 |
| A lovely handmade gift from one of my pupils - the real spirit of Christmas |
Dear all,
As
the gold and silver memories of the Halcyon Olympic summer entwine seamlessly with
similarly coloured tinsel on Christmas trees from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and
as Rudolf and his antlered amigos enter their crucial last week of sledge endurance
training, the moment has come to take stock of another year. In time-honoured
tradition, no stone will be left unturned in Yours Truly’s quest to bring you a
blow-by-blow account of family life at the Sparrowholding in the year 2012 AD.
 |
| The 21st ceilidh: kilts in full swing! |
Of course, being a complete cultural philistine, Yours Truly would have swiftly resolved the situation by avoiding both courses like the plague (note token medieval analogy) and heading for Angelina’s Café on the Rue de Rivoli, there to imbibe hot chocolate so dense it’s more akin to luxury custard. As they say across the Channel, “à chacun son goût”. In addition to University, plus her evening job teaching “Baby English”, Daughter No.1 has joined a French hockey club. Consequently, she is amassing a useful new set of bijou French sporting phrases such as “go for the legs” and “that umpire doesn’t know his derrière from his elbow.”
 |
| My precious: a tin of Angelina's chocolate powder |
To intense parental relief, she has swapped last year’s sleep-starved nightclub employment for a daytime job as a hockey coach,
and is still getting used to being called “Miss”. Painful shin splints caused
by her own excessive hockeying over the last decade mean she is often reduced to
hobbling up the field instead of sprinting, but that doesn’t seem to have made
her any less terrifying to her opponents. Indeed, one of her own teammates was
overheard recently saying: “I’m really scared of her when she’s playing: she
gets so angry...”
The
daughterly duo spent a sisterly summer together in the south, keeping 100s of
14–17 year-old language students on the straight and narrow (possibly an
example of ”poacher turned gamekeeper” in DD2’s case). Their work was certainly
far from dull – for example, one of DD2’s
charges slightly misunderstood the “total immersion” aspect of the course, and immersed
himself in vodka rather than vocabulary, necessitating a 999 call. Another
couple of students decided they’d head off to visit a friend in London for the
weekend, but never thought to mention to the house manager (DD1) that they were
going... Paramedic and police visits notwithstanding, it was an
uneventful summer’s work experience!
 |
| Total immersion: the continental way... |
As
for Son+Heir (17), well, his teachers all share one thing in common: a grudging
respect for his ability to turn homework avoidance into an art form. He is, it
would appear, the Picasso of procrastination and the Degas of delaying tactics.
Suffice to say, this year saw him continue his tour of the country’s
educational establishments, culminating at our local high school. Fortunately,
his lack of academic rigour is not mirrored by his unstinting efforts on the
hockey pitch, and 2012 saw him head off to Ireland and Wales with the U18s and
Germany with the U21s. In a rueful phone call during the latter trip, he advised
his fond parents that as he and two of the others were under 18, they’d been
dispatched to the funfair in Hamburg for the evening while the others sampled
the city’s more “interesting” nightlife. Sadly, his weekend of high-level sport
was marred by a collision with a German player who had evidently consumed
several tonnes more Bratwurst than Son+Heir had haggis. Result: one dislocated
shoulder and several weeks of enforced rest.
While he was facing the might of
the German sausage-munchers, his sisters and parents ventured to the Olympic
Games. Yours Truly had, of course, secretly been hoping for selection, but
since my prodigious penalty-flicking skills somehow failed to catch the eye of
the GB coach, we had to settle for watching the real hockey players. There are
no superlatives sufficient to do justice to the atmosphere that prevailed in the
Olympic Park this summer. It was epic, amazing, sensational, phenomenal,
incredible, utterly unforgettable – and that was just the giant McDonald’s...
 |
| Belgium vs Spain: superlative hockey skills |
But
I digress... Back to the family news and a marathon of a different sort: July saw Farmpa and Supergran celebrate 50 years of marriage, and recently another family milestone was reached when Farmpa turned 80 (though that doesn't stop him being out on the farm seven days a week!). HunterGatherer, too, remains firmly a man of
the soil and, for the past six months, has been based on a large soft fruit and
vegetable farm near Perth. Having spent long hours in the autumn getting up
close and personal with turnips (a skill well honed after living with us for many
years), our very own Baldrick is now busy tucking up strawberry plants in “bed”
for their winter nap.
Disappointingly, his often protracted working week has left
little time for hockey, but he still managed to score the odd goal during his
rare escapes from plant policing duties. One highlight of 2012 was attending
his first-ever ‘pop concert’. Luckily we didn’t have to travel “500 miles” to
see the Proclaimers, as they were performing just 25 miles down the road at
Edinburgh Playhouse. The late-starter enjoyed the experience immensely, though
his aged ears (they – and he – turned 50 in March) are still readjusting after
this unprecedented assault on their unsuspecting tympanic membranes. His big
5-0 in the spring was celebrated with a family meal for the five of us at the
Hard Rock Cafe in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, a 90-minute wait for a table saw
the birthday boy (‘fresh’ from a 12-hour shift, in fairness) morph rapidly into
a veritable Victor Meldrew [translation for foreign readers: ‘grumpy old man’!].
 |
| Nothing to beat hearing "Sunshine on Leith" in Leith! |
In
the spring, Yours Truly took the risk of jumping into the freelance abyss and –
as the bank manager would, without doubt, testify – I’m still falling, though
pleasingly at a slightly slower speed than back then. Painfully aware of my
impending half-century (August 2013 – argggghhhh!), I tried to thwart the
ravages of my insidiously sedentary lifestyle by playing hockey all summer as
well as winter. However, sadly a hefty
collision in July saw my shoulder AC slightly displaced in one on-pitch collision,
only to be knocked rather conveniently back into place during a second collision
in September (which left me with whiplash instead!). Am now considering taking
up freestyle rock climbing in the hope that it might prove a safer option.
November
was my most frenetic month of 2012, as – in a moment of madness – I signed up
for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This involved penning 1,667 words
of prose per day for the whole month, in between doing the ‘day job’
(copywriting), the evening job (private tutoring) and playing Little Bo Peep to
our 20 Shetland sheep (alias “the chocolate sheep”). The outcome of NaNoWriMo
was one extremely rough 51,000-word novel, which is about as far from the
infamous "50 Shades" as it is possible to get – and is thus destined to
remain forever in the recesses of my PC and never see the light of a candle, far
less a Kindle.
 |
| That was a hard month, that was... |
Having
dug deep (and missed a lot of sleep) for those 50+ thousand words in November,
I had initially feared that it might be a step too far to gird my loins for
this, albeit shorter, literary endeavour in December. However, the deeds of
2012 have now been consigned to virtual posterity, so it only remains for me
to wish those hardy souls who have made it to the end of this epistle a very
happy Christmas and a (not too) merry New Year!
Festive greetings from all at the Sparrowholding and here's to a great 2013 :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment