Happy Christmas

Another year has passed! As usual, we split our time between Coventry and Greece. In Coventry we have been kept busy with childcare (Charlie and Bobby are now 9 and 4, Jade's George and Harry are 3 and nearly 2) and visiting Simon's mum (now 97), who moved to a dementia home, just round the corner from us, in February. She has deteriorated a lot over the last year and is now bedridden and barely communicative. Lin continues to volunteer at the Warwickshir Wildlife Trust, doing nature conservation, and Simon keeps up his cycling. His arthritic fingers meant that he was finding it increasingly difficult to use his brakes, so in June he bought an "old people's" bike, which is very light, with hydraulic disk brakes, so now he can stop.

We went back to Greece in the middle of April and set off on our long spring cruise (almost 1000 kilometres) up to Lesbos, Limnos and Thasos, then across to Mount Athos. At first we kept offshore from Athos, because women are not allowed within one kilometre of the coast in case they drive the monks to sinful thoughts, but then we saw tripper boats full of men and women going much closer to the coast, so we did too.  

Saint Panteleimon, the Russian Monastery on Mount Athos - you can see who has the money!

From Athos and Halkidiki, we sailed (or motored) down to the Sporades, through the Evia channel to the Cyclades and back to Leros towards the end of May. The highpoint of the voyage was Delos, the sacred island off Mykonos, which we last visited in 1964

on which there was a wonderful installation of sculptures by Anthony Gormley. 

ou can read more about our voyage on our blog, miahara.blogspot.com

We came home in the middle of June for Simon's niece Jenny's wedding, then had a weekend in Snowdonia, in Wales, where Simon, Andrew, Becky and Kai went on the fastest zip wire in the world

and Simon, Andrew, Kai and Charlie climbed Snowden.

At the end of July we spent a week camping at Crantock, in Cornwall, with Becky, Andrew, Kai, Charlie, Bobby, Jade, Elliot, George and Harry.

In August we joined a local sailing club and Charlie started to learn to sail an Optimist.

We went back to Leros at the end of August and pottered around until the middle of October, making a short week-long tour with Kai to Kalymnos, Levitha, Astypalea, Nissiros and Kos.

Once we got home it was back to childcare and the usual round of doctors and hospitals to get everything checked up. We pretty well passed everything, though Lin's diabetes has got a bit worse and Simon's feet are contorted by arthritis so he has to wear sandals, whatever the weather.

Deecmber 13th was a day of profound depression when the monstrous buffoon Johnson won the election, to join the regiment of Trump, Putin, Modi, Netenyahu, Salvini and co., who are conspiring to dash everyone's hopes for the future and make the world a worse place.

On the other hand, it was also a day of looking back with joy because it was 50 years ago that day that Lin and Simon were married.

We hope that we have got a few more years to go!

With lots of love from

Simon and Lin