Ancient history 2002 - 2010

NEWS

September 12 2010

Last of the summer visitors (Roy & Monty) left last week, the first autumn one (Justin) arrives only end-September.

Of course in the interim we are not unemployed - there is another unplanned election in Neuchâtel, which the Greens have a good chance of winning, but we have to mobilise our members and others!

Various adventures continue: one of our big windows cracked form heat shock, it will be replaced in October, with a stronger one, but that involved lots of visits from window and crane specialists.

Alison, Sopie, Ella, Angus, Penel and various others visited end July and early August in more or les planned fashion.

We had a very good short trip to Zinal mid week: paragliding and walking. The garden in Cudrefin was used as too, though the weather was less than optimal this summer. Though I did manage to do quite a lot of paragliding (for me!)

Monty and Roy had a good visit, swimming most days and cycling too. The electric bikes were also tested and enjoyed. We had a super birthday dinner at the Bolzani's - Asia's birthday is September 3rd. The usual haunts were visited, and not found wanting.

The RedFish have a new trainer - a bit older and more relaxed and experienced than the last one. However he still makes us work hard.

We did not go to the Jardins Musicaux this summer - nothing very inspiring but Steffie did get us tickets for an excellent concert in Luzern - what might have been one of Pierre Boulez' last conducting performances (rumours change). Challenging and very interesting - Boulez & Mahler.

Justin should come at the end of September, we will try and go to the UK for early November.

Zinal is the last week in January this year, Nick and Julia will join us, and probably Alison.

July 17

Stormy unsettled weather. Dulcie is back at home and David is back in Switzerland. More home help has been organised and David will go over again soon.

It's a bit less hot here, but very dry, clouds keep scudding by and any rain that falls is torrential for short periods. We had 105 kph wind on the lake the other day!

Neuchâtel is quiet with a lot of people on holiday, we are enjoying a restful time. One more book review. AS Byatt - The Children's Book

July 11 2010

Hot hot hot

David has headed off to England to see his mum. She's been in hospital and needs some help when she comes out. I'm here with the cats feeling HOT. It's about 30° inside, hotter outside. (Just remembered to go and get a drink...) Cats are lethargic. Indy doesn't mind having glasses of water poured over her, Tinga is much less keen.

The lake seems a long way away but is well worth the journey.

We had a relatively quiet month of June, no visitors, work aplenty, recovering from May which was very busy.

The Transport Neuchâtelois bus company decided to merge with TRN (La Chaux de Fonds) in principle. The Greens and ProVelo had fun and success collecting signatures for more cycle parking at the station. Even better, at the press conference the town and the CFF agreed to have a meeting with us in September to discuss putting in some temporary places while the figure out the long term layout of the station.

Also on the political front the Greens of Neuchâtel District will enlarge them selves to include all the greens on the lakeshore, making a bigger and we hope more influential unit. "Les Verts du Littoral"

We went to St Petersburg, which was fascinating. Hard work, as cities and museums always are. The ballet (Marinsky, ex-Kirov) was superb and we were thrilled to see the Little Humpbacked Horse, everything a ballet should be. An excellent end-of-tem concert by young orchestra of the Glinka Kapella, with an excellent "Land of Hope and Glory" played by Russians with not British cultural baggage. We went to an uninspired end-of season concert by the St Petersburg philharmonic, the conductor's title (something like "honoured musician of the great Russian People") was reflected in a certain stolidity and great lack of enthusiasm. And at least 6 mobile phones went off during the concert, a record by any standards.

Our excellent guide Nina took us around and made things as easy as possible for us. In the center or town the shops are the same as in any European capital (as are the prices), but the heritage of bureaucracies and Kafkaesque hierarchies is stall apparent in many to the institutions. The difference in wealth between rich and poor does not seem to have been changed by the multiple upheavals, now we are busy reading Russian history books to try and understand a bit more.

We stayed in a very well run hotel the Asteria (not the Astoria) in a great location for the city center. Two trips out-of town were fortunate to be on the hottest days, one to Pushkin and one to Petrodrovets.

Mass tourists from cruise ship made a well organised guide essential to seeing the palaces, Nina always encouraged the other groups to overtake us, and we were often on our own. The exception was there Hermitage, which is swamped. If you don't need to see the fountains, go in early May of September!

We were exhausted last week and did not much. David's mum went into hospital on Thursday,with a mild heart attack, no-once seems sure whether she will be well enough to look after herself when she comes out, so David is off to see her.

Read several books, reviewed one. The Earth by Richard Fortey

David has posted the holiday photos (a selection) at Summer 2010. Off to visit Justin's favourite rock by the lake.

June 6 2010

A warm quiet weekend, a rare occurrence. After a very grey month of May (least sun since records began) with record amounts of rain, summer has arrived. In fact it arrived at Pentecost weekend, but Carol at least did no notice it because she was working.

After MaryAnn flying and volcano interrupted visit, we've had Justin around planting piquets, cooking us nice meals and playing the piano. Rod and Gaynor are back in town, we've seen them both, but need to have dinner or lunch.

Paragliding this morning at Roche de Van and this afternoon a quick cycle ride and lots of rest. One of our big terrace windows has cracked in the heat - fun with the insurance and autogrues in store to get it replaced we have no doubt.

We're off to St Petersburg at the end of the month - I wonder whether to venture out to the bookshop for a guide. Neuchâtel is packed, with the quinzaine Neuchâteloise. The lake shore is also covered with pale bodies and a few brave souls are in the lake although it is at 14°.

David is busy trying to launch the Hubble telescope in his pace shuttle simulator! Willi & Sandy are going to holiday in the chalet in Cudrefin in July, then Sophie and Angus are next at the beginning of August them Monty and Roy.

May 15th

Long time no news, we have been at home working, so nothing exciting to report!

Carol continues to have fun with new software, all good stuff, but not yet making all the computer people redundant. And of course there are USERS to look after.

Just had Gavin, Irène, Edmond and Constance for raclette and music. Great fun. Various plumbing issues at the chalet, but Richard is managing it all.

Justin came end March for some vigneroning with Nicolas and we had an very pleasant dinner in Bienne with Colin & Jane, mutual friends of Patrick and Justin.

Since then we've been pretty routine, finishing the Jazz Classic season in Geneva, getting to know our neighbours who also have season tickets, and know Nico from EPFL. Small world.

We cycled up to have lunch with Irena and Enrico in the Val de Ruz. David on his new electric steed, Carol panting on her person powered vélo. Emilia shared her workbooks Carol while David did sword fighting with the boys.

English book club continues with stimulating discussions - reviews to write.

The Neuchâtel Greens are on the verge of expanding to include the whole lakeshore - challenging organisation and progress we hope in the right direction.

http://www.verts-ne.ch/pageNeuchatel.php

Looking forward to another visit from Justin, a trip to St Petersburg, and a summer full of visitors here.

March 7th

Had a great holiday with Bions & Ubbens in Grimentz & Zinal (yes again). Pistes de l'Ours was open so we had fun in the powder, but it's nothing like the old days since they have pulled a snowcat up it!

Neuchâtel is quiet this week - school holidays, we're catching up on work and preparing for a busy few weeks in March. We had thought of going cross country skiing but with gale force North winds it's not very appealing. Carol has two trips to Geneva next week - Work on Wednesday and in the evening to see Abdullah Ibrahim.

Built a new server for Brookland and Energex - new Windows 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 all virtualized! Seems to be running well, so some new technologies are mastered.

February 5th

Woke up to torrential rain. Coldest January since 1988 (there was more snow on the ground in 1988).

David's birthday was this Monday, we had a birthday dinner at the Taj Palace last night, and haggis at home on his birthday.

Between ski trips, Zinal was excellent - great weather, flew my new paraglider every day. Alison had a cold and bronchitis, and David managed to get a migraine, so we were a little less festive than some years. Now looking after ourselves in preparation for Grimentz with Bions & Ubbens & whoever else turns up.

Photos

Last weekend we had an outing on our cross country skis in a meter of powder and a blizzard. Great fun! Photos

We went to see Ron Carter in the Victoria Hall - excellent! And got a lift back with Christian van Gessel a Green friend who also turns out to be a jazz fan.

The town is planning to transform one of our nearby squares, I think it's a great idea, David thinks a waste of money.

http://www.2000neu.ch/index0.php?id=1112

Otherwise work, swimming, politics, slow progress on the sax and piano, and our very pleasant routine.

December 29th

A great Christmas break for me (Carol) being anti-social in Neuchâtel, with rain, rain fog and gales.

I even finished a book!

Amitav Gosh

December 26th 2009

Life continues: our local nuclear power station is to be kept in operation indefinitely, COP15 failed miserably.

I'm inundated with news from friends rushing around the world trying to keep warm, help the poor, or just for "épanouissement personnelle" - a great French expression most often used in a derogative sense which roughly translate as personal fulfilment (with an understood "at someone else's expense").

Could we keep warm by planning our day better (walk up the hill, take the bus down?).

Could we help our local poor rather than those half way round the world?

Could we fulfil ourselves by interacting more with our local multicultural and fascinating community rather than travelling thousand of kilometres to peer at others?

We middle aged west Europeans will be OK; we're rich and well educated, we have the money to buy the remaining fossil fuels and the technology to save energy and develop alternative sources. We live in an area with plentiful water and with the means to store it.

Over the years we've seen mobility increase and security decrease. Bombs on aeroplanes; trains going so fast into tunnels that they break down, so many places I could not travel to safely any more! I don't think the situation is going to get better. Overfished seas will lead to more piracy, climate change will lead to more gated communities (and countries).

We have also seen an enormous increase in communications : twitter, internet, facebook, mobile phones.

Perhaps there is hope, but I don't think video conferencing is as effective as walking out of the door to the poor neighbourhood round the corner.

Neuchâtel:

The greens are not exempt: 850Million francs to reduce the transit time between La Chaux de Fonds and Neuchâtel. (codeword TransRUN). Two towns separated by a mountain range! The big risk is of course that the unique culture of the Neuchâtel mountains is completely overrun (the Brits will remember the Dordogne) by outsiders from the bassin lémanique looking for large cheap homes, paddocks for their horses and proximity three international airports.

Next task : develop the last paragraph in French for the local greens, persuade my wildly mobile friends to at least try and compensate for the carbon. Convince the world the local can be great, and that being able to walk out of you front door and meet 5 people you know is what quality of life is really about!

December 6th

Still recovering from the minaret referendum. The country is in shock, no-one, even those who set up the referendum expected it to pass. The consequences will be widespread and long lasting.

Almost everyone we know is angry upset and disturbed. Very few people in Neuchâtel will admit to having voted to ban minarets, but someone did!

We went out on Tuesday to demonstrate our disgust, now we have to wait and see what the authorities and courts decide.

However life goes on, the next election campaign to be organised, new software to be mastered and installed, the book club met on Monday to discuss The Blind Assassin, last Thursday the first meeting of the new "bureau" for the Neuchâtel district greens, yesterday our presenting our candidate for the Conseil des Etats (upper house of parliament) to the public. Francine John

David has had his H1N1 vaccine, no side effects, and two pianos lessons this week!

And even a review of 4 excellent books

Amin Malouf, F Scott Fitzgerald, Mohsin Hamid, Rawi Hage

November 15th

Quiet(ish) weekend in Neuchâtel.

I forgot to mention the wonderfully funny play we went to in Canterbury: Moby Dick by spymonkey.

The whole theatre laughed continuously throughout the performance. Difficult to describe, but brilliant, with every aspect of comedy and entertainement combined with excellent timing!

Last night we went to Woyzek, at the other end of the spectrum, an excellent performance at Stadttheater in Koniz (a suburb of Bern). The play in German, the songs in English. Compelling if disturbing!

Friday night we were out in Neuchâtel with Nesh and Noemia, Martin and Do and various friends. Hard to find a place in a restaurant!

Tuesday we went to see Cassandra Wilson in Geneva, and were disappointed, the solos seemed aimless, the poppy jazz didn't really inspire us or the rest of the audience greatly.

Plenty of activity in Green politics, trying to get a modified energy law passed, the Liberal-Radical party are fighting tooth and nail and may well win. The Greens are also busy restructuring to handle the growth of the party from a marginal group to be ready to get elected to responsible positions and run things well!

On the house front we have finally got the tube connecting the Bolzani's extractor fan to the roof completed, so we don't have their cooking smells. Slow progress is also being made on the ventilation and heating systems!

Life will continue much the same, plenty of work too for the moment!

And there's even a new book review: Margaret Atwood

November 5th - family birthday day

Roy and Dulcie have birthdays today. We celebrated last weekend with a party for Dulcie's 90th and whistlestop tour of the Chisholm family.

Everything went very smoothly except for Easyjet. Let's hope Sarko gets the TGV tunnel under Paris built soon.

Working back in time we went on holiday in Germany, Bonn, Stuttgart and Bad Buchau. Photos here: summer_2009.htm. Thanks to all the Ubbens family for entertaining us in Bad Godesburg- David visited the Porsche museum while I went cycling and visited the baths in Bad Cannestatt.

We visited various archaeological and historical sites, and had a very pleasant 3 days in and around Bad Buchau.

Nick Davey another old Neuchâtel friend came over for dinner and we'll see more of him as he regularly visits Stryker in La Tchaux. Petra came by and told us all about life at VMWare and in Munich, we miss her lots.

The ventilation system in out building is finally getting sorted out, with a new contractor to manage it perhaps there is hope.

Carol continues to be an active green, we're trying to get our new energy law passed - we'll know on the 29th if we succeeded. Interesting referendums that day - one for banning exports of military equipment, another (horrible one) for banning the construction of minarets.

Upcoming excitement: the Jazz Classics series of concerts in Geneva - hope we survive the late nights. Some new bits of sports equipment and the winter!

September 12th

The last visitors left last week, after a full and busy summer.

We had a great party for Monty's 80th birthday at Le Pavillion in Montet http://www.hoferundhofer.ch/

Rod & Gaynor came for a last visit, and the sun shone.

Dulcie came for a week, Alison joined us for a weekend. We walked from Les Geneveys sur Coffrane to Tête de Ran on Sunday and met up with M&R, David & Dulcie for lunch on the terrace.

Richard & Stephanie invited us to Luzern for an excellent concert in the middle of August. We did not go to Cernier this year, probably a good thing as we seem to have been very busy.

Roy brought his harmonica and we had some fun home concerts (for a very long suffering audience)

Lots of work for Carol too, as well as trying to keep fit, contribute to the Greens and follow up on the eternal saga of the ventilation for the building!

We bought a new waterproof camera and there are some photos from it summer_2009.htm. The really high quality photos are from Hans' super-dooper professional camera.

August 9th

Visitors galore! Margret Hans Sitse and Yelle de Vries arrived 2 weeks ago, and JUST as we were going over to Cudrefin to have dinner with them the doorbell rang and Mandy (not seen for 17 years!) was there with her family from Canada.

