Hello again,
Three-quarters of 2024 is now behind us, and soon we will know if it is to be Trump or Harris. Since the wretched Trump went into politics, I have been fascinated (or maybe it should be horrified) by how the American people can be so stupid that they cannot see Trump for what he really is. Never was there a better example of the emperor’s new clothes! My hope is Harris wins and they put Trump behind bars, where he belongs. Political rant over!
We continue the story of the year in St. Tropez, after the big wedding of Tania Bulhões, which was fun.
But St. Tropez was hot, crowded, and of course, very overpriced. So, we decided to accept Victor’s parents' offer to join them on their boat, cruising off Corsica. Flying was complicated, and Carol came up with the idea to get a ferry. So, we booked a passage from Toulon to Ajaccio, on the west coast of Corsica. The idea was good, but we overlooked the 4 suitcases we were travelling with! Normally, people drive onto the ferry, relax in the cabin, and then drive off to their destination. Sadly, we got a taxi to Toulon and had to struggle onto the ferry with all our luggage. The crossing was overnight, and we slept soundly, but woke to find that our target had moved to the other side of the island due to strong winds. This meant another 3-hour taxi journey with our luggage over to Porto Vecchio and the boat.
She’s a beauty — 30 meters long (90 feet), 6 bedrooms, plus a crew of 3. It is an old Argentinian tugboat, converted to be a luxury cruiser. It even has a funnel, which now houses the ship’s washer/dryer and laundry facility. The food and wine on Belar's boat are as good, or even better, than you find in his wonderful restaurants.
We spent the next 6 days relaxing, eating, swimming, drinking, and cruising down to Olbia on Sardinia, where we again gathered our many bags and got a taxi to the local airport to fly back to London.
We then had a few nice days at the Landmark Hotel on Euston Road, and I managed a quick visit back to Newmarket, to finally get my broken-down old Jaguar loaded up on a trailer and sent off to Jagutek to be fixed, ready for the summer. But the good news - I fitted the new front fairing on my Ducati 996 and it is all fixed now:
While we were in London, Carol, of course, took me shopping on Oxford Street, and so I had an idea to buy a bread-making machine. I had a Panasonic one, many years ago when Rosie and Tara were very little. The milk loaf was fabulous, and I would bake a loaf adding food colouring, so that Rosie and Tara were the only girls at school with red sandwiches one day and blue sandwiches the next. At John Lewis, I found the new version of my old Panasonic bread-maker, then I went to Waitrose and purchased 4 pounds of strong flour, to be ready to bake when I got back to Brazil.
Then we flew back to São Paulo, and I was looking forward to spending time at Boa Vista playing golf and baking bread. I had wrapped the bread-maker together with the flour, in a cocoon of bubble-wrap and then made a handle to carry it. All was well until we entered customs in São Paulo with a large quantity of white powder! Amazingly, their equipment spotted our cargo, and we were taken into the search area for questioning. They were quite amused to find that I was bringing in flour and not cocaine, and we were soon on our way.
The next day I keenly unpacked my new toy and carefully measured out the correct quantities of flour, water, yeast, milk, salt, and sugar. Then pressed the button to bake. Four hours later, I excitedly opened the lid, only to find a flat, half-baked, sticky mess ☹. I could not understand it. I had done everything as I used to do it, many years ago, and back then, I never had any problems. I tried again, worrying that it was the yeast getting wet before the process started. Same result. I tried and failed about 4 times, always getting the same flat, sticky mess ☹.
Looking for help, I watched several YouTube videos, which gave some advice, but still nothing was solving the problem. The videos said it was safe to open the lid during the kneading phase to see what was going on. This was when I finally solved the mystery. I could see that although the kneading paddle was rotating and mixing the dough, it was doing it slowly and weakly. That made me remember that the voltage in Brazil is mostly 110V! Most houses do have a few outlets which are 220V, and once it had full power—bingo! Perfectly baked loaves came flooding forth!
We spent a couple of weeks at the Boa Vista house, and I played a lot of golf. Maybe 8 rounds in 2 weeks, and only a couple of times did I see anyone else playing the course. It’s like having my own personal golf club. Although I do allow others to play at weekends!
