Hobbies
and other things we like to do
We like to lots of things, many of which appear on other pages:
music, swimming,
soccer,
diving,
surfing, homework, more soccer,
trains, funfairs,
screens,
mountain biking, skiing, cars,
stamping, photo albums, more
soccer, to mention but a few. Not all of us like
to do all of the things, but some we do have in common. Soccer is our
number one hobby. Although Daphné lost interest after only one year, everyone
else kept at it or keeps at it for years and years, at home if not in competition.
Most of this page covers some of our activities that did not fill a page
themselves.
We spent a lot of time bike riding, until the older children
started going their separate ways, that is. Here we
are in late 1996 in front of Marian House before it was sold. Marian House
was Grandma's house in Marlow
where Ian lived as a teenager. The Ford Aerostar
(here's another one of our first minivan) that carried the six bikes and all our luggage from France is in the
driveway.
On the way home, driving along the M25, the motorway ring road around London,
at 70mph, one of the bikes on the roof flew off into four lanes of
freeway. Ian recovered it with the help of a couple of friendly lorry
drivers who stopped traffic with their trucks so that he could cross two lanes
of freeway and collect it. Repairs were necessary!
Marian House looks completely different now. We sold it to
Andrew Milsom, the agent handling
the sale for us after mum died (no conflict of interest there, right Andrew!),
and he and his wife redid everything, bringing it up to date and considerably
enhancing its value. There's a picture of Andrew outside his principal office
here.
Biking itself is different now too. Nick and
Daphné began driving
in 2003 and 2004 respectively, and
Alban in 2007. The family no longer bikes together. That feels bad.
It's the way it is, of course, perfectly normal, but still. Those were fun
times.
For a while, Alban took mountain
biking to the point of competition, but then he let it go. The photo was
taken at Laguna Seca in 2004, the Sea Otter Classic. Alban fell, but got back on
and still finished honorably.
Before leaving France, the childrens' sporting activity was
principally judo. All four of the older
children joined the local club at one time or another. Below is Nick at a tournament in Gif-sur-Yvette
in May 1995.
In the lower photo, he's posing with David Lowenfeld, a good friend
from our time outside Paris.
Gardening is sometimes more of a duty than a hobby, especially
when you live in a forest which invades and overpowers with alacrity most of
what you try to cultivate. Once the driveway is cleared of leaves and dirt after
each day of rain, and the entire property cleaned
up and trimmed a couple of times a year, there's not a lot of energy left.
But we do make an effort, and by "we" here we mean
Marie-Hélène!
The hummingbirds love the abutilons, and give us a show
whenever they flower.
On the right is the one cultivated space that we preserve in the
midst of our forest. The deer tend to eat the prettier plants,
almost anything with petals, and they tend to eat a lot. The weeds seem to have
several growing cycles each year. But in the springtime, we have our own little
flower show.
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