Author Archives: Lionel Stanbrook

Ahem With all this mist and mellow fruitfulness around, thoughts are turning to winter and even onward to Christmas although last month the weather continued to turn this way and that like a Tongan fly-half, with one day feeling Indian and another practically Orcadian. Today is Michaelmas, associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of […]

Ahem Our annual holiday in La Hune, Mansonville was as eventful as ever, full of incident and occasion, with a grand total of 27 different people this year enjoying its unique charms. This year it seemed that this part of south west France area is starting to change. While there had always been a lot of English people around […]

Ahem, Alli and Ella have done much of the family´s travelling recently (as well as going to see Meat Loaf in Basel), and, together with Gwen, have been in England for a week, which included Ella’s fourteenth birthday. Alli also went solo to Brussels for a weekend school reunion. For the latter sojourn I stayed at […]

Ahem The highlight of the month has definitely been the Farewell Party for the Departing Swedes. Alli had become a very close friend to two Swedes, Ann-Lii and Susanne, through proximity and dog walking (one of the dogs involved was the one pining for Bonnie’s unavailable fertility a couple of short months ago) and she decided that […]

Ahem The merry month started with hot weather but finished with abrupt downpours and a clammy-cold Whitsun holiday while our social life moved to a higher plane as we gave or received hospitality virtually every weekend. Our ritual of inviting bemused neighbours to view the BBC coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest while drinking several bottles of wine held […]

Ahem Sunny April has confirmed our suspicions that in Basel winter was not just late. It hardly started. It barely, merely and only half heartedly threatened, then grudgingly provided just a few shiversome days, a few dustings of snow, then it turned its back on us with a careless gesture little more than a flimsy flounce. It done been and gone without […]

Ahem It has been a big month for travelling, featuring a major Stanbrook family holiday to New York and a trip with Alli to Rome, as well as several far less enjoyable business visits on my own. New York City – a first for Alli and the children. They hardly knew what to expect, but feedback […]

Ahem I’m sure you all know the feeling. For several weeks I had been wondering where I had put the concert tickets. I could not remember the date of the concert, although I knew that it was some time in January. I had bought the tickets in cash before Christmas, on Jessie’s request, and I had put […]

Ahem We welcomed the New Year with our customary annual family gathering on our balcony to watch the fireworks of Oberwil and in the excellent company of our friends Nigel, Andrea and their family, who had done us the honour of a visit from England over the long weekend. On the second day I noticed […]

Ahem This has been a crowded, jostling rambunctious month, teeming with alarum, pele-mele, noises off and background hiss. It started with Gwen’s house-wide posters inviting the family to her Gymnastics event. The posters (seven of them, each individually drawn) showed pictures of physical contortions that “Gwen will NOT be doing”, including the splits and the […]