Friends and Family
(This page constitutes our grudging recognition that there are people
in the world other than the eight of us!)
Friends of his and
hers come visit from time to time, and we love that. It's a truism that
people get along better when they are in front of others, and the closest thing
to a vacation for us is having friends visit, of course the kind of friends that
you can relax with.
Well, none of our friends come more frequently, and none are easier to relax
with, than
Fabienne and Jean!! (Only kidding about the frequency: they know that we
are flattered that they continue coming to see us and enjoy every all-too-short
visit!)
Here they are
with their four daughters (descending in age, oldest first), Fiona, Maeve, Leah
and Chenoah, in our garden on Bastille Day 2005 with
Alban, Daphné,
Charles, Alex and
the parents. Tom was in Paris
visiting his mother, and Nick with his friend Gael
visiting from Paris.
Here are Faby and Jean again at the bottom of this page,
in front of the same arch.
We have actually been a little disappointed because visits from friends in
Europe are often notable by their absence. Which does not stop us going to
visit them! Which we do pretty often, especially if they are in the UK or France,
where we vacation most summers.
The summer of 2004 found us in both the UK and France.
On the left, Ian with Gez Kahan and David Milsom, two other Old Boys (the term more
literally correct as time passes) of Sir William Borlase's School,
Marlow. When we left school, our combined age was about
50. Now it's over 150 years. There's been a lot of water under those bridges!
There's more on David here and
Gez here. This photo was taken looking on to the school
playing fields and the cottage where in 1817 Mary Shelley is reputed to have
written at least part of Frankenstein.
Below is a scene from Paris in August 2004,
almost at the end of the vacation, and we've moved to family as well as friends.
We dined with Denis and Claire, Marie-Hélène's
brother and his better half, and Jocelyne and Alain, one of
her oldest and
dearest friends and her better half. Joce was kind enough to put us up, all four
of us, the night before we flew back to California.
Here are more of her friends, his
old
friends, her family and his
family, not to speak of the Hanlons,
Courtney and Antony's wedding (they're
family, below), and Ian's 50th birthday
party.
Finally, here is one of a visit by the Nashes, Ian's sister and brother-in-law
and their troupe, to Santa Cruz in July 2005. They all came to visit and took us
out to dinner at Shadowbrook, one of Santa Cruz's nicer restaurants, on the
banks of the inlet in Capitola. Marie-Hélène took the
picture, Antony, Sue and Derek's son, got stuck behind someone hard to see through, Alex
is studiously looking somewhere else even though he has pride of place, and
Tom did not quite make the frame. From left to right it's
Alex, Derek, Ian, Antony, Daphné, Charles, Nick, Laura, Sue and
Derek's daughter, Sue and
Courtney, the new Mrs. Nash. Too many people! We haven't seen all the Nashes since that
hectic evening!
