For some 33 years now I have written a family Christmas newsletter. I know that for some these have a mixed reputation but I always try to make mine distinctive adopting different themes and styles.  I particularly enjoyed writing one in the style of a P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves and Bertie Wooster story and similarly enjoyed writing in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle where I had apparently lost my newsletter that year and asked Sherlock Holmes to find it. In his vain attempt to locate it turned out that Dr Watson wrote the letter for me. I have taken another love, the Italian opera, as the theme where the chorus barracked us throughout. And I enjoyed it when Kirsty Young interviewed my wife and me on Desert Island Discs.

A goodly number of our correspondents return the favour and we look forward to catching up with friends and family this way. But this year one or two have said there is no news so there is no newsletter. So how did I manage? Well, here is a slightly edited version of Christmas Newsletter number 34.
 

Splendid Isolation
 

In this extraordinary year writing our customary newsletter is going to be more a case of what we didn’t do than what we did. But then we must not complain too much as many will have had a much more difficult time than us. We are very fortunate to live in a decent sized house with a decent sized garden in a nice neighbourhood. There are good walks in all directions to parks and the Common and down to the river and over to a protected area of woodland etc. David retired with impeccable timing just as the lockdown was about to start, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

It began well enough. We had the usual round of social activities planned with the various affiliations that we have: the Worshipful Company of Marketors, the Phoenix Past Masters Association and the Firebirds, the Phoenixes’ consorts, the Cripplegate and Coleman Street Ward Clubs, the City Livery Club, the Anglo-Chilean Society, Brand Exchange, the English Speaking Union, the Royal Society of Arts et al.

We took our traditional winter flight to the sun by going to the Bahamas.in February.  We spent part of our honeymoon there and this time we stayed in Sandals which had taken over the hotel that used to be frequented by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor when he was Governor.

On our return we began by attending a wonderful concert at the Royal Festival Hall organised by Rotary International. All the performers were school children and the performances were to a very high standard and hugely entertaining. We then flew to Madrid to stay with our son and his partner and celebrate their daughter’s fourth birthday. We had a lovely time and enjoyed seeing how she and her new brother are developing. We got back in time to attend the Phoenix Masters’ Spring Dinner where Sir Charles Bowman was the speaker and I was somewhat overwhelmed as Sir Charles singled me out for praise for the work I have been doing with Sir Charles’ nominated charity as Lord Mayor, the Samaritans.

It was just as well we got back for this dinner because if we’d stayed in Spain we might still be there as it went into lockdown soon after. My last paid assignment was as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Digital Engineering. I had decided I would retire from this role as I reached 70 in June. I was required to give three board meetings’ notice of this which I had done in September 2019. They found a successor who could take over after the March meeting so it was decided that I would step down then and they would give me a farewell lunch afterwards.  By now various meetings and social gatherings were being cancelled. Some members of the Board were prevented by their employers from travelling so with two days’ notice it was decided to hold it as a conference call. So that was my final paid work and there was no farewell lunch.

Everything in the diary was getting crossed off.  Some meetings were held by Zoom, not always successfully. Straightforward events like dinners just got cancelled. Cripplegate Ward Club postponed its AGM and then decided to hold it by email, not even virtually. So I moved up to Upper Warden,  that is next in line to be the Master, just by the stroke of a key.

We had booked various tickets to the concert halls and theatres but we didn’t see the LSO perform Elgar’s beloved Violin Concerto and Sibelius’ equally beloved Symphony no 4. We didn’t see the hilarious Mischief Theatre perform the latest in the “Goes Wrong” series: Magic Goes Wrong. We didn’t see the latest musical performed by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. And we didn’t see Lehar’s The Merry Widow, Puccini’s Le Villi nor Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirate of Penzance at Holland Park.

In April we didn’t go back to Spain this time to share our other grandson’s third birthday. My wife had planned to stay on to also share our daughter’s birthday at the end of April. The crossing out in the diary just kept on. We didn’t go to Portsmouth with the Phoenix Past Masters where we were going to have dinner on the newly refurbished HMS Warrior, the foremost fighting ship in the world in Victorian times.

Most hurtful of all was that I had planned a bigger than usual party to celebrate my 70^th birthday in June. I had booked Barber Surgeons’ Hall in the City of London for a large lunch party. Instead my wife and I just had lunch on our own, but at least we got a friend who is a skilled chef to cater for us.

So what did we do? Well, like everybody we shared lots of jokes and funny videos; we held Zoom calls; we went back to reading a daily newspaper. My wife spent all day on What’s App with various groups. I still haven’t mastered this. To think I helped create the consumer market for mobile phones back in the early ‘90s with Sony. But then phones were for making phone calls.

We took every opportunity to celebrate. On 30^th April when Captain Tom Moore celebrated his 100^th birthday we celebrated with him cracking open a bottle of bubbly. Then the following day it was May Day so we did it again. On VE Day, asked to raise a glass with the nation, we did it again with some of our neighbours but keeping well to our own driveway, well, just.

Since we couldn’t go to our local pub The White Horse we christened our patio The White Rabbit. Well, we do live in The Warren…
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We did manage to get to Spain in September to see our children and grandchildren. That was a very happy experience and one we regarded as essential. On the flight back I had three rows to myself.

Regular readers may remember our newsletter from 2018 when we documented the domestic travails we had then. Well, we could have just repeated it, almost word for word this year. Even with social distancing we have had an army of electricians, plumbers, handymen, gardeners, and decorators through our doors and gates. Perhaps the most extraordinary was when our American-style fridge-freezer blew up. We’ve had it over 20 years so perhaps we should have expected it. My wife told our neighbours through What’s App and one very generous couple said they had a spare and they kindly brought it round on a trolley. Ours was covered by an insurance policy but as this was during the lockdown the company could not send two men round so one man delivered another fridge freezer, UK style, on loan. We still had our first fridge, over 30 years old, so we now had four. We thought if a 20+ year old fridge could blow up then a 30+ year old fridge needed to go so we bought a new one with a deal that they would take the old one away. Then, surprisingly early apparently two men could deliver a replacement fridge freezer after all. There was a moment in time when we had five fridges in our house. The one that was supplied on a temporary basis they wouldn’t take back and said we could keep it, so we gave that to a local charity.

In August we didn’t go on a cruise to Iceland. The cruise company went bankrupt but fortunately we got a full refund and invested that in solar panels. Our house is L shaped so some part of the roof is always in sunshine when the sun is shining. In fact it’s not only when the sun is shining as technically they work off UV light so even when it’s light cloud we are generating our own electricity. So maybe some good has come out of the crisis. But we hope that it will be over soon.   

Merry Christmas and a New Year full of what you wish for yourselves.
And now we’ll go on mute.