Dear Family.

Steve telephoned me last evening to bring me the sad news that Cathy has a severe chest infection and is lined up for a period of treatment. I have not got any more serious information. When I was with her at Christmas, she certainly had a very bad cough and was planning to ask her doctor to tell her what his diagnosis is. Trouble is, I cannot get my head round it yet and to go to bed early sets me on a worrying path. That is why I am trying not to spend my time idly.
I ask you all to think of Cathy especially in your prayers.

I went out to dinner twice last week, the first being to the beautiful old Falcon Hotel in Stratford-on-Avon and the second on Friday 27th (Should have been on 25th) to a Burns Night celebration at a golf club near Broughton. (About 6 miles out of Banbury). Haggis, piped in by a piper, with a dram of whiskey on each place around the circular table of 10 (of which there were 11 tables - 110 celebrators.
Got in at midnight and switched off my bedside light by 12.05.
After hearing the weather report for the next few days, I went to Sainsbury's in Banbury yesterday to refill my freezer with easy meals. I hope the promise of snow does not materialise !! Love From Dad XXXX

News from Forty Green

Hello all,

Well, what an exciting start to the year.... Firstly, Jan's mum had a funny turn over the Christmas break and ended up calling an ambulance. The doctors set her to rights temporarily but recent test results suggest they will need to cut a bit more bowel out as they did fourteen years ago, so she's awaiting the call...

Next it was Stan's turn. He had a some root canal treatment the other day (Friday the 13th, no less) and ended up with complications after a thrombosis developed in his leg (...he does have funny bloods nowadays, being 93). Well, they have him comfortable in Stoke and is on treatment to thin the blood but of course his mouth keeps bleeding and he cannot have visitors because of the Nora virus outbreak in the next ward...., just our

Then there was Dad going electronically and communicationally AWOL, and now we are waiting on dear Cath. Added to this we have just had news yesterday that our landlords would like to reclaim Forty Green (not all of it, just their own cottage) and have served us with 2 months notice with the idea that we are out at the end of March. We are looking into reasonable cost rentals in Chinnor as it may be advantageous to be closer to 37 and to get ourselves back into Oxfordshire as Amy closes in on secondary education....(only a year and a half to go!).

Hoping that the hurdles to our new year's resolutions don't continue to build up. We're supposed to be eating less and getting fit, getting to bed earlier and destressing regularly! Thank God we have a close knit church community of dear friends to help us out from time to time! And maybe Amy will appreciate moving into the village to be closer to friends she can just pop round to play with.

PS...Does anyone have a van to lend us for the Easter holidays? I can swop two cats for it...

Love to all

Pete and Jan

Wish me luck!

Hospital appointment tomorrow at 4.15 for test results and 'where we go from here'!

Reply to two of my grand daughters.

Congratulations to you, Gems on your new job Best wishes for your future, give my love to Mandy when you get to London.

Also to my lovely Kate. Go for it, darling and show those boys that girls can do it, just as well.
I'll bet Edward is proud of you, as we all are.
Love to you all from Grandad

PS I am going to a Burn's Supper, with Pipers and a Haggis, on Friday. perhaps a wee dram also!!

Parents Evening in Lampter

It turns out that Kate is an intellient, well mannered pupil and a pleasure to teach; well I never!.
But seriously, well done Kate, they all want her to take 'A' levels in their subject.

Job News

Hello,

Just to let you in on some upcoming life events for me and Clive. Last week I handed in my resignation to Oxford University as I have been offered a job at Royal College of Art at the Kensington campus; so Clive and I will be moving to London this summer. We have the flat in Witney until June so there will be a certain amount of me living up in London in the week (at Mandy's) until we find somewhere in London (any suggestions gratefully received or leads!).

Wish us luck in the lucky year of the Dragon (C's a firedragon!) G xx

Feb Birthdays

Sorry Ruth, I missed your birthday, yesterday. Hope that Louis gave you a nice big Kiss.
Jen and Will both have birthdays on 3rd February.

Big Plans for Bigger Girls

Wow, yesterday was a big day with 4 hours of parent teacher meetings from 5 till 9. After 1 1/2 hours of Daniel's school Principal and teachers' making excuses for our sons, we went on to Claire's Secondary School Year 1 briefing and were completely overwhelmed by the love, enthusiasm and care the school bestows up on the girls. Amazing. Claire is looking forward to playing soccer in school but as the program is quite new, they are a bit short of players so she and two of her friends have been about the place putting up posters and trying to recruit.

