Hello again,
It's part 2 of 2024 and I'm happy to say that life has calmed down after the hectic months leading up to Cesca’s wedding.
We were hoping to travel from Seville to the small Greek island of Paxos, but the travel options were very complicated and, surprisingly, the weather was not that great in May either. So, we decided to go to our apartment in Miami instead, where we could relax and enjoy the better weather. This is a view from the balcony, on the 9th floor:
We had a very nice time there. I played a lot of tennis with my group of friends from the building, and Carol was happy to do absolutely nothing. Then, in mid-May, I flew back to the UK and Carol went back to Brazil. I was happy to spend some time back in my apartment in Newmarket, which now is really Tara’s apartment, as she is there much more than I am. Tara is very creative, she made this for fun:
While I was back in Newmarket I had an accident. After washing my Honda Blackbird, I was returning it to it's normal parking space and failed to put the sidestand down correctly :( The Honda fell on me, I fell on the Ducati and the Ducati hit the back wheel of the Jag - ouch!
I have a big group of old friends from Sussex University days, mainly from the University football players. We have now established an annual event where someone takes a turn to organise a 3-4 day walking holiday. This time, Keith had the responsibility of organising a walk in Dorset, along the Jurassic coast. The hotel we were all staying at was in Swanage, a little Dorset seaside town.
My brother Roger and his wife Terrie, live in Wareham, which is close by, so I drove down a day early to visit them first. Before the walking holiday started, the few golfing members of the group, also have a tradition of meeting up for a round of golf before the walk. This time there were only 3 willing golfers, so Roger agreed to make up the four. We played at the beautiful, Isle of Purbeck Golf Club, which has wonderful views down to the sea.
The whole trip was great. On the first day, we covered around 14 miles, which I thought was a lot for the first day. There were a lot of sore feet!
Another established tradition for these walks is to launch a rocket. Since my kids were small, I have been building and launching model rockets. Each rocket has at least one motor (it can have more than one!). Each motor fires twice. A 6-4 motor will burn for 6 seconds, propelling the rocket up to about 1000 feet, then it will glide for a further 4 seconds before firing from the other end of the motor, which will push out the nose cone, deploying the recovery parachute. The rocket and nose cone are connected to the parachute and hopefully, the whole lot will return to earth, not too far from the launch pad.
For this trip, I had 2 rockets with me and as it was a little windy, we fired the smaller of the 2. It was a great success, and we watched it reach over 1000 ft, deploy the parachute and float gracefully back to earth.
<< Watch the rocket video >>
On the second day, we decided to be more ambitious. For my birthday a couple of years ago, Rosie bought me a rocket model kit, which had a special nose cone that would accept an egg as its payload. The egg was duly loaded and a smaller, 6-0 motor, was fitted. As it was windier than the day before, I angled the launch pad into the wind, expecting the rocket to float back to us on the breeze. But I overcompensated for the wind; when the rocket launched, its top-heavy payload made it dip further toward the ground. The rocket arced and dived only a few hundred feet, straight into a dry-stone wall!
The egg did not survive the crash, although the rocket was OK and will be able to fly again.
Of course, a lot of beer was drunk over the 3 days we had together, and lots of old tales were retold and no doubt embellished!
On the last day, we played some tennis, and I spent Sunday night with my brother, watching the Antiques Roadshow (their Sunday tradition) before driving home on Monday. My brother's house in Wareham, as viewed from the hottub, and brother in his boat:
The next event was another wedding, but this time for an old friend of mine for a change. My friend Chris Brewin is a lawyer who lives near Melton Mowbray, and he was having his 3rd crack at marriage. I had stayed in the UK and Carol flew in from Brazil the day before the wedding. I collected her from Heathrow, and we drove up to Melton. We checked into a lovely old stately home, converted into a hotel, Stapleford Park Country House Hotel. I fully recommend it.
The wedding was fun. It was a typical English, small event, set up in a field at the back of a pub in the middle of nowhere! Carol was very impressed! Lots of drinking, eating, and dancing.
Sadly, my lovely old Jaguar had developed a problem on the journey there. There was a horrible, high-pitched rattling noise, coming from the front of the engine. With help from my brother, we diagnosed it as a bearing failure on the supercharger. I did not want to risk driving it and making the problem worse, so we got the train back to Cambridge, and I arranged for the car to be returned home on a trailer.
From Cambridge, we returned to São Paulo and went to see our new apartment. We have been living in a large 3-bedroom apartment, just off the main Avenida Paulista, in the centre of the city. This was meant to be for only 9 months, as Cesca and Bobby’s father had bought them each a new apartment, but they were both late being completed. Additionally, Carol had bought a new one-bedroom apartment for us, in Cidade Jardim, where we used to live. So, after 2 years, the 3 new apartments were finally ready. Cesca has moved into hers with Victor, her brother Bobby, is pretty much moved into his new place already.
Our new apartment is very nice. Carol bought a 2-bedroom apartment and then had it modified to a one-bedroom apartment with 2 bathrooms and a large dressing room. It looks good, and now we have to fill it with the basics and actually move in, in August.
The next couple of weeks I spent mostly at Boa Vista, as my golf membership there was finally approved. I had not really played much during the last 3-4 years, and my game was very bad. But I was keen to start playing again.
We have 2 electric golf karts, and I strapped my clubs on the back of one of them and set off for the course. Over the next week, I played 5 days out of 7. The Brazilians who have a house there, only seem to come at weekends, so Monday to Friday, I have the place to myself. During the first 4 rounds I played, I never saw any other golfer playing at all. I had the course to myself, and it is an amazing course. It is long and challenging, and the greens are extremely fast. I love it!
Then the next event was, surprisingly, another wedding! In St. Tropez, in July! After going to St. Tropez last August, I said I never wanted to go there again in August, yet here I am a year later, returning in late July.
Carol knows a lady called Tania Bulhões, who owns a chain of very high-class china and glass shops in Brazil. Google her and you will find her easily. Until a few years ago, Tania was married to a very rich guy in Brazil and arranged a special party for his 70th birthday. As a surprise, she contacted lots of people from his past, who came to the party, including his sweetheart from his school days. They very much reconnected, and it developed into something nobody was expecting. Tania realized that he had found a love greater than theirs and so agreed to let him go. It was all very civilized! Now, at the age of 70 herself, she has found a new love, and they invited 50 couples from Brazil to this exclusive wedding at a chateau in St. Tropez.
The wedding was on Saturday, and it was amazing. Set in the grounds of the beautiful chateau, there was a very large candlelit dinner outside, followed by drinking and dancing late into the night. Yesterday, they had hired a large beach club for lunch, and we did it all over again. More eating, drinking, and dancing. I’m sure I have put on a few pounds during this trip.
Cesca’s parents-in-law, Belar and Ana, have a very big boat that they keep at their house in Ibiza. This summer they have decided to cruise over and around Corsica and Sardinia. We have been invited to join them, so tonight we will get an overnight ferry from Toulon to Ajaccio on Corsica and join the cruise.
So, that is the first half of 2024 done already. Time is really flying by these days.
Lots of love,
Peter