We had a long dinner together reminiscing about old days!

Cudrefin and the region have been a great success for our Dutch visitors - bike an boat trips, 1st August sports and fireworks, tree swinging and walks in the Alps.

Last night we won our bet with the weather and had fun on the lake and a long BBQ in the garden, Willi brought his new telescope and we saw Jupiter and the moon and some beautiful star clusters. We had multinational football, with the Grétillat family showing their skills. Not sure who won, but Tanya ended up rather wet getting the ball out of the stream at the bottom of the garden. The new keyboard and the visiting DS were also much in demand.

Otherwise it's normal summer, a bit too much work, very variable weather.

July 26

More wind and rain, cold hot, wet dry, one front after another.

Loads of work. We've been watching Battlestar Galactica, so not much culture either (Galactica must count as some kind of culture).

Gavin, Irène, Edmond & Constance came to escape the painters, and we ate an excellent côte de boeuf that escaped from France with them. We tested the new modern childrens' games at the Jeunes-Rives and found them amusing for both young and older children.

Rod & Gaynor prepare their departure for Australia, we have inherited a lovely plant which we will care for attentively.

Milko & Sue finally came to dinner (last planned visit their friends farm burned down, so they were busy providing accommodation and moral support). We had a lovely time on our terrace (they managed to get a night when it wasn't raining)

The cornichons have grown (see May 24th) and are being harvested and "mis en bocal". Help needed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. http://www.doodle.com/7uzk9fpd9u2mytaf

Thursday Indy got bit by the printer (she's fine) and bit Carol, who of course had to go to the doctor and is enjoying the pleasures of anti-biotics.

Today the weather is good, (until tomorrow) so flying swimming, boating on the agenda! David & Bart were out sailing 'till late last night.

July 12th

Wet and windy month. No paragliding. Swimming, walking, cycling, music, yoga over for the summer holidays, plants growing well, worm thriving. The worms went on an outing to the rubbish and recycling exhibition at the the dechetterie.

Carol went on a girls weekend in Adelboden at the Parkhotel Bellevue with Sandy & do. Climbed an Alp, bobbled in the various pools and saunas, had the reflexologist tell me I am in perfect health. Delicious dinners, lovely breakfast, all good in fact.

We went to see Cedric & friends (Carol's sax teacher) play at the Robinson one evening. Lovely atmosphere, medium food. Also went to the Bohème which was once a good restaurant, definitely not recommended now.

The Jura and the Cardinal continue to please as ever!

Pro-vélo is being dynamic and militant - disturbing the fonctionnaires! The end of June was spattered with AGMs and meetings of all sorts, hence the lack of news.

The rest of the world has headed south in a giant traffic jam, and we're awaiting our first visitors on the 14th, booked solid now until mid-September!

June 7th

Wet and windy weekend, went swimming in the rain yesterday, managed a walk on Chaumont this morning, looked at some sports on the TV this afternoon.

Carol's saxophone has been serviced, it sounds better, but it does not improve the playing! Lots of work and administration setting up Chisholm Informatique Sàrl. Hope to get the paperwork finished this week.

This week's book review Claire Messud - Emporer's Children

June 1st

Holiday for many today; we were both working. We will have a day off (or several) another time.

Yesterday we had lunch with the Bolzani's, "just a family lunch" Italian style, yesterday!

Lots of north wind, plants need a lot of water, the lake has been turned over, and the fisherman at the market has lost his nets!

Justin has arrived home safely, as have Monty & Roy, all the journeys went well. Everyone seemed to enjoy their visits to Neuchâtel. The cornichons on the terrace are growing well, we'll see if they are a climbing variety.

David has a new toy - an indoor helicopter which is easy to fly. The previous one, 10 years ago was impossible to fly. These new ones come with a simulator so you can practise on your computer (not for me) and are very stable. Tinga-cat is attentive but keeps at a safe distance. Indy-cat can't decide whether it's a giant insect or a funny shaped bird, and puffs herself up like a hedgehog when it's out. Battery life 10 minutes! So for the moment Indy is banished during flying times.

My saxophone has gone for a service, the shop has lent me one which is much harder to play. Got a new bag for my paraglider, which converts into a harness. It is wonderfully compact, just waiting for the weather to be good so I can go out an try it.

Chisholm Informatique Sàrl starts today, a proper company structure, with 100 shares, all owned be me! Lots of extra administration, new VAT numbers and so on.

May 24

Hot summer weekend. Unfortunately too windy for paragliding, we have had to make do with the lake!

Cornichon planting on Saturday, a super BBQ party at the Pointe du Grain Saturday night.

http://www.lopinbleu.ch/spip/spip.php?rubrique13

A very lazy day today, swimming, putting up sunshades on the terrace. J is making us roast chicken for dinner.

David and Bart are assembling the Hobie Cat, but there has been no wind on the lake. Perhaps if our boat is ready the wind will oblige!

Pulka cat has been visiting since Thursday, all relatively quiet, as Indy seems to have acquired the necessary social graces for living in a three cat household. Pulka will go home this evening sometime.

Monty and Roy are on their way home after a couple of weeks in Cuxdrefin, safely arrived in Mangat, with an easy drive to Calais tomorrow.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow, learning new software and trying to finish projects which are moving forward only slowly.

Hope to get some paragliding in soon, mid June is a girls weekend away, probably in Adelboden or Charmey, not husbands of children! Thanks Sandy for the organisation.

The Red Fish sponsoring committee should also start moving again. Not entirely sure that a financial end economic crisis is a good time for getting new sponsors, but the RedFish certainly needs some help and organisation.

Chisholm Informatique has become a Sarl (Société à responsabilité limité), allowing more pension investments and giving it a structure which would allow it to be sold. More form filling and bureaucracy!

May 17

Justin and Gavin are coming next week, Justin for a week of labour in the vineyards, Gavin for some paragliding.

Monty and Roy are enjoying the new staircase in Cudrefin, getting fitter cycling along the flat paths.

David is back from Anglesey, having had a migraine attack, wondering if he's allergic to petrol! It was as expected, it was windy and damp, very primitive racecourse.

Carol has been at home, at the salon de la mobilité douce trying electric bikes with Monty and Roy, trying unsuccessfully to find a reversible harness for her paraglider.

The Swiss narrowly accepted the introduction of biometric passports, largely accepted more "alternative" medicine. Neuchâtel voted against its new commerce law so the shop will continue to close at 18.30.

Book reviews:

Aravin Adiga

Neil Gaiman

Kate Summerscale

April 18

A relatively quiet week. Poster sticking and hanging for the second round of the elections, only one apéro, Opération Cornichon makes the headlines. Generally a good week for the Greens, we were also the main article on Wednesday's news!

Work continues, catching up on things, plenty more to do.

Planted some new flowers on the terrace, hope the frost is not too violent.

Carol got back to swimming training after a cough, hard work be worthwhile. Last weekend we did some cycling and visited the new stairs in Cudrefin. They are much less steep and will make life easier for everyone!

Maryann sent some wedding photos from Dubai (or Melbourne).

Photos from our most recent holiday (we only took the camera out one day!) Siviez 2009. Videos still to come.

April 12

We can now walk into our cave and find things!

The worms have also been sorted and a lot of lovely new soil prepared for repotting plants.

Carol has re-organised her book review pages Books Carol has read. Let me know whether you think there is an improvement.

Recent reviews:

Orhan Pamuk

And even some photos from earlier this year!

Q1 2009

April 10th

Spring ? Summer?

Probably spring, as there may be a frost. We tidied the cave this morning, tomorrow we'll visit the dechetterie to get rid of the stuff. We had lunch by the lake in the sun and went to an excellent St Matthew passion in the Collégiale.

Carol's cough is nearly better after the ski week in Siviez - 3 days snow, 5 days sun! Excellent conditions and NO queues as we were completely out of season. Nick, Georgina and Candice did every black run in the region, others were less energetic. We cooked delicious things, solved all the world's problems and generally had a great holiday.

Carol had a day off skiing to celebrate the smoking ban in Neuchâtel. It's all gone very smoothly, helped by the excellent weather. Justin did 3 days vine pruning with Nicolas and no work with the sledgehammer. The greens got 4 more seats in the canton parliament, the executive election goes on to a second round at the end of April. Carol did not get elected!

Carol's recent book reviews (missing lots, as I look back, hope for rain!)

Rubicon - Tom Holland

Lloyd Jones

Markus Zusak

Donna Leon

Andrea Camilleri

March 15

Spring arrives. Fun day yesterday doing cycling and politics, fixing the odd computer, today we'll see if there is any snow left to use our new cross country skis on.

A busy week, nothing very exceptional; planning with GastroNeuchâtel the event for the introduction of smoke-free public place in Neuchâtel, doing a cross-forest migration, keeping computers and business running, trying to get the swimming club organised, Maryann's leaving party, eating too much curry at the Taj Palace and so on...

March 8th

Wonderful winter! The days are getting longer, the sunrises are beautiful!

And fresh snow keeps falling in the Jura, so we can have fun near to home.

Yesterday we had a morning outing The Bugnenets - empty slopes, no queues, 20cm powder on an excellent base. Fabulous.

Life in Neuchâtel continues as usual, not enough time to fit everything in. We have new cross country skis - just at the right time, David's binding broke last weekend while we were out with Gavin. I have a long tour with Irène the next day while Gavin took the children sledging. We had fondue with them and with Bart & Sabeth.

Today we'll try our new skis as there is sun and snow!

Smoke-free Neuchâtel approaches fast, and still takes up some time with press conferences and on the 1st an event with GastroNeuchâtel. As the first canton in the West of Switzerland to ban smoking we get quite a lot of attention from the press. And it's election time, Switzerland has loads of elections and referendums, making sure that anyone involved in politics has to stay involved!

February 2nd

A relatively quiet couple of weeks in and around Neuchâtel. We managed to have dinner with Liz & James and hear all about the renovation of their place in La Tzoumaz. The Sutherlands came through on their way to Nendaz, great to hear from old friends. Dave Whaley is coming skiing with James, we'll try and meet up with them. Richard & Stephanie were her last night, with news of their visitors from Namibia who had the best Christmas and New Year !

We've been snowshoeing on Chaumont, downhill skiing in Bugnenets and cross country skiing at the Vue des Alpes! A real winter. Yesterday afternoon it might have been the beginning of spring but this morning it is snowing again!

The green electoral program, co-edited by Carol was accepted with almost no modifications, let's see who gets elected!

I also went to the pre-election meeting of Ecologie Libérale, a more right wing grouping, with many of the same preoccupations, but a preference for incentives rather than "interdiction". Most interesting to meet and discuss.

David's new piano is here set up and sounds very nice. Work continues, Maryann is leaving so our pilates classes are being re-organised. the RedFish swimming trainer has been more absent than present recently - something else to be discussed!

OxyRomandie is lodging an official complaint about the Davidoff tennis tournament, since cigarette advertising is banned on TV, how can a tennis tournament have a cigarette brand all over it and be broadcast in prime time? We would not have been interested a while back, but now we are more aware of the deviousness of lobbies we're more inclined to be supportive.

David's greenish links is a new page where David publishes some of the interesting links and analysis from discussions over dinner and with friends.

February 8th

Back from a weekend in Chamonix with the Elsevier team - usual fun! skiing in blizzards, flat tyres, ski poles dropped off lifts, eating more meat in a weekend than we'd normally eat in a month.

We did not manage to do the Vallée Blanche as the weather was too bad.

Working back in time, we've been busy and enjoying the "real" winter. The deer in the Jura are suffering - not much food around and the snowshoe fashion for finding every last bit of undisturbed snow causing them stress as well.

The various no-smoking campaigns continue their contorted paths - Neuchâtel is at present in the lead among the Suisse Romande cantons, with an Aprils 1st date. Fribourg and Valais have both jumped all the legislative hoops and had various referenda, look good for July 1st. Geneva despite having stared a few years before the rest is not threatened with another referendum and another visit to the Tribunal Federal.

Zinal was fun this year, Alison cane for 5 days, David for 2 long weekends and Carol had a full 9 days, not especially restful as there was a load of powder snow and we could paraglide every day. We had a super flat in the Forum (thanks to the Agence Germann).

David is getting a new electric piano next week, fun in store, and we continue our musical efforts. Carol is standing for the canton elections, and having been part of the 3.5 person "groupe de rédaction" has a lot more idea of what might be achieved in a 4 year legislature. Most interesting debates and discussions.

December 31st

Snow!

http://www.rtn.ch/rtn/Actualite/Regionale/311208Trafic-fortement-perturbe-sur-les-routes-du-canton-.html

Much more than usual. Stuck at home because the road are slippy and blocked.

Forced to read books, drink champagne and relax.

David will be back on Friday, I have not really done all I thought I would during the quiet time, but loads of much needed relaxing.

December 21st

David is not well this morning so I have updated some book pages and even fixed some broken hyperlinks.

Last week seemed to be one continual apéro, with Christmas and leaving parties. We even had beer at swimming training! We had the ventilation shafts tested and they are not at all airtight, so we will have to have more work done in the New Year. Two paediatricians and a generalist doctor will moving in the New Year, so the building will be full.

Neuchâtel will become no-smoking on April 1st.

December 20th

Mild and muggy today, hope all the snow does not melt.

Can anyone explain why the UK has the most complicated postcodes and yet everyone seems to have long-winded 7 line addresses?

December 13th

Winter has set in seriously, with loads of snow. Not much in town fortunately. We've had all our wintersports equipment out in the last couple of weeks - snowshoes, cross country and downhill skis!

After Carol's 50th birthday we've also been to lots of St Nicholas, Christmas and other events - great fun and exhausting. Thanks to all who invited us for such lovely evenings!

Monday we had a day off and went to Les Crosets, only a few lifts open but not many people there, and lovely snow. Sunday we did a run from Savagnières to Quatres-Bornes and back!

Carol has got two new customers who needed a bit of sorting out! And a busy week ahead next week, with all sorts of projects to be done before Christmas.

David is trying to decide what sort of piano to buy!

November 29th

Thanks to all who came or tried to come to my party last weekend!

The weather was really against us. However many brave souls came and we had a great time (only regrets: "I did not have time to talk to everyone")

The last Chizzes left Tuesday, we're mostly cleared up, lots of monosodium glutamate left over, and lots of lovely bons to spend on nice things!)

Thank you everyone.

Anyone looking for dishes they brought: all unidentified objects are in the stairwell so you can come and pick them up anytime.

Today we went to to enjoy the snow which fell last weekend. It was in great condition - so cold all week!

Richard came round and we had our usual wide ranging discussions: paragliding in Chili, twitter addiction, poorly documented open source software...

David's robot is progressing by leaps and bounds in it's new development environment (thanks Microsoft). It can now detect the position of lights in the room.