Rocky is settling in although today he appears to be misbehaving. We have boot camped him so he is learning who the bosses are. As a result we have stopped the peeing in the house and we are beginning to see some signs that he will make a great pet. We let him off the lead in the park last weekend (in an enclosure) and watched him sprint around for an hour. On Sunday, we went to the beach and he had a big swim and a big day. He loves the water but we think he likes his football more.

We have a 4 day holiday for Chinese New Year starting tomorrow so I'll do my upmost to take some pictures and load them up some how to the web.

Love you all,

Nic

Dearest Dad

Ah, good to have you back. I'll skype you over the next 4 days as we have days off for Chinese New Year which arrives Monday. Love you, Nic

Welcome back Dad.

good to hear that you are back online, love Cathy xx

BACK ON LINE

After over a week with no phone and no broadband, we are at last back in business. I hate people who steal copper wire!! Dad

Nic's email

Hi Pete,

I've been in touch with Cathy all this last week through Facebook messaging. I'll drop you my email details there or you can also message me through Facebook.

Love to all, Nic

Emails

I don't appear to have your email, Nic. Could you ping something to me so I can check it. If you didn't get my mail this morning Steve and Julian, could you do likewise. Ta muchly.

Comments...

I seem to be able to see your comments, Cath, so perhaps you just have to clear your cache and reload the page to see them just after posting then. Try going to the dasher and viewing the blog....

chitchatchit

looking for suitable chat buttons to put on here

Stars on Sunday

Dear all,
We are well and enjoying an evening on the beach. As the sun set we had what I consider a quite extraordinary occurrence when low across the sky within a 60 degree arc, I could three quite clearly three planets all in a line and nothing else. On the opposite quadrant was a very bright star and directly over head a not so bright but bright star. Very little else in the sky. So I think we are all going have a good year, love Nic

Definitely giving up writing comments!

I don't know were they go but not onto the blog!

Mrs S

In those days you had an 'Grammer Skool' entry exam at age 11, called the 11plus. My birthday being in October meant I had an extra year in Class 6 at Chinnor with Mrs Sheedy so I got left behind (booo) because I was still 10.. all very confusing at the time and since probably. Mrs Sheedy was married to a stained glass artist and brought a big box of scraps for us to make a big Jesus picture, to my design (beaming smile). We traced on to a large framed piece of picture glass which lived on the side we worked on at the end of the day if we were good... with Aruldite!
What happened to the big Jesus picture?
Well, Mrs S was away for a few days and we had Mrs Middleton to fill in, and when she asked for a window to be opened, Tony Fujak jumped up like Biggles would have done and put his foot on the yet to be finished masterpiece. Ohhhh my, all that work gone for a burton.
Mrs S took against 'Fujak' from then on.
He was a techy sort of chap and when we first moved to Chinnor when I was nine had already rigged up a private phone line with the people the other side across Oakley Road using scrap telephone receiver parts and bell wire. His Polish Dad was a bit scary with the belt but there were quite a few of his compatriots at the Cement Works. Switowski, Zakachevski, Petrovski to name but a few.
Great Missenden had an entire estate which was still Polish speaking in the 70's including a grocery shop full of sauerkraut and würst and my drum teacher 'Stan' Pearson also Polish got me a gig at the Hilton hotel with a polka and waltzes band from there.
I really thought I was on the brink of stardom being one hand shake away from the Czar of Russia. The ancient violin player who looked quite a lot like Bob Hope had been a child prodigy summoned to perform at court.. imagine!

Health scare!

I haven't been sure who to tell or what to say, so here goes. I have been having some trouble with my breathing and I have been for various test and xrays, the C.T. Scan did not look very good, I have had a bronchoscopy with inconclusive results, so have to go for another next week. I think this will leave me out of action for a couple of days whilst I recover.
Also we are having a challenging time at work, as you may know we are a charity and our shaky finances have hit the buffers; so we are reorganizing, closing down the main building and all moving into the farmhouse, whilst we try and ride out the financial famine. So we are down to three full time staff, three part-time staff, two self employed and as many volunteers as we can muster. I am one of the full time staff and John is one of the volunteers. So this is as predicted for the new year the s*** hitting the fan! Hayho! Happy New year everyone much love Cath xxxx

