Wit Over Ignorance

They like Christmas

Me too.

Did I mention that we had some snow ?

When the going gets white, white men feed birds.

(Click on the pic for the full widescreen 3D HD Imax effect)

The niece-in-law-to-be

Poor Michael. He's the oldest of my sister's kids, and his younger sisters, my nieces, mock him relentlessly, notably about his sloth in fixing a wedding date.

Poor Heather. She's a great girl with her own life and her own ideas about how she wants to live it, and every time we see her she has to put up with the polite burdens of family expectation tinged with impatience.

They'll marry when they're ready, I dare say. I think if I was them I'd run away and tie the knot on a beach in Africa somewhere, and tell the rest of the family a couple of months later. Then again, no-one with any sense would ever take my advice on marriage....

 

Visitors from another world

A family first - an historic visit from my only sister, my closest living relative, and diverse members of her extensive brood. Trudie lives in darkest Wales, and though we've seen a bit more of each other these past couple of years, it has been several decades since we lived in the same town together (Cambridge, early 1980s). Since then we've lived on different continents and barely managed one meeting a year.

It's a shame, really, because I love her adorable family and I've seen far too little of them. Unlike me, Trudie had her kids young and they've now all grown up into delightful adults: a lawyer, a surgeon and a professor of mathematics (the mathematical-looking dude below). My lot are still ploughing through various levels of skool and some of them have got a frighteningly long way to go....

The other day they turned up in a gaggle at my Maryland front door (sister, brother-in-law, niece, nephew, nephew's fiancee) and this was actually the first time in my life that Trudie had visited me abroad (though Michael, who now also lives in America, had dropped by a couple of times previously).

I don't think she's suddenly going to turn into a transatlantic commuter, but our link is strong and I hope our respective families will continue to see each other often. Next up may be a wedding, if Michael manages to figure out a date (the hardest mathematical challenge of all).

In the pictures below, Michael towers over his Mum; Alastair, Trudie and Rosie prepare to board their spacecraft home. Missing was Katie, the lawyer, whose turn it is to visit next (HINT).

Back to the real world

No sooner had we returned to Maryland from our break down south than it started snowing. And how fitting that I find myself, a couple of weeks later, sorting through photos of that previous snowfall during the biggest blizzard to head this way for years. The drifts currently piling up outside my window make me pine for the sprinkles we got before global warming......

Day 7 - The last stop

We wouldn't normally consider a graveyard a suitable tourist destination for two small children, but Savannah's Bonaventure cemetery is no ordinary heap of bones. It's one of the most beautiful places I've been to in America, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Maybe it's just because I'm old and think more than I used to about the nature of eternity, but there's something about those blissful live oaks, draped in Spanish moss standing on a bluff above the river, that seems the very definition of heavenly rest. Throw in some epic funereal statuary - everyone's seen the Bonaventure cover of John Berendt's epic Savannah masterpiece, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - and it's hard not to visit without thinking: OK. This'll do. Just lay me behind the bush over there, please.

Even the kids were awed by the sheer loveliness of the sun-dappled, Garden of Eden setting, and we spent two happy hours gambolling amid the tombstones (with occasional diversions by certain family members to fertilise the aforementioned bushes) before hitting the road to home. I'm writing this back in Maryland, Christmas is approaching, so maybe I'll put off a business trip to Bonaventure for a while.....

 

 

Day 6 - Fun in the sun

What a difference it makes when the grey lifts and that large yellow thing appears in the sky surrounded by blue. Our last day on Hilton Head was gorgeous (though not quite warm enough for swimming, alas). And then we were off to Savannah.

I have two pictures to share from our visits to a bird marsh and later to the Sea Pines plantation at the other end of the island. The first shows Maman making a desperate break for freedom after her family drove her to despair. The second confirms that she decided to come back after all in order to inflict hideous punishments upon her children. It's tough being a mother. Especially when you've got a husband who always carries a camera.....

Day 5 - Fly, damn you

Yes, that is sunshine.

Yes, that is me, trying to fly a kite.

Yes, that is me, failing miserably.

You have to understand that in this case there was a clear failure of operating machinery, which coupled with unfavourable weather conditions (it was the wrong kind of wind) exonerated the kite-flier (me) from all responsibility.

That's what I told the kids, anyway. I did eventually get it to fly but by then they had all looked at their watches and remembered urgent appointments elsewhere. I consoled myself with a barrel of rum.

Left behind

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming to spare a thought for those left behind on our recent trip to South Carolina. Poor old Delaney and Cleo, trapped by scholastic advancement, chained to their schooldesks, barred from touring the South in the rain. Come to think of it, they don't look too miserable, but I do feel guilty. I'll probably have to start saving up to take them with me on a bike tour of the Alps next year. They'll really enjoy pedalling up those mountain slopes.......

Day 4 - Hug a horse

Our plans for a leisurely day on the beach shattered by the continuing rain, we decided on an early day trip to Savannah, where the girls took one look at the horse-drawn carriages conveying tourists about the town, and that was the afternoon taken care of.

As it happened, trotting through the soaked squares while huddled under warm blankets was a much better idea than dragging freezing children around on foot, and good fun was had by all. Especially the horse, whose name was Robin (its stablemate is Batman).

Will the sun come out tomorrow ? Be sure to check this spot.....