Reply to two of my grand daughters.

Congratulations to you, Gems on your new job Best wishes for your future, give my love to Mandy when you get to London.

Also to my lovely Kate. Go for it, darling and show those boys that girls can do it, just as well.
I'll bet Edward is proud of you, as we all are.
Love to you all from Grandad

PS I am going to a Burn's Supper, with Pipers and a Haggis, on Friday. perhaps a wee dram also!!

Parents Evening in Lampter

It turns out that Kate is an intellient, well mannered pupil and a pleasure to teach; well I never!.
But seriously, well done Kate, they all want her to take 'A' levels in their subject.

Job News

Hello,

Just to let you in on some upcoming life events for me and Clive. Last week I handed in my resignation to Oxford University as I have been offered a job at Royal College of Art at the Kensington campus; so Clive and I will be moving to London this summer. We have the flat in Witney until June so there will be a certain amount of me living up in London in the week (at Mandy's) until we find somewhere in London (any suggestions gratefully received or leads!).

Wish us luck in the lucky year of the Dragon (C's a firedragon!) G xx

Feb Birthdays

Sorry Ruth, I missed your birthday, yesterday. Hope that Louis gave you a nice big Kiss.
Jen and Will both have birthdays on 3rd February.

Big Plans for Bigger Girls

Wow, yesterday was a big day with 4 hours of parent teacher meetings from 5 till 9. After 1 1/2 hours of Daniel's school Principal and teachers' making excuses for our sons, we went on to Claire's Secondary School Year 1 briefing and were completely overwhelmed by the love, enthusiasm and care the school bestows up on the girls. Amazing. Claire is looking forward to playing soccer in school but as the program is quite new, they are a bit short of players so she and two of her friends have been about the place putting up posters and trying to recruit.

Rocky is settling in although today he appears to be misbehaving. We have boot camped him so he is learning who the bosses are. As a result we have stopped the peeing in the house and we are beginning to see some signs that he will make a great pet. We let him off the lead in the park last weekend (in an enclosure) and watched him sprint around for an hour. On Sunday, we went to the beach and he had a big swim and a big day. He loves the water but we think he likes his football more.

We have a 4 day holiday for Chinese New Year starting tomorrow so I'll do my upmost to take some pictures and load them up some how to the web.

Love you all,

Nic

Dearest Dad

Ah, good to have you back. I'll skype you over the next 4 days as we have days off for Chinese New Year which arrives Monday. Love you, Nic

Welcome back Dad.

good to hear that you are back online, love Cathy xx

BACK ON LINE

After over a week with no phone and no broadband, we are at last back in business. I hate people who steal copper wire!! Dad

Nic's email

Hi Pete,

I've been in touch with Cathy all this last week through Facebook messaging. I'll drop you my email details there or you can also message me through Facebook.

Love to all, Nic

Emails

I don't appear to have your email, Nic. Could you ping something to me so I can check it. If you didn't get my mail this morning Steve and Julian, could you do likewise. Ta muchly.

Comments...

I seem to be able to see your comments, Cath, so perhaps you just have to clear your cache and reload the page to see them just after posting then. Try going to the dasher and viewing the blog....

chitchatchit

looking for suitable chat buttons to put on here

Stars on Sunday

Dear all,
We are well and enjoying an evening on the beach. As the sun set we had what I consider a quite extraordinary occurrence when low across the sky within a 60 degree arc, I could three quite clearly three planets all in a line and nothing else. On the opposite quadrant was a very bright star and directly over head a not so bright but bright star. Very little else in the sky. So I think we are all going have a good year, love Nic

Definitely giving up writing comments!

I don't know were they go but not onto the blog!

