A belated welcome to our 2018 blog. We are a little late in starting this year: we have been busy selling our Cambridge house and trying to buy another in Broadstairs close to Helen. We travelled to Broadstairs in mid December via Lyon, where we celebrated Pat's birthday with two excellent meals. We even saw snow! This was from the train, but we also walked around Lyon gingerly on the day that we departed. We have rented a flat very close to Helen for 4 months, so that we have time to deal with the purchase of another house without bothering the family too much. Of course we have been delighted to have extended time with the boys and tried to make ourselves useful in looking after them. Our first job was to travel up to Cambridge to see such furniture that we were taking into storage. We said goodbye to Jim's tree: he planted a horse chestnut when he was nearly 2 - this was taken nearly 40 years later. When we returned to Broadsta...