It's a year later and we're all still alive here in Leamington Spa. This is what we've been up to in 2009 (pictures in progress - click on them to enlarge):
JANUARY: The year began in chilly London where Max and Lachlan joined the shivering crowds on the Thames embankment, watching several million pounds of firew

FEBRUARY: Snow closed play (actually, work) and our boys rejoiced in a number of d


Cam turned six and chose a sophisticated lunch at Leamington’s best – and only – sushi restaurant over a party with his classmates.
MARCH: We joined our neighbours for the biannual clean-up of our section of

The National Trust re-opened its doors; Alyson was taken on her traditional Mother’s Day cream tea and daffodil jolly; and it was already time to fetch Duncan (and a term's worth of washing) home again.
APRIL: Spring got into full swing and took us with it.



and on Easter Monday had lunch with friends in Islington, who took us to see the 2012 Olympic site beginning to take shape.


Did you know that Queen Victoria died in the Isle of Wight? Well neither did we until we got there.
Back home again, Cam threw himself into rehearsals for his first Scout gang show where he appeared as a piano mover in a flat cap so large that nothing was visible from the neck up as he helped (Right Said) Fred haplessly shove a piano from one side of the stage to the other.
MAY: The sun shone, and the woods, fields, parks and gardens were overtaken

We were moved to visit the furthest tip of Cornwall for a few days to admire the

gardens, tramp the coastal paths, and contemplate possible retirement in or around Alyson’s Penzance gene pool.
JUNE: Deep in the fens, Duncan

Alyson was undiagnosed with thyroid eye disease and returned to wondering why, oh why, her eyes no longer move properly together or apart, and why she sees not just two of everything but now four (making way too many children). On the last day of the month we trained down to London for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, one of the intellectual highlights of our year, where we get to spend a whole day in elegant surroundings talking to enthusiastic research teams about their work.


Once the school year had come to an end we decamped immediately and at once to Cornwall to take possession of a cliff-top National Trust cottage




and walked some more all around this magnificent southern-most tip of England.

Like the dragon in Rosemary Manning's Green Smoke, we love Kynance Cove (above) best of all.

AUGUST: Alyson




Max and Lachlan returned tanned and happy from their annual sojourn in Wasdale, climbing up and down fells, sinking into bogs, and jumping off bridges. Without pausing for breath they packed their carpet bags and morphed into teenaged super-nannies for a week, looking after the impeccably behaved sons of some good friends in Wiltshire. Cam enjoyed several days at Mad Science “camps”, while Mum and Dad were at work, making smells, bangs and satisfyingly gooey long-chain polymers. Trevor developed kidney stones and now has a keener appreciation of what women go through in childbirth.




Duncan hitch-hiked all the way to Dundee in a day, and then worked his way back down to London via the Edinburgh festival. Lachlan started at Castle Sixth Form College in Kenilworth, Max returned to Year 13 (his final one) at Trinity School in Leamington,

OCTOBER: We discovered Geocaching, a satellite-powered form of orienteering which allows you to hunt world-wide caches of ‘treasure’ with the aid of a hand-held GPS. Duncan returned to Cambridge to start his second year as an anthropologist. Trevor turned 73 and the next day we jumped on a cheap Ryanair flight to Tuscany to spend a week of sunshine in a deliciously mellowed mediaeval villa – complete with dovecote bedroom for Cam. We climbed the leaning tower of Pisa, saw the mountain sunset from the walls of Volterra, fell in love with the towers and gelati of San Gimignano, stumbled into a costumed games convention in Lucca, dipped our toes in the blue Mediterranean, and contentedly sipped our grappa as the leaves turned gold in the Tuscan vineyards. In fairness, we should add that collectively and/or individually we also got sick, got sick of each other, deeply and obviously mourned missing a Halloween party back in Leamington, couldn’t see the views because of double/triple/quadruple vision, went on a long guidebook walk along an ancient pilgrims’ way now utilised by heavy traffic, got lost in the hire car, etc, etc. But the first version is by far the nicest so we’re going to stick with that.
NOVEMBER: Max started driving lessons. Duncan was voted President of the Robinson College Students Association and succeeded in getting sanitary bins into the women’s toilets (though not yet the men’s). He also launched his literary career writing for Varsity, the Robinson Brick, The Tab (Cambridge’s new and supposedly satirical online tabloid) and the College pantomime.
DECEMBER: And here we are in December. We have dutifully watched a stageful of six-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, eaten 120 mince pies, cut down a fir tree, and stuck several hundred cloves into unsuspecting oranges to make the house smell festive. On Wednesday we go to our favourite candle-lit Ex Cathedra carol concert (go out and buy a CD) and on Saturday we’re lined up for Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Crackers at the Royal Festival Hall, where she’s going to put Ronnie Corbett on top of the tree. The yule logs are already burning in both fireplaces – we don’t know how Father Christmas is going to arrive unharmed but so far he has always found a way.
Merry Christmas from us all...:
Alyson, Trevor, Duncan, Maxwell, Lachlan and Cameron