Oakwood, 11, Carlton Road, New Malden, Surrey, UK (This mail address appears as a graphic file to prevent spam harvesters from getting it.)

In spite of this and the many invitations to remortgage everything, purchase those must-have China inflatable products, lose weight while sleeping or dead, peruse Cindy's webcam on the inside of her gerbil's nostril or any of the other wonderful things available on the web, we decided to contribute our own form of spam. (My current favourite which showed up today is "Elk extract gives you multiple orgasms". Do you have to see another Elk for this to happen or does it also happen with say a Moose ?)

As of the time of writing, a reasonable year for all. The babys are 23, 19 and 15 and appear below in Leo's delightful birthday card to Gillian. The influence of Gillian's side of the family is very clear here. If you look carefully, you can probably see the tree they are hanging from.

Leo duly graduated from Liverpool in music and has returned home in spite of all Mum and Dads threats and subtle hints like piling his furniture in the front garden and pretending we didn't know him. Since getting back he has set up his own media and web company in the attic which has been rewired into an Internet jungle. If you would like to know more, have a look at DinAlt Mediaworks Ltd.. We are still reeling in shock at this unaccustomed energy. The general idea was to fund his music composition and a book he is writing by doing web work but he is so inundated with work that the latter have taken a bit of a back seat and Dad has become a sub-contractor to this mighty empire in the absence of much else to do.

We offered Leo a graduation party in the summer to make up for not having much for his 18th or 21st birthday parties. This duly went off with lots of his friends coming down, dressing up and having a good time. The highlight for them was Leo, Felix and Issy performing a White Stripes tribute performance on the band's equipment following the discovery that Issy is an ace drummer. The highlight for Dad was Mum's performance at 5am when awakened by the alcohol-fuelled political discussions and general noise. Gillian needs her sleep with her busy life and when she let rip, Les could still hear her through two doors and with a pillow in each ear. The silence after was profound - even the birds went quiet.

So one in, one out. After getting 2As and narrowly missing a third in product design (which is under appeal following a characteristic screw-up by Edexel), Felix decided eventually not to bother doing a gap year to try for Cambridge. What really swung it was the athletics potential at Cambridge. It's er, zero. This year, 55 year old Dad would have come fourth in the Varsity match javelin and even at 17, Fe would have been fourth on the all-time best performance list so abysmal are the standards. So he decided to go to Sheffield which so far seems to be wonderful. He has made loads of friends, the Architecture department (which is graded the same as Cambridge) is superb and he is training 3 nights a week with Mick Hill as part of the High Performance Athletics Centre at the Don Valley stadium, so it seems to be an excellent move. We're not sure if we will be able to afford to feed him when he comes home for Xmas but I expect Sheffield will be glad to get rid of his appetite for a while.

Isabelle has had an interesting year although a busy one. Music continues to dominate and she has just got an honours in grade 7 flute and has just taken grade 7 piano. She got made Head Girl this year, a stunning performance coming so soon after doing well in Religious Studies. Poor old Dad had still not recovered from her excellent performance in RS the year before. This effortless achievement of peer-acceptance is an entirely female thing in the Hatton-Librettos with Gillian's one time status as Deputy Head Girl at her grammar school leading the way. To balance things up, the male side has been characteristically hopeless with Les setting the pace being asked not to sing during his school assembly and getting a rather fortunate 10% in his Latin mock, Leo passing through his school entirely unnoticed and Felix repeatedly leading to parent's day comments from his teachers like "Is he like, you know, alright ?".

Gillian has been characteristically busy although her arthritis makes life somewhat painful. Her involvement with athletics just carries on as usual but once again along with her many other duties, she organised the family holiday again so ably. (We actually left on time, got to the right place and arrived back on time.) The whole family came along including Leo's lovely long-time girlfriend Carolina and this time we went to the middle of Italy (Umbria) via Florence going there and back. Les' old friend Don completed the team meeting up with us after the first couple of days. The wall to wall culture impressed everyone. Six days in the middle spent in Umbria in and around a friend's retirement party gave us ample insight into the secret of life in Italy. Get rid of the Government, ignore economics, eat well and chill. It certainly worked for us. Lots of memorable moments including possibly the most unusual excuse for finding it difficult to sell a house we have yet come across, (three German soldiers down the well), an all too poignant reminder of a violent past. Umbria is frankly gorgeous and I expect we will go again. In fact now the pension system is collapsing round our ears, its becoming important to find somewhere slightly less of a rip-off than Britain to live, and with the annual Umbria blues festival, who knows ?

Les had a far better year, which given the trauma of the previous year was not difficult. The business environment remains difficult but we're surviving and the band had a great time doing its first foreign music festival in the deep South of France. He is still a part-time Prof. at Kent, he still throws javelins occasionally although is more involved in coaching these days and he spends as much time as possible playing in the band. The rest of his time is spent writing and generally staring out of the window of his office in the garden avoiding household chores.

Nannie is keeping well and is still reading 5 Mills and Boon a day, (or is that an hour ?).

The pets are fine although Kerby the randy tortoise remains a menace to everything. This year he included the lawnmower in his objects of desire and gave Mike our gardener a love-bite on his toe.

We hope you are well and here's wishing you a very merry Christmas and Happy new Year. 8-)