It was mid-July now, and I flew back to the UK to see my kids. Meanwhile, Carol had been invited by the Brazilian Jewish community to address a big convention in Curitiba, in the south of Brazil. Carol has many Jewish friends here in Brazil, and she is considered to be almost part of their community. We talked about what she should base her talk on, and my suggestion was history. To really understand the Middle East and all of the problems and wars they have had, you really need to know the history of the region and the people. This is compounded by where and how people get their information these days. The internet and places like YouTube and TikTok can easily spread misinformation and do a great deal of damage to an already combustible issue. The talk was a great success, but now they want Carol to present at events all over Brazil!
Meanwhile, I arrived back in sunny England with the happy news that the bearings on the supercharger had been replaced, and the old Jag was ready for collection. Tara wanted to have a swim in the Soham reservoir and it was a rare hot summer’s night.
I had missed a few birthdays earlier in the year, and they had missed mine, so we agreed to have a big birthday weekend together. When the kids were small, we would often go to the seaside at the weekend, and the nearest place to Soham, is sunny Hunstanton. There is a lovely big, old hotel in Old Hunstanton called the Le Strange Arms Hotel. We had often stayed there long ago. It has a lovely long lawn which takes you down to the sand dunes and a very long beach with golden sand. And these days, lots of kite surfers too. The plan was for Charlie and Lilly to drive down from Birmingham. Rosie had her boyfriend, Lavant, visiting from York, where they had met at university, so we invited him to join our party, and Rosie drove them both up from Soham. Tara and I came from Newmarket in the old Jag, having prepared a big picnic for everyone.
Sarah got the train up from her apartment in South East London to Kings Lynn, where I had agreed to collect her from the train station, then drive the final 30 minutes to Hunstanton.
This is where I hit my first bit of bad luck. As I pulled up at the station, Tara jumped out to go and find Sarah, and the Jaguar was enveloped in a cloud of steam! ☹
One of the main coolant hoses from the radiator had split. I called the AA, and the young man managed to make a temporary repair so that we could drive to a local garage to get it repaired. This we did, and we managed to divert the others to meet us at the garage. Sadly, Lilly was not well, so did not travel. Sarah and I jumped in with Charlie, and Tara went with Rosie and Lavant, in the pouring rain, to the hotel. Not a great start! ☹
Sadly for me, worse was yet to come. We all checked in, found our rooms, had a cup of tea, and noticed that the late afternoon sun was trying to push through the clouds. We have a tradition of bringing things to throw and catch, so armed with a Nerf bomb and a frisbee, we set off to explore the area. We were making our way down towards the lighthouse when Charlie threw the Nerf Bomb to me, as he has done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. I jumped to catch the bomb, slipped on the still wet grass, and fell flat on my front. Again, this is something I have done many times. But somehow, I landed on my upstretched right arm, and I felt something tear inside! ☹ ☹
It was agony, but of course, I felt pretty stupid, so I did my best to shrug off the injury and conceal the pain. I even managed to join in with left-handed frisbee. It did not really hinder the weekend; we actually had a great time, doing all the usual fun seaside things, a big picnic,
[All together - Vedant, me, Charlie, Sarah, Tara and Rosie]
—the funfair, fish and chips, the beach, crazy golf, Charlie even swam in the sea! And we all got lots of lovely presents too.
Tara and I had to get the train home, and the poor old Jaguar had to be fixed up yet again. After the fun long weekend, I was very disappointed. No car and no tennis or golf for a very long time. Stupidly, I hoped that it was just a torn muscle and that it would fix itself. After a couple of weeks, I returned to Brazil and called up my physiotherapist, Julia. She informed me that it was probably more than muscular and might need surgery ☹ Lots of sad faces in this newsletter 😊
As directed, I got an ultrasound scan, and it revealed that one of my five tendons in my shoulder was completely torn and a second was partly torn. Bad news. I then saw a doctor who said that surgery was not necessary, as the main tendon was still OK, and that it could be fixed with physio.
The problem was we had a lot of work to do to finally move everything out of the old rented apartment into our new apartment. Our new apartment is at Cidade Jardim, where we used to live a couple of years ago. It is brand new, and Carol and the architect converted a nice two-bedroom apartment into a one-bedroom apartment with a very spacious dressing room area and our own individual bathrooms! There was a lot to do, moving stuff in, buying new stuff that would fit, and having the home automation company automate the apartment so that we can control everything by telling Alexa to do it for us!
