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Peter's Letters: Open letters to friends and family |
(Follow this link for some of the letters
I've received out of the blue from visitors to this site)
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| January | ||
Big Cat Jazz Our first bit of excitement for the new year is Debbie winning an Elite Racing Club competition to think of a good name for a new racehorse! Debbie's idea was chosen, so we win £50 and the horse will have the name Debbie suggested. The horse's parents were called Tiger Hill and Trompette, and Debbie's horse is going to be called "Big Cat Jazz". |
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| August |
| When I first started doing these letters pages there was no Facebook, no Twitter, and whenever I wanted to post something online for friends to see I'd put it here. Now, of course, I put things onto Facebook and Twitter almost every day. That's my feeble excuse for not having done anything here since January. I'm not actually sure whether anyone will have noticed, but here's a bit of an edited review of some of the things that we've been up to in the last six months or so! As always, the most important things are usually the least visible. |
Out and About with Birds and Dogs Debbie has been doing plenty of birding, with me in tow often to help with extra photo's! We saw a Great Grey Shrike on Cannock Chase, Little Owls at Berry Hill and an Osprey carrying a big fish over Hanchurch Woods, amongst other fairly rare sightings. And of course Gus comes with us too!
Gus at Hanchurch Woods |
Great Grey Shrike at Cannock Chase |
| Cold winter... dead Boiler | |
| Then just in the depths of the winter cold snap... our central heating boiler went and died, so we had no hot water or heating, and during the (expensive) replacement process the gas man condemned our cooker, too! Cut it off, put a warning label on it and everything! So we bought a tiny little table-top oven instead, freeing up some kitchen space. Who needs a real grown-up cooker, anyway? |  |
Our new cooker! See my review on Amazon.co.uk |
Debbie out in the cold!  |
| Days out | |
| As spring came on and the weather improved we ventured a little further afield, as usual. Our trips out included a look at Lynmouth in March as we started scoping out possible retirement destinations! Scilly is still top of our list, but I might need to write a few bestsellers to make that dream any kind of reality! |  |
| I also had a nice trip to Liverpool and made a funny little video souvenir of the day! Debbie wasn't a big fan of the video, but I like the bit with the Windmills and the bit about Approaching Runcorn. |  |
Days in |
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Debbie and I both still do lots of painting. Debbie has had some more commissions to do horses, dogs, etc., and I have beem working on my latest Mahler!
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| I've also been trying to do some "Scilly" themed work, both with paintings and poems, and after I posted a couple of poems on my website I was approached by the "Scilly Now and Then" magazine asking if they could publish one! | |
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Meanwhile, Debbie and Cooper grow more alike each day! Except that Debbie is a lot more beautiful and substantially more intelligent.
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| Summer has generally been pretty raining throughout, so this is a pretty representative view: Debbie looking after Meg in the rain. In this year of Euro 2012 and the London Olympics I'm giving Debbie a Gold medal for Animal Care! |  |
| Work | |
Work continues apace... I always seem to have plenty to do! At the moment I'm spending as much time as possible on my new book. |
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Me hard at work in my office.
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I've missed lots out in that quick rush through, but at least I don't now have to be worrying that I haven't said anything since January! I'll try to keep a bit more up to date in future On the other hand, if you want to keep in touch you can also do that through Facebook and Twitter! |
Here's Debbie on our Isles of Scilly September holiday,doing a bit of chilly birdspotting on Bryher.
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And here's me, with Gus, on St Agnes the same week. I seem to be explaining the finer points of coastal geomorphology, and Gus seems appropriately enthralled. |
| In November I decided to do the NaNoWriMo challenge, which involves writing a "novel" of 50,000 words from scratch in the 30 days of November. There is no rule about the novel being any good! I did mine as a sponsored event and raised £200 for Redwings Horse Sanctuary! You can see more about my NaNoWriMo here. |   |
Thank you very much to everybody who sponsored me... I really appreciate it, thank you.
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We had some nice visits during the autumn. Here is my God Daughter Olivia on one of the Thompson family visits down to Stoke!
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And here's little Joe having a conversation with Gus. |
We always seem to end the year with lots of stresses and problems, and this year has been no exception, but here's wishing everybody a good end to the year and a Happy 2013! I'll try to keep more up to date with this page, but increasingly I think everybody just follows stuff on Facebook and Twitter now, so perhaps this page needs a re-think. We'll see about that next year!
That's all for now, thanks for tuning in, please drop me a line!
(Follow this link for some of the letters I've received out of the blue from visitors to this site)
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