2019 Brexit Blues

We are both keeping ourselves active, with regular sessions at the gym and our walking group, although we missed the autumn walking schedule because of our temporary Max sitting arrangements. We go up to town quite a lot to either Tate Modern or Tate Britain to see the special exhibitions and we try to get our money's worth out of our National Trust, English Heritage, Horticultural Society and National Maritime Museum cards as well. We are lucky that there are lots of lovely NT places in Kent and Surrey and we can fairly easily get to Wakehurst Place and Wisley for a day out. We also went to a wonderful Chihuly exhibition in the gardens at Kew. Our phones nag us constantly if we fail to cover our 10,000 steps per day!

Chihuly flowers at Kew

The telescope I was given for my 70th has now been used quite a few times, whenever the weather permit, which doesn't seem to have been very often over the last four rainy months. We had some wonderful views of Saturn in late summer and the moon is always worth a look. I now have the wherewithal to take photographs but so far, I haven't managed to find the right settings so nothing to send off to the Astronomy Photography of the Year competition yet. 

I've had a busy year in the garden, in part driven by the damage done by our local and very destructive fox. I have had to construct covers out of mesh and wood for my vegetable plots to stop the fox getting in to dig up my plants in its search for worms. It also seemed to be intent on building an earth so I had to go around filling up the holes as I found them.

The long hot, dry summer of 2018 left my lawn in terrible state, made worse by the fox making one of its earth digging attempts in the middle where there was a badly dried up patch. Part of the problem with the lawn, which I have known about for years, was that just under the surface there was a load of broken crockery, bottles and bits of brick from Victorian times when our garden was the end of the garden of a house now long gone and as there were no rubbish collections in those days, lots of stuff was just thrown down the end of the garden. So this year, I decided to sort it. This involved digging out the entire 50 square metre grass area to a depth of one foot and removing the rubble below. I started in February and finished at the end of July and ended up with about on cubic metre of rubble. I did rescue quite a few unbroken bottles of various shapes and sizes to add to the collection we have made over the years when we have dug up other parts of the garden. Sandy was getting a bit miserable with the view out of the window of the big brown patch where the lawn used to be so I called in a turfing company to finish off the job quickly before the autumn. We are really pleased with the result.

Only two thirds of the digging still to do

We didn't get round to organising a long holiday this year but we did have a week in the Isle of Man with Sandy's choir. It got off to a bad start when EasyJet texted everyone to cancel the flight as we were on the coach to Gatwick, and although we have recovered the cost of our much more expensive BA flights the following day, we are still in the process of trying to recover the cost of the hotel for a day and some measure of compensation for the lost day of holiday. We really enjoyed the IoM though. We had coaches booked for two days when we had concerts outside of Douglas but otherwise we went here and there either on the excellent bus service or on the island's little railways, including an electric tram ride to the top of the only mountain on the island.

Sandy with the Snaefell electric tram car

Sandy at Port Erin Station

Joe, Eugenie and Max are in Hong Kong for Christmas this year so we have been in Reading with Tessa, Joel and Maria. We had a lovely time and a superb Christmas dinner cooked by Joel which he produced after he had been out at 9 am doing a Christmas 5km Park Run! When we arrived on Monday, our first task was to take Maria into town to look for a Christmas dress. We had to do the rounds of quite a few shops and I must say I was looking at the stuff on offer and had to agree with Maria that there was a distinct lack of anything which suited her. But we had a second look in Debenhams and found something we had missed first time around. It was a perfect fit and she looked lovely in it, so everyone was happy. Our planned walk to Sonnig for a meal on Christmas Eve had to be replanned as a car trip as the Thames was occupying all the riverside paths - we have had way above average rain over the last four months. We will have all the family with us on 4th January after Joe, Eugenie and Max return from Hong Kong.

Max is now three years old. For most of the year we have looked after him on Wednesday but we switched to two half days for the Autumn term as a temporary arrangement and will be back to doing Wednesday in the New Year. He is beginning to get the idea of talking now and can manage English, Cantonese, French and his own sign language. It is amazing how he knows which language to use when he's speaking to someone! He's a happy little fellow and we have never seen him have anything resembling a tantrum. His idea of bad behaviour is to run away cackling with laughter. One of his favourite pastimes is doing jigsaws, so long as they are of Thomas the Tank Engine or real trains. He can now sit down and do a 72 piece puzzle completely unaided.

Maria is now in her second year at senior school and doing well. She has already established herself in the school drama/musical scene. She was one of just two first years to be in last year's production and has a bigger part in the show coming up at the end of January. She is still breaking boards in Taekwondo and going to dance classes, although there has been a change of style - ballet is out and street dance is in. Her drawing skills are amazing - here is the drawing she did from a photo of Max.

Maria's drawing of Max

Tessa and Joe are both working for the same companies as last year and they are both now settled in their new houses. Tessa and Joel organised a new bathroom in the loft extension and a new kitchen, both of which were done very well. Their road won an award from the council for the best community street in Reading. Joe and Eugenie now have their living room and bedroom redecorated and have had things like the radiator and power points in the dining room reorganised in readiness for having that room redone.

The wine that I made last year from the grapes we brought back from our holiday in France was bottled up in May and a few bottles have already been consumed. I'm very pleased with it and am looking forward to having some with our family gathering after the New Year. Unfortunately the vine didn't produce enough this year for a 2019 vintage.

In the end, the Brexit fiasco has not turned out well and we also have Boris Johnson and a Tory government for the foreseeable future, along with a distinct possibility that we might end up with the 'No Deal' Brexit the lunatic fringe of the Tory party have been wanting all along. That is despite more than 52% of votes going to the divided opposition who it seems will never get their act together to organise effective tactical voting,which in this election would have produced another hung parliament. It looks to me that the much vaunted freedom from Brussels will end up with us in Rees Mogian satrapy to Donald Trump. TV highlight of the year was a six part drama called 'Years and Years'. If you haven't seen it you can watch it on Youtube. You do have to pay for it but it is well worth the small charge - As a depiction of a dystopian future, it has already had some scarily accurate observations - fortunately it has a happy ending.

At least as we come to the close of the year, Burnley already have 24 points so unless they have a complete melt down, they should survive in the Premier League for another year. My local Rugby Union team (Blackheath) provide good entertainment too and are generally near the top of their division without ever seemingly to be in danger of promotion.

That's about it then. I'll end by wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year wherever you may be.