Carol has fixed the web server by building a new virtual one so DO complain about the performance. (no thanks for Microsoft for not letting me know that WSS would destroy my FrontPage Extensions).

Smoking ban is for just before the elections next year. Vaud Valais and Fribourg vote today.

November 9th

Pretty eventful time! The Neuchâtel parliament passed a law banning smoking in the canton, not the government has to decide when it will come into effect. (early 2009). Unfortunately it is destined to be modified or overturned as it included "fumoirs" which are un-constitutional and not in conformity with the World Health Organisation recommendations.

However we will enjoy the clean air when it comes. Ella came to visit this week, we had fun shopping cooking and chatting. Harvey has found a home in Gland and we're preparing for Carol's 50th birthday party which will be on the 22nd November. Most of the Chisholm family seem to be managing to come and visit, as well as loads of friends.

Local politics continues to be active, we've got some progress on the Jeunes-Rives renovation, not much on public transports, but we'll keep trying.

A new swimming trainer is ruthlessly getting us stronger and fitter at the Red Fish, David is out kite flying as the wind is strong today.

Plenty of work still to do, though probably the recession will arrive soon. It certainly has arrived in advertising, our local paper has laid off 15 people!

October 5th

Stunning weather - snow on the Alps and tops of the Jura, wonderful light. We have a visiting cat Pulka for 10 days, so there's lots of hissing and cat politics.

Harvey came to visit yesterday, we had a delicious lunch at the Taj Palace. Otherwise cycling, swimming, work, bringing in the cold sensitive plants, and ramping up for a busy few weeks socially.

Excellent book club meeting to discuss Mr Pip, again we are lucky with the range of people in out book group: when we're reading Snow we have someone whose grandmother escaped the Armenian massacre, this time we in Bougainville, and we have New Zealanders and Australians who were brought up with the situation, and someone whose sister in law comes from an Island just like it!

September 27th

Back from holidays, sitting quietly at home while Neuchâtel goes mad outside. It's the Fête des Vendanges weekend. Fortunately the insulation is very good so we hear only the loudest noises from outside.

David went out sailing with Bart, I helped on the green stand today. Yesterday I had a fun time curling (a new sport) at the Elsevier autumn party. We experienced the Beaulac's rather poor service afterwards, but a good time was had by all.

Thursday evening we had a working group on the energy consumption of the building - not all bad news but many poor design decisions and weak implementation by Axima. We'll work to saving money and energy by getting everything better regulated and them think about alternate sources of energy too.

Tuesday we arrived back early on the night train from Florence. We were not over-impressed by Florence - too many tourists, but we had an interesting day in the Duomo construction museum, the scientific instruments museum (with Galileo's telescopes) and the archeology museum which is poorly laid out but has some very interesting stuff.

The weekend we spent in Perugia, which was very pleasant, a well preserved medieval town with lots of culture.

The previous week were were in Rome on a tour with Martin Randall. Our lecturer, Angus was excellent and we now know almost all there is to know about ancient Rome. The food was also very good and the extra kilos have not gone away yet! Expensive, pretty gruelling (long intellectually challenging days) but well worth the effort and money.

The week before that we had David's mum here - all well except her handbag was stolen so we're still busy with insurance claims and lock changing. Carol's parents left the week before that (early September). Harvey has started his new job in Geneva, is finding it hard to find a flat (as everyone does on Geneva) but seems to be settling in well.

Looking forward to a couple of months at home alone!

August 23rd

Working backwards in time:

Today we have Harvey visiting here in Neuchâtel, Monty and Roy on Cudrefin, and Ella with the Gottraux, for the term, so we will see her sometime!

Paragliding, cycling, lunch at the buvette in St Blaise, swimming in the lake were the day's activities.

Last week Tjalf and Christa and their family were in a wonderful house in Champs du Moulin - only three other places in the village, no one to disturb and a fabulous view up the Creux-de-Van.

Also last week we went to three concerts at Cernier, a good Chostakovitch 9th symphony, and abysmal Bartok "Strings Percussion & Celeste", a medieval mass sung by the Hilliard ensemble, and a very late night performance of Stockhausen's Kontakte, which made us understand why no-one continued down that particular line of musical development.

Also last week : We got the decking on the terrace replaced; the original material had rotted and splintered so much as to be dangerous! Various music lessons happened and it's back to school with all sorts of meetings and activites.

The earlier part of August was quieter, Gavin came to visit and brought some bad weather, Richard had a lot of German friends in Cudrefin adn we enjoyed their excellent cooking!

Monty and Roy arrived at the beginning of the month and have been keeping fit, cycling and swimming, as well as masterminding staircases and learning to rezone the DVD player.

Next week is back to work with a vengeance: book group, first board meeting of Transport Neuchâtelois for Carol, two more concerts at Cernier, and a meeting with our health minister M Debély about the passive smoking initiative.

July 13th 2008

Rainy cold weekend so we are catching up on jobs, doing websites, may even do some book reviews. Summer did arrive for a couple of weeks and they tell us that is will be back on Tuesday.

Carol's paraglider has even been out flying, with Carol of course. The waterskis have had several outings. The hobie cat has been busy as well, with plenty of sporty wind! The mixed rain and sun has left the bikes well coated with mud. Our musical repertoire is currently being extended to include Blue Moon.

The new deck (made of FSC certified Ipe) is ordered but won't come 'till August. Small cat found she could jump up to the gargoyle platform in search of birds so we now have some anti-cat netting over the edges of the terrace.

Green and town politics continues well, lots of fun projects to be involved in!

The "Prix de l'Acceuil" Jury was most interesting: based on a public vote we had to chose the best and worst restaurants in the Canton, as well as the one with the best welcome for children and so on. It seems this will continue next year so now we have to go out and test all the restaurants!

David is off next weekend to Snetterton to help Barry with a car race, most un-green, but probably not a sport with much future in it's current form. Weather permitting Carol will go for a long weekend in the Alps with the Albatros paragliding club.

June 7th 2008

Long time no news. We had lots of visitors after Easter - Eastry Chisholms on their way to sun and snow in Cervinia, Harvey checking out life and old friends in Switzerland, Justin to learn about vigneroning with Nicolas. Monty and Roy had a couple of weeks in Cudrefin. Gavin & Irène came for Pentecost.

We've been to some interesting concerts - Stockhausen in Geneva, est (excellent jazz) and a stunning performance of the Ligeti violon concerto in La Chaux de Fonds.

Faubourg du Lac 12 had it's annual general meeting and we are going ahead with an energy optimisation study for the building - incredible that is should be necessary on such a new building!

Carol has swapped her squash racquet for nordic walking sticks, and David has bought a remote controlled aircraft flight simulator - less time consuming than crashing them in real life.

The motor boat has been underused, as the weather has been awful. The Hobie cat has been out a few times, but cold and wavy is not always the most enjoyable sailing conditions.

Music lessons continue, David has found a jazz piano teacher, and Carol a new sax teacher, so all we have to do now is hours of practise.

The book group thrives with lively discussions, the smoking initiative progresses incredibly slowly through the Canton political system; the powers that be really do not want to upset Philip Morris. Carol has just been a jury member for the best "acceuil" competition for the Neuchâtel restaurants. Most interesting.

Work of course continues too. Dulcie comes next week for her holiday.

April 20th 2008

An eventful month, FABULOUS SNOW at Easter and probably the best run we've ever had down Chassoure, in thigh deep powder; we just happened to be there when the lift and slope opened! An excellent end to a good winter season. There has been plenty more snow since then, we have been too busy to use it.

The Eastry Chisholms came through on their way to Cervinia after Easter, and by all accounts had a good time there. Carol's been working hard on figuring out how Office Communications Server works and how communications are going to change just as much in the next 10 years as they have in the past 10.

Harvey came to visit, an occasion for lots going out to dinner and catching up with old friends. He stayed with us and with the Ribonis and with Sue & Milko.

EcoConscience had it's AGM and we got a new member, Patricia, who is full of exciting ideas, which is very positive. www.ecoconscience.org

www.verts2008.ch for the Neuchâtel green election site. Election activities seem mostly to involve preaching to the converted. Another time we'll have to think hard as to how to converted the rest. However it does help make a team of the people who might get elected, which is probably also important. The election is on the 27th April, but with a majority of postal voters, this weekend is probably the last chance to change any minds.

Monty and Roy arrived immediately after Harvey left, and have taken up resident in Cudrefin, as usual doing cycling and swimming and visiting their friends and acquaintances. Lat night they came here for dinner, with Martin & Do, Jess and Sam, and Gaynor. We got the fire brigade out because of a burning smell - our brilliantly designed house has the sink piping just above the plug for the dishwasher, and the plug got full of water and short circuited. All very exciting, we look forward to sending the bill to the architect.

Today Justin arrives to learn all about grape vine planting and ebourgeoning. I went on a nordic walking class this morning, excellent exercise, and I'll probably stop playing squash and do that instead. We're starting the energy review of our building (thank you Mr Architect whose name cannot be mentioned), to try and reduce the vast amounts of electricity our building consumes.

Gavin & Irène will be over in Cudrefin for Pentecost - Monty and Roy will have returned to the UK by then, and after that we'll have a couple of weeks to ourselves.

March 16th 2008

Another stormy Sunday, David is watching the Grand Prix, I'm having fun doing websites and book reviews. The lake is fabulous this morning, bright sunny patches, dark stormy clouds, wind whippping the waves over the breakwaters.

Carol is standing for the town council with the Green party, more fun in store. Rather than complaining it seemed a good opportunity to contribute something. Of course I have to get elected first. We went to the Maxwell Davies Mad King concert again in La Chaux, it is a most powerful and disturbing piece of music, well worth the journey.

The ladies squash team looks as if it might die next year, as one of our (younger) players does not want to continue. Life will go on. The Red Fish has no trainer for the masters (again) but we seem to be maintaining enough motivation and momentum.

The weather has been very variable, all the snow has gone from the Jura, though more is to fall this week. We'll go to visit the Walskys for some of the Easter weekend, and revisit the Nendaz ski area. We've not been to the Portes du Soleil at all this year.

The Archipel music festival (www.archipel.org) is doing loads of Stockhausen this year, so we'll be bending our ears a bit un April. See the Concerts page for information.

March 1st 2008

A stormy bank holiday, spent quietly at home, tidying, cooking for Liz & James who did not realise all the shops are shut on March 1st, doing websites, re-potting plants and generally being quiet and domestic.

We've a couple of reasonably calm weeks until Easter, we'll try and ski some more if the snow is good. We may go down to Cervinia to meet up with the Eastry Chisholms after Easter, Harvey is coming in early April, Monty and Roy hot on his heels for a spring visit.

Fortunately others are better at photos than we are!

Zinal photos : http://www.montivagus.ch/Montivagus_FP/FP080119ParaZinal.html

And more: http://www.improsteurs.ch/~herve/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=20

And even a video so you know what we do all week: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q4S-ffdvoU

The no-smoking initiative is perhaps progressing, politics permitting. More news next week.

February 24th 2008

Back from a week in Zermatt - excellent company, glorious weather, hard and fast snow.

We've also had 10 days in Zinal, better snow, only one day of bad weather, good paragliding and fun company.

And an adventure weekend at Super St Bernard / Etroubles - awful weather, snow conditions between hypnotically wonderful and "worst ever experienced"

In Zermatt we met up with Urs and Ann, now in Delft, Urs busy with his new department and Mars program, Ann working part time in Liestal and the rest of the time in Delft. Then we were joined by the Bions and the Steads. We stayed in the Alpenroyal hotel, very friendly and well run, as near as you can get in Zermatt to skiing from the front door.

We also managed to ski down to Cervinia and have coffee with the Fossons, who were very busy, but found time to look after us all.

Zermatt has excellent skiing and equipment, it's much bigger than the places we normally ski, and though we enjoyed the museum, we probably did not benefit from the town. Dates and venue for next year's trip are still to be fixed. We ate in Italy when we could, but also found the Chalet Ried excellent, and the Riffelberg hotel overpriced.

Alison (Chisholm) joined us for a week in Zinal, and we all had a wonderful time. Benoist had found us a very nice flat, (price for 8 days the same as two nights in Zermatt), and the snow was soft and powdery. I broke my records for the Mauler cup run (6 touches and 3 gates for those who understand the technical details).

St Bernard / Etroubles was the Elsevier ski trip, and even our guides fell over on the run down the south side. Altogether and excellent tem building experience.

Maryann has been house and cat sitting. It look as as if we will have to rearrange the basement to allow the bank to put a new airconditioning unit in. We were hoping they would choose a more ecological solution, but they seem to be very determined to waste energy and money.

December 16th 2007

For a change a fiddly computer problem is consuming Carol's time. The end is probably in sight but it has been a long process.

We went out in the snow and wind on our snowshoes today. It was a keep moving or freeze type of day, though we did see the sun, and get plenty of exercise.

A busy week for all, with book group, a squash match, David's office Christmas party, Carol attending the "spurned spouses" rival event, and the intellectual challenge of rebuilding a 4 year of computer environment to recover some very old e-mails.

A large part of Saturday was taken up filming for Temps Present, a TV show to support their thesis that Benin (West Africa) protects its citizens from the dangers of cigarettes better than Switzerland. It will be show in February, just before the referendum in Geneva on banning smoking in public places.

We've even written some Christmas cards, avoiding doing a newsletter by referring to our website, so welcome to all readers.

December 12th

Rain, gales, snow in the mountains. Friday we went to the new mineral baths (Bains de la Gruyère) at Charmey. Very pleasant and relaxing especially on a wet weekday.

Richard is back from America thought we have not had his news yet.

Chizzmas was in Lewes in November, with a walk along the South Downs way to a tasting to English champagne, and lunch for all at Alison's house.

Otherwise life is busy with a new swimming trainer for lane 1 at the Red Fish masters (www.rfn-masters.ch). Olivier (from lane 3) won the Mr Suisse Romande competition, and we had our annual dinner at the top of the national statistics office building.

Marin ladies' squash team have slipped from 1st to 3rd position in the Suisse Romande squash league, we do need some new players, but young things these days don't seem very interested.

The no-smoking campaign (www.neuchsansfumee.info) is a long slog of lobbying and chasing bureaucrats. Interesting but hard work. The Café du Cerf becomes no-smoking on January 3rd! We have all been made honorary members of OxyRomandie, and went down to a long and disorganised AGM.

Sandy and Carol went to Loèche les Bains for a relaxing weekend with hot baths and relaxing treatments. The weather was awful, but the rest of the weekend was excellent.

Gavin and Irène came over, with children for a weekend at All Saints, we eat and drank rather too much and had to borrow garlic for the fondue from the Hotel de Ville, where we met the Woodtlis.

November 3rd

We've been on holiday for a week since the last news. Tunisia was very welcoming, not terribly warm and most interesting. Food was excellent, people friendly and it was very easy to travel around.

