We have had a less active, but still satisfying year.  With our friend Georgeanne Lamont we once again organis¬ed a retreat for people working with refugees in Chios,  Calais and UK.  It was a privilege to support these committed and often exhausted people and see them relax, learn, enjoy themselves and share with one another. John also led a course on Shakespeare’s depiction of marriage, looking at three plays.  And together we led an online course on thinking nonviolently for the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.

We took two breaks together, visiting friends in East Anglia and Yorkshire and Lancashire.  We also had separate holidays when Diana had a week’s silent retreat at St Beuno’s in North Wales, while John made his first visit to Tallinn for sight-seeing and meeting Estonian Quakers.  At home, Diana plays tenor in a recorders group, and we both belong to a U3A group which explores local canals.  But Diana’s arthritis means that she has to miss the more active outings.  We still enjoy plenty of concerts and theatre shows. 

We now decline most organisational commitments, though we are still active in local Quaker business and fundraising for our Uganda programme.   But we give some of the time gained to individual people who need it, and have been very enriched by these encounters.  

We keep up with dear friends in Ukraine—or in exile.

Our family from Connecticut came on their first visit to England since 2018;  it was so good to see them here. Grandson Charlie is studying music and has already made two commercial recordings.  It’s fascinating to watch the development of our great-grandson Ziggy, now two, living in Shropshire, and expecting a little brother next year.   We feel we are now too old to visit Clare in New Zealand, so we talk on screen.  Judy & Craig and Frank & Mel are fine; the first with a new campervan, the second with a new London house;  we see them all often.