This year, 2024, was a year strangely full of happy anniversaries.
To focus on the most notable, there were two for me, two for my old schools and two a little random!
For me, 2024 marked 60 years since mum and dad took Sue and me to see the Beatles live in concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, London. I was 12 years old and Sue 10! It was our first concert.
We celebrated this extraordinary anniversary with an extraordinary concert, Paul McCartney Getting Back in Paris.
For me, 2024 also was 50 years since I moved to the US, first to attend Whittier College.
For my old schools, 2024 marked Yale Law School’s 200th year, which I missed because the school has lost track of the principles that it embodied while I studied there, and Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School, Marlow’s, 400th year. Lisa and I attended a fascinating black tie dinner at the school to celebrate that anniversary.
Randomly, the National Gallery in London celebrated its own bicentennial with a fabulous collection of van Goghs.
It is easy to love Vincent. Here is a BBC tribute.
Many of his 61 works in the show were borrowed from peer museums and galleries all over the world.
The Cadbury factory in the Bourneville suburb of Birmingham is now 200 years old – that’s how I fitted in chocolate here! – and features an actual chocolate theme park. Move over, Walt!
I first got to know it on a fabulous school trip as a ten year-old. They let us help ourselves to chocolates at will off the production line!
This happy anniversary merited a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut Chocolate, courtesy of Linda and Stewart!
That’s a lot of happy anniversaries for one year!
* * *
Fittingly, the year has revolved around reunions of one kind or another. Like anniversaries, reunions stitch together past and present.
Meeting up with the Roys in Dublin in September was a perfect illustration.
Back in 1970, Jean Roy and I each spent three weeks of our senior year of high school in the other’s home, hers in Cambridge in upstate New York and mine in Marlow on the Thames.
Jean and Will, her younger brother, attended Cambridge Central School and lived at home, and John Paul (then a hippy at SUNY Plattsburgh) and Pat (married and in Boston), her elder siblings, visited.
Sitting with the four of them in a pub in Temple Bar, Dublin’s home of “craic,” in September, felt just like it used to feel back in the day in Johnny’s, north on route 22 in Hoosick Falls, where they never asked for ID. I was home again.
Jean laughed about how my three weeks in Cambridge had turned into years of an and off visits, until I started school in California in 1974.
She reminded me of how she came downstairs one morning, not having seen me for months, to find me and Adrian asleep on couches. We’d apparently arrived from somewhere far away in the middle of the night without notice, let ourselves in, and fallen comfortably asleep.
That was the welcome that the whole family, especially Marie and Paul, her parents, gave me all those years ago. That’s why we’ve kept in touch ever since.
That’s probably why when I dropped back into school, it was in the US.
It may even be why I emigrated to the US a year later.
* * *
The most emotional reunion of the year was with my former blended family. This was in July, when Charlie and Gabi held their second wedding near Valencia in Spain, where her parents live.
And unlike the first in London, arranged in a rush – no, she wasn’t expecting! – all the children in the family where Charlie was raised attended. It was the first time that I had seen them all together since late 2007, when Arlo left our home to return to Paris. A very special reunion.
In a very special place, the Castell de Barxell, Alcoy, a gorgeous castle in the Valencian hills.
The whole event was well organized from beginning to end, with shuttles between Valencia and the venue for many of those visiting from abroad, on Gabi’s side mostly from Chile and on Charlie’s mostly from California. The shuttle back to the hotels in Valencia left around 2 am, giving everyone who wanted it plenty of party time. The food was “muy bien” too, several courses of it, and the dinner seating well arranged.
“Muchas gracias” to Alba Lucy and Eduardo, Gabi’s parents!
Not only were the six siblings from our former blended family all there, pictures of each of them over the years with Charlie were all put up as a slide show on a giant screen by Alex, his best man. While they may have been hard to follow at times for the other guests, for me the photos were a reunion on steroids. Many of them are in the Zinzins part of this website, and I love them all!
Charlie and Alex still arrange things between themselves with great care. Charlie flew from London to officiate at Alex’s wedding in La Quinta, California in late 2023, and Alex flew from Carlsbad, California to be Charlie’s best man here. Each gave the other a real role in his wedding: each always supports the other.
Nick and Charlotte made it down from France and, freed from Eliza who was staying with her French grandparents, were animated and relaxed. Arlo made it from Greece and bounced happily around on the dance floor – “you see your baby loves to dance,” as Neil Young sang to his dad! Alban made it from Santa Cruz and Daphne from Lake Tahoe, bringing Jared, her other half. We both enjoyed chatting with her.
Courtney, my niece, officiated the wedding in both English and Spanish, simultaneously translating herself, and telling the happy couple firmly to wait for both languages before responding. We could all see the skills that she has developed as a judge! She also served as a much needed translator when Gabi’s parents introduced themselves to Lisa. Thanks, Courtney. I have to do something about my pitiful level of Spanish!
* * *
When is cheap gas not cheap gas? When you leave your Ray Bans on the roof of the car where you put them while you pumped the cheap gas! I did that in Murcia, Spain, kicking myself for days after.
We had our fair share of calamities this year.
