Oakwood as usual

First, a merry Xmas to you all. So 2011 – what was that all about ?


If you want a bit more detail, read on.

January

Instead of slipping into a post Xmas torpor, we settled for a life-long ambition and decided to visit Egypt. With the impeccable timing which has long characterised our planning, we arrived the day before the riots started. Sooooo … on the first day, we got herded out of the Museum of the Antiquities by helpful policeman at gunpoint, bundled in a bus and driven off to our cruise boat where we spent a leisurely week one day ahead of the riots until they caught us up on the last day so we had to spend 24 hours on the floor of Cairo airport. Your scribe's hip hasn't been the same since. Gillian managed to consume a cheese sandwich with glass in it causing a nasty and very worrying bleed in her throat as we spent a night of misery in the airport surrounded by tanks. Who put the Tank in Tu Tank Hamun ? Who indeed.


BUT – would we go again ? ABSOLUTELY. We took hundreds of pictures and because of the riots, your scribe got to go inside Tu Tank Hamun's tomb on his own. Utterly, utterly spectacular and truly the trip of a lifetime.



Gillian temporarily escaping the clutches of the camel ride man who wanted to plant us on his camel for 1 dollar, take us into the middle of the Sahara and then charge us 5000 dollars to get off and be rescued. Fortunately, the only thing that smelled worse than the camel was your scribe in the heat so the camel refused to take us. Apparently even camels have standards.

Your scribe looking rakish amongst the ruins of Karnak. Notice the crowds. For some reasons, tanks on every corner and riots everywhere had affected tourism, particularly for those who hadn't left when it all kicked off. Wimps.

Far from the sands of the Nile blocking the Sphinx' exterior orifice, it has in fact been bricked up by the Cairo branch of the Sphinx Birth Control Trust. Supremely indifferent, the Sphinx has just lit up a fag as can be seen by the little cloud above its head.




No, there really was nobody about. Another rakish pose from your scribe whilst his mind is full of Indiana Jones adventures, albeit involving a lemon hat.

Tahrir square with increasingly worried police. A bad time for everybody. We do hope the Egyptian people get what they both need and want – the freedom to express their obvious talents. Ordinary people were very nice with us, treating us with respect.

Sunset on the southern Nile. It really is staggeringly beautiful.

February

Just about nothing happened. Your scribe was 63 he thinks.

March

Just about nothing happened again until the end when Leo bowled in from Singapore to spend a welcome few weeks with us.

April

Big family wedding.



Gillian's Liverpool side during a wedding knees-up. Best to keep a low profile when this lot hit the town.

Notice they all talk at once except for the one on the left who is so hung over, he is praying for his mother or a priest.

Baby foxes are back. Look in the middle.



May

Nice month. Started off with the annual Idle of Wight trip.



Here we are on the way. Your scribe is holding his toupee down in the breeze whilst operating a ball-point retractor in the other hand as a party piece. John, the second from the left, is singing from the bar menu.

This year we travelled on the luxury ferry.

President Obama joined us later in the week on his ferry. He's such a show-off.



June

Felix started his season again in Glasgow and managed a whole season for the first time in several years. His various bits are still holding together. Although the UCL graft in his right elbow has sadly failed, he did a personal best, broke the Surrey record with 72.26m and was selected for the UKA World trials. He is intending to carry on through to see how things go with the Olympic qualification and will then have it redone.



Felix raring to go with some bits not yet bandaged.

Heavily bandaged but he had a really good season.

Irritated by the continuous whoom-whoom noise, farmers have stolen all the blades from the windmills. Fortunately, the efficiency of windmills is such that it makes very little difference.



July

The annual charity blues gig. Many stars were imported including Sonny Boy Clegg and Howlin' Turnip Sigley but thankfully no photographs have been found. The kids also put together a band.



Leo, Izzy and Felix let rip. Felix has still not mastered the art of breaking sticks whilst counting in, a feat managed only by the legendary Juniper Hill Blues Band drummer, Colin “Animal” Hales. Unlike his Dad, Leo looks like a guitarist.

Izzy doing her Aretha impressions. Behind her, Malcolm makes his bass sing.

A quiet moment.



August

Didn't really do much but your scribe travelled a bit – to Boulder, Colorado and to Sweden.

September

Well, a bit more travelling here but this time to Singapore to see number 1 son, our far East representative. Your scribe, nerd that he is, lounged by the pool writing programs to be used by our far Eastern empire being set up by Leo.



What you do in Singapore is basically, eat.

Ming the Merciless deciding on which tourist he is going to eat next.

Leo's House in Singapore.




Quite.

Ah, yes the Singapore flying club, which has Chili rated I think from 1 to 30. 1 is unbearably hot. The charred remains of the 30-eaters are on display in the vomitorium.

The vomitorium.




Looking out at the endless string of container traffic in the Singapore strait from Kusu island. Leo is giving his old kippers a steam.

We managed to see a platoon of the Terracotta army in Singapore, on loan from China. Very tasty. Gillian was particularly taken by this guy.

There are a lot of very rich people in Singapore. Each of the Ferraris in the foreground have a sign in the back window saying, “One of my other Ferraris is actually a Veyron”, which is the black slinky one at the end. The Ferraris are for weekdays.



October

Generally speaking, nothing happened apart from your scribe applying for voluntary early retirement from his academic job at Kingston, (duly accepted in December). We had a very nice trip to Grenoble so your scribe could give a talk at a Synchrotron conference in the middle. We decided to go by train – barrelling across France at 200mph on the TGV (Train de Grande Vomiting) while trying to consume a Croque Monsieur, is quite an experience. Much of this finished up in your scribe's ears and hair. No change there I suppose. 2011 has been a 3 synchrotron year. Not everybody can say that. Even fewer would want to.

November

A nice month. Your scribe went on a Last of the Summer Wine reprise with his school friends.



T'lads gazing sympathetically down the hill while your scribe heaves into view sweating like a horse and whimpering quietly.

This I believe is Dent-dale. It has nothing to do with Arthur Dent.

This is Dent village. If you listen carefully, you can just hear the sound of banjos and screams.



December

A nice month. Gillian's 65th birthday was spent first of all admiring the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery and then eating and drinking a lot at the local Italian. Everybody home for Christmas although we had to travel up to Manchester to see Nannie who is not so mobile as she once was as she approaches 90.



Gillian outside the Leonardo exhibition. This was really wonderful.

Part of the group of happy revellers at the restaurant in the evening.

Jolly Fat Man spotted underground in Switzerland in mid December. Has Santa come early ? (Correction, this bit of the Large Haddock Collider is under France. Your scribe had the great fortune of being at CERN giving a talk when the initial evidence for the Higg's boson was announced.).



Pets

We still have Totto and Trampolina and they still ramble round the garden, pausing only to solve confluent hypergeometric equations in their heads whilst wondering what on earth could cause a human or indeed anything high enough up the evolutionary ladder to break wind, to watch the X-factor. Yes, they still watch the aircraft, goodness knows why. Dotty the pussy cat still does her impressions of a black furry pizza but with rather less animation. We had a family of 7 fox pups in the garden this summer and a badger or two – all this in suburban New Malden.

Butterfly on steroids attempts vertical lift with tortoise.






Your scribe finally hits a correct note on The Trombone during the grand charity gig in July. Sadly, all the incorrect ones before it and other strange noises reminiscent of a cow's digestive tract had driven off the audience long before so they weren't able to er, 'share the moment going forward'.


We hope you and your families are well. We wish you a very merry Christmas and health and happiness in 2012.