I loved my time on the river at Oxford. The crisp stillness of early morning in winter in radley training with the lightweights gave way to the warm hum summer evenings on the reach in Oxford training for summer eights with new college
We had a lovely autumnal day scrunching through orange and red and brown leaves, and throwing them up in the air like confetti. (I am so sad that I will not probably get to throw confetti at your wedding , so this was my moment with you like that!)
Sanna and Jonnie met making a programme in the late 90’s called ‘It’s good to be green’ They inspire me with their love and respect for the natural world (Jonnie makes the most beautiful houses out of wood and other sustainable materials, and Sanna makes television programmes with the BBC and Sky on the wonderful natural world we live in. The got engaged in Morocco on an adventure with jemima(their Land Rover) through the length of Africa.
Sanna and Jonnie drove over (in jemima!) on New Year’s Eve 2016 to say hello and have tea and cake.
And she gave me this photo of us in Rectory Road Oxford back in 1995/6
Imogen thought that if she could not see us we could not see her. Sometimes she crouched down in the flowers and closed her eyes thinking that she had vanished!
Imogen and Nicky came to visit in the winter of 2018. I had fallen and broken my wrist but we played mastermind which Imogen was really good at from a young age. Her combinations usually involved two or one colour. She found it funny when I followed her lead and called my black and yellow alternating pattern “the bumble bee ? “!
One of my all time favourite holidays was spent on the shores of this beautiful lake in Cumbria in Fenella’s cottage there with her and a lovely group of invited friends. One morning I swam in the lake and I will always remember how invigorating and awe inspiring it was to be in the midst of such a lovely creation.
In 1998 I left management consulting to follow what turned out to be an optimistic attempt to ride the “dot com” wave and set up a mobile phone network. Before I joined Capital One Communications, I took my airmiles and bought a ticket to Mexico for a holiday with my great friend Nick and his lovely girlfriend ( now wife!) Sonya. For some reason (bearings have never been a strength of mine) I thought it would be nice to visit chile “on my way home “! It was almost as long a flight from Mexico City to Santiago as London to Mexico City! But I loved my week in chile travelling from Santiago to the beautiful Lake District north of Patagonia. The photos of me beside one of the lakes, has a volcano in the background which I had climbed with a group to the snow line the day before.
We had a lovely time showing Imogen our childhood village, primary school and church