Some Final Words From Carl

Sue has asked me to collect my thoughts and try to summarize my impressions and feelings as we close out our year in London and prepare to go home. It’s hard to believe that’s it’s been a year – it’s all gone by so quickly that it’s like a blur. And, maybe, that’s the best way for me to recap my experiences, to try to take you through what I sometimes think of as this large collage that runs around in my head as I go about my day-to-day routine.

First London, a city made up of hundreds of villages each with its own unique character and feel and which, over a thousand years, now has 12,000,000 people living in it. A city both grand and grimy but always interesting, a walkable city with beautiful architecture, monuments and palaces, fortresses, parks, shops, pubs, gourmet restaurants, great museums and music venues (Royal Albert Hall, The Academy of St Martin’s in the Field), theatre in the west end and in the park, London cab drivers, the tube and double-decker buses, people driving on the wrong side of the road. Expressions like lift, queue, flat, bum, boot, bonnet, and “mind the gap”. Gray and rainy lots of the time, good beer and bread and not a snow plow in the whole place.

Greater England, the Cotswold’s, the Lake Country, Richmond and Brighton, Leeds, Oxford, Edinburgh and Churchill’s home, Chartwell, where the cab driver who takes you there from the train station is a published author of children’s books. Palaces, castles and cathedrals everywhere. A green country with lots of long views.

We traveled to Europe a lot and that was great. An emotional trip to Slovenia to see my father’s birth home and connect with long lost family; cousins once and twice removed, “aunts and uncles”. It was a warm, wonderful, and too short an experience. Slovenia is a beautiful country. And so are Austria and the Czech Republic which we did as part of the Slovenia trip. We also did long weekends in Paris and Belgium (Brussels and Bruges), Christmas Markets in Germany and Austria; and the final trip for us as a couple was Italy on the Amalfi Coast and Sicily. There are no bad meals in Italy!!

We were able to share some of our experiences with family: Kris and Richard and Paul and Carol in the spring with the best stretch of weather we had the whole year. Tom and Shannon just under the deadline before Shannon couldn’t travel any more because she was pregnant with Nate, and Matt and Julie just after Christmas and into the New Year. We feel blessed to have such great family.

We also had friends visit and we delighted in showing them around. And we made new friends here in London: expats Pete and Marsha Dillon, new colleagues at work, and men and women that Sue met through the various clubs and organizations that she joined.

It’s been a great adventure and it’s brought Sue and me even closer together. It’s also an emotional time for us as I contemplate a transition to retirement over the next year. Already my successor at the company has been named and I am transitioning to the role of “senior advisor”. So, in 12 months, we’ve had a beginning, an ending and, now, a new beginning. It’s frightening and wonderful at the same time.

It’s interesting that one can recap a year in a few short paragraphs. I know I am not doing the experiences we have had the justice they deserve; for justice you really ought to read the detailed blog that Sue has so faithfully maintained over the last year. It’s wonderful and she did a great job with it and it will be a great memory for both of us. What I have tried to convey are the thoughts, feelings and recollections that run around in my head every day; you’re getting them at a moment in time. I know as soon as I stop writing this and it’s posted with Sue’s final blog entry I will think of something else. And that’s OK because that’s what this year should be, a living, vital, reflective experience that will continue to grow and inform us as we get on to the rest of our lives.

With love, Carl.