran up the side of one valley. In the dark it would have been tricky to find, and even tricker to get set up once we had found it. To get electricity for anything we needed to get the petrol fueled engine up and running (we also had to turn it off again at the end of each evening and when we left each day). There was little in the way of central heating and what heat we did have was created by the oil burning stove in the living room and the range in the kitchen.

The location was, however, stunning. It was like having our own valley. The was no-one anywhere near us. 

Night-time was amazing: total darkness. Here is Jill holding our battery powered lantern:

The stars looked beautiful. There was no artificial light for miles around so we got a fantastic view of the night sky. 

We visited the castles at Conwy and Caernarfon. They were built by Edward 1 in the late 13th Century to impose English rule on the Welsh. In both cases the town walls, built with the castle, still stand. This is Conwy:

And here is Caernarfon:

We went on some walks. On Snowdon;

And straight out from the cottage towards Llyn Conwy: 

And we went down the slate mines at Blaenau Ffestiniog: 

Evenings were generally filled by huddling around the kitchen table, near the range, and we had a couple of evening where DJ Ollie arranged a dance-off competition in the living room. It was one way to keep warm. Despite the cold, (it got to -10C), we had a terrific time, and it was far better to have cold and sunny weather than slightly warmer yet rainy/cloudy conditions. 

I couldn't possibly let this post go without a picture of the outhouse and the generator where I spent many happy moments, both last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

For a full set of pictures go here and click on the slideshow icon in the top right hand corner.

Christmas Day

Our Christmas Day was in two parts. The first part was at home, with the kids opening their presents. The Clone Trooper outfit and helmet went down very well. The second part of the day was at Jill's parents in Surry. Bob and Sally, and the kids were also there. We did all the things one should do at Christmas; ate too much, opened lots of great presents, watched Wallis and Gromit, ate too much again, and then slumped.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is when the Danish side of the family celebrate Christmas. When I was a kid these family gatherings were pretty big, especially for a little kid, and very exciting, as it was when I got the best presents, the ones from your mum and dad. As a result Christmas Day was pretty boring. None of my friends were allowed out, as they were having their Christmases, and I was done with mine.

Anna and I make sure we still have our families get together on Christmas Eve, and we still open a few presents but the main emphasis of Christmas is no longer on Christmas Eve. And with Dad no longer around it is ever more the case.

This year we hosted Christmas Eve. It would be a change for Anna, we might not miss Dad so much and besides it was definitely our turn. The highlight of the evening was getting some of Dad's old 35 mm slides out. We got his old screen up, and the projector, it must be 40 years old at least, was still working. My Dad hadn't got the whole thing set up since we were kids so it was a little like going in back in time. We saw lots of old favourites, and quite a few pictures we had never seen before, like the pictures of us both as tiny babies.

Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in looking at my Dad's pictures, I didn't take any of my own.