Intex: A bigger splash

Now in its third year, the splash pool is turning out to be the best £150 we ever spent on eBay. With clergy family barbecues coming on, our whole family extends a cordial welcome to its other afficionados, hoping the weather this year will be up to it. With new solar heating the water has reached temperatures of up to 32 degrees recently, four or five degress higher than it ever managed with its original 7Kw electric heating.

With school friends etc,. it gets hours of use many days. One first this year was adoption and families workers on a staff day here using it for a teambuilding game with paper boats. On a cloudier Sunday, I just wanted to try and convey the full solemnity of the naturally Anglican way our children have been interpreting the instructions printed in six languages on the side, about not jumping in:

Chiltern Hills Freak Early Snowfest

The first snowy October day in Great Missenden since 1935! Lucy and I were up at the crack of dawn to try and capture the weirdness of it all — autumn russets and deep brown, bright reds, some verdant green, and sparkling fresh snow.

All this, and half term, too. We arrived back home in to find a note from Catherine, Tim, Stewart, Nicholas, announcing they had gone off to goof about on sledges in the hills. The result seems to have been some vintage romping loonery, caught on Catherine’s phone:

The rats, sensibly, stayed snugly out of it. Some of us had to go to work — a good hour to get down to Eton College for an afternoon working through plans to invent the country’s first interfaith dialogue residential centre for young people; Worthwhile activity but fractionally less of a riot....

Banks, Bandaids and Badinage

UK Satirical magazine Private Eye provides its own narrative of our recent financial plague month, with cartoons:

The root of all this isn’t some quantum of greed beyond the rest of us, but something we all do given half a chance:




Funnymoney is ultimately, er, funnymoney:





The result has been, depending on your point of view, a Massive Bank Nationalisation to make Lenin blush, or an act of (compulsory) mass investment beyond Mrs Thatcher’s wildest nightmares. Same difference?



Meanwhile the Wilson family has been fiddling while Rome burns in our own sweet ways. Catherine made Anna a Deep Chocolate and Fresh Raspberry cake for her birthday yesterday, whilst Stewart and Nick have made an creditcrunchable escapist movie — Jim & Jam’s Bicurious Adventures:

It’s called a Belgian Dip

Could the computer grab a weeks holiday? the family wondered. Could it ’eck, as it does the holiday snaps; but in principle it’s been a week away from all emails and the like. What’s the nearest country we’ve never stayed? We all bundled off to Belgium, sadly without Stephanie who couldn’t get cover for her job. So after a few days in the land of Poirot and Tintin (as wells as beer, waffles, chocolate and chips — but confusingly, not chocolate chips?), we’re all suitably refreshed; and so’s the compmuter. And its back to the blog...

Going Ape in Wendover Woods

Stewart & Nick’s birthday outing was snowed off, so this was the week we took a couple of friends to Go Ape in Wendover Woods — a fantastic day out. You spend up to four hours swinging in the trees with full safety equipment and training provided.

They also do team building corporate days. It’s a radically more intelligent way for bishops to recover lost youth, than playing at student politics.

Birthdays with a bang (Pop)

March birthdays here a great success. Lucy and I hit London for mine — lunch with a great mutual friend in the city, Duchamp/Picabia/Man Ray at the Tate and time with Catherine in her flat above her Day Centre, followed by luscious family dinner with Indian friends — the real thing, you understand.












Late March included Stewart & Nick’s birthday. Our Go Ape trip was snowed off (watch this space for the re-run) but we compensated in part with Diet Coke-and-Mento pyrotechnics out the back — 11 turns out to be the optimum number of mentos:

Teenagers Again — family romp

Good Friday — a sporadically fine spring day — also Stewart and Nick’s birthday. We are now second time proud parents of teenagers. Grandparents/ godparents for tea and gooey cake (13 of us) and then a family goof about meal out together at the Nando’s in the new Wycombe Eden Centre. It’s probably a coming-of-age thing to be OK about peri-peri at last.

Among other delights and curiosities, Catherine produced a Nick pic from a Madame Tussaud’s visit last year (“funny how you get more right wing as you get older”). She also pointed out to us that the new centre’s car park contains an interesting piece of the world’s moral heritage — Schindler’s Lift.

Sprinkling or full immersion?

Baptisms by sprinkling have always hitherto looked less spectacular than full immersion. But does it always have to be like this? Is there another way? Diet Coke and Mentos? Stewart and Nick have been doing a fair amount of this recently in the garden, but not (yet) quite in this league.

h/t Nick & Stewart

Gold Diggers of 1533

Stewart hauled me off to see The Other Boleyn Girl, which was surprisingly absorbing and enjoyable. The history is slightly tendentious, but it’s a terrific costume romp, with a better than average script, emotionally engaging characterisation and great acting. Centering it all on two Boleyn girls provides a Buy-One-Get-One-Free treat for dirty old men. Not that I'd know anything about that.

The key to all Tudor history turns out to be Anne Boleyn’s jolly decent and much nicer sister Mary, the other girl with a pearl earring. Do not misunderestimate anyone capable of giving Henry VIII a male baby. Thus doth Mary out of unfeigned love, but also, sadly, out of wedlock. With Mary parked in a siding producing the goods, Hank gets hooked and bedded by cunning-little-vixen Anne. Consequential Bluebeard activity produces not a male heir, but England’s greatest monarch — and, wait for it, it’s a girl! By which time Hank has moved on, leaving in his wake the original desperate housewife.

There’s a kind of crypto-feminist moral here. Girls! If your bent old wicked uncle fixes you up with Henry VIII, be very afraid. Even as a sprightly Bantamweight, Hank in bed is bad news. Mother warned you all along: You are in serous danger of losing nine inches off the top. But as that big sword of state swings towards your little neck, you have the consolation of knowing that you have laid the foundations for future national greatness, including, let's not forget it, the dear old C of E. Remember the other tip Mother gave you. If in doubt, even on the block, lie back and think of England.