There's a big gap between the massively touristic areas and the rest of the country. The results of the relatively "benevolent" dictatorship in the middle of the 20th century are an relatively well educated population, good roads and public transport.

We're back now, the cats had new cushions for their official birthday today, Gavin and Irène with Edmond and Constance are in Cudrefin for the long weekend, and coming to visit Neuchâtel tonight. Tomorrow we'll cycle out to Petit Cortaillod for lunch, and last night we had fondue in Cudrefin. We had no garlic, so a visit to the Hotel de Ville was necessary, where we met up with the Woodtlis, ex-owners of our chalet. Small town are great fun to live in.

The first week back from Tunisia was busy for me as I had "the Libyans" over, in fact some Egyptians. I was helping Newis, a local company that does surveying and geodatabase software sell their wares and services. The project turned out to be making a database for the whole of Libya, including electricity gas and water systems. A change from my usual routine, now everyone concerned is working out how to move forward.

Alison C will be joining us in Zinal in Jaurary, the Bion family and Linz & J. in Zermatt in February, Monty and Roy travelling to southern Europe by train in the spring sometime, so next year is filling up nicely.

Carol's first squash match of the season was last Tuesday, we managed to win, though the first place in French Switzerland will be harder to get this year!

September 30th

The weather has been good until this week, Carol not very well, but the ear is finally unblocking. We've been cycling and walking locally, enjoying a warm autumn in Neuchâtel before the holiday season begins.

We had a "last" dinner and "last" concert with Urs & Ann who are now in Delft! We will be in touch.

Friday we went to an excellent concert in the Temple Allemand in La Chaux de Fonds. As it was the Fête des Vendanges, we though of taking the train - fortunately we decided to take our car and bikes. The organisation was a total shambles: it was cold and wet, and though we arrived rather late, there was a large crowd of people standing in the rain on the steps, waiting to buy tickets! The reservation system consisted of a rough piece of paper, and by the time we got to the front of the queue, our name was crossed off (I can't believe there are many Chisholms in La Chaux-de-Fonds).

However the concert was excellent. The NEC (http://www.lenec.ch) was well prepared and all the musicians were good. The Berio folk songs were wonderfully sung, and the very small hall was an excellent venue.

We returned to a very quiet Neuchâtel, as rain wind and cold had dampened the spirits of the revellers.

Sandy and children came in for a visit yesterday, between the childrens' parade and a party in McDonalds.

We've bought lots of tickets for interesting concerts this season some come and join us.

September 9th

Carol's got earache and exhaustion after a long summer of visitors and not very good weather. David's watching the Grand Prix after a long afternoon sailing with Bart yesterday.

However otherwise all is well and we will go to Urs & Anne's last concert this afternoon.

Visitors came and visited as promised, first the Tscahns who we have not seen for ages, they were lucky with the weather, and we enjoyed that garden lake and visiting old haunts (Thomas shared and office with David at the IMT while doing his PhD).

Linz & J visited on and off over a couple of weeks, using us as a base for trips to walk in in the Alps and go to the opera in Verona.

The Bions came for a week on their way back from the Dolomites, we managed to fit in a lot of activities despite the wet and cold weather. Even some very extreme waterskiing on cold windy wavy weather!

The Eastry Chisholms also came for a short week, Dave a bit word out after his cross channel swim, and again we interspersed lots of activities with the rain and wind.

Monty and Roy arrived during the Eastries visit, and left last Friday. A slightly less physical schedule was in order but plenty of swimming and cycling, sorting the chalet (we now have a nice properly connected satellite and flat screen TV, as well as wireless broadband), and garden out. We enjoyed various nice dinners and concerts in Cernier. We updates the William and Lucy website, so go and admire all the hard work!

July 8th 2007

More rain. Yesterday we had sun, but after the wettest June on record, it's now starting to be a pretty wet July.

Last weekend was all all parties: Pierre and Maryann's, Urs's birthday, BBQ with Brian's very interesting missionary brother from Botswana. The one before we had the AGM of Opera & Cultura all day Sunday, and Dulcie as here.

The weekend before Tjalf and Maud came to visit, and we went in the boat with the Grüninger children to their grandmother's place down by Bevaix, to BBQ in the garden.

In between we've both been working hard and the weather has been so bad we've not done much else.

Visitor season starts next week with Thomas and Lucy Tschan, then the Bions, Linz & J, then all the Chisholms except Alison, Monty and Roy for a long visit, and the Eastries for a short one.

May 27th

Busy busy, hot weather, cold weather, today it's raining so we're at home!

The painters are gone, we hope for the last time though we still have cracks in the spare bedroom wall. The ventilation system continues to cause problems for the whole building; we hope the new management of the MigrosBank, now in Lausanne will help us get to grips with the problem. We have got rid of the old administrator of the co-propriété, who was pretty useless and have chosen a new one who seems much more dynamic. The cat netting is up on the terrace, much to our relief, and the cats also like it. Small cat can now show off walking along the railing, knowing she has a safety net if she falls!

David and James have acquired a Hobbie Cat (for the princely sum of 600.-) and after several days sorting it out, finally took it on it's inaugural voyage yesterday. Fun in store for all. We also went out in the motor boat to follow the M2 regatta - M2s are very fast and very expensive catamarans. There is a big race weekend for them in Neuchâtel this weekend, so we enjoyed that greatly.

Friday we went to see the Vienne Art Orchestra at the Corbak Festival in La Chaux-du-Milieu, and had a very pleasant apéro with Jérôme and Lisa on their terrace. A few weeks back we went to the Basel Jazz festival to see Carla Bley and the Lost Chords, who were excellent.

At the end of April (seems a long time ago) we had a lovely party with lots of old friends and new acquaintances, which we all enjoyed greatly.

The ladies squash team won the Suisse Romande championship after a very slow start to the season, and had a nice dinner last week to celebrate and plan next year's efforts.

Ecoconscience (www.ecoconscience.org) is moving forward slowly and we have had some donations from companies and individuals, purchased 160 copies of Al Gores DVD "An Inconvenient Truth" which we will send to all the Neuchâtel Canton politicians next week. At the moment we are stuffing envelopes!

The no-smoking initiative (www.neuchsansfumee.info)got a great boost from the decision of the Tribunal Fédéral concerning Geneva, now there is no legal reason for the power that be not to act.

Neuchâtel has hired a "City Manager", so from July 1st we should have a dynamic coordinator and promoter of the town shops and other activites.

Of course we continue to progress slowly in out musical endeavours, David has made a lot of progress on more jazzy style piano playing.

April 1st 2007

A busy winter and spring. Despite the lack of snow we have had some excellent skiing and great holidays in the mountains.

Zinal in January was fabulous - it had snowed in Zinal, one of the few places in the Alps where there was snow, and they have invested heavily in snow cannons, so ski conditions were great. The paragliding was good too, with the usual touch and crêpe, various "sketches" and lots of rolling around in snow. The week started off fairly soberly with early nights and lots of sports and gradually degenerated as the evenings got longer and the quantities of food and alcohol increased.

In Siviez we had too much food and drink all week, with long evenings solving the world's problems, playing silly games and generally having fun. The size of the groups was variable with the hard core of Bions, Chisholms and Steads for the whole week and various hangers on and visitors at various times during the week.

Then it got warm again and the snow all melted until last weekend when we had 2 days in Adelboden in knee deep light powder with absolutely no one else on the runs or lifts. Completely exhausted but very happy we came back on Saturday afternoon.

This weekend was mild so we had to start on spring activities like unpacking the plants on the terrace and cycling to the Robinson for Sunday lunch.

Now we are supposed to be quite and have a nice relaxed routine for a few weeks. Alison will come over after Easter; we will ski if there is snow anywhere, or we may have to do some hot baths and walking instead.

We have plenty of work to do and we have made a new association for ecological good works: www.ecoconscience.org with Christine and Diego Corti.

The no-smoking signatures which took up the autumn are counted, validated and should be debated in Neuchâtel in May, in Fribourg in April and in Vaud I'm note quite sure when. The highest court in Switzerland decided last Thursday that the Geneva initiative (for which signatures were collected in 2005), is constitutional, so there will soon be a referendum there, and the other cantons will have no business dithering about whether or our text is constitutional.

December 31st

After 10 days of fog we have warm sunshine, until the next front arrives. We have had a quiet holiday, pottling around Neuchâtel and Cudrefin, visiting the Jura for walks in the sun and catching up on lost sleep.

Time seems to go fast all the same, all the work that needed to be done has not been done, and books remain to be read and reviewed. However we're all ready to start the New Year with extra energy. Three cats is exhausting, they keep waking each other up. Cibby is going home today, we're encouraging Petra to get her a companion.

Snow should come on Tuesday, so I hope I will get to use my new ski boots. David will be back on Tuesday, too, Monty, Roy and Alison will leave in the morning and be back in England on Wednesday.

Cats2

December 24th

Foggy and grey, Ciboulette is visiting so there's lots of hissing and stalking going on.

David has braved the airways of Europe and is in Sidcup, Monty, Roy and Alison are visiting Neuchâtel and Cudrefin.

Cats1

December 16th 2006

The initiative "fumée passive et santé" has taken all the autumn, and successfully concluded with presenting 12,000 signatures to the Canton of Neuchâtel, requiring them to make a all closed public places in the Canton smoke free. They have a certain amount of freedom in how and when they do this, but we hope they will respond quickly. The constitution requires 6,000 signatures to be collected in 6 months, so getting twice as many in half the time is a considerable exploit.

Our little band of signature collectors is very pleased with itself, but also pleased to be able to do other things again.

Now we can catch up on administration, enjoy the snow once it arrives, read our piles of books, play our musical instruments and enjoy the company of our new cats Indy and Tinga. There's also sport to catch up on and visitors over Christmas (Alison, Monty and Roy from England and Ciboulette from Petra's house.)

Running an initiative has been excellent fun and a very interesting experience. It's an all-consuming activity, with every spare moment spent collecting, counting or checking signatures! I suppose I can say I am now properly Swiss, having successfully got the law changed via "direct democracy".

Perhaps we will be better at our website in future.

October 30th 2006

Perhaps the autumn is finally arriving, we have had warm mild weather until now, fortunately for our signature collecting activities. We have more than enough signatures to force our Neuchâtel canton government to make a law to ban smoking. We'll now have to see how long they take or what obstacles can be put in the way.

We had Ciboulette the cat visiting over the weekend while Petra was away in Zermatt, she'll probably come again at Christmas while Petra goes to India.

We had a week in Antalya in the middle of October - very satisfactory with sea and swimming, a few visits to historic monuments and plenty of sleep and sports.

Otherwise life has been very occupied with collecting signatures, a new experience, totally gripping as every free moment one is devising new ways to get them, or actually standing outside Migros harrassing passers-by.

The website is www.neuchsansfumee.info if you're interested in our campaign.

October 1st 2006

Cold and wet again, but September was warm and dry. Of course we have been busy and neglecting our website. Monty and Roy visited most of August and a bit of September. We went to a lot of interesting concerts in Cernier, mostly in the rain.

Dulcie came to visit for a week in mid September.

After our long string of visitors, you might think we settled down to a quiet life for a few weeks.

Direct democracy interfered. Someone was needed to run the initiative to make all public places in the canton of Neuchâtel no-smoking areas, and I took on the task (Carol). As president of a small committee, I am trying to collect 6,000 signatures. In our small canton of Neuchâtel, 6,000 signatures mean that the government has to take action on the text of our initiative.

We are asking for a complete ban on smoking in all closed public places, and we seem to have a lot of public support. We have collected some 2,500 signatures in the first 10 days, though I don't think we will get many today as it is pouring with rain.

Our campaign website is www.neuchsansfumee.info, check it out if you speak French, and if you live in Neuchâtel, send us some signatures.

Running an initiative has been an interesting if time-consuming occupation: first you have to sort out the text, and since none of the local political parties want to get involved this took a while. It is then submitted to the canton for approval (of the form). Once it is published, the supporters go out and collect signatures as fast as they can. We need 6,000 in 6 months, I think we can get more in less time. We will probably coordinate with the neighbouring cantons Vaud and Fribourg, who are collecting for almost identical texts at the same time.

Geneva collected 20,000 in 6 weeks in 2005, and have been slogging through the courts against nit-picking opponents financed be the cigarette industry. Tessin (the Italian speaking part of Switzerland) passed its law in 2005, was forced to hold a referendum by a small group, and the population voted 80% for a total ban which comes into effect this year.

Neuchâtel is a bit backward, but we are hoping to move forward quickly. The constitution is slightly different from the other cantons where this kind of signature-based initiative can lead directly to legislation rather than to a referendum.

Otherwise life continues as always. We have started having music lessons again after the summer break and some trios with Roy. There's also work to do and new software to master. Books to read and review, and sports to amuse us and keep us fit.

August 6th

We've had a wonderful time with loads and loads of visitors all at the same time. Now all the visitors have gone and so has the sun.

It's COLD and WET.

The Ubbens family were here trying out their new trailer tent. They got wet one day so we dried their belongings in the tumble dryer and they continued on their way. They are all well and growing fast.

The Bion family stayed a week in Cudrefin and did all the usual activities: barbecues, badminton, swimming, tubing, waterskiing, and forest jumping, as well as some shopping and too much eating and drinking, and solving the world's problems.

The de Vries family stayed a week at Jon & Lisa's house, and greatly enjoyed the swimming pool and children's games collection. They did cycling and went to the Vapeur Park in Le Bouvert as well as joining in all the rest of the fun.

The Freys came on their way back from Groeningen (Gordon's map reading again) with gold medals festooning the car, and did not only the "Robin Hood" but also the "Tarzan" routes at the Forest Jump. They also did some of the most extreme tubing we've done in a long time with Georgina & Candice Bion in rain and big waves.

So all in all we had 12 or 14 people for dinner every night for the last 10 days or so, now we are collapsed in exhaustion and probably even glad the weather is awful.

Next visitors are Monty & Roy sometime soon, hope the lake warms up by the time they arrive.

July 12th

Nice and quiet for a few hot days. We had the Annual General Meeting of Opera & Cultura in June, and a very interesting trip to Liestal and Basel.

Danièle Rämämen's annual BBQ was another weekend, good to catch up on old friends.

Andy and Sheila came for a day in the lake, we damaged our bodies as usual and had a great time.

Otherwise it's just the usual routine of boating, waterskiing and swimming in the lake (it's very hot) doing a bit of cycling and yoga, a minimal amount of squash and running to keep a little fit.

We will have a new neighbour downstairs, Paolo Bolzani had bought the two apartments and will make a hole in the wall between them.

Piano and sax lessons continue at an erratic pace, depending on how organised we are and how much we practise. We are getting better slowly.

Jon & Lisa have bought a boat, Jon passed his boat driving test and ran out of petrol for the first time (we explained some of the adventures he will have with his boat in time.)

