2012

Remember from last year - great excitement being generated by John and Holly deciding to get married in 2012.  Well -  January came around, and we all went to the wedding which was in The Puppet Theatre in Norwich.  I think it’s true to say that everyone had a great time. Click on the image above to see pictures.

From great happiness to great sadness at the other end of the year.  Our friend Karl Moore died in August.  We went up to Nottingham for the funeral, and Dave and Mike helped to try to give him an appropriate musical sending off.  We also met his sister and his son Tom (who sounded just like him) which was really nice.  But it was still very sad and Karl still keeps coming into our thoughts.

Anyway - as both Kate and Mike were sixty this year we thought we should celebrate somehow.  We never quite got round to organising a party (sorry) but we went to Pam Stirling’s - which was great.  Kate organised a weekend away in Sheringham with the family for Mike’s birthday in March.

In April Mike and Kate met up with Sue and Pam for a long weekend in the Lakes.

Chris has been beavering away at his Computational Biology (Bioinformatics) MSc in Norwich for most of the year.  It certainly seems to have paid off as he has now got a job in the Department of Plant Sciences in Cambridge!

In May we went to stay at David Mount’s whilst visiting the Edale Folk festival. Click the ‘Gigs’ link for this and other musical highlights.

In June Mike and Kate went to Stockholm.  Some of the time it was very damp and cold, and some of the time it wasn’t... We enjoyed it though.

In July Mike went to two sixtieth parties! His school friend Eric Chardin (they played in a school band together) had a great party in Nottingham, and Martin Leach (from our Brum days) had a “meeting up” at the Cambridge Folk Festival.  It was fun to meet them again, and on stage Roy Harper was amazing!

In October we treated ourselves to a holiday in America - New England in the Fall, and the Art Institute of Chicago - both stunning.

In November we went to Wells next the Sea for Kate’s birthday.

We’ve also been struggling with an influx of builders these last few months.  Eventually we’ll have a bigger kitchen and a porch, but it’s quite hard living with the chaos.  Still the actual builders are great and real craftsmen.

It’s actually been quite a year to deal with.  The death of a friend has hit us emotionally and either the building chaos or old age has hit us mentally.  Still we struggle cheerfully on...