Blundell Xmas Letter 2003
We have again had a very busy year with each of us being involved in many different activities. Peter took early retirement from British Airways with pension in May 2002 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 the USA and to Europe, with the advantage of Peter's cheap travel concessions.
Our travels started with a day trip to France in January to restock the cellar. In February, Peter, Alison and Richard went to Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, USA. The highlights were the very many beautiful cacti that we saw growing in that very dry desert environment. We also saw historic missions and churches, museums and Native Indian sites. The weather was superb, with blue skies and a consistent 75 degrees every day.
In March, Peter once again captained the BA bridge team when it took part in the annual European airlines tournament. It was held this year in Athens, Greece. Peter saw a lot of the historic ancient Greek sites. After the Olympics next year, Peter is likely to return with Alison. BA hosted the annual bridge match with Delta Airlines from Atlanta. At the end of March, Peter spoke at two computer conferences, one in Copenhagen, Denmark and one in Stockholm, Sweden. He had plenty of spare time to see again the sights of those 2 cities. There was now no boss hurrying him back to work and no real business need to attend all of the conference as many of the presentations were in Danish or Swedish. In April, Peter and Alison took part in the Thames Valley League’s annual bridge teams tournament, again hosted by BA. At Easter, we spent a week with Diana up in Liverpool. We visited Rufford Old Hall, a beautiful National Trust property, and Poynton, where Alison’s mother comes from. We have started researching our Family History and so took the opportunity to do some Family History research
In May, Peter and Alison went to Geneva, Switzerland for a few days for Alison’s fiftieth birthday. The highlights were a boat trip all the way along Lake Geneva and a very scenic train ride through the Swiss mountains. The following weekend, Peter had another trip to speak at a computer conference, this time in Helsinki, Finland. Alison came with him this time. We spent a very enjoyable weekend in Helsinki enjoying what was the Finns first spring weekend. In June, Richard and Diana went to Rome for an all expenses paid weekend. Richard won this for beating his sales targets at work.
Peter and Alison played lots of tennis in the excellent weather in June and July. Alison and her partner won the 2003 veterans ladies doubles. Peter spent a day at the Wimbledon Tennis; and Peter’s team won one of the club’s friendly tournaments. Peter and Alison were away for almost all of the school summer holidays. We spent a week at the start and another week at the end of the holidays in Liverpool with Diana.
In August in the middle of the holiday, Peter and Alison flew to Philadelphia for two weeks in Pennsylvania, with Richard joining them just for the final few days in Philadelphia. This was a very varied holiday, with temperatures pleasantly around 80 for most of the time. We saw beautiful houses, gardens and historic sites. Peter went to several aviation, railway and trolley museums. The best museum was Steamtown in Scranton, which is the National railway museum and the American equivalent of the British Railway Museum at York. Outside Pennsylvania we visited Trenton and the university city of Princeton in New Jersey. The main sights of Philadelphia are the Liberty Bell and the old buildings dating from American independence in 1776.
In October, Peter and Alison went to Houston for a week’s holiday in Texas. We spent the most time in San Antonio. This is famous for the Alamo mission, the site of a major battle between the Texans and the Mexicans just before Texan independence in the 1830s. We also saw San Antonio’s four other mission churches as well as walking along the beautiful river walk in downtown. We took a day trip to Austin, the Texan state capital, where we went round the Capitol building. Back in Houston, we took a boat trip round the docks and went to more lovely gardens. On our last day, we went to the historic seaside town of Galveston, drove and walked the promenade there, saw some old houses and went to the museum.
We have just started to plan our holiday trips for next year. We hope to go to more German and Eastern European cities for weekends in the Spring and trips in February, and April or May possibly to the US. In March, Peter, Alison and Richard hope to visit the Delta bridge people in Atlanta in the USA for our annual match. Peter may go to Frankfurt in May to play in the annual European 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 eight years. She 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 is Ashford Tennis Club chairman and in the summer was captain of the men’s fourth team in the Surrey league.
Until May 2002, Peter was a Senior Manager in the computer department for British Airways. He is one of the world's experts on Data Warehousing. He now spends some of his time writing computer textbooks for Heinemann educational publishers. He has written 2 units and their associated teachers guides and these are in publication. One is on Programming Concepts and Practice and the other is on Visual Programming. Peter is now writing a larger unit for them on Software Testing. He is a volunteer at Brooklands Museum, helping to run their library and in research. The museum covers both aviation and motor racing. It is on the site of the Vickers, later British Aerospace, aircraft factory, and the famous pre-war Brooklands motor racing circuit. They hope to acquire one of the development Concorde aircraft for display.
Alison works part-time as a school admin officer at Buckland Junior School in Staines. Alison has recently retired as 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 Hawkedale infant school, in Sunbury.
Diana, now 25, 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 the Dominican Republic on holiday in November. It seems that she has a very active social life in Liverpool. She will be home for Christmas. She is also into Family History and can easily visit the county record offices in the North West and in North Wales for research.
Richard, now 23, 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 2002, he was also on McDonalds Graduate Management Training scheme. He then became a Store Manager for Costa Coffee shop, working at three of their Heathrow stores. In October 2003, he moved to Sodexho as Brands Manager at Kings College Hospital in Denmark Hill, London. He manages three stores across the hospital. Richard has had trips on his own to Gran Canaria, Copenhagen, Lisbon and Rome.
We have done many other things, 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.