Oakwood, 11, Carlton Road, New Malden, Surrey, UK

Well, first of all, a very merry Xmas to you all. It gets more and more difficult to say this as global warming kicks in. As I write this, its about 10 Centigrade, a lovely grey colour and getting to the longest night of the year. Give it 10 years and we'll be wishing each other merry Xmas standing on the kitchen table to keep our heads out of the water. There follows a slightly potted version of events of the year.

This year marked Carlton road's first alien abduction. Here a neighbour has been spirited away whilst enjoying a few quiet moments. Actually, this toilet suddenly appeared one night, stayed for four nights and then disappeared. Nobody knows where it came from nor where it went. Spooky or what ... My own personal theory if I might take a few of your valuable moments is that the only other life form in the universe is a sentient porcelain form which looks uncannily like a dunny, (an extra toilestrial). They mysteriously appear and disappear through worm holes in space called PLUM MING. I don't want to worry you or anything but if you accidentally sit on the wrong one, you are sucked in and re-appear sitting on an anti-dunny at the other end of the universe. Speaking of anti-matter, I read somewhere that the risk assessment for the large hadron collider, (the latest, greatest and shortly to be fired up CERN particle accelerator), includes the "end of the universe" as one of the risk factors but it is "definitely" less than one chance in 10,000. Well that's reassuring. I leave this interesting subject with a quotation from probably the greatest physicist of the latter part of the 20th century and my personal hero, Richard Feynman. He say "Show me an engineer who says there is one chance in 10,000 of a failure and I will show you someone who is full of crap". I rest my case.

2004 wasn't too unkind to us generally although business was truly awful until about May when it became manic as is the way of these things. So what have we been up to ? I'll try and cut down on the prose this year and make up with photographs. In traditional batting order:-

Issy

Poor old thing had a rotten year after contracting glandular fever in February. It hung on and on and on. Eventually she had to be pulled from her GCSEs and it has only very recently receded to the point of irrelevance. In spite of all this, she was assessed as having earned a good bunch of As and and an A* or two. Her athletic interest went all to pot of course but she seems to have made up with it in music. She auditioned and got into the Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra and is the piccolo player at the moment. She continues with the Merton Concert Band in which she plays flute and the piano is still in full swing.

She may not now do music as her main career. She has suddenly got interested in psychology, no doubt Gillian's genes. After all, Gillian has been doing frighteningly sophisticated behavioural experiments on Les and male offspring for a number of years now. Les of course is only dimly aware of this as he is only dimly aware of most things unless it happens to be the blues but more of this later.

Felix

The only apparent change in Felix is his size. He is still as deliciously daft as ever. The speaker fetish remains so he always seems to be building bigger ones. Unfortunately, after Les told him that an array of small speakers was acoustically much more efficient than a big speaker of the same area, he took it to heart and built a set of speakers with, we believe, 6 main driver speakers in each cabinet. Carrying these up to his 3rd floor flat in Sheffield nearly did for Les. Playing music through them certainly did. When you turn them up, the volume of air shifted actually disturbs your hair and almost certainly registers on the Richter scale. Its like being trapped in a timpani drum being played by Ginger Baker.

After the disappointments of missing the last two seasons through injuries entirely unrelated to athletics, he is training hard and hoping for a decent summer next year but its early days yet.

Felix in a pensive mood thinking if he can make an even bigger speaker. The ceiling is close courtesy of the enormous pile of bacon he needs each morning to get him through until the mid-morning snack.

Leo

Leo did his own share of mind games this year. He applied for and got a job. Both Gillian and Les had to sit down for some time after this news. He has become a web monkey at Sun microsystems, (a big US company), so he has to get up each morning and drive to Camberley. The idea is that he uses this to support his singing and continue building his virtual empire, (well we can't see it at the moment).

All in all, he's had a good year. He can now keep fit in the office gym, hack his way around the internet and generally have the sort of time that Les would like to be having but is unfortunately constrained by virtue of being a sad old fart. Carolina is also still looking for internships having stacked up an impressive collection of qualifications.

The singing event of the year was Mozart's requiem which Leo, Issy, Carolina and Les all took part in. Les supplemented the normal Soprano Alto Tenor Bass parts by singing the sub-woofer part, requiring no frequency content, just a sort of low rumbling with the odd cough.

Les, Issy, Carolina and Leo after singing in Mozart's requiem. In deference to the beauty of the great man's music, Les is still wearing the musical extension provided by the conductor

Les

Not a bad year generally although business was very quiet at the start. This picked up later by being completely manic in Sept-Nov necessitating trips to Australia, the US, Germany twice, Austria once and Sweden four times. The band had some good gigs, notably the charity performances in the New Malden festival and a really good gig at Surrey University where they supplied the very impressive sound system and engineers. Has gone back to being a half-time academic, this time at the University of Kingston, 45 minutes walk door to door, where he is Professor of Forensic Software Engineering. When he figures out what this is, he will let you know.

Gillian

Up and down year for the family rudder. Her health has not been good with lots of problems with knees and latterly, Baker's cysts in her calves which have been really painful. She still battles along with her load of athletics commitments which she has only been partly successful at reducing.

Organised the family holiday to Barcelona. We could only manage a few days following Issy around in her concert band tour, but saw enough to be completely captivated with Barcelona in general and Antoni Gaudi in particular.

Gillian attempting a short runway takeoff. Felix in a characteristic pose.

The Nanny-ator

Nannie also had a rough year after falling down the town hall steps which shook her up badly and left her with mild vertigo. In truth it didn't do a lot for the town hall either but she is battling on though and still enjoys her snacks as can be seen in the picture below.

Nannie stalking a pigeon.

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

Xmas News; Oakwood home for the persistently bemused, 19th December, 2004