We shall start to have our summer visitors soon, so we'll have some days holiday to go and do fun things with them. David is in England for a long weekend: Wagner at the Proms and domestic duties.

June 4th 2006

Carol has been very bus upgrading the accounting software at Elsevier. It's not over yet, but summer has started to make an appearance, so working hard should no be encouraged.

Meteosuisse promises us summer temperatures by the end of the week so we'll try and have a BBQ in Cudrefin next weekend. The boat is in the water finally. We have found ourselves a new boat man in Cudrefin, who seems a little more organised than the last one. The only drawback is that he speaks little other than Swiss German, so David has some communication problems!

We had a busy social week too, with Martin, Do, Sam and Jess round on Monday night, we were invited to Martin's birthday on Wednesday, Sandy came round after her co-proprietors meeting on Thursday, and we collapsed on Friday. For those of you who are not owners of flats in Switzerland, co-proprietors meetings are where the co-owners decide on all that is in common in a Swiss block of flats, and believe me the Swiss are at their best on these occasions. Since everything has to be regulated and organised the meetings become marathons and a strong drink is needed afterwards.

Next week David's mum Dulcie arrives on Wednesday evening for a visit, bringing the good weather we hope. Carol's paraglider is pining for an outing.

Carol is testing Windows Vista; don't rush out to buy it. Especially in a corporate environment where you'll spend a lot of time turning off all the "features"

Today was windy so we did cycling in the forest, up to Tête Plumée, along to Fontaine André and down to St Blaise, back along the lakeshore.

May 26th 2006

If there were any regular readers they will have got bored!

Most of the Chisholm family visited Neuchâtel during March and April: Alison was the first for skiing at the end of March she also did the baths at Yverdon and had a generally restful time before going back to buy a new house in Lewes and move. She's now safely settled into her new home, and keeps the other house as an investment.

Then the Eastries came over on the way back from skiing in Cervinia. We were not able to join them in the mountains but we did lots of fun things in and around Neuchâtel. We all greatly enjoyed the Starlight circus.

Monty and Roy followed for a few weeks and got fit in Cudrefin. We missed Gordon in Champoussin this year, just too much going on at that time. Next year! Dave Chizzz did the haute route and we admired form a distance!

Since Easter we've been working fairly hard, the weather has been pretty miserably with an occasional sunny interval lots of wind and rain and pretty cold. Out bikes have been out, but the paraglider is feeling neglected and the swimming pool too. The forecast is no better for next week with snow down to 1000m!

I just looked at the long term forecast for this summer (June - August) and they say it's more likely to be cold than warm. However they do also publish the database of their past forecasts with the actual outcome, and a quick glance shows they are not very reliable.

The book group continues to meet and read all sorts of interesting things, Carol's town revitalisation committee is on hold until the politicians vote on some financing for the "City Manager" we recommend hiring. The "Observatoire Citoyen" which might or might not turn into an apolitical pressure group for the Canton has had a couple of meetings but nothing very concrete.

David's piano playing progresses well, Carol has finally found herself a saxophone teacher, and has lots of things to learn. www.julianerickenmann.com. You can hire her band to play at parties.

Winston the gargoyle has a fabulous gargoyle stand on the terrace, built by James our friendly local DIY expert.

And for the summer we are lining up the visitors: mid-June we'll have David's mum, end July we have the Bions in Cudrefin and the van Galens borrowing Jon Lisa's flat in Auvernier. Then Monty and Roy will be back for their summer visit, including lots of whacky music in Cernier. More of that next time.

www.jardinsmusicaux.ch

2nd April 2006

We were still busy. The Monaco photos are on Monaco. We had lovely weather and good flying. Thanks Yvan. You can visit his site and sign up for more fun on www.leasailesduleman.ch.

The living room and small bedroom got painted and the cracks fixed. The fixes lasted a week and something was wrong with the ceiling paint. So the living room ceiling (all 78m2) has to be repainted and the painter is discussing with the architect about the cracks. We are not happy with the situation. However we do still like the flat.

Alison came to visit, and we went to Les Crosets to ski for a couple of days. The weather was pretty naff but there was no-one on the slopes so we had fun. Alison also went to Bern and had a lazy day in the hot baths at Yverdon. Liz and James came to dinner and we planned the gargoyle stand. A fun project for the spring. We'll have to get the terrace finished before we start.

No we're expecting DJSEZ after their week skiing in Cervinia. It's a good thing they are high as the weather is very mild. The lake is deep with rain and melted snow.

We're organising a no-smoking dinner on the 27th April at the Paprika, it may be one of the last, as the government here voted strongly to ban all smoking in public places last week and the executive will now have to come up with a proposal. Although they will try and fob everyone off with some thing about "tolerance" and "consideration" and "respect" the voters are in a pretty belligerent mood at the moment, and I'm sure more and more "initatives populaires" will keep getting submitted until they succumb.

Today the commune of Neuchâtel voted 72% against the government's proposal to raise taxes by 3.2%. A bit tough on the first socialist government in Switzerland, having to make budget cuts rather than distributing largesse. But 72% must include quite a lot of left wing voters, the same people who elected them last year.

The book club with no discussion of babies continues to be interesting and challenging. Carol's town center committee is on it's last legs as the government (same one we voted not to give more money to) can't make a commitment to anything, possibly a reason why we did not want to give them more money. We'll see. It was interesting while it lasted.

The swimming pool users association has been stunningly successful. All it's requests have been granted by a recalcitrant management, including laned swimming at peak hours. So we're trying hard to go at least once a week to take advantage of the new organised, safe swimming lanes. It is encouraging that something can be done quite easily about most things. Anyway, back to work on reading one of my customer's proposals for a new software package. Mind bogglingly boring but important so has to be done in small stages.

25th February 2006

Guess what - we've been busy!

Having booked holidays at a hectic rhythm of one week holiday, two weeks' work until mid March, and having the (new) flat redecorated, we've not had time to update our web page!

Zinal was great, sun all week, excellent flying and not too bad skiing considering the lack of snow. David had some lessons (ski) with Sigrid, the beautiful blonde Austrian girl who also happens to be a good ski teacher. JC was celebrating 11 year continuous attendance with a free week, we only hope we're in such good condition when we're 75.

We changed from Champoussin to Siviez this year, following the decline of the Champoussin resort in the hands of Joost and thousands of Dutch. We'll go back for a day sometime to see, probably when Gordon is there later in the season. Siviez was an excellent trip, with visits from Andy and Sheila, Tjalf & Christa, Liz & James and of course the Bions. We had sun in the beginning of the week and bad weather and powder at the end. We tried all the restaurants, deciding that Odette's was the best, and the waiter takes wonderful photos which are for sale on www.raphaelblanc.ch

Now we're home for 2 weeks, off to Monaco next for paragliding (Carol, possible David will join for a weekend). The accounts are not finished yet so I should be doing them not writing news for all and sundry to read.

Otherwise we had a disappointing no-smoking dinenr at the Grotto (food was not as good as expected but we had a lot of fun). We caught up with the Sutherlands on their way to Nendaz in the very smoky Jura.

The book club continues to be interesting, after Snow which everyone greatly enjoyed, we read Shadow of the Wind which was a bit on the light side. Now we're on Isiguro again with Never Let Me Go.

Neuchâtel's revitalisation committee awaits a decision by the town council on the financing of the city manager, so everything is on hold there.

David and Brian are slogging away at their new database, lots of work, but necessary for their business to run well. Carols customers keep her occupied in between the holidays.

No one has moved into our building yet, we're having all our plastering and painting redone, the back part (library and bedroom) were done last week, and the rest will be done in mid March, after Monaco.

30th December 2005

Nearly the new year. Snow everywhere. It's all very peaceful and beautiful.

David is in Sidcup, I'm here in Neuchâtel, enjoying the first winter in our new flat. The insulation works well and the heating also works. I'm very happy and contented watching the snow falling, and able to go out and have fun in the Jura every day.

Work is relatively quiet, with a few server to do, but nothing urgent or very stressful. I have been able to read books, test new software, try and learn to play the saxophone David rented for me before he left. We got to a duet of "Three Blind Mice" before the holidays, so don't ask for any performances for a while!

Despite trying to be restful lots of friends have invited my out. Urs & Ann cooked a wonderful dinner (when do they not cook wonderfully?) on the 24th. Richard made a delicious lasagna for Rod, Gaynor and myself on the 25th. The 26th I was able to take Willi, Sandy, Tania and Michael sledging and try the new no-smoking room at Tête de Ran. Tomorrow Jon & Lisa have invited me to celebrate an Afghan New Year in the correct traditional way.

Christmas cards keep arriving. Thanks everyone, I will try and reply, late as usual. Don't forget our address changed back in April to

12 faubourg du Lac 2000 Neuchâtel

Perhaps I will sort my fiction book reviews into good, bad and ugly this weekend. Or perhaps I will go out and play in the snow.

Happy New Year

11th December

A quiet day, we met Tania and Michael, who have just arrived with Willi & Sandy from Colombia. They are a significant addition to the Knoelly family and we were very pleased to meet them.

Our legs were tired from all the skiing yesterday and the bise was string and cold so we have not been out a lot today.

10th December

Lots to report, we had a good time in Paris, with Urs & Ann, eating shopping museums. We enjoyed the Schiele, Klimt, Moser exhibition and were very glad to have booked in advance. We were less convinced by Bill Viola's video's for Tristan and the minimalist production that accompanied it. The whole thing (Tristan) is much too long in any case, but having prepared fairly well for it the experience was not entirely negative.

We went to Marty's restaurant near the Goblin factory, which was very good and found the Enothèque an Italian one near St Paul, which was also excellent. We stayed at the Belle Epoque hotel, very convenient for Gare de Lyon and Bastille.

Today we skied at Bugnenets, very few people on the slopes, magnificent snow and sun. We are waiting to meet Willi & Sandy's adopted children but they are probably exhausted. David rented me a saxophone for a month so I can see if I have time and energy to play.

20th November

Lovely cycle ride along to Cortaillod, sold and sunny with fantastic views across the lake to the Alps.

19 November 2005

We're back after a long weekend in England (10 - 14 November), with a fun visit to Noke (out in the middle of nowhere, near Oxford) on the 10th to see Linz & J and their wonderful garden, vegetables, chickens, and pigsty. Nikki Henshaw came for dinner which was especially fun and we caught up on all sorts of news of old friends and acquaintances.

Carol had a quick work trip to Kidlington (11th) and the bookshops, music and CD shops in Oxford were visited. David did not like Blackwells' music section: too hot and too many fussy staff, no room to browse.

We started at Luton airport (not recommended, but not far from Oxford), went round the M25 South on a Friday afternoon without too many problems. We had great trouble finding Bromley South train station, as it is disguised as a shopping center, without Perdita the GPS we would never have found it! David enjoyed spending 2 hours getting from Bromley South to Sidcup, whether poor navigation or awful traffic were to blame we shall never know (the GPS batteries had run out by then).

The Eastry Chisholms served up a fantastic Christmas lunch for 9 on Sunday 12th, and everyone had fun and lots of exciting presents.

David and Dulcie bought new televisions and DVD recorders and set them up. The Canterbury and Brighton Chisholms got Skype connections for their Christmas presents, dragging them into the modern world of IP phones!

Carol went to Brighton overnight and visited the burnt down pier, the super modern new public library and the Royal Pavilion before meeting up with David (late again due to Sidcup traffic) at Gatwick before returning to Switzerland.

This weekend Carol has lost all her matches in the Canton Squash Championships, not enough girls so she had to play in the men's...

Vivre à Neuchâtel, the town center Resident's Association had it's AGM this evening. Lots of lawyers and visitors from other associations, talking about noise mostly.

Tristan is being prepared for, we got through a very blancmangy first act on DVD last night, but probably we'll have to do the rest on CD as the DVD production is pretty bad.

House saga

They came and changed the terrace windows on the 15th November. The "intercalaires" - bits between the panes of glass in double glazing - are unfortunately damaged, so they will all have to be changed again...

The heating people cam as well, because the flat was like a sauna on our return fro, the UK, despite our having set all the thermostats to minimum. It turns out there was too much pressure, too steep a heat curve and the valves were not properly tightened.

Now the front door does not close probably because it's cold.

23 October 2005

Yes we have had a few days' holiday in Grisons,(5 - 11 October) and the autumn has arrived, clouds are scudding across the sky at high speed.

We went to Vals (for the hot springs and mountains) and Bonaduz (to visit the Arquints). In between we went to a dinosaur museum and a peat bog near Pfäffikon, to Lenzerheide which we did not like at all, and we drove back over some of the central Swiss alpine passes.

Yesterday we went to a very interesting exhibition about how ancient statues, Greek and Roman, were painted. www.skulpturhalle.ch

Richard came to dinner before he sets of to the USA for a visit. Today we're futzing, pootling or whatever you call all those activities that are reserved for wet windy Sunday afternoons.

Carol has been surprisingly successful in the squash Interclubs so far, winning both matches, though all the other players in our teams lost! David has some exciting new piano books to try, and is making steady progress while enjoying learning a new skill.

At the end of September we went to an excellent 30 years party and show at the IMT (Institute of Microtechnology) where David worked for 10 years. It was really most inspiring and very pleasing to know that such exciting and innovative work continues to be done. It was also great to see many old friends who have moved away and catch up on news of all sorts. Thank you Nico and all at IMT for organising it!

www.unine.ch/imt

Carol has two less customers - one moved to Schaffhausen (a little too far) and the other (the Mercedes garage) was sold by Daimler Chrysler to AutoPrestige, a big chain with a highly centralised IT organisation. Just waiting for all the free time to materialise!

House saga

No house news, everything seems to be on hold. We did finally get the ventilation in the bedroom to work quietly, though the small bathroom seems to have go more noisy. A few more registered letters will be needed.

25th September 2005

We've had as quiet a weekend as possible, with lovely weather, and the fête des vendanges in full swing. Fortunately the flat is pretty well soundproofed, so we have slept well. We went for a cycle ride to Jolimont yesterday, looking for some tumuli in the forest and a large erratic block. We had lunch at the buvette in St Blaise on the way back and ventured out for dinner at the fête.

Today we had visitors to stand on the roof and watch the Corso Fleuri, along with 35,000 other people. It was not at all exciting. The fête has been extremely popular this year with 120,000 visitors.

Carol went for a last swim in the lake this afternoon.

Skiing

We'll probably be in Zinal end January, we've booked a week in Siviez 11 - 18 Feb 2006, with the Bions. There are other apartments available if you want to join. Just let us know. Alison (Chisholm) may come over at the end of March.

House saga

The window people came with a very large mobile crane. They had made the new windows in the wrong colour (silver instead of anthracite) so they had to take them away. It turns out the covers for the scratched frames will make it difficult to change the panes of glass, so that whole operation is now in doubt.

We're sending off for an infrared laser thermometer as the floor seems to heat very unevenly.

