We have again had a very busy year with each of us being involved in many different activities. Our big news is that Peter took up an offer of early retirement with pension at the end of May and so is now a gentleman of leisure and enjoying every minute of it. We have had several lovely holidays as in earlier years, going to North Africa, to the USA and to Europe, with the advantage of Peter's cheap travel concessions.
In February, Alison and Diana started our travels with a week in Hawaii and Los Angeles. This would be Diana’s last trip with us as she lost her main travel concessions at her 24th birthday in April. Richard and Peter joined them on their return to Los Angeles; Diana then flew home and the three of us went to San Diego. The highlight there was the Wild Animal Park. We finished that week in the US flying to Atlanta to stay with our American friends for the BA Bridge club to have their annual friendly match against Delta Airlines.
At the end of March, Peter and Alison went to Toulouse for a few days. It is a beautiful city, with lunches outside in the spring sunshine, impressive old buildings and walks along the banks of the historic Canal du Midi. We also took the train to the old city of Carcassonne. In April, Peter organised the European airlines annual championship in London, as it was BA’s turn this year to run the event. BA’s Chief Executive Officer Rod Eddington presented the prizes, as he is a bridge player. Peter’s final BA business trips speaking at conferences about BA’s IT were 4 days in Edinburgh and two days in Central London. Peter and Alison took part in the Thames Valley League’s annual bridge teams tournament, again hosted by BA.
In May, Peter and Alison went to East Anglia for a long weekend. We saw the beautiful Constable country near Ipswich, the brashness of Great Yarmouth and the historic National Trust houses around Cromer. We have joined the National Trust and with a visit to a local property most weeks during the summer, we have now seen almost all the sites within about 50 miles of here. Peter had 2 weeks Jury Service, most of which was spent sitting reading while waiting for assignment to a trial. Peter and Richard also went for a very long sightseeing and shopping day-out to France and Belgium, visiting Ostend, Gent, Lille and Calais. The month finished with 2 retirement parties for Peter, one with his workmates and a surprise party with our friends.
In June, Peter started his retirement training as a house husband, learning which aisle contains which food at the local Tesco and how to supervise grass growing. When not playing tennis, we spent a weekend with one of Alison’s school friends in Devon. Alison went to a school reunion, while Peter went for a boat ride down the River Dart and a ride on a steam railway. In July, Alison’s mother Dorothy moved flats in Rustington, so we spent 2 weekends there with her, helping with packing, moving and unpacking.
In August, Peter and Alison flew to Washington for two weeks in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, with Richard joining them just for the final few days in Washington. This was a very varied holiday, with temperatures unexpectedly in the 90s for much of the time. We saw a lot of historic sites with Washington’s and Jefferson’s country houses and battlefields from the American Civil War, much of which was fought in Virginia. We visited historic Williamsburg and the pretty US Naval Academy in Annapolis. There was beautiful scenery on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Peter went to several aviation and railway museums. Perhaps the most unusual visits were a flight line tour from a retired Rear Admiral and lunch in the Officers mess at the Oceana Navy aviation base, Virginia Beach, and a tour round the Navy shipyard at Norfolk. We then went and stayed with Diana in Liverpool for a few days as we have seen little of her.
In October, Peter and Alison went to Tunisia for two weeks sightseeing and bridge, as Peter’s bridge committee organised a bridge week there for 140 airline bridge players from 10 countries. We spent the first 5 days independently in Tunis, where we started with seeing many fine Roman mosaics, discovered all over Tunisia, in the Bardo museum. We also spent a day in Carthage, seeing the Punic and Roman ruins from over 2000 years ago. The bridge was held in the resort town of Port el Kantaoui, 90 minutes drive south of Tunis close to the city of Sousse. Peter’s BA team won the main pairs competition. The excursion from there was to the religious sites at Kairouan and the magnificently restored Roman amphitheatre at El Jem. We also took a trip on the train from Sousse south to the next historic city of Monastir.
We have just started to plan our holiday trips for next year. We hope to go to somewhere warm for a few days in January, to more German and Eastern European cities for weekends in the Spring, a trip in February possibly to the US, and in March we host our regular March visit from the Delta bridge people in Atlanta in the USA. Peter also hopes to go to Athens in March to play in the annual inter-airline bridge tournament.
Three of us play bridge, with Peter, Alison and Richard playing at the BA bridge club on Monday evenings. We run a BA team in the Thames Valley Bridge league. Peter is BA bridge club chairman and captain. Alison has been Ladies Captain for Ashford Tennis Club for seven years, is now fit enough to play in the teams again and has spent a lot of time organising some of the Ladies tennis and tournaments. Peter has just been elected Ashford Tennis Club chairman and is captain of the men’s fifth team in the Surrey league.
Until May, Peter was Knowledge Strategy Manager for British Airways, which is one of the Senior Managers in the computer department, and his specialist subject was Data Warehousing, on which he is one of the world's experts. He is now a volunteer at Brooklands Museum, involved in their archives and cataloguing their photo collection. The museum covers both aviation and motor racing. It is on the site of the Vickers, later British Aerospace, aircraft factory, formerly the famous pre-war Brooklands motor racing circuit.
Alison works part-time as a school admin officer at Buckland Junior School in Staines. Alison remains a school governor at the school Richard and Diana used to go to, Ashford Church of England. Peter is a governor and Responsible Officer, a form of auditor, at a local infant school, Hawkedale in Sunbury.
Diana, now 24, graduated with a B.Sc. Honours in Mathematics from Liverpool University in July 2000. She is now a manager at a McDonalds restaurant in Liverpool following their Graduate Management Training scheme. She has a car and the flat that she used to share with Richard, just 2 miles from work. She still goes riding. She spent 2 weeks in Cuba on holiday in November. It seems that she has a very active social life in Liverpool. She will be home for Christmas.
Richard, now 22, graduated with a 2:1 in his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science also at Liverpool University in July 2001. He is now back living at home. Until September, he was also on McDonalds Graduate Management Training scheme working at their Heathrow Terminal 4 restaurant, about 3 miles from home. He then left to become the manager of the Costa Coffee shop, the UK’s leading brand, in Terminal 4. He has about 20 staff working for him and takes about £3000 on a busy day: that’s a lot of coffees. He has increased sales by about 20% since he started there and he is very highly thought of. Richard has had trips on his own to New York in January, Rome in May, Berlin in September and Stockholm in November.
We have done many other things, including starting on Family History, but this letter is a summary of our main activities. We plan to update over Christmas our own web site with a pictorial version of this letter showing photos of many of the places we have written about.