This year's motto would probably be "Look, we have come through!" but echoing the last line of Lawrence's poem "Strange how we suffer in spite of this." This picture of our Christmas decorations taken by Clare Dove last Epiphany shows our status at the beginning of 2013!
The good news is that the year has nearly ended, we are all still alive and well, and have made one or two small steps forward. Ned has gone to university - Politics, Culture & Literature at UEA and is enjoying living in Norwich. Finn has achieved Grade 4 cornet, and mastery over his nicotine habit (yay!) - with the help of an e-vap device. We have finally got our act together to do a website - it will be up soon at Architecturalarchaeology.com - should you require Mark's services. Mark has been trying to find new outlets for his reconstruction drawings, such as heritage-related apps, but on the whole it has been a year with many distant prospects of Jam - but very little jam actually on the table - apart from a couple of domestic properties and a rather exciting time recording some Vanbrugh stables at Stowe. The enforced idleness has meant he has had time to do some more work on his book, Claudius's Elephants - which he tells me is two-thirds finished...so probably only another 3 years till completion! He is still singing in the Thanet Festival Choir - and this year sang in an impressive Verdi's Requiem at Canterbury Cathedral - a fantastic experience to hear and to sing in.
I have had various back and forths with an agent about my first book, The Romantic Feminist, and re-written my second book, The Ash Grove, so am now in a stupid quandry of not knowing which one to send out to agents... they don't like you to send them both apparently. People keep telling me that persistence is the thing... and I feel I have no alternative, but it makes one wary of writing more when one is committing oneself to another year or so of uncertainty. I have other projects planned out, but really need to get an agent to work out which ones might be most commercially viable. My chums in the Society of Authors group locally are shouting "Get Published!" but it's hard to see what else I can do - although I may enter some first novel competitions... I am not going to self-publish... for many and varied reasons that I will not bore you with here (but if you're curious the reasons can be found here: http://katehamlyn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/why-i-dont-want-to-self-publish-that.html and here.http://katehamlyn.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/author-publishing.html). I have recently started doing occasional shifts of activities with the inmates of a care home for people with psychiatric problems - an eye-opener in all sorts of ways.
The immediate family has shrunk again, with the death of Mark's father Edward in June. We have been missing him for some years, but he was very patient and sweet in his demented state - which was a relief. Sadly Mark has inherited his diabetes from him: he's recently started on metfornin, the standard treatment. Our remaining parents, my father (86) and Mark's mother (88) are both active, both still driving around and have both attended "speed awareness" courses in the last year or so - because they were driving too fast (no dithery elderly caution here!). My father's centre of activity is as always his house - where there is a continuous cycle of little bits of building work and gardening.
In September we gathered together as many of Tom Taylor's descendants as we could for a toy theatre production of his play Our American Cousin - the play Lincoln was watching when he was shot. There were 20 of us - including Robert Poulter who had created the production for the Ford Theatre in Washington. Fine weather enabled us to eat in the garden, perhaps for the last time that year and we all had a lovely time - and were very delighted that so many people had made the epic journey to Ramsgate.
Finn is doing his GCSEs this year - and has a number of career ideas which are constantly fluctuating. He is very interested in film... at the moment. Ned is joining a punk band at UEA (having broken up his former ensemble when he broke up with his Ramsgate girlfriend a few weeks into his first term). In the summer he did a brief solo gig at the Lifeboat, a Margate bar which was one of the venues for his gap year "pub slavery" as he calls it. We were impressed by his ability, and very delighted to see that the audience was enthusiastic about his songs - great lyrics of course! Finn still sings impressively, but gentle hints that they might "work together" have been largely ignored. Finn is abandoning the cornet next week, as soon as he's done his GCSE practical exam - Prelude by Charpentier will no more echo in these halls!
Since we can't go abroad at the moment, abroad comes to us in the shape of foreign students. This year we've had a repeat visit from Jaime (the future Spanish Prime Minister) and several boys from Khazakstan, Ukraine, Russia and China. We also continue the sporadic B&B services through airbnb.com - which also seems to bring more foreigners - mostly Antipodeans and S. Africans, but also Italians, an Hungarian, an Irish couple, and Germans. So at least our ludicrously large house (which now feels very empty with just 3 of us in it) is providing us with a useful source of intermittent income.
I'm sorry if this letter is a bit joke-lite...these are the highpoints of a frankly "challenging" year (the worst year financially of the last 3 rather tough years). There is always a lot to be grateful for - that my colposcopy (don't ask!) showed everything was normal, that worse things generally have not happened to us, that we ought to consider how lucky we are (no hurricanes, famine, civil war, or terminal illnesses have touched us this year), that we have "come through". I am not going to indulge in any "hopes" for 2014, since I have had to review my feelings about the value and efficacy of Hope - Obama may have been wrong - it may be a cardinal virtue - but it sometimes feels as if it could be psychologically damaging.... the Bible writers knew this: Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.
We are very blessed in having had a lot of support from my family this year, and we have gradually acquired a large number of really good friends in Ramsgate - after 4-5 frankly rather lonely years at the beginning. I have really cherished the few occasions in the year when I've seen older friends and cousins and been able to renew those close contacts. I find tremendous solace and energy in good conversations - I just hope I'm not becoming a social vampire - sucking all the life and energy out of a social situation and then gloating over my hoard (nah! probably not!). There is always something to make bad situations bearable - religious faith, political conviction, friends, or just a sense that there is a collective human spirit that sustains us through a recognition of our common struggles and a belief that there is a better way of being a human and striving towards it. Gosh! I've come over all "Queen's Christmas message" now!
With much love to you all, whether you're near or far, we wish you all good things for 2014!
Kate, Mark, Ned & Finn
for a myeloma charity in support of a friend of ours. This looks a bit of a combination between Oswald Moseley and Ned Flanders - but it suits him better than this picture suggests. He also went for a jolly weekend in Belgium with the choir - Chimay - twinned with Ramsgate is a brewing town, where the inhabitants enjoy dressing in medieval costume and drinking - so quite like Ramsgate, apart from the medieval costume.