Mrs Sheady

She was the teacher for class six, the last class in primary school.....so the top teacher to the top kids and absoulutely terrifying to me as a child, her classroom was one of those black clapperboard stand alone prefabs, tucked away on the far side of the canteen giving it a rather forboding presents. Like a kind of Coldiz for the elite. But just a shed really!
Do you remember there were some photos of Steve, Julian, Nic, Pete, and me playing in the snow in the garden at Chinnor, where we built snowmen(snow was a very rare occurrence in Chinnor in our childhood), there is a snap for Julian with his chicken snowman, and Steve built a magnificent snow sculpture of Mrs Sheedy compleat with bosom and handbag, at least that is how it is in my memory!
When Steve was in class six they made a stain glass window(Mrs Sheady's husband was a stained glass craftsman). When I was in Mrs Sheady's class I was always in trouble and she was so cross with me sewing backwards..Uuh?..that I was made to sit with my face to the corner and back to the class to do all my sewing leasons. Am I bitter? Do I bare a grudge? I always felt I had the last laugh, although I'm still confused about sewing backwards.

Hello

Glad all is well with Gdad. These metal thieves are busy as there was a report on the radio yesterday about two men from Birmingham who'd stolen wiring from Southern Electric site near Oxford on New Years Day. The police despatched helicopter team and spied them racing up the motorway.

Can someone fill us younger family members in about Mrs S?! Am v curious.

love G xx

Mystery solved!

Thanks Jan, and of course Pete. It's good to know what is going on with Dad.
And I'm sorry if anyone tried to phone me back last night after sending out messages hither and thither.
We have a slightly dodgy phone. If you don't remember to bang the phone after you have put the receiver down the little button doesn't always pop up to finish the call so you leave the phone engaged, and I forgot this last after talking to June.

Dad's communication problems...

Back from Dad's after a lovely late evening visit. Jan got me out of a church meeting to investigate Dad's lack of communication with June, Cathy and Nick....so I phoned Banbury Police to ask if they would look in on the house and in the meantime Jan and I set out for Kings Sutton not really knowing what to expect. When we got to Dad's he was surprised but pleased to see us, having already had a visit from the police that evening! He was in good spirits and on excellent form, and clearly very flattered that everyone was so worried. According to the police who had visited him, all the communication cabling leading into and out of the village had been nicked by metal thieves. As a result there is no internet and all the telephone lines are down. Hence, he has been out of contact and, unbeknown to him, his mobile was switched off even though it was charging. So we have set the mobile up next to his chair and it is on. As for internet and land lines we will have to wait and see but rest assured all that dad was on good form and looking really well. We had a laugh trawling through some old primary school reports of Julian, Cathy and Steve mostly that he had dug out of a drawer...even a couple for Nic and me signed off by Mr Manser. I think Mrs Sheady had a soft spot for Steve....

Out of touch!

Dad, June would like to speak to you as soon as possible, she has booked a holiday and needs you to confirm that you agree with her choice. Put a note up here to say you have recieved this message so I know you are alright.
Has enyone else spoken to Dad this week?

Dad and Nic

Have you managed to meet up on skype yet?

Still In Party Mode

Dear all,

Christmas has been and gone, New Year is over, yet we still have Chinese New Year coming up in the next week, not to mention a 15th wedding anniversary celebration and Jen's birthday in early Feb'. Hope you're all well. Our skype and blog seem very quiet this year but lots of activity on Facebook.

Wishing all Merrows and friends a Happy New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai for next week.

Love Nic and Family

Alarm clocks at 5.00p.m.

Departure 6.05...20mins late, arrival at 8.05p.m. boy delivered onto Cardiff train! Then John and Thomas on to the halls of residents at Cardiff University, bags, boxes, and guitars, up the stairs to the second floor, cup of tea, John home by 10.30p.m. Job done!
There was a phone call from Gratz airport at 5.30 to say he had arrived. Bless him.

The rest of the week so far!

Yesterday...Johns birthday went well, we had wrapped up lots of nonsense bought in the pound shop and made a pile on the breakfast table, so we had fun watching him open packs of sellotape, socks, lighters, and such like and opening cards. Then we went for a walk on Tregaron bog...we had considered going there with you, Dad but I wasn't sure what the walkways were like and I knew it was very exposed but it would be suitable in the spring. There was some complaining about the cold and wet then we retired to The Talbot so that Thomas and Edmund could buy John a pint which as you can imagine gave John a tremendous kick, after that home to a repast of pheasant with apple celery and cream sauce, roast potatoes and cabbage fried with onion and caraway seed, all well received!! Then a couple of John's friend's came round for a few drinks and then took him away for an hour. so everyone was happy.
Today was supposed to be getting the boys ready for their return to college....washing, packing, mending, etc but about midday I had a call from the hospital to make an appointment for Monday and could I come in this afternoon for a C.T. scan as they had a cancellation. So Thomas and Kate came with me for moral support and I had dye injected into my veins and slid into the doughnut shaped scanner whilst they took pictures of my lungs, so we shall see what they have to say on Monday!

