Andrew and John's Newsletter 2007

Who's Whose & Where

• Fran: John's ex-wife, in Cambridge
• Andy: John's son, with partner Séverine and children Chris (15), Jake (6), Kim (0),
  in La Rochelle, France
• Louise: John's daughter, with children Rory (4) and Morgan (2), in Cambridge;
  her husband Andy Slade also in Cambridge
• Anna: Andrew's sister, with husband David and son Christopher (8) in Fangfoss, Yorkshire
• Anne & Peter: Andrew's parents, in Pocklington, Yorkshire

Family (click on the pictures for larger versions)
The event of the year (!) was our Civil Partnership on 27 October at a country hotel near Hitchin. We began the celebrations at lunch in Wolfson College the previous day, had a buffet dinner at the hotel after the ceremony on the Saturday, and ended with a small party for the residents of our courtyard on the Sunday. And on that Sunday, 28 October, in Cognac, France, John's sixth grandchild (second granddaughter), Kim Erin Ménard Dawson was born.

Louise's husband Andy has moved back to Cambridge.

We often have Rory and Morgan for the day in Baldock; they love digging in the gravel in the courtyard, and throwing water around!

Travel

• Christmas and New Year 2006: Baldock and Yorkshire
• March: Niederthai, Tyrol, Austria. There was hardly enough snow for sledging or (for Andrew) cross-country skiing, but we tried both, and had some lovely walks.
• April: Andrew spent a month in Berlin, improving his German at the Goethe-Institut. We met up there for Easter. John also had a good weekend in Amsterdam on his own, staying at the Golden Bear Hotel as usual.
• May: Lake District (John). The weather forecast was so bad that he almost didn't go, and certainly wasn't going to camp, so he stayed at a nice inn in the south Lakes. Walking was restricted to the lower hills round Coniston Water, because of low cloud and very high winds. He also visited Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin. Andrew spent the week on retreat at the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon.
• May: Ljubljana, Slovenia. Interesting though very small place. We also visited the cave complex at Postojna.
• July: Bremen, Germany. Fascinating place, completely rebuilt after being heavily bombed in WW II.
• September (main holiday): Japan. We visited Tokyo, Nikko, Kyoto, and Okayama, and made many day trips to see various places, including Nara, Hiroshima, and Kochi. We were lucky to see Mt Fuji. The weather was incredibly hot and humid (>30^o, >90% humidity). The temples and shrines were marvellous, though the number of them is overwhelming! We took about 600 photographs ...
• December: Cologne, Germany, by Eurostar from the new St Pancras International Station. Day trip to Bonn. Very rainy!

Websites and Photographs
Many of our holiday photographs can be found on our website www.rabancourt.co.uk, and John's genealogy site is at www.rabancourt.co.uk/abacus. John's work website is people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/jld1.

Health
Following two years of trouble-free back, John has had more spasms, and is due for another MRI scan to see what is wrong. He also had a difficult-to-diagnose swelling, which turned out to be an infected groin node, cured by antibiotics. Andrew also spent a boring night in hospital while they decided if they could find anything wrong with him. He only went to the doctor with stomach ache!

House
In August a car demolished part of the front of our building (though not the part we live in). Nobody was hurt.

Leisure
We walked along with the Pride Parade in London in June, and enjoyed getting sunburnt at the Pride Parade in Brighton in August. We have visited Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and the British Library. We greatly enjoyed the musicals Evita, Cabaret, and the very funny, very rude puppet musical Avenue Q in London. We are both working out at the gym (Andrew more dedicatedly than John!)

Friends
Our friends Spike and Carl celebrated their Civil Partnership in June.
In August we had a very enjoyable reunion in Cambridge for five of John's friends who were at King's College together 1963–66.

Work
John continues as before, mainly editing biographies of Cambridge alumni. He is beginning to think about retirement, and has set the date at 30 September 2010! Several of his contemporaries have already retired from the Computing Service. Andrew is working 3 days a week at a small IT consultancy, spending the other 2 days completing his MBA project and his German.

Singing
John now sings with Choir 2000 in Histon. They performed a Mass by Mozart, and his Vespers, in June. In November he was roped in to sing Brahms' Requiem and Bruckner's Motets with Trinity College Choral Society, with just one rehearsal.

Genealogy
John is still slowly working through his genealogy course (Armed Forces and Schools almost done). He has attended some weekend and day courses in Canterbury. Some paid work coming in (he's having to turn some down!) John contacted an American Military genealogist about his father, John King, but he was unable to trace his records.

Other things
Fran's horse, Melody, on whom John learned to ride in 1980, died on 19 November after a fall. She was 32 – very old for a large horse.

Our email addresses are:
John:       john @ rabancourt . co . uk
Andrew:   andrew @ rabancourt . co . uk