An update of our 2025 events!!!
As we enter the last couple of months of 2025, the sky’s are gray, the leaves are falling and we realise that its time to look back beyond the long hot summer to all our earlier events.
After a quiet Christmas and new-year at home, our 2025 began with an unexpected early February trip to UK for Jon’s Auntie Anne’s funeral. She seemed in good shape when we visited the previous October, so it was a shock and there was little we could do from France, but leave the arrangements to Joseph and his sister.
Back at home we both continued with matters of health and wellbeing. For Barbara it was the lengthy process of fitting hearing aids or as she says “new ears”. But for Jon it was finally succumbing to a prosthetic knee (the right one). The run-up to the operation, scheduled for the end of May began in April with specialist consultations, x-rays and tests, all of which had to be fitted in around a planned weekend in Germany, just before the actual operation.
This year it was Barbara’s Brother who organised gathering of the ‘Abitur class from Teheran’ Teheran school group, In Walldorf at the end of May.
Knee replacement is quite a brutal procedure, these days its done under local anaesthetic, so apart from a plastic screen and some earphones with music, you know what’s going on! The operation went well (so they say). Then you are encouraged to get walking soon after the operation so with three weeks in the ‘rehab’ centre (or re-education as they say in France), Jon was home, not totally up and running, but starting to drive and do jobs around the house and just in time for his birthday celebration on first July.
We had organised Jon’s birthday lunch at one of our favourite restaurants and were pleased that 16 friends and neighbours were able to join us. We were embarrassed by their cash gift and after much thought have decided to save it towards visiting parts of France that we have still to explore, hopefully during 2026.
Then of course there were follow-up and physio appointments stretching into September.
Well of course the has garden suffered the most. We had some of the trees and bushes cut back professionally and our neighbours helped tidy the front garden while Jon managed to keep the grass (or should we say weeds) under control thanks to the ride-on mower.
The Findlay Family visited in August. We certainly enjoyed having them and we hope that thy had a good time too.
We had major IT problems with Barbara’s long time Microsoft e-mail account. It has been hacked and all her addresses stolen. The worst thing was that we had no control over it and it took Microsoft a month to change the password and another month to close the account. We hope that you were not affected by this, but we are now Microsoft Free, so if you don’t have Barbara’s new e-mail address please contact her. (We prefer not to publish it on this website). Make sure you are using the new one and that the live.co.uk one is completely deleted from your systems.
We can’t deny that one of winter’s pleasures is sitting by a log fire on a chilly evening, so replacing our ageing wood stove and getting rid of its fake stone surround was on our 2025 job list. We knew that the chimney needed lining, but the sheer cost of the proposed new stove made us rethink our priorities. We heat the main part of the house and the water with oil, so occasionally lighting a fire for a few hours in the evening is a bit unnecessary. Do we really want to chop and stack wood, go outside on a rainy night to replenish the logs, then clean and empty the ash at our age?
We easily decided to install an all electric “log effect fire” in the new year. Meanwhile we will patch-up the old stove to burn as much of our remaining wood as possible. Then we can remove the old stove, and close of the chimney (so that it can be reinstated in future). We are already looking forward to an easier, dust free life!
Getting up early enough (to get fresh baguettes from the boulangerie) and see a December sunrise over our valley like this makes us think that life is not so bad.
ANNE GORDON PEACOCK (ANSELL) 19th July 1937 ~ 13th January 2025
Once again we have to give a big mention to all our grandchildren and their parents. We really don’t know how they manage to fit the extra activities in!
With the grandchildren getting older, priorities change; Jacob, now at ‘big school’ has discovered rugby, also fishing and cycling (with his dad). Sadly the Findlay family had to sell the boat and stop their involvement at the sailing club. Something had to give!
Fiona is now at collage but continues with her ballet classes. Jon was delighted that Fiona had become interested in motor racing. Especially F1, she also asked about his days racing the MG Midget.
We were lucky to see Sebastien play some rugby while we were in Essex. The smallest boy on the field but his tackles always stopped the opponent. He went for their legs!
Blink and you will miss it (the goalkeeper did)
Football still seems to be the preferred sport for the Lacey boys Sebastien and Eliot with this stunning penalty shot to the top left. I think the Lacey boys have been practising at home on their little pitch behind Corner Cottage!
The names of the cars!
I am not sure if it makes economic sense, but we feel it’s environmentally good to use a small car for local trips, shopping etc. while, for a powerful SUV, our Alfa Stelvio is noticeably fuel efficient (and more comfortable) on longer journeys. We don’t usually name our cars but because of the last two letters of the Fiat’s registration, and its character, we immediately started calling it Pee-Pee! Now we had a problem. We had to settle on a name for the Stelvio, something Italian sounding.
We have owned several Italian cars over the years, but they say that you can’t be a ‘petrol head’ without owning a Alfa Romeo or two. Top left, our two 156’s, the blue one was the GTA which we often called ‘The Beast’ due to the growling sound of its V6 motor. Both cars were taken over by Jason and Babsi when we moved to France and bought more practical left hand drive vehicles.
My father had an Italian work colleague called Oscar. He and his wife Elsa became family friends and for no apparent reason, I woke up one night thinking about the times we spent with them about sixty years ago. They had no children, but Oscar was very proud of his wonderful Lancia car which I suddenly remembered he called ‘Carolena’. Why my ageing brain choose this moment to drag the name that Oscar called his car from some dusty corner of my mind must have been an omen.
Bottom left- ‘Pee-Pee’ in the background, with our ‘Carolena’ Stelvi finally back from the repairers during the middle of December 2022