Author Archives: Lionel Stanbrook

Ahem Jessie updates us regularly with her news as she freewheels around New Zealand. She finished her parliamentary job with New Zealand’s next-but-one Prime Minister at the beginning of the month and has started on the travelling and sight-seeing phase of her visit. Highlights of her month past have included her record-breaking bungee jump (8.5 […]

Ahem The month began in deepest white winter and finished in thrusting gusty springtime. Due to Alli’s slow recovery from her broken ankle I continued to walk the dogs in the early mornings, then drive to work, dropping off Ella and Gwen along the way at their different school venues in Aesch and Reinach. On […]

Ahem Another month of repeated and heavy snowfalls caused delays to our plans in many ways, but more recently the temperatures have climbed and the snow has disappeared and we are now merely buffeted by storm winds. The last day of the month has even been sunny and warm. We finally became legally insured drivers […]

Ahem Early in the month while walking with the dogs Alli slipped and fell on an icy path in the woods and broke her ankle in three places. She had to be in hospital for nearly two weeks, undergoing two operations and considerable pain, not to mention an enormous degree of irritation that she was […]

Ahem As the days suddenly became shorter to help spin the year to its conclusion, Gwen distinguished herself for the second time by running the Basel Stadtlauf with many of her friends and hundreds of other Baselers at different levels, ages and distances, through the city one cold Saturday evening after dark. I was in […]

Ahem The great year-long French house purchase saga has been successfully concluded. We have taken nine tenths of the law of 13 Rue de la Scierie, 68220 Leymen, France. For over a week we have now been waking there every morning having gone to bed there every night. It is true that the final act […]

Ahem Just before it started to get cold, I spent five nights in Marlow at a scientific conference, sequestered in the stuffiest of stuffed English hotels, the Compleat Angler, although its position by the big weir on the Thames is admittedly rather impressive. I spent a discreet weekend there once over twenty-five years ago but […]

Ahem We are creeping forward steadily on the house purchase. The results of my medical, reported to you all last month as satisfactory, in fact generated a ruling from the bank’s insurance experts indicating that, on balance, I would not last another twenty years. A trifle harsh, I thought, even for being undeniably overweight. I […]

Ahem So there I was, dressed only in swimming trunks and a balloon, floating on my back down the Rhein, the opening bars of Das Rheingold playing around in my head as the late afternoon sun winked from the fast moving current. Wagner’s Ring Cycle begins in the source of the Rhein, where three Rheinmaidens […]

Ahem You may be amused or possibly worried to learn that I have participated in my first serious run for 25 years when I turned out in company garb for Basel’s annual Firmenlauf. Over 1,600 runners got going on a six kilometre trail through woods and a big adjacent park, the Grun 80. Six kilometres? […]