We managed to get everything ready just before we had to head off travelling in Europe again. Carol’s friend Sandra, who had the party in St. Tropez two years ago, was now having her 60th birthday in Paris (where she lives (mostly)). Carol had found a new travel agent called Stanley, who arranged the travel, and we were lucky to get an upgrade to first class, on the flight to Paris. It was a big event, and on the last night, Sandra had rented out the fun museum, and we all had to dress up as fairground people from 100 years ago. Carol, of course, had a fabulous period dress made for the event, but I had nothing planned.
I decided to become a lion tamer! We went to a sex shop in Paris, and I bought a whip and some kind of bondage harness thing, which on top of black pants and a white t-shirt, did the job. It was great fun, as we all got to play the fairground games. I was unbeatable at the Arabian derby! There were lots of acts too, and then we danced and partied late into the night with a few hundred other friends of Sandra.
From Paris, we stopped briefly in London before heading to Miami. I love, love, love Miami. Late September is very hot and humid in Miami, 30+C every day, but good fun. We relaxed a bit there before the next event.
A company called LVMH, which owns lots of high-end fashion brands, invited Carol and me (mostly Carol, of course) to the relaunch of Tiffany’s in Madrid. Wow, what a party! There were a couple of lunches and dinner before the big party on the final day. It was held at the most famous bull-fighting ring in Madrid,
and the Gipsy Kings played for us again. Before the party, there was a lunch event for us and a small group of other Brazilians. We didn’t really know what it was; Carol said she would go, and I decided to skip it and do some work in the hotel room. At 1 pm, we went down, and I was planning to pop to McDonald's and grab a Big Mac, leaving Carol to go to the lunch. However, the attentive host spotted us in the lobby and said that the lunch event was now just for us, at a very special restaurant, called Coque (you can google it). So, I quickly changed, and we headed off to Coque. It was clear as we arrived that this was a pretty high-end, Michelin-starred restaurant. We were shown around and invited to eat small aperitifs at each station. Then we were taken down to the cellar, so that we could choose the wine for our lunch. We were given more tasters, and then the sommelier presented the wine pairing options. There was the Global pairing option, 10 different wines from different countries, plus a dessert wine and a 15-year-old Magellan whisky to finish. Then, he presented the Spanish premium wine pairing options, 10 of the best and most famous wines from Spain, plus a dessert wine and a 25-year-old Magellan whisky to finish. We were given the wine list to look at, and I noticed that the World pairing list, was a mere EUR 700 per person and the global pairing was a mouth-watering EUR 1,000 per person! Then, the sommelier returned, a little flustered, and apologised, because he had not realised that we were guests of Tiffany’s and therefore, we had the premium option included in a deal. Our deal, being to pay absolutely no euros!
<< See menu here >>
The meal was amazing—23 courses, 11 wines, 1 whisky, it took 3 hours! That’s what I call a good lunch.
After that lunch and the big party in the bullring, we had to leave very early for a 7:30 AM flight back to Miami, zzzzz.
The main event for me now was my full-body MRI scan. Carol had one a few months earlier, and she decided that I should do the same to make sure all is well with my body. Plus, with my torn meniscus in my knee and my torn tendon in my shoulder, I thought this would give me a full view of all my problems. I went along for the scan and lay still for an hour while the thing buzzed and whirled around me. Sadly, it did not scan my knee or shoulder. Apparently, a full-body scan only includes your brain and major organs! What a scan/scam! So, I will have to get that done separately, in São Paulo.
We are getting up to date now. On Friday, we left the apartment in Miami and headed to the airport. But on leaving, we bumped into some old friends, and Carol’s handbag was left back in the lobby. We managed to get an Uber to save the day and ferry the handbag to us, so we could proceed.
We arrived very early on Saturday morning, and after a tussle with customs, we finally arrived at our new apartment. We are both very happy with it. There is still a lot to do, but we had a very successful first night, where we both slept from midnight, through to 1 PM!
Today is the sad anniversary of the horrific events in Israel, and tonight we are going to attend a ceremony where the Brazilian Jewish community will pay homage to Carol and three others, whom they recognise as the leading non-Jews in helping with the current situation. I hope they have beer.
Coming up in Q4: my brother Roger and his wife Terrie are coming to visit us next month. We will show them around São Paulo, plus Rio, and take a trip to Argentina.
And the US election! I’m looking forward to both!
That’s it for now—take care and send news if you can.
Lots of love,
Peter