15th September 2005

Our architect, M Geninasca has been in the newspaper this week with the opening of the new sport hall. "Honteux" the headline in L'Express read ("shameful" for those whose French is not quite fluent)! Very mixed opinions, generally not very positive, from the people who will actually do sports in the hall. We can report this because the newspaper said it first, so he can't sue us!

Monty and Roy have headed home, Dulcie is staying with us 'till Sunday. David has a few days off to look after her, and we're busy entertaining. After 6 weeks or more of visitors we're looking forward to some quiet time to ourselves.

The Neuchâtel shopkeepers are in uproar over a new market in the Jardin Anglais next weekend, which is allowed to open late and on Sunday! In the Canton with the most restrictive opening hours in Switzerland, selling stuff at "events" is a way around the opening hours regulations. Also lots of new shops are opening up at the station to take advantage of a new law allowing them to open 7 days a week from 6am to 10pm.

The Canton is looking at radical decisions like reducing funding for the "professional musicians" sections of the conservatoire, on the grounds that perhaps a small deficit-ridden canton with 170,000 inhabitants does not need a full scale structure for training professional musicians, and that they could go to Geneva or Lausanne, or even another country! Some encouraging e-mails need to be written in support of cutting back ineffective and corrupt services.

Winter will come at the weekend so the boating season is probably over, and paragliding has not happened at all this year.

Skiing

We'll probably be in Zinal end January, we've booked a week in Siviez 11 - 18 Feb 2006, with the Bions. There are other apartments available if you want to join. Just let us know.

House saga

The hall cupboard has arrived and been fitted, now we are only waiting on the autogrue for changing terrace windows, the aluminium covers for the damaged windows frames, and the solution to the noisy ventilation inside and outside. The structure engineer came and will tell us when we can start on re-plastering the the ceilings.

We have no neighbours, though a kitchen has been fitted on the 4th floor, so perhaps someone will rent the apartment there.

29th August 2005

Monty and Roy are settled in happily. looking forward to more clement weather next week. We've been challenged at the Jardins Musicaux, certainly not boring.

We had a lovely dinner here on Friday evening with Gaynor's mum Marge, Monty and Roy. Everyone bravely sat on the terrace until late, and we enjoyed the lovely lantern Gaynor gave us as a housewarming present. Life is such fun! Let's hope it continues.

Today we got up relatively early thinking perhaps we'd take to boat out, but it was windy and wavy so we went out biking in the forest instead. Lunch on Pierrot's terrace, coffee back here and a quiet afternoon doing stuff.

Carol's just been out for a swim in the waves, David is conquering the world in Rome Total War!

Life is gradually starting up again - the town centre revitalisation committee starts being active again next week, though whether it will come to anything we have set to tell.

Not much paragliding this summer, next year should be better. A couple of meetings about house stuff each week seem to have eaten up so much time that there have not been many free days for flying. Those who have had time say the weather has not been great either. Another year will come.

21st August 2005

Autumn has arrived (in fact it arrived last weekend with 40cm of snow at 2000m! Wind, clouds and rain. We did manage to go to a lot of parties last weekend: thanks to all especially Carmel and Gino for a magnificent 40th birthday party where we met lots of new people and some we have not seen for a while.

Rachel & Julian & Patricia did in fact visit on the 6 & 7th August, we had a lot of fun in the boat and a lot of different people came over to Cudrefin for a BBQ before it started to rain!

Monty and Roy have arrived and our new terrace ornament Winston the gargoyle will come over today. Photo promised. We need to do some work on the terrace, though we are waiting as always on out friendly local architect to get stuff finished.

Thursday we went to a magnificent 7 Amens by Messein for 2 pianos. Absolutely magnificent performance, completely gripping. We were in the 4th row so we felt really involved. For dinner we went to the Chasseur in Fenin, as the weather was not good, and heard that Nick Oppliger is going back to being an electrician, in the top of the Canton, after figuring out that running a restaurant actually does not leave much time to be with the children.

www.jardinsmusicaux.ch

www.auberge.ch

Skiing

We've booked a week in Siviez 11 - 18 Feb 2006, with the Bions. There are other apartments available if you want to join. Just let us know.

House saga:

We have a new administrator, Fidimmobil were asked to resign the position and we now have M. Brunner form Littoral Gérances. He is much more dynamic. The stairwell has been cleaned and we have had a rather silly proposal for resolving the noisy ventilation problem. M. Rüfenacht is back from holiday, not really speaking to us, but we imagine that some work may get done.We hope to get the kitchen finished (final touches) and the entrance hall cupboard done, and the spare extra shelves for the cupboards delivered in the right shape and size! Who could have though it would be SO difficult.

We also have had various visitors from the Migrosbank to see our apartment, apparently bemused as to why one apartment is so nice and the others so horrid. We can tell if you ask, but since we have already been told not to mention certain people involved in the design o f the building on our website, you will have to use your imagination.

Today is more music and fun at Cernier, next week is perhaps a little quieter, though you never know. Carol's paraglider is feeling rather neglected in it's cupboard, but perhaps it will come out for the Albatros Club (www.clubalbatros.com) Annual competition next weekend.

25th July 2005

We had lots of fun last weekend and this week with Margret and her boys from Holland. All sorts of interesting visitors came over to Cudrefin and fortunately Brian brought his boat so we had two boats for water sports! Now we are quiet for a week, perhaps some Robinsons will come on the 29th.

Yesterday we went sailing with Urs & Ann, and Carol cut grass on the paragliding takeoff at Roche-de-Van (wind in the wrong direction for flying). Today we went rollerblading along the lake, hung some pictures and sorted some books on our new bookcases.

Visitors

Rachel & Julian and Patricia are we hope coming from Geneva on the 6 & 7th August, we have not seen them for ages, and I don't think we have ever met Patricia.

Monty & Roy will be over mid-August for a month, we'll catch up on all their news.

Family

Dave Chizzz has taken up running triathlons, pretty successfully. Alison has been in Canada, Richard borrowed her house while visiting the UK, and survived the 7th July in London. The Eastry Chisholms are off to Cornwall, Oxford and Wales for holidays.

Skiing

We've booked a week in Siviez 11 - 18 Feb 2006, with the Bions. There are other apartments available if you want to join.

House saga:

This week the newly installed very expensive unbreakable-into locks failed on the first day. We were both out so we had an enjoyable evening with locksmiths, until we got the bank manager out of bed so he could let us in. The architects office then told us it was not their problem and anyway while "our" architect is away on holiday, no-one will be in charge of our site. The automatic velux in the stairwell has also broken, so as soon as it rains we will have water all the way down the stairs. We are generally unimpressed, but that is nothing new. The ventilation people "regulated" the ventilation and it is noisier than ever.

15th July 2005

Back from a few days in France; two nights in the Vercors, and 4 in Aix-en-Provence.

It was cold and wet in the Vercors, so we did a lot of sleeping, some walking and visited a cave. Aix was hot and sunny as one would expect, and we went to The Turn of the Screw and La Clemenza di Tito.

La Clemenza was boring in the extreme, soft conducting and very uninspired costumes. The singers and orchestra were good, but the whole was a failure.

Turn of the Screw was much more challenging, well conducted, played and sung. It is of course not a pleasant piece of music but it was a good production.

We also had the first AGM of Opera&Cultura, at the Moulin restaurant in Lourmarin, after a lung delicious lunch. We had a rather strange tour of the Silvacane abbey with the whole group, and climbed the fort of Boux on another day.

All in all a very pleasant trip.

We're back to our houseworks, but waiting to go out for the evening to Cudrefin. The retouching of the book case has been done, the ventilation is supposed to be fixed but is noisier than ever. The carpenter was supposed to change some planks on the deck but has not yet done so. The locks are still not finalised so we can't open the door

7th July 2005

That last news item about the flat being nearly finished was over-optimistic.

Our new home is indeed great, and we are very happy.

(skip this paragraph if you're bored with our house) Many details remain to be resolved: finishing touches to the kitchen outstanding, the ventilation does not work at all, though we did have 8 people come to see it yesterday. All the ceilings are to be re-plastered, as is the big wall in the living room. The windows frames are mostly damaged and have to be re-faced, and much of the glass is scratched or has spots of molten metal and has to be replaced completely. The deck needs re-sanding. The computer room air-conditioning broke and has a temporary fix, which we hope will be resolved permanently soon. We are otherwise very happy on out new flat.

Our architect did not like being on our website, so we have removed him from the history. You probably won't miss the reference.

We're off to Aix-en-Provence for a few days and couple of operas. We can't go far, as there are always workmen to let in and to supervise. Then we'll start on the visitor season: Margret de Vries (ex. van Galen) first, then the Robinson family, followed by Carol's parents, David's mum, and them I suppose we'll go on holiday again.

The windows get changed in August, and the plastering and painting re-done sometime in the future when the engineer tells us the building will settle no more. The boards on the deck which are really bad are to be changed next week (date to be confirmed today, and as its 22:41 I don't think that will happen). The rest will be sanded in the autumn or winter. The final kitchen details are still awaiting a resolution.

Last weekend we had fun in the sun (today it is wet and cold so it seems a long while back). Carol managed to get up on the wakeboard and crash spectacularly. Martin managed to put his back out on the water skis, and David skied well, but did not manage to get out of the water on the mean mono-ski. We have a fun BBQ up in the cold wilds of Rochefort at Chateau Walters and admired the new grass after it's first haircut.

Carol has bought herself a new sewing machine (the old one lasted 30 years) and should be creative with it. David is progressing on the piano, and has some regular lessons for the moment, with Corinne encouraging him to learn new pieces of music.

The plants have generally recovered from the shock of moving and the enormously lighter environment the live in. The housewarming present plants are all happy, and much appreciated, hope they survive while we are away.

18th June

Our new home is nearly finished. The dark patch of parquet has been replaced, dust everywhere from the sanding. We're waiting on the heating (not needed at the moment) the ventilation, some finishing touches to the woodwork and kitchen, and the rest of the building.

The deadline for he building is June 22nd, but that seems impossible.

The weather has finally turned good, hot and windy today. House stuff is immensely time consuming and we're pretty exhausted each weekend, but all is well. The boat has a new place, number 29, and the lake is finally warm enough to enjoy.

We're looking forward to a few days in Aix in July, then various visitors in July, August and September.

6th June 2005

We've had a lovely time since we last updated our website. We had a great house-warming party, and a few pre- and post-housewarming parties.

All our friends have brought us magnificent plants which greatly enjoy the light we have in our new apartment. Thanks to all. We're trying to find time to organise a no-smoking event with Toralf as chef. If only there were more day in the week or we could stay awake more hours in the day!

Laura, Dave, James and George (with the broken arm) Whaley came over for an unexpected visit, having been refused access to their plane for their holiday in Greece, because of George's broken arm.

We were thrilled to see them, show off our new house and had a great party in the garden in Cudrefin. Thanks to Peter (Danielsson) for taking all those children out in a lovely boat. We swam in the lake and annoyed the neighbours.

We're still waiting for the final touches to our building and apartment. Much remains to be done, some things will never happen (like straight walls, or the heating and ventilation), but we are very happy.

This weekend was the first quiet one in many, and the next week will make up for it.

17th April 2005

House

We were to move on March 26th, but we realised that there was no way our architect was going to get it will finished in time. We asked for a new reliable deadline and were given an improbable plan for April 8th. The latest deadline (April 22nd) has just moved out by a week to April 27th! Perhaps we will get moved by the end of the month.

Our opinion of the construction industry is not improving.

Urs & Ann's new kitchen

Last night we "tested" Ann & Urs' new kitchen which we must say works extremely well.

Websites

Carol has been working on some new websites, for Monty & Roy (www.chisholm.ch) and for Opera & Cultura (www.opera-cultura.ch) . Now the "real" owners of the sites have to do the hard work of getting their content together and organised.

Politics

Neuchâtel Canton now has the first socialist majority government in Switzerland. We'll see how they do at managing the massive budget deficit left behind by the supposedly frugal centre right majority in charge before the elections.

10th April 2005

Second attempt : Front Page hangs when browsing the network. I love it when software crashes!

House

We were to move on March 26th, but we realised that there was no way our architect was going to get it will finished in time. We asked for a new reliable deadline and were given an improbable plan for April 8th.

After some discussion we got the architect and the Migrosbank to plan for a more realistic date of April 22nd.

We hope to move on April 22nd.

There is a lot of room for improvement in the Swiss construction industry.

Visits

Monty and Roy came for 10 days, Alison for a week. They were lucky with the weather and we were able to walk in th Jury and lunch in the garden in Cudrefin.

Brunch at the Beau Rivage

We tested the brunch at the Beau Rivage. It's really lunch - no omelettes, no bacons and sausages, no croissants or pains au chocolate. It's pretty good but not absolutely outstanding. We enjoyed it, and on a wet day with friends you have not seen for a long time it would be a good option.

13th March 2005

Cross country skiing today in beautiful sunshine, snowshoe outing yesterday in a snow storm. Both wonderfully good fun; we are so lucky to have such great places so nearby. We have been a bit reclusive recently, packing is very time-consuming and pretty exhausting, and we have both had coughs.

Our new flat is progressing well. The ice rink on the terrace became a lake, and a drainpipe unblocking man came and it all went away.

The floors are laid and drying. The bookcases are designed, and should be in on time. The painters are painting.

Our existing flat is now full of boxes of things, we are regular visitors to the déchetterie and the recycling bins.

The computers and phones will move on the 25th. The boxes and furniture will move on the 26th, but the tiles will probably not be finished them, so we will have only half the flat to move into.

27th February 2005

busy, Busy, BUSY.

New house to supervise, we've had two weeks' holiday already this year. Tax returns are done, accounts are up-to-date (no thanks to the Swissmoney software which is AWFUL!)

On holiday we had lovely snow, and each week with bad weather at the beginning and good weather at the end.

Zinal in January was wonderful as ever, quiet, all the runs meet up at Sorebois, so you can't loose anyone, the slopes are deserted and the powder was excellent.

Champoussin was excellent as well, with three days at the beginning of the week when we could not leave the local area because there was too much snow. We did not mind as we were busy rolling in the powder.

We had some sunny but cold days later. Logistics were massively complicated with Helen and family in Morzine and Gordon in St Jean d'Aulpe.

The continuing saga of the ownership and management of the Royal Alpage Club, and hence a large part of the resort provided gossip and encounters for the whole week.

Now we are back at work. Elsevier (one of Carol's customers) has moved up the hill to the station, a 7-10 minutes walk each day. Brocom, another customer is opening a new office with RP International, more things to set up and get working...

15 January 2005

A belated Happy New Year to all.

Christmas was not as restful as expected. Many projects remain incomplete.

David enjoyed Sidcup and London, an excellent trip to the British museum, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) and other UK activities.

Carol had a pre-Christmas visit to Eastry, visited the Chisholm girl's school on the last day, and set up Monty and Roy's ADSL in Canterbury.