Hi Dad

Sounds like another epic trip Dad, no wheel chair, no lovely airport staff to wheel you around. We piggy backed on Li and Koon Hou on our way out to Zurich and ended up with first class check in and an evening in Changi T3's first class lounge although we flew economy. Recommend you travel out first class next time you make your way out here. We now have a dog with us, Rocky. We are on the verge of adopting him. He's about my age, just as handsome, pretty fit still and looking forward to an active retirement as he's been working all his life.

We had a quite christmas and an even quieter new year. We are all back to work and back to school now but chinese new yearis just around the corner. Married 15 years this month, doesn't time fly!

Love Nic and the crew.

Part 2 My visit to Wales

What a gargantuan stay I had with Cathy and family. Lovely food from Cathy (Two Turkeys), lovely curries, plenty to drink, courtesey of John (incidentally John, Happy Birthday for tomorrow) good company with both boys home from University and Kate's 16th Birthday on 27th. We also attended the School Prize giving where Thomas came home with two certificates. One for art. Although the weather was keen, we managed a trip to Aberaeron and one to Aberystwyth. One of the thrills was to see the Local Hunt Meet on Monday, although rain spoiled it for some.
I arrived home this afternoon after a reasonably easy journey, I stopped off at Morrison's in Leominster, for a p (Not bad for me - only an hour from Cathy's) and I stopped off at welcoming pub just outside Banbury for a lovely Fish & Chip meal.(and a pint of Hooky)
Plenty of mail to examine when I got home - some Christmas cards which arrived after i had left on 20th December. One from June who I will be contacting tomorrow. I spent some time reading through the family blogs. Thanks for all those interesting reports, it was lovely to read them. Also the lovely photos of Nic and family in France and a blog with photos of Julian and Louis from Ruth. What a year they had!
Now I am back to my beloved SKY TV and trying to get my small house warm. Love to you all. Your Loving Dad.

So relieved that you got home safely.

The weather was so wet and windy last night, so it was with some concern that we waved you off. But the had sun came out by 8.30 a.m. So I hoped the journey would go well; so I'm pleased to hear it was alright.
Kate, Thomas, and I shot into Aber for birthday shopping and then back to Tregaron for me to see the doctor, he will get a second xray and hurry them up with my appointment, but no meds for me untill he knows what the problem is.....so I'm rather disconsolute, although he says there is nothing to worry about.

Home again, Home again, Jiggety Jig.

7.30 this morning high winds, rain like they get in the Fishing Boats --- Shall I, shan't I Face it?
YES I decided to go!! Cathy and John helped me to pack the car and my lovely Kate and handsome Tom even got out of their warm beds to wave me off. I decided to use the main road as the lower road was flooded in many parts. Still quite dark and there was quite a bit of traffic following me - afraid to chance overtaking in case they met the floods. Got to Lampeter OK and stated the climb up and over the road to the A 40
Many flooded parts and water pouring off the high banks of the road like a waterfall. Luckliy I didn't have to dodge much traffic and no-one tried to pass me. Eventually reached the A 40 at Llanwrdra and met a continuous line of traffic coming from the Llandeilo road.
A mile or two along the road and traffic was held up by a very deep flood. Eventually the traffic in front started to brave it and we gingerly followed, like the power boats race!.
Still raining very heavily and the river Teifi was overflowing on to the road. Luckily I had decided to try a different route, towards Llanwryted Wells, which was a better bet to get to Beulah and to the larger town of Builth Wells eventually to the A44, at New Radnor where I stared to breathe more easily.
I arrived home in part 2 which I will write later.

Dad's return home

Dad is planning to set off early tomorrow for home. The weather forecast looks rather wet and stormy, so I do hope it will be alright.

Happy New Year

I hope we all have a happy and successful 2012.
Lots of love to you all from us all in warm wet West Wales xxxx

Happy New Year

Dear all, lovely to see you all safely made it through 2011. Thought i'd wait until well into the day before posting my best wishes to all. From Tuesday, Claire is attending secondary school so we are experiencing a dry run home on the public bus which is jammed full of maids going to Orchard Road. Wish you all well, love Nic