Graham Davies’s Spoof Round Robin, Christmas 2011
Well, here we are at the end of another year – and in spite of all the gloom and doom about the economy it’s been a good year for us. We began the year by renovating the three bathrooms in our house, one in dazzling white, one in turquoise and one in avocado. OK, as John always says, avocado is “out”, but it’s Susan’s favourite colour, and now that it’s finishedJohn has had confess that it looks really good.
As usual, we went skiing in March. Just for a change we decided to go to America rather than France. We got a fantastic deal on the flights, just £300 each for the four of us, and the five-star hotel in which we stayed in Aspenwas wonderful. There was a blazing fire in the lounge every evening and everyone sat round it and toasted marshmallows. Emily is now a very accomplished skier and can tackle double black diamond runs with ease. Simon is making amazing progress as a snowboarder and has been invited back next year to take an instructor’s course.
We decided to put in some more work on the garden this year. It’s quite a struggle managing half an acre, and the bit at the end that borders on the National Trust land was terribly overgrown. John spent a whole month clearing it and turning it into an organic vegetable plot.
We spent our summer holiday on a two-week cruise in the Caribbean. We got a great deal on flights to Jamaica through an old friend of John who works as a pilot. The cruise was wonderfully relaxing but, sadly, John’s favourite aunt died after a long illness halfway through the trip, which we could of course not interrupt in order to attend the funeral. But the rest of the family gave her a fitting send-off and, guess what, when her will was read out on our return she had left us £100,000. We had no idea that she was so well off.
Our new dog, a Leonberger called Prince, has proved hard to house train. But the problem was solved by a dog psychiatrist we had met on our Caribbean cruise and who lived just a short drive from us. We invited him over one day for Sunday lunch. He just whispered a few commands to Prince, who no longer has the urge to sprinkle on the leg of our sofa every night.
Emily got her A-Level results in August, four A-stars and one B, which we found a little disappointing. Nevertheless it was enough to secure a place for her at Cambridge, where she is now studying Social Anthropology. Simon is in his second year at Oxford, where he is reading Greats.
We have always resisted the temptation to buy an SUV on account of their poor carbon footprints, but we finally gave in as we have had so many bad experiences with the Volvo getting stuck in the mud and snow on the country road leading to our house. But, of course,our new SUV is a diesel.
All in all, it’s been a great year. I think our greatest achievement was probably our discovery of Sainsbury’s organic Sicilian sausages.