I hope this finds you all well and that you have had a good year. We've had another busy
one - news of James and Rachel first!
James is in the sixth form now - he sat his GCSE's in the summer and ended up with 10.5 (the half was in ICT - they only had a 1 hour lesson a week, so he did the short course). He got 7 A's, 3 B's and 1C, so we were all very pleased with his results. He's doing A levels in History, English, Media Studies and ICT.
We had a bit of a party for James's 16th birthday and hired Sumo Wrestling suits, which were a great success - giant padded suits and a mat - fortunately the weather was good - there are some pictures on our family website. James is still a keen skateboarder (so far no broken bones) and is also in a band with some friends from school. He plays base guitar, and although they haven't played in public yet they have been practicing and have booked time in a recording studio in January. They are called High Jinks and have a website - www.high-jinks.net. You can see pictures of them (James is the one in the green T-shirt) and a couple of their songs are on there, but not very good quality as they recorded them in his friends bedroom with one microphone - still, who knows - the next Oasis? Thank goodness he doesn't play the drums as they always rehearse at the drummer's house!
He isn't sure yet what he wants to do after school, but there's Ravensbourne College in Bromley, which specialises in degrees and courses in media if he's still interested in media studies. James has still kept in touch with his friend who moved to Germany and has been over to visit Cologne a few times.
Rachel's also had a busy year. She made her confirmation in the summer, so that was a lovely day - all the family came down and Anthony concelebrated. Rachel is doing well at school - she got a level 8 for her SATS in Maths, and has chosen History and Drama as her GCSE options - she'll be doing 11 subjects like James.
Rachel is still keen on drama outside of school she still goes to a local drama group and from her school drama group she has just been chosen to take part in a youth theatre group. They will be working on a production which will tour round other youth groups and end up with a performance at a theatre in Hammersmith. She's also just been in a school production of Sweeney Todd as one of the chorus. If I hadn't known what her costume was I wouldn't have recognised her as she was dressed as a man and had a wig on! John's Dad didn't realise she had been on stage until we pointed her out to him at the interval.
Rachel has a good crowd of friends from school and she still enjoys shopping! She's made a few trips up to London now with friends, so definitely knows her way round better than me now. (I saw more of London when I lived in Birmingham!). Rachel's going on a school trip to Italy next year, ten days touring starting in Venice and going to Verona, Pisa, Florence and Rome.
We went back to France for our holiday this year - we flew to Marseilles and went to a holiday village in Pont Royal, about 50 km north. Anthony, Mary and John joined us for a few days. The village had a golf course attached, so we all took golf lessons before we went. We were in France during the very hot spell - most days it was over 100 degrees, so it was a case of getting up and going out early and keeping in the shade during the middle of the day. There were a couple of quite dramatic forest fires nearby - for one we were fortunately out for the day as it was getting close enough to consider evacuating the village, but for the second we had a bird's eye view of the helicopters filling their buckets in the canal at the bottom of the hill, before circling off to drop water on the fire. As we were in Provence, we enjoyed trips out to Avignon, Aix-en-Provence and to the villages in the Luberon hills. Again, there are some pictures on our website.
We're thinking of doing something similar next year, but hoping to go to Australia in 2005 as both James and Rachel will finish school early after their A levels and GCSE's, so we'll be able to take a longer break and visit family and friends there.
John and I have kept up the golf. We tend to play 9 holes at the local public golf course. James had a few games in the summer holidays with his friends - a cheap way to spend the afternoon, and Rachel had a game with us on Sunday. I am definitely improving, but can't manage 18 holes yet. John has really taken to it and even managed to play on the Ailsa course at Turnberry when he was up in Scotland at a conference.
John is still working in Leatherhead, and is still doing the M25 run - he does tend to travel later, so misses the worst of the traffic. He has been working on his family tree with his parents and they have traced family back to the 1700's. (Both John's and the Flynn family trees are on the website).
I started a new job in October - back in the NHS. I'm the team manager for the community mental health team for older people in Greenwich. It's a big team with nurses, social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists and psychiatrists. The team also includes a day treatment service and voluntary services, so I think I'll be kept busy! There's quite a lot of development work to do as the team only joined together a year ago, and we still use 2 different systems - so a fair bit of sorting out to be done.
That's about all our news.
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2004.
Anne