Joan and Wilf's Golden Wedding

On 14th August, it was Joan and Wilf's - Jill's parents - golden wedding. There was a meal to celebrate at The Grange in Bookham. Jill was asked to propose the toast, and did so with this super poem;

We had an excellent meal and the family thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Here is Joan, Jill, Sally and Wilf:

And here are the grandchildren having fun:

George, Charlie, Ollie, Sophie, Tom, and Katie.

After lunch we retired to Joan and Wilf's house where we played swingball and ate another hearty meal for supper. Mighty congratulations to Joan and Wilf

ps the reason why this has taken so long is because I couldn't work out how to post such a long movie. I couldn't upload it directly to blogger. The workaround was to upload to youtube and then embed the code which given that Google own both blogger and youtube seems a little strange to me.

Molly's 80th

Last Friday, 26th June, we celebrated Auntie Molly's 80th birthday. Molly is my mum's sister. She is quite an amazing lady and has survived quite a lot of tragedy in her life. She seems to get up, brush herself down and just get on with it.

The party itself was at Ponsbourne Hotel in Newgate Street. It was a lovely summer evening and lots of Molly's friends were there, as well as a full family turn out. I looked a little shoddy, having dashed from running a two-day American Express workshop.

For those of you who don't know, from left to right is Anna, Molly and me!

Christmas 2009

Snow, the carol service at the Abbey (pic), roast pork and red cabbage at the Handley's on Christmas Eve, George's new bike, Joan and Wilf's, playing Red Alert, DECODE at the V&A, pot roasted beef and Ade on New Year's Eve, bike rides and football in the park, too many lbs put on and insufficient calories coming off.

Watford 3 Parma 2

After a week at football camp Ollie and Charlie got tickets for today's pre-season warm up match between Watford and Parma, newly promoted to Serie A. It was a good game, though lacking a bit of atmosphere! I think we will be back at some point in the season for real.

Weekend In Norfolk

We had a great weekend with the Fryers at their cottage in Norfolk.

It is a lovely cottage, originally four tiny cottages, now as one.

With a lovely garden.

We went to the beach near Wells, flew kites, made sand forts, and played on the dunes.

The kids played happily in the garden; swinging, bouncing and playing badminton.

The kids also went to the local river and paddled the inflatable downstream, until it punctured!

We also ate wonderfully well. Jill's fish pie on Saturday evening:

And a lovely outdoor Sunday lunch

It was a splendid weekend. Thank you Jacki, Stuart, Miles, Max and Rose

For a few more photos, click here, and go for the slideshow option.

Jane And John Get Married

Jane and John got married 5th July at The Node. Huge congratulations to them. Here is little Eva helping them out. And below a great shot of Matt, Molly, Jane and Paul. 

Thanks to Abbie's Facebook pages for the pics!

Boys Play Cricket

Cricket is a great game. I used to play alot; that's me, above.  Click here, to see me enthuse a little about the glorious game. Currently, I can't play properly (shoulder injury I am hoping to have operated on) but nevertheless I fulfilled one of my ambitions by playing cricket with all three boys yesterday. It might only have been in Clarence Park, but it didn't matter. The boys themselves may drifted off from time to time to play football with their friends or take a quick cycle around the park, oblivious to how cool this was for me. It wasn't even with pads and a proper cricket ball. It didn't matter. For about 30 minutes we were all engaged. Here are some pix:

Let's see if we can make any advances on this!

Wilf's 75th Birthday

It was a lovely day for a 75th birthday last Sunday.  We went down to Bookham for Wilf's birthday. Mary was there, David and his fiancee, Sharon. There was lots of delicious food; in particular, Jill's fish pie and the rhubarb syllabub. The boys, and me, had some football fun in the back garden. And there was a rather surreal episode during which Bob got a little stuck in the back of the van. 

I rather like the pic of the back garden. It is one of those pictures where the soft focus effect of the trusty old blackberry seems to work in its favour. 

Fleetville Fireworks

Last night was fireworks at Ollie's school. The fireworks were good and the crowds big.

Natalie and John's Wedding

Last Friday night was Natalie and Johnathon's wedding. The reception was held at Tewinbury Barn, where Anna and Rupert had their reception. We did some dancing, which was fun, especially as our dancing styles now have a significant retro quality to them.

Alick and Gillian's 40th Anniversary

Last weekend was Alick and Gillian's 40th anniversary. That is 14600 days, not including leap years! The family party was lovely. The bad weather turned good as the party started and turned bad just as it ended. It was particularly opportune timing for us as we could prove to the Barnett side of the family that we have actually returned.

Arrival in UK

Yesterday, I landed in UK. The flight was delayed, I slept 30 mins, and it was cold and overcast when I emerged from the airport. The temperature in NY the day I left was about 90F, when I landed it was mid 60s F.

We are living in St Albans, to begin with we will rent again. We have a nice semi-detached that I had the briefest of looks around when I was here with George in June. It is not perfect but it does have a big family space and four bedrooms, and it close to town, schools, train station and park.

The Address: 10 Flora Grove, St. Albans, Herts, AL1 5ET.

The 500lb Game

Imagine a game where you have to select 500lb of your belongings that you can live on for 6 weeks in a new country before the rest of your belongings arrive. Imagine you are selecting for a family of five and you don't know how much 500lbs is. Do you take pcs, beds, clothes, kitchen utensils, toys, papers, important papers? The weekend was spent deciding what goes in the 500lb shipment (takes a week, by air) and what goes in the container 6-8 week shipment. There is also the question of what goes in our cases just to complicate things.

After the packing men have gone, all that is left is what we are going to take with us on the flight or what we are going to discard or hand off to others in Chappaqua. Luckily, we have found a home for the TV, DVD, phone and the car! It still means that house looks a little empty:

We decided to head off for a few days rather than hang around.

Baltimore Independence Weekend

Its usually feels a little odd being a Brit in the USA on Independence Day. Not this year. We had a fabulous weekend with Arthur, Kym, Will and Ella in Baltimore, where they are staying for the summer. We watched the fireworks in the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill on the Friday (and had some of the best hamburgers I have ever tasted from Arthur's grill). We went to the aquarium,

the USS Torsk,

and the American Visionary Arts Muesuem,

with a fabulous meal at Obryckis on the Saturday.

Sunday was the Science Muesuem,

and a boat trip to Fell's Point whilst Nadal just pipped Federer at Wimbledon.


It was great.

Visa Trip to UK

We had to take a trip back to UK to get our visas renewed. We stayed with Joan and Wilf for the for most of the week then drove around to Anna and Rupert's. After a relaxing Sunday with Joan and Wilf, including a very English walk on Bookham Common.....

...we had to be ready for our visa renewal process at 8am Monday outside the American Embassy. With the jet lag meant we were very late to bed but being on UK time meant we had to get up with our bodies thinking it was 2am! The visa interviews themselves went smoothly but we had to wait in the UK for our passports to be returned to us with the visa in. We took the opportunity to visit Sally and Bob, the Whites in Bath........

...and some work contacts in London before heading north to see the Handley's.

Ski Butternut

We went to Butternut. It was very good. Here is George:

And here is Ollie


There are more pictures of our winter ski-ing on the Flickr site