Yes, it’s that time of year again; the moment you’ve all been waiting for when your deliciously personalised letter from the Barwich’s arrives. I know you wish you had the time to send an individual letter to each of your thousands of friends like wot I do, but we can’t all be budding Dostoyevski’s I guess. T’would be a far far better place as the man said.

Anyway I’m sure you’re just itching to know what happened to us during the last year but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m sure you recall the fact that the year before I had rescued the world’s airline industry single handed, this year I felt it was time they stood on their own two feet for a while so I decided to do a little less travelling. Actually I was quite glad of it, but I suspect it won’t last, the latest managerial shuffle at the place of work would seem to indicate that I’ll be getting on planes again real soon to spread technological wisdom to the European natives (fortunately they all speak English these days).

The kiddiwinks are now showing serious signs of being taller than me (watch this space next year for developments) and are now 13, 11 (nearly), and 7. I know these snippets of information help you when you’re trying to select the ideal Christmas gift. Incidentally if it hasn’t got at least 32 Meg of RAM and a gigabyte hard disk they won’t want to know. Also a soundblaster sound card, 10X CD ROM etc., etc. Oh, and you might bundle it with Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Hexen and Doom II. Apple’s share price has dipped alarmingly since they discovered that I finally got on the PC bandwagon but they only have themselves to blame you know. As exclusively forecast in this publication over a year ago we got ourselves on the Internet with e-mail and surfing and stuff. I can now change Internet pages into Windows help documents which I could never have done without the Internet; this and thousands of other life enhancing capabilities are now mine as a result of hours of self improving sessions on the net. By this time next year I fully intend to have a GSM mobile so that I can surf the net even while sitting  on my favourite beach in Italy, not to mention checking up on my office e-mail and downloading innerstin’ pictures... This jet setting technological lifestyle is just too much isn’t it?

I’m sure you’re wondering what the holiday’s were like ‘chez nous’ (that’s your actual French) this year. I toyed with the idea of cutting and pasting from last year’s letter at this point but decided that the effort of editing it would be almost as great at the effort of composing afresh, and anyway the sharper eyed of you might have felt cheated in some way which would never do I suppose. We went to Italy (again) but this time to the north, near Venice, and by train not plane. They stuck our car on the back wagons of a train in Calais and gave us a bed up the front for the overnight journey. In principle the ideal way to travel but.... I’ve often criticised Margaret Thatcher’s policies as being altogether to left wing, but in the area of business competition she has grasped an essential truth; competition raises standards. French railways have an enviable reputation for technical excellence, the TGV springs to mind, but the catering on this train was the pits. It made cattle class airline catering seem haute cuisine by comparison. But why should they do any more? No-one else is going to sell you food (or provide you with an alternate train for that matter) so it’s a case of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). That may be a good thing on a computer screen but believe me, it stinks in restaurants. The trip was worth it though, Venice and the lagoon around it are amazing. I have half a suspicion that we (that’s the human race at this point) may not have too many more chances of seeing Venice, it’s very visible that the city is sinking, and it’s also visible that not much money is being spent on restoration, to the extent that many of the ground floor sections of the buildings have just been abandoned. They say that the excessive pumping of water from the aquifers for irrigation purposes has now been stopped, but then they would say that wouldn’t they. On a less serious note we also drank wine and beer, and ate pizza and risotto. On top of all that we sat in the sun. As you can see a real action packed adventure holiday for today’s renaissance man.

There is not much to add after all that but I will try my best.  This has been a nice year for us, with plenty of growth, in every meaning. There have been lots of fun times and I hope the coming year is even better. My only complaint is the regressing of the children, they now seem to need feeding every three hours just like babies again, our middle one wakes up in the middle of the night to cook toast because of starvation, despite roast dinner beforehand.  I suppose another ten years will see us through that problem.

I have more or less given up the teaching proffession, and I am concentrating on the translation and interpreting. I must say that at times it is much more fun going to prisons and courts, or companies conference rooms.  I sell myself as the Irish specialist of translating about wheel balancers and screws.  I have done lots of those.  I am now trying to advertise myself to become my own boss, sending lots of pretty fliers to various companies to tell them Iam good and cheaper than the rest of them (if you do need some translation work done please do not hesitate to contact me for quotations).  It will work , I am sure and then Peter will HAVE TO upgrade my substandard computer.

We wish you all a happy Christmas and lots of fun in the new year.

Love,

     Peter and Annie Barwich