Mrs S

In those days you had an 'Grammer Skool' entry exam at age 11, called the 11plus. My birthday being in October meant I had an extra year in Class 6 at Chinnor with Mrs Sheedy so I got left behind (booo) because I was still 10.. all very confusing at the time and since probably. Mrs Sheedy was married to a stained glass artist and brought a big box of scraps for us to make a big Jesus picture, to my design (beaming smile). We traced on to a large framed piece of picture glass which lived on the side we worked on at the end of the day if we were good... with Aruldite!
What happened to the big Jesus picture?
Well, Mrs S was away for a few days and we had Mrs Middleton to fill in, and when she asked for a window to be opened, Tony Fujak jumped up like Biggles would have done and put his foot on the yet to be finished masterpiece. Ohhhh my, all that work gone for a burton.
Mrs S took against 'Fujak' from then on.
He was a techy sort of chap and when we first moved to Chinnor when I was nine had already rigged up a private phone line with the people the other side across Oakley Road using scrap telephone receiver parts and bell wire. His Polish Dad was a bit scary with the belt but there were quite a few of his compatriots at the Cement Works. Switowski, Zakachevski, Petrovski to name but a few.
Great Missenden had an entire estate which was still Polish speaking in the 70's including a grocery shop full of sauerkraut and würst and my drum teacher 'Stan' Pearson also Polish got me a gig at the Hilton hotel with a polka and waltzes band from there.
I really thought I was on the brink of stardom being one hand shake away from the Czar of Russia. The ancient violin player who looked quite a lot like Bob Hope had been a child prodigy summoned to perform at court.. imagine!

Health scare!

I haven't been sure who to tell or what to say, so here goes. I have been having some trouble with my breathing and I have been for various test and xrays, the C.T. Scan did not look very good, I have had a bronchoscopy with inconclusive results, so have to go for another next week. I think this will leave me out of action for a couple of days whilst I recover.
Also we are having a challenging time at work, as you may know we are a charity and our shaky finances have hit the buffers; so we are reorganizing, closing down the main building and all moving into the farmhouse, whilst we try and ride out the financial famine. So we are down to three full time staff, three part-time staff, two self employed and as many volunteers as we can muster. I am one of the full time staff and John is one of the volunteers. So this is as predicted for the new year the s*** hitting the fan! Hayho! Happy New year everyone much love Cath xxxx

Mrs Sheady

She was the teacher for class six, the last class in primary school.....so the top teacher to the top kids and absoulutely terrifying to me as a child, her classroom was one of those black clapperboard stand alone prefabs, tucked away on the far side of the canteen giving it a rather forboding presents. Like a kind of Coldiz for the elite. But just a shed really!
Do you remember there were some photos of Steve, Julian, Nic, Pete, and me playing in the snow in the garden at Chinnor, where we built snowmen(snow was a very rare occurrence in Chinnor in our childhood), there is a snap for Julian with his chicken snowman, and Steve built a magnificent snow sculpture of Mrs Sheedy compleat with bosom and handbag, at least that is how it is in my memory!
When Steve was in class six they made a stain glass window(Mrs Sheady's husband was a stained glass craftsman). When I was in Mrs Sheady's class I was always in trouble and she was so cross with me sewing backwards..Uuh?..that I was made to sit with my face to the corner and back to the class to do all my sewing leasons. Am I bitter? Do I bare a grudge? I always felt I had the last laugh, although I'm still confused about sewing backwards.

Hello

Glad all is well with Gdad. These metal thieves are busy as there was a report on the radio yesterday about two men from Birmingham who'd stolen wiring from Southern Electric site near Oxford on New Years Day. The police despatched helicopter team and spied them racing up the motorway.

Can someone fill us younger family members in about Mrs S?! Am v curious.

love G xx

Mystery solved!

Thanks Jan, and of course Pete. It's good to know what is going on with Dad.
And I'm sorry if anyone tried to phone me back last night after sending out messages hither and thither.
We have a slightly dodgy phone. If you don't remember to bang the phone after you have put the receiver down the little button doesn't always pop up to finish the call so you leave the phone engaged, and I forgot this last after talking to June.

Dad's communication problems...

Back from Dad's after a lovely late evening visit. Jan got me out of a church meeting to investigate Dad's lack of communication with June, Cathy and Nick....so I phoned Banbury Police to ask if they would look in on the house and in the meantime Jan and I set out for Kings Sutton not really knowing what to expect. When we got to Dad's he was surprised but pleased to see us, having already had a visit from the police that evening! He was in good spirits and on excellent form, and clearly very flattered that everyone was so worried. According to the police who had visited him, all the communication cabling leading into and out of the village had been nicked by metal thieves. As a result there is no internet and all the telephone lines are down. Hence, he has been out of contact and, unbeknown to him, his mobile was switched off even though it was charging. So we have set the mobile up next to his chair and it is on. As for internet and land lines we will have to wait and see but rest assured all that dad was on good form and looking really well. We had a laugh trawling through some old primary school reports of Julian, Cathy and Steve mostly that he had dug out of a drawer...even a couple for Nic and me signed off by Mr Manser. I think Mrs Sheady had a soft spot for Steve....