19/1/07

Dear Lore,

We were so pleased to get your letter, but sorry to hear that you haven’t been well. I do hope that your good doctors are able to work out ways to make you feel better, so that you can enjoy your usually very active life. Keeping up with your amazing family must take a lot of energy, even if you do it sitting down! Thanks for keeping us up to date, we always enjoy hearing about what everyone is up to.

You will read on the back of one of the photos I am enclosing that Ian and his partner Anne will be living in Oxford for a year or so. Ian will be working for an Aid-organisation on development projects similar to the ones he is involved with here in Australasia. The Oxford Company works mainly in African countries and Ian would like to gain some of that experience. Anne was born here, but her parents came to Australia from Poland and she would like to experience life in Europe. Her work is similar to Ian’s and she may look for a few consultancies while she is there, but her main objective is to explore England and places in Europe. Her sons are pretty independent now and it will be good for her to have a break.

This may well entice us to visit England towards the end of the year, but first we’ll have to wait and see how things turn out. It would be our opportunity to catch up with you too.

It seems that great minds think alike! Starting next Monday, our building project is due to begin. We have the same objective as you – to allow us to totally live on one level, which is safer for our age-group. Our home is very pleasant and in a very good location with great services all around us, so we don’t want to leave here, even if one day we become somewhat incapacitated. We have been lucky so far, but we see some of our friends beginning to have problems. We are basically enlarging one of the bedrooms by 2m front +2m on one side with lots of windows to the garden – that will be our bedroom + a large walk-in wardrobe. Our bathroom is going to be completely and quite elegantly remodelled and made “wheelchair friendly”. It will also have a washing machine and dryer to replace the downstairs laundry. Our downstairs area will be made self-contained for visitors. Our contract says that all this will be complete by April 27th. Having to change the roof structure makes it into quite a major project.

I am enclosing a few photos to put you into the picture of where and how we spend Christmas with Mark’s family each year. (Ian was in Indonesia and Anne in Japan with her boys.) Mark and Judy are still living in Sydney, but their house is on the market, ready for a move back to Melbourne. Both Ben and Jay have got excellent engineering jobs in Sydney and intend to stay there for the time being. I don’t have a photo handy of Mark or Vanessa, so you will have to imagine them as: a distinguished looking, greying bearded gentleman and a blonde young lady who is very clothes conscious and full of bubble.

We always have a lot of fun together.

With lots of love and keep well