Charlie’s wedding was a step on a trip planned through Spain and France to return home to Brittany. We were in the hotel in Barcelona when the email came through from security at the golf resort where our flat is located – no we don’t play! – there was a flood!
Security had turned the water off at the main, but recommended that we returned. Which made sense, and so we did. This did add a couple of days to the drive back to Brittany, and a change in the planned itinerary, but was well worth the effort.
We were happy to verify that security had reduced the damage by their prompt action – thanks a bunch, guys!
After cleaning up a surprisingly limited mess, we located a plumber to show us what had happened – a braided pipe in the bathroom had corroded and burst. It could easily have been a lot worse.
Closing in on an even better mishap, I managed to leave my MacBook Air on the TGV taking us from Paris to Rennes after our visit with the Roys in Dublin. How did I do that? You may well ask! I had folded it into the table that dropped down from the seat in front of me, took a nap, and forgot it when grabbing our bags on arriving in Rennes.
A hairy weekend followed, as I tracked it around northwest Paris – a useful Mac app. For professional reasons, I would have been obliged to delete all the data on it if there was no chance of getting it back – another useful Mac app. I was about to do so as it moved around Paris on Sunday, when I noticed that the movements weren’t as random as they seemed. Perhaps the Mac was approaching Montparnasse. I held off. A couple of hours later, Montparnasse lost property called; it had been handed in!
* * *
In part because of driving back and forth between our homes in northern France and southern Spain, we spent a lot of time traveling this year, giving us quite a few highlights.
I already posted here about several of them here: castles in Spain, Carcassonne in France, the amazing gothic cathedral in Burgos, Spain, not forgetting Rome.
There have been more highlights since. Two nights in Paris with Linda and Stewart, our Scottish friends, culminated in the concert celebrating the happy anniversary of my Beatles concert in December 1964.
Paul McCartney played three nights at La Défense Arena. What a show! His songs have spanned and enriched most of my life (even if I do still feel more for his mate John), and he performed a total of 36 songs, in three hours and 12 minutes. The moments when most of the audience of 40,000 held up their phones to imitate candles brought me back to rock festivals around 1970 and the heady dreams that we all felt there.
What is it called when you experience a reunion with a younger version of yourself? Can you still dream at 72?
An inspiring week in Marlow followed. Marlow is close to the new Elizabethan Line across London, meaning that the West End is only about 50 minutes away by train. Lisa and I caught the train into town to visit the National Gallery and its bicentennial van Gogh show. 200 years of free art in the West End! Well, except of course for Exhibitions like this one!
The next day, my birthday, we caught another train to see a matinée of Les Misérables on Shaftsbury Avenue, before returning to the Ivy Garden in Marlow for a warm and loving dinner with Arlo, Erato (his delightful recent girlfriend), Charlie and Gabi.
Yet another train trip the next day took Lisa and me with Arlo and Erato to Exeter to visit Ian, a musician friend since 1964, and his wife Stella, whose art we both greatly appreciate.
Delighted to be handed one of Ian’s guitars, Arlo played a couple of songs on it, and Ian joined in, improvising along on another guitar. We just sat there, amazed, absorbing the vibe.
Yep, another highlight!
* * *
But the biggest highlight of the year was Paris 2024, the Olympic Games!
And, like the rest of the year, it was packed!
We had invited Lisa’s parents, both 83, for the Games; they have helped us out a lot over the years, putting us up and loaning us a car whenever we visit California, and this was a golden opportunity to show our appreciation.
Lisa’s dad Max is a runner like his daughter – he is still, running Masters’ Track – and he was as excited as Lisa about three full days with good seats in the Stade de France.
Spending a total of nine days in Paris and just three athletics days, we had several pauses. On a few, Lisa and I engaged in our favorite Paris hobby, walking everywhere, and we filled the others taking Max and Iris to see some of the sights. We took a train from Montparnasse to the cathedral in Chartres, spent an afternoon staring glazed eyed at the wonders in the Musée d’Orsay, and even took a hike up the Eiffel Tower (Max and Iris took the elevator!). Hosting tourists in Paris is so much fun!
Then there was the track and field itself, full of the human drama that makes sport so absorbing and worthwhile.
My favorite moment was at the end of the men’s 100 meters final, the climax of our first day there.
It was an incredibly close race, and we in the audience had no idea who had won. The results flashed quickly on the scoreboard on the big screens over our heads: the first seven runners (out of eight) tied in a dead heat! The faces of the runners then appeared on the screen, looking at each other, trying to figure out what had happened, trying to figure out who if anyone had won.
Perhaps a minute later, the final results appeared on the big screen. Noah Lyles and Kishane Thompson, who won gold and silver, were separated by only 5/1000ths of a second. We learned later that the former had the flu and that latter was ahead for the first 85 meters! Talk about drama! The first four finishers were only separated by two hundredths of a second, and it was the first 100 meters in history when all of the fastest men in the world broke the 10 second barrier. All of them!
What a ten seconds of spectating: you just couldn’t make it up!
So there you have it, happy anniversaries and warm reunions scattered throughout our busy year. It is indeed a wonderful life!
Here’s hoping that 2025 will be as enjoyable for you and yours!
