Xmas news 2016

Oakwood as usual, 18-Dec-2016

First, a merry Xmas to you all, we hope 2016 was kind to you, and if not, that Xmas provides comfort.

January

According to your scribe's diary, nothing happened at all. This could be due to a variety of reasons. Either, your scribe forgot to put anything down; or couldn't be bothered; or nothing did indeed er, happen. There was a rather nice Burns night again with our old friends but a rather ominous blank thereafter. There were a couple of interesting photos however.


Gillian's new year resolution is to practice begging for food for when we are really elderly.	Its come to a sorry state when you leave your car for a few minutes and the phantom astrologist strikes.

February

February rolled on and its your scribe's 68th birthday. We went to see the Blues Band with old friends Chris and Monika. The BB are wonderful apart from the need to sell you CDs not only before and after numbers but also during. This continued before and after the event and I half expected to be walking down the street on the way home with Paul Jones attached to my leg, rattling with CDs. Given the state of pension funds and it has to be said, the halfwits who manage many of them, I quite understand the need to look for alternative sources of revenue for the elderly and they are awfully good.


The Blues Band in full swing, in a short break between selling CDs.	Jolly useful sign for pedestrians in the middle of Kingston. I expect it only cost about 500 quid to make and place here, ensuring good taxpayer value.

March

March breezed by. Nice weather and a flying visit from the Singapore branch allowed us all to get together.


Duck performs death-defying tightrope walk without the aid of a pole.	Our oak tree catches the sun rise. Your scribe is not quite sure what he was doing up at this time.	All together including Alan and Leo in from Singapore. The silly faces are something to do with the presence of chocolate.

April

Your scribe went on an "irritate a biologist" tour with old friend and collaborator Greg. The actual point was to present some work we have been doing demonstrating that there are features of proteins, notably how long they are, which have nothing to do with natural selection. Instead, they are derived from properties in information theory. This is to put it mildly, a little unpopular with evolutionary biologists, although the evidence is now overwhelming. A very nice few days spent at our Alma Mater, King's College Cambridge, wandering around the local countryside and trying to convince biologists.

Your scribe finally remembers what he had for breakfast and excitedly tells Greg before it disappears once again into the mists.

May

And off we went to the Isle of Wight with the usual motley crew where your scribe was able to demonstrate his navigational skills once again by showing how to get to Adgestone vineyard via the centre of Newport in the rush hour.

Sitting in the back of the George at Yarmouth looking generally very relaxed. Of course the bill had not arrived at this point.

June

Featured a visit from our very old friends Ken and Nancy, coaxed from the Colorado mountains for a few days.

Ken and Nancy enjoying a bit of a generally lovely June.

July

And so came July. Back to the Isle Of Wight and then Cuba !


Joined by various family members and friends, ready for some serious eating ...	Yes, it was as good as it looks.	Practising silly walking from the supine position to save energy.

And on to Cuba and your scribe's radical new weight loss program. Visit Cuba, eat something, spend next 7 days in the vicinity of a place of easence, go home. In spite of losing 7lbs in a week, it is well worth a visit as it will probably change quite quickly now as the Castro influence wanes, not always for the better. We had just over two weeks there staying with families as well as in hotels. The people were uniformly lovely and the country is generally charming, although there are terrible shortages. They are really going to have to do something about the distortions in their economy though, or the whole country will become a tourist resort.


Typical Cuba.	Inside Sloppy Joes, with the Sloppy Joe's scene from "Our Man in Havana" showing on the telly. At this point, your scribe's head began to spin under the weight of recursion or maybe it was 3 too many Mojitos. Rum is very cheap there.	A whisper of the past.


Your scribe shortly before the lurgy.	Gillian making short work of a lobster.	Unlikely threesome.


Taken in Hemingway's lookout study on his estate. We couldn't help but wonder how long he would have lived there had he had to struggle along without 9 servants.	A Cuban cigar making short work of Gillian.	A classic Cuba scene.

August

Quiet but a pleasant month. Did our annual Woodies charity gig.

Here your scribe hungrily devours a cheese sandwich in the middle of something loud.

September

Nice month but a few trips here and there - Gillian and Izzy to Berlin to see our old friends Liza and Karl and your scribe to Linkoping and Stuttgart.


Lovely shot of deer enjoying the September sunshine.	Our candidate for silliest packing of the year. The little green box on the right was buried alive in the rest of it.	A warm but somewhat eccentric welcome awaited your scribe at the hotel.

October-November

A BIG month for travelling. Izzy set off to Moscow to work at the Bolshoi for a couple of months and Gillian and your scribe set off for New Zealand for the first time. This trip had been in the planning for several months and Gillian and her very old friend Linda in New Zealand had decided to meet up for the first time in many years to celebrate their respective 70th birthdays together. It's such a long way we decided to make a trip of it and spent 3 weeks on South and then North Island after dropping in at Singapore on the way.

To cut a long story short, the South Island of New Zealand is the most beautiful place your scribe has ever visited and we ran out of superlatives on the second day. We started in the earthquake struck city of Christchurch, went south to Queenstown and Milford Sound, up the west coast to Franz Josef, over the mountains on the trans-alpine train to Christchurch, to Kaikoura on the east coast Pacific train missing the big earthquake by a few days, up to Picton and across to Wellington on the ferry, then up north on the train again eventually to Rotorua, the Coromandel and finishing up in Auckland for a week. Phew. Here are just a few pictures or this page will never download properly. We took hundreds.


Izzy off to the Bolshoi for a couple of months working on Billy Budd.	Stop over in Singapore with Leo. Yes, it really is all whisky.	Changes in Singapore's trade description act have led to improvements in food advertising.

Arriving in Christchurch, it starts with a tram.	... and dolphins. These are Hector's dolphins, the rarest sea dolphins in the world. We were very lucky to see these.	View from front room in Lake Tekapo.

Flying over Mount Cook and the glaciers in a small aircraft.	... and on to Mount Cook by bus.	This is a Kia. Very funny birds whose hobby is eating rubber trim on cars. We were travelling in a panoramic coach with transparent view when one of these attempted a landing on the roof, went careering across on one claw and fell off the back.

In spite of the lovely food, we managed to keep our overall size under control.	Barrelling through 50km of Isengard (aka the Dart River) on one of these at 40knots is not to be missed.	The rarest breed of Kiwi alive - the Rowi. There's only about 375 left but they are now breeding them successfully. We found NZ very enlightened.

Big smile from your scribe somewhere up Arthur's Pass.	Gillian astonishes seasoned sheep shearer by hypnotising sheep after a short chat.	This was taken in Kaikoura shortly after we had taken our heavy duty sea sickness tablets to go whale watching and shortly before we found out the trip was cancelled because the whales had disappeared. A few days later, the biggest earthquake for 100 years (a 7.8) flattened it, brought a cliff down onto the railway line, raised the seabed by 2 metres and closed all the roads. We were 500 miles north when this happened. In spite of this, our bed gaily galloped round the room and an enormous cracking noise issued forth from the floor above us according to Gillian. Disappointingly, your scribe slept through it.