Christmas 2018
Dear FRIENDS and families.
It is the last day in November and time to write and hopefully receive Christmas letters from our dear friends all over the world.
It has not been the best year in our life, no traveling apart from John’s two short trips to Denmark. First in January to spend time together for the last time with his oldest friend, Henning.
The two of them have been like brothers since they were six years old and ever since have been I nearly daily contact via Skype. Sadly Henning died in June, so John went over for his funeral while I stayed home to look after our old dog, but the loss of Henning has made a big hole in our hearts. It is the worst thing about getting old (we are now 82)- that we lose more and more old friends every year. Several of our closest friends have had serious health problems so not an easy year for the lot of us.
The bigge
st shock came from our daughter in the form of a letter 1st Sunday in Advent 2017, where she has decided not to have anything more to do with us. She want to spend her time together with her friends and dogs in the future. We have been her parents for 52 years, but suddenly she wrote that Ulla has been such a bad mother to her all her life. As a doctor the only explanation I can find must be her jealousy for her brother and his three children. Naturally Ulla has spent more time with the grandchildren than with her 8 dogs over the past 12 years so my explanation is she has become paranoid. We know from rumors she has been in contact with a physiologist, as if that should be helpful;;; The blame for her problems have been laid on her old parents which we have to accept after having done our best for her all our life.
On a happier note. We are still very happy with the move three years ago to our little house in Bracknell, big enough for the two of us and Ulla has enough space for all her plants in our little garden. Bracknell is a nice town, with nice neighbors and we have all the shops in a short distance from our house. Another happy experience is that three of our long time Thule friends celebrated their 60th birthday and a couple of other old friends had their 80th birthday, so a lot to be happy about. Both our 82 years birthdays were celebrated in our old Windsor house where Stephanie and Claus threw us a very nice party, and in July we were there for Claus’s 51st party together with all his old friends, and it is always a joy to meet the “old” boys” again as we have know them since they were teenagers.
our three grandchildren –now 12, 10 & 7 years old- continue to give us a lot of joy, they are just so lovely, well behaved and funny and we enjoy every moment together with them. Claus has had to do weekly commutes the last three months, so only home at weekends, and both Stephanie and the children have missed him a lot but Stephanie has done a great job of keeping everything working at home, so 10 stars to her .
We are lucky to have the children every Saturday or Sunday form breakfast to lunch plus in half term and in holidays, during which we took them to some musicals – “Madagascar” and “Robin Hood” in our local theatre, where we also go to other interesting events. We also celebrated Anita’s birthday in October in The Royal Windsor theater with the musical performance of “Motown”, a very noise but fun performance.
All the Christmas decorations are up, small Christmas lights in all the rooms, gift bought and wrapped so now it is time for the Christmas baking, which we start together with the Children baking gingerbread cakes first Sunday in Advent.
We wish you all a Very merry Christmas and a good and prosperous New Year. We hope you are well and hopefully enjoying life to the full. Remember we have no return tickets to this life.
YOUTH PASSES, BUT WITH LUCK IMMATURITY CAN LAST A LIFETIME.
LOTS OF LOVE FROM ULLA & JOHN