Gavin & Irène visited Neuchâtel for a few day's cross country skiing at exactly the right moment with fresh snow every day.

David and Dulcie went to Canterbury for Christmas lunch with Monty and Roy which was all a great success.

Carol has a little too much work to do, but we did manage to found a new Association Opéra&Cultura with Ann and Urs today, so as to qualify for reduced prices on cultural trips in future. The first will be to the Aix-en-Provence festival in July.

Carol is working, trying to catch up with all there is to do, David is running a climate modelling program. Next week we should have all the final pricing and detail from the architect for our new flat, and then work should start in earnest.

We're scheduled to move on March 31st, but we have two ski trips before that and plenty of other things to do.

New Year resolutions include updating the website more frequently.

4th December

Any avid followers of our news will have noticed that we have been extremely busy these last few weeks, so there has been no news.

The reasons are twofold: overwork, and the time-consuming decisions involved in our new apartment.

We've done the planning for the cabling and the bathrooms, we meet with the architect next week for the internal walls and a lot of other issues.

We're still working on tiles, wall surfaces, and the kitchen.

Lots of work too, David trying to finish his database upgrade at Sigma (a moving target it seems), Carol with a new customer Nutriblend (which was a moving target, but seems to have slowed down a bit) and a lot to do for some older customers too.

This morning we cycled up to Corcelles to combine some choosing of tiles with some exercise, and this afternoon we have been to the matinée performance of Pulcinella, with a lot of children, and sat next to two parents we knew (pure chance). The ballet was a lot of fun, lively and energetic.

We've been out a lot too; thanks for Francis & Frédérique, Brian & Dee, Stephen & Emma, Willi & Sandy for recent evenings and food.

Carol is off to the UK in mid-December, David for Christmas. Gavin & Irène will be over between Christmas and New Year for some cross country skiing, and we hope there will be snow in January.

23 October 2004

A beautiful autumn day, sitting on terraces beside the lake weather. Tjalf came for lunch before heading back to Holland, we had a lovely raclette at Anne-Christine & Daniel's house last night.

We're progressing towards buying the flat on the top of the MigrosBank building, after a meeting with the architect last week. Contract signing on November 1st.

Carol's Swiss naturalisation is also advancing, with an interview with representatives of the town council on November 8th.

Work continues for both of us, the squash season has started successfully with the newly dynamic association Squash Romandie - the French speaking part has seceded from the all-Swiss squash federation, reduced prices and got a lot more teams and members.

There's a no-smoking dinner on the 29th at the Banneret restaurant, and Neuchâtel continues to be a very pleasant place to be.

15th October

We had a busy time in September, now we are back to routine for a few weeks.

We went to the Ardèche in mid-September for a few days in the sun, walking, caves, swimming and enjoying great weather and beautiful countryside.

Carol then had a week in St André des Alpes paragliding with Yvan Curdy's school Les Ailes du Leman. Again good weather, strong south winds, lovely food and a great break.

Last week was busy with the first Interclubs (squash) match of the season, a press conference for the Association Revitalisation Centre-Ville Neuchâtel, and lots of work upgrading the accounting software at Elsevier.

We've both had the first cold of the season, we hope it will be the last!

A no-smoking dinner is in place for the 29th October : Chasse et the Banneret. No Smoking

28th August 2004

The last concert in Cernier last night was a very good Shostakovich 14th Symphony. Not fun music, but very well performed.

We also enjoyed the whacky Schnittke Requiem, Perphassa for 6 very good percussionists, and all sorts of other things. We visited the Fête de la Terre, ate nice food and drank nice wine at the restaurant, and generally had fun.

The weather has been variable, some sun some showers, Monty and Roy have been making the best of it and doing all sorts of outdoor activities.

Carol managed to break the waterski tow bar yesterday, probably pure chance rather than any exceptional skill.

Slow progress is being made on trying to purchase the top floor of 12 Faubourg du Lac, more news if you keep reading this page.

Neuchâtel is slowly coming back to life after the summer holidays, with all sorts of committee meetings and things to do.

Keep your fingers crossed for a long hot autumn.

15th August

Great party for Andy Walsky's birthday a couple of weeks ago, we certainly made up for the missed fireworks last year.

We were too late to help with clearing the tennis court at castle Walters, but we did enjoy the festivities afterwards.

Paul and Liz gave us an excellent leaving part, we may summon up the courage to driver round the M25 to see them, but we hope they will come back and see us. Their new house has a gate onto the golf course, so we hope they enjoy a life of leisure and golf for the boys.

Michael and Nathalie inaugurated their new garden today, more food and drinks and great weather to boot.

David is getting much better on the wakeboard, Carol has finally got the dust off her paraglider and is enjoying gentle morning flights.

Monty and Roy arrived yesterday for a few weeks, unless the lake gets cold.

David's off to the Proms in London this week, and there the Jardins Musicaux also start in Cernier for us all to enjoy.

21st July 2004

Summer has arrived, finally. Not the anticyclone, but a "marais barometrique" which means hot and sultry with magnificent, if damaging thunderstorms.

We have also seen all sorts of friends and visitors, catching up on Emma and Stephens' wedding news at the Thai Break last week, having a "very British" dinner in the drizzle in the garden at "Castle Walters". Saturday we had our first boating and garden day of the year. Of course there was a thunderstorm while we cooked, but Bal and James did a valiant job finishing off cooking on the fire so expertly built by Jon. Thanks to all.

Sunday morning, Richard, Gavin & Carol went paragliding (also a first for this summer) at the Roche de Van, and in the afternoon we cycled up to Jon & Lisa's to return a forgotten handbag. We stopped at the excellent no-smoking Japanese (fusion) restaurant in Serrières on the way back.

Gavin, Irène and Edmond are in Cudrefin, leaving today, so we have had happy evenings over there, catching up on their news, solving the world's problems over a glass of wine and dinner in the garden.

It's great having visitors who cook, we have been restricted to taking wine (we drank all the wine Gavin brought from France on Saturday night) starters and puddings!

We've also got better with the GPS and wonder if we can use it to find dropped waterskis.

Carol continues to have loads of work to do though perhaps things are calming down. David continues happily at Sigma, fighting with his databases and decisions about Microsoft software assurance.

July 11th 2004

Dulcie, David's mum had a nice visit, and even had some nice weather when she was here.

The last week has been cold and autumnal, wind, storms, rain and miserable. Bicycles, paragliders and boats are neglected, fortunately there is work to do, duvets to wrap up in and books to read. Better weather is forecast for the end of the week, we hope we will realise what to do when it arrives.

Lots of work for Carol - moves, upgrades, fixing computers, testing network performance.

The town center revitalisation committee is at a turning point - formalisation as an association. It may all implode, due to lack of political support, or it may consolidate itself into something substantial and active. The little subcommittee Carol has been running has reported it's findings, now we are waiting to see if the rest of the participants can summon up the energy and motivation to act on the recommendations.

Two leaving parties this weekend: Julie from Merisant, going back to the UK, and Keith & Sue who were at the International School heading back to Toronto. We also went to visit Michael & Nathalie's new house, up in the forest above Peseux.

Richard is back from Ireland, having found some sun there, Gavin & Irène should come over from Dijon in mid-week, perhaps they will bring the sun.

June 27th 2004

A stormy summer day! Not that we deserver storms, as we have had not much summer so far this year. Carol's paraglider is suffering from lack of use, the lake has been too cold to swim in except for a couple of days. Today it's how and stormy.

Dulcie arrived safely yesterday evening, only slightly late after a bomb scare at Geneva airport.

Last weekend we had two summer solstice parties: thanks to Morli & Marc, Jon & Lisa! no thanks to the weather god.

The boat is back in the water and has not sunk. Our new mooring works well, now all we need a warm sunny days for outings.

The Migrosbank flat story continues with no conclusion and not much to tell; one day we may write the whole thing up as a saga of life in Neuchâtel.

Carol has lot of work to do, various misbehaving computers (boring stuff) and upgrades (quite interesting) and new projects (very interesting and challenging). Today's tasks were misbehaving home computers. The Red Fish (swimming club) computers have all been consolidated in one office, a real intellectual challenge as the software is so old that we've all forgotten how it worked...

The Commission Marketing de la Ville de Neuchâtel meets on Tuesday 29th, to review the market research report Carol's working party has prepared, and also to find out who will be in charge of it all as we have just had local elections, and posts in the local government are being re-distributed on the 28th.

David continues to incrementally improve the computer systems at Sigma, learn more about Access and Exchange and enjoy a low stress job not far from home.

June 13th

We had an excellent trip to the Lyonnais at the beginning of the month, with a visit to Claude & Karine's lovely new house as well as mountain biking, archaeology and of course far too much food and wine. See the Rallaye du Pamorama page (and perhaps D will post photos). Rallaye du Panorama

Monty and Roy have been visiting for a week, we've seem lots of friends, and they have enjoyed the good weather. Of course as it is Sunday today, it is cold and wet.

Life is quiet, cycling, swimming, working, reading, fixing computers and the programs that run them. David is learning to play the piano (well the electronic keyboard which Ann kindly lent us).

Carol's town center committee reconvenes on July 29th to hear the results of the market research. In the aftermath of the local elections we don't know who will be chairing the committee, as various new faces have appeared on the local council, and they don't decide who gets which job until the 28th!

Nuechâtel Xamax have played their last game in their old stadium, and the great big construction project is about to start to replace it with a new multifunction stadium & shopping complex.

The Migrosbank building where we might be able to buy a flat is growing fast, we had a first meeting with the architect and agent, and we will go and climb the 23m of scaffolding next Friday, to see what it will be like.

May 16th

Summer is finally arriving. The wind is still cold but the sun has come out.

Yesterday we took the funiculaire up Chaumont (well we did cycle up to the bottom of the funi) and cycled along the Val de Ruz to Montmollin to see Mickey's aeroplane. We passed by Max working in his garden in Montmollin, and could not decide whether the GPS was a help or a hindrance in navigating.

He's building it in a garage at the bottom of his garden (www.rv8.ch).

Today was more restful, pootling around kite flying, noticing that we have a new mooring for the boat (replacing the on that broke last autumn.

Stephen seemed to have recovered from his stag night on Friday (David left quite early, so did not know the final outcome of the evening).

Marin Squash Club has gained independence from the CIS sports center where we play, after a few careful planning meetings an amiable separation has been agreed, so we can have more of a customer-supplier relationship with the center.

April 17th

The "family heirlooms" from Monty and Roy's move have been integrated into our house. The tapestry looks great:

Carol's committee on regenerating the town centre reconvenes on Tuesday to hear the results of the market survey we commissioned. All sorts of interesting information should be forthcoming about what people like and don't like in Neuchâtel. It's a very politically sensitive topic, the president of the Conseil Communal will honour us with his presence for the afternoon. All most exciting!

We're training for Claude and Karine's VTT (mountain bike) rally at Pentecost weekend. Today we went up in the forest above the Botanical gardens and the Durrenmatt center.

We're enjoying a bit of routine after a lot of three and four day weeks, and with three and four day weekends in between: great fun but exhausting.

The boat needs to get mended as the weather is getting warm now. Carol's paraglider is also wanting to be taken out into the mountains again.

David is learning to read music, so is also learning to play a keyboard, suffering from wrist ache, but finding it all most interesting. Carol, surprisingly retains a few of the painfully acquired skill she learned at school.

Carol is reading a large tome on the Reformation (of the Church in Europe) which seems to cover a vast amount of other history, philosophy and sociology as well. It is an surprisingly gripping topic, hard to put down each night.

Carol has nearly finished consolidating the bank accounts which were at UBS and Credit Suisse at MigrosBank, and learning to use a new accounting package.

Otherwise nothing at all exciting for the moment.

April 10th

Easter is quiet this year: the weather is awful, though there is plenty of snow, and we are quite exhausted after a lot of late season skiing and a trip to England last weekend.

We've had fun in the 4-Vallées starting from Siviez and in the Portes du Soleil the last few weeks of the ski season. Monty and Roy moved house (into a lovely town house which they will greatly enjoy). We drove over to England to help with a few things and David went to see Dulcie. As a result of all these activities we seem to have had a lot of 4 and 3 day weeks. Of course there is no less work to do so we are in some ways happy to have a weekend re-arranging books and wall hangings.

We caught up with the Eastry Chisholms briefly and congratulated Zoë on her 6th birthday (a little late).

Nothing much else exciting to mention: no new jobs, lots of interesting things to do and not enough hours in the week. We're looking forward to a last weekend of snow next weekend and then getting the boat mended in time for the summer. Also on the agenda is getting fit for Claude and Karine's Pentecost mountain biking trip.

February 28th 2004

A busy month, with a week in Champoussin. Lots of people came to join us for skiing and other activities: The Ubbens family, The Bion Family, quite a lot of Esjmond-Freys and assorted attachments, Linz & Justin on their way to Nice.

The weather was good, the snow was good and the week went very quickly. We were all self catering and the food was excellent, thanks to all concerned!

We had a lesson on Pas-de-Chavanettes, and nearly froze on the terrace of the Relais on our last day.

David & Carol have been ill for a week since their return with a very persistent virus which seems finally to have moved on. The Bions wrote off their car in Bracknell on the way home but they are all well. Linz & J drove in torrential rain to the Mediterranean coast, and have not been heard from since. We assume everyone is now back at work of school happily planning the next holiday.

Gavin, Irène and Roland (new sprog, Edmond) are visiting for the weekend, we will catch up with them today! Sun shine and snow!

Carol: I'm reading an extremely interesting book on Reformation (of the Western church). It covers not just theology and church politics but also a wide sweep of Western European history, economics developments in everyday life as influences on the evolution of the religious thought and doctrine.

It makes me realise (more than ever before) how completely dependent every philosophical or religious idea and doctrine is on it's the host society. It also reinforces my gut feeling that no church can pretend to be independent of society or to present any "absolute" truth of any kind. More later when I get to the end of the book.

January 31st2004

We made the best of the weather and the snow in the Jura today with lunchtime skiing at La Corbatière, "the longest black run in the Jura". Now we have a SW gale, so we are pleased to be back in out house.

January 29th 2004

A great snow storm this morning. For the first time in many years we have a lot of snow in town and all around the lake.

Last night two of our local policemen came to visit for my Swiss naturalisation interview. They asked a lot of questions about David, and about my education: too many schools and countries for their form. However the seemed quite pleased with their dossier, and set off to present it to the Conseil Communal for approval. I should get invited to an introductory aperitif for new citizens sometime soon.

We had a great week in Zinal last week, loads of fresh snow, and a surprising amount of good weather for skiing and paragliding. The usual bunch of participants were there, along with a few new ones to liven up the proceedings. Yvan’s organisation gets better every year. Next trip is to Champoussin in just over 2 weeks, with various friends from the UK and Netherlands. (Bions, Gordon & children, Ubbens and us).

Just before we went to Zinal I got my committee for revitalizing Neuchâtel going again after the Christmas holidays; a heavy week of meetings, getting results of the preliminary study from the students, analysing it and passing it on the MIS Trend the market research agency which will do the quantitative study in March.

Otherwise life continues as usual. Computer viruses keep us on our toes, though none of the systems we look after have been infected recently. However it is a never-ending task. Sigma will not be expanding quite as fast as planned, so David has one less project to work on. There is however plenty to keep him busy.

My various customers continue to have new projects for me, and I not to have enough time to do them, especially with loads of holidays at this time of year. We’ll also go back to the UK end March to help Monty and Roy move into Canterbury, where they have found a very pleasant and central new house.

We have not seen Gavin & Irène for cross country skiing, parenthood has intervened, but we have had some good adventures in the Jura this season, and more to come since there is a LOT of snow now.

December 27th 2003

Alison and Howard are visiting Cudrefin for Christmas and New Year. We are supposed to be being monastic, without a great deal of success.

We have done lots of cross country skiing and extensively tested out new snow-shoes. I have also been trying to master the GPS David gave me for my birthday; the GPS is OK, but the software interfaces are pretty time-consuming to set up and fine tune!

The other Chisholms were in Wales, David is in Sidcup and life goes well.

December 13th 2003

Last chance to fill in the sondage about Neuchâtel on www.lexpress.ch.

Christmas party time! We missed two last weekend, being a little under the weather. Last night David was out learning salsa dancing until the early hours; I tried the new Japanese (fusion food) restaurant in a converted cocoa silo in Serrières. It was excellent (the Japanese food, not David's salsa dancing which I did not see)

No snow yet but they say we may well get some tonight and tomorrow.

David bought me a GPS for my birthday, so we spent hours messing around with maps, scanning and calibration software. It is mainly for paragliding, but is a fun gadget for all sort of things!

No doubt we will post tracks of some of our adventures for your perusal!

We went to Lausanne on Tuesday to see the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne play MacMillan and Stravinsky. We left after the first half; we thought it was so badly performed that we could not face the second half. Our letter of complaint has been answered with a justification from the administrator of the orchestra, and free tickets to a concert of our choice, so we hope for better next time.

The sondage on the Express website has been a great success. The students who accepted the project of collecting and analysing the results are completely overwhelmed. With luck we will have some good idea for re-dynamising the town centre! Not that it needed anything this afternoon, as it was packed with Christmas shoppers.

Off to have a raclette at Martin's tonight. He promises to send us home early, so we can catch up on lost sleep.

Barry has been giving the ladies squash team some extra training as we have been playing so badly this season. Unfortunately we don't have any matches until February to try out our new tactics on. Perhaps next year the squash federation will be better organised.

28 November 2003

This week's carting was a great success, apparently a good stress reduction exercise for all participants.

Snow is falling, so we can get our skis out. The resorts will open this weekend, after a long dry autumn. We hope for more cold and wet.

Sorry to anyone who could not find the website, as usual the cobbler is ill-shod, and we use our website for testing new theories (Carol mostly) and trying out new programs, so from time to time it vanishes. Also occasionally bits get lent to customers in emergencies!

We are busy trying to make a musical sculpture out of our SkyTrain, Lego, Mecccano and various dismantled chimes. We saw a very cool one in the Dunhill shop in Place Vendôme, by a sculptor called Didier Gros. We can't find him on the Internet, so we can't buy one, and have resorted to making our own.

November 22nd 2003

All sorts of fun things to tell!

This morning we watched England beat Australia at Rugby in the company of some Australians, some English and a couple of Americans enjoying the cultural experience.

Yesterday I managed to come second in the Neuchâtel squash championships.

Thursday we had a no-smoking dinner at the Jura restaurant, as part of the ongoing campaign to persuade local restaurants that there is demand for this service.

Last weekend we went to Paris with all the Chisholms, found some excellent restaurants, had lots of fun and caught up on some family news.

Over the last week my working group on offer and demand in Neuchâtel town centre has been active, with a questionnaire on the local paper's website (www.lexpress.ch) and a group of students from the Haute Ecole de Gestion doing street interviews and analysis.

Further back we had an excellent piano concert at Urs and Anne's, we went to see Pierre Boulez conduct "Pli selon Pli" in Geneva, and listen to a talk by him beforehand. We went also the Utte Lemperer in Lausanne, with a very mediocre Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

There is no snow yet, but we are occupying ourselves in the fog down here. One day we will go out and see the sun which is not far away.

October 19th 2003

A few weeks of blissfully boring routine to look forward to!

We had an excellent trip to Provence in mid-September, and Carol enjoyed a week paragliding in St André afterwards. Summer was prolonged a while. now autumn is here, with morning frosts, stratus clearing at lunchtime and beautifully coloured mountains everywhere.

Autumn activities start again:

Organising no-smoking dinners (great progress here, as the Jura ha a no-smoking room now and the new Japanese restaurant is entirely no-smoking!)

The "Commission Marketing" for reviving the town of Neuchâtel's commercial decline. If you have any ideas for improving life and shopping in Neuchâtel, let Carol know.

The Swiss Cup online racing league keeps David busy setting up his car and racing on Sunday evenings.

Playing squash: though there are only 4 teams in the West of Switzerland LNB this year so we don't have many matches. The club league should keep Carol occupied. David keeps promising to play as well, not has not got organised yet :)

The boat broke it's mooring (not our knots, but the chain to the bottom of the port), so it has a hole in the bottom and has to be repaired.

Everyone's at home, no snow for skiing yet, so there are loads of social events and news to catch up on.

Yesterday we went to Martigny, to see the Leonardo exhibition at the Fondation Gianadda. Very nicely laid out and not at all crowded.

David has done great work on the photos on the website so you can see what we've been up to.

Work (in case anyone is interested) continues well for us both, David is getting used to a lower adrenaline life at Sigma than he had at PSINet, Carol's customers continue to want new projects done and the virus and worm writers keep us all busy and active doing boring preventative security stuff.

September 12th

We are remiss in updating our website. Server problems have intervened, and we hope nothing is lost.

Carol is busy testing new software. Our main Mail and File server was behaving badly so was rebuilt this weekend. David has meanwhile been ballooning in Kent, a great success.

News from America from Richard and Karin, always fascinating to have news from the world hyperpower.

Monty and Roy are back in England attending conferences and all sorts of other activities.

The Eastry Chisholms are back at school (the younger ones) and work (the older ones). Dave has a new strip in the Mail on Sunday. Ella and Sophie have a new school which they like, and Zoe is in Eastry in the first year.

Carol is enjoying working on the regeneration of the town centre (Neuchâtel) with lots of local contacts and colour, and still hoping to get away for the end of the month for paragliding in St. André.

The Champoussin ski trip grows in numbers, we are pretty sure we have reservations, though the takeover of the timeshares by a mega-corporation and the hotel by Derek and Jost makes the organisation something of a nightmare.

More news later...

July 27th 2003

Finally a rainy day. It is quite a luxury to stay in, listening to the thunder, smelling the water and reading books. Carol is reading Alberto Manguel's "History of Reading", yet another book which needs to be savoured and rationed, so rich are the pages in fascinating references and provocative thoughts.

David is enjoying his new job at Sigma with a mix of systems administration, programming a badly-behaved database, planning ahead for the company to grow.

Carol continues as usual, one new customer, Merisant, producer of artificial sweetners, and all the old ones. The continuous evolution in software is challenging enough, and there is always the less satisfying, but essential meticulous attention requires in prevention of hacks and viruses.

The fundamental conflict of contemporary computing between making all information available to everyone, everywhere, all the time, and increasingly clever hackers and virus writers is not even starting to resolve itself. I'm sure someone somewhere is working on the philopshopical aspects, we're just trying to please the customer while keeping it all secure.

Carol is also chairing a committee to study what needs to be done to re-vitalise the town center in Neuchâtel, where the shops are stressed that their sales have not recovered after the Expo and that they will have a new commercial center nearby in a few years, when the football stadium is redeveloped. It takes lots of time which she does not really have, but is great fun.

Gavin has been over to see us a couple of times since he moved back to Dijon, with some excellent paragliding outings. Rod and Gaynor have taken up climbing with a vengeance. Willi and Sandy have bought a flat just below the observatory (very appropriate), and Brian and Dee a palatial house in need of considerable renovation out in Rochefort. Andy and Sheila have also bought a house down by Nyon in Givrins, another small village, and Andy is having a challenging time starting a business after parting company with Quantum.

June 24th

Gavin came on Friday.

Friday night we had a lovely BBQ at Michael and Natalie's inauspicious looking house with a fantastic hidden garden.

Saturday Gavin and Carol flew from Roche de Van, Gavin all the way to Mt AUbert, Carol just to Provence (in the Canton of Neuchâtel) and back.

Dulcie and Margaret arrived safely on Saturday evening, taking the scenic route along Lac Leman to take advantage of the beautiful views of the Alps.

Sunday we have a BBQ in Cudrefin, all sorts of new and old friends turned up.

The week continues as usual, Windows 2003, broken processor fans, DHCP and WINS, and so on for Carol and David, Dulcie and Margaret escaped the heat by going to the top of Chaumont today.

June 16th

The baking hot weather continues.

Carol's SIV paragliding course last week was a great success, ending in the lake at Montreux (intentionally), much to the amusement of all the passers by.

David won another tasteless prize for his karting exploits and is testing his German trying to join a Swiss online car racing league!

Carol is supposed to be installing all sorts of new software on the servers (and is instead updating this page), so be patient if our website vanishes.

We're cleaning out the junk in the spare room so our next visitors Dulcie and Margaret have somewhere to sleep!

Petra came out for her first waterskiing trip of the year, and complained she hurts all over. We enjoyed dinner at the Mekong on Saturday night with Willi and Sandy.

June 8th

Ascension weekend we went back to England. We greatly enjoyed Roy and Monty's golden wedding, 150th birthday celebration. Lots of friends and neighbours from Canterbury and further afield were there to celebrate with us. Thanks to Gavin for choosing the champagne.

We missed Irène's professorship party in Dijon on the way back, but were pleased to be invited, and were lucky to have Richard with us to share the driving.

We're enjoyed the warm weather this week, the lake is lovely for swimming and floating, and we've just finished a typical Neuchâtel weekend : paragliding at Maubourget on Saturday (Carol & Martin), cycling up and down Chaumont (David), waterskiing and wakeboarding, barbecue and badminton and hammocking in Cudrefin.

May 17th 2003

Thursday was out first sailing evening of the season. Urs and Carol went sailing, David and Ann joined us for fondue on a terrace afterwards.

Friday the outdoor swimming pool opened. The water is 25° and there is no one there for the moment...

Friday evening we had a great curry evening with Bart, Andy, Sheila, Rod and Gaynor.

Saturday we waddled up from La Grande Motte to Mont Racine and then had to eat more because it started raining...

May 11th 2003

David was in England (getting sunburned) on May bank holiday weekend, and watching a cart race at Brands Hatch, while Carol walked La Tourne to La Vue des Alpes in lovely summer weather.

Gavin and Irène came over for the weekend, the weather was bad, so we ate and drank and caught up on news. May 11th, we cycled to Erlach and had lunch on a terrace there.

April 18th 2003

Spring has arrived, we are at home avoiding the traffic for the Easter weekend.

We have been spoilt for excellent and interesting music recently: we had a superb production of Stravinsky's Persephone in Basle, ballet, 2 choirs, orchestra, narrators and all.

Last Sunday we went to Luzern the Listen to an excellent Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra performance of Mahler's 6th preceded by some orchestral pieces by Webern and Schoenberg.

And yesterday we went to Lausanne to See two pieces by Pascal Dusapin, a contemporary French composer with a wide-ranging interesting in philosophy, literature, linguistics and music. Niobe and Medea. Two unhappy women. Niobe was especially well produced, because although nothing happened on the stage at all, the visual and musical effects combined in a gripping performance.

David will be in England at the beginning of may to see his mum and go to a cart race at Brands Hatch.

We will both be driving back again for Monty and Roy's party on June 1st.

In the meanwhile, life continues as usual, some work, some sports, a Tale in the Desert, the boat should go back in the water soon....

March 29th 2003

Alison Chisholm is visiting, lovely weather.

We have walked along the Creux-de-Van in the snow and had fondue on a terrace, snow-shoed up to the glacier in Zinal and gone caving in the ice.

Alison skied until she could not walk, Carol & Richard did paragliding and skiing.

We have all been playing A Tale in The Desert, a new MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game for the uninitiated) as Ipy, Amose and ally. Come and visit us in virtual Egypt!

The production of Persephone in Basel was excellent, choir, orchestra, dance and all. Thank you, Ann, for organising and inviting us! A review should be forthcoming from one of us.

In February we had an excellent week in Champoussin, lots of sun and snow.

Today we are going to the underground mills at the Col des Roches, and visiting Jérôme in Le Locle, center of the Canton.

February 15th 2003

Long time no news.

Monty and Roy were her for Christmas and enjoyed New Year in Nice.

We skied in Les Corsets on January 1st, enjoying the sun and powder!

David started his new job at Sigma on January 2nd and has been working hard since then.

We had fun at the Elsevier ski weekend in St. Luc. The observatory visit was especially interesting!

Carol had a week in Zinal, paragliding, testing skis and sleeping a lot.

February has been very busy for us both so far, and there is loads of snow. We've been skiing in the Jura, both cross country and downhill.

Next weekend we're off to Champoussin for a week with the Bions.

December 29th

Dates for Zinal and Champoussin ski trips are fixed: Events

Monty and Roy were in Cudrefin over Christmas, and are off to nice for New Year. The weather was less than optimal, rain, fog and wind. Too warm for good snow. However, the upstairs loo in Cudrefin is a success, the garden is in better order (thanks again).

David returns today from Sidcup and London, to get ready for his new job in January.

Our main server died shortly before Christmas and has been replaced (almost) by a new one. Apologies for any interruptions!

A whole pile of new books arrived from Amazon - thanks Mickey and Anne.

December 14 2002

David has a new job at Sigma in Peseux, starting January 1st. In the meantime, he is doing a very intensive German course starting at 07:45 every morning. It is quite wonderful training for getting up early at weekends to go skiing!

The office Christmas party season is in full swing. We're having a quiet weekend in Neuchâtel, out in the sun on our cross country skis over lunch today, making labels for Christmas cards on the agenda.

Carol's work is lining up for next year, load of Windows 2000 upgrades (in 2003), probably much to Microsoft's distress as they are preparing to release .Net in the spring. Not much chance of being unemployed in the near future.

The Eastry Chisholms are set up in Trinidad for the winter. Monty and Roy will be in Cudrefin for Christmas, off to Nice for New Year.

Dates for Zinal and Champoussin ski trips are fixed