We wanted to do a longish trip overseas, and had also planned to make the most of thelimited time available. Sam and Abi have become so much more resilient, tolerant and welcoming of change; this meant that we could be more advernturous as we preferred to go to differing climates and cultures, as well as enjoying the company of friends and relatives in the UK.

The big trip included:

• Christmas in Somerset,
• Time with Clare in Tetbury and Jean in Chalfont,
• Taking all the grandparents for some wet-time at Centre Parcs near Longleat, UK,
  
• A week of brilliant skiing with Sally and Clare in Andorra; and
• 10 days in Krabi, South Thailand, on the way home.

We left a few days before Christmas, andjust got back in time for the start of school, but it was a close thing! We planned to cram as much as we possibly could into this big holiday, and by dint of serious cooperation and organising with everyone involved, (and kids who were so self-sustaining), we spectacularly succeeded! To maintain our reputation for insanity, we also took 2 1/2 unicycles around the world with us; the only place they didn't go was to Andorra because there just wasn't enough room.

Mike was still a bit wobbly and likely to have fits, so the journey was split into two halves with a break in the middle to allow time to recover, and a day or two was spent with Jean before travelling down to Somerset for a Christmas celebration with all the trimmings. The festivities turned into a mass family gathering as only the Tiffins can do, with all the various family groups coming together. Brian remained marvellously stoical as various grandchildren made the most of the opportunity to enjoy his company.


Presents were happily exchanged, and a radio controlled aeroplane was tested at the local football pitch without catastrophic damage: indeed it still operates a year later in Oz; a remarkable feat for something apparently so fragile!  Although the weather appeared mild, we were caught out when we went for a walk on the nearby moors and experienced just how cold a winter squall can be: I had forgotten what 'bitter' could mean, with wind-driven rain and mud to freeze the soul.

We spent a day or two with people in different places, including Clare and Pedro in Tetbury, including a full day doing a long walk through the Gloucester countryside with Tim Hopes' tribe and other friends. It was a great opportunity to catch up with people and to take the time to chat and eat fresh bacon sarnies on a passing golf course (what else?). The welcome was, as always, fantastic.



When we were with  Jean, we went to look at the Tate modern gallery.  In my case, it was more out of curiosity because I had heard so much about it, rather than  because of any artistic predisposition. There were lots of interesting and confronting art forms, however the thing  that most took my attention was the degree to which the congestion charge has reduced  traffic in London's square mile. There was traffic, but there weren't any queues.




We were also taken out for a day on the canals by Pat and Andrew. They had failed to resist the temptation to upgrade fom a time-share narrowboat to owning one outright: a fact of which they are justifiably proud. We spent the day with Brian, Margaret, Pat and Andrew, complete with picnic, and toured from their private mooring to somewhere with a lock, and back. Abi played well as a Jimmy Cagney-style baddie trying to take out the ship, using a broom as a machine gun



until she was finally taken out by the good guys, allowing her to make the most of dying on the roof with appropriate blood-curdling sound effects.




We had been to Centre Parcs a couple of times before on previous holidays, and we invited all the grandparents to come with us.





It not only provided a great opportunity to play in the water but also allowed for time for the family without domestic commitments because the time was not spent at anyone's home. Again, this was the first family holiday where the kids were old enough to 'fire and forget', so that although we could do stuff together, there was no mutual obligation to look after one another; people could travel independently on either a pushbike, unicycle, foot or the shuttle bus. Didn't that make life easier and more relaxing, despite Abi's attempts at overt affection towards her loving Granddad!



Clare and Sally had committed to take Sam and Abi skiing in Andorra as a part of their filial obligation as aunties, and had also invited Cathy and Mike along as well! Roo had been extraordinarily generous in providing the use of his Andorran flat in a prime skiing location. We spent 5 days there. The snow was OK to start with, but it snowed every night, and only started to melt on the day we left; it couldn't have been better! The kids soon realised that ski time was limited, and that it was well worth acting fast and organised so that we made the most of the limited daylight time.


The OzWatsons all took lessons; Sam and Abi very rapidly leapfrogged through the classes to a higher level, and had moved from novice to red-slopes by the end of the week. Cathy's and Mike's improvements were also good, but more modest as befitted our age.
                                                         



Mike soon got fast, but eventually gave Cathy concussion in a mid-slope pile-up; The respective height difference meant that she would inevitably be worse off, however she fortunately had recovered by the next day.  The skiing was fabulous, the weather was fantastic, and it all worked well because of Sally's and Clare's lethal ability to organise. If only Mike could have leant forward as he should!


We found a specific way to identify each other: it was known as 'the earwig pose.'


It was a great time, we all loved it, and it was the first time in many decades that all this Watson genration had been off on holiday together. Abi also had a birthday party while we were in Andorra.  We went out  to a local restaurant where we learnt  the pleasures of proper italian pizzas, cooked in the Mediterranean instead of the American manner, as well as a chocolate fruit fondue. What a treat!  We were also amused by the Andorran understanding of Australian spelling.




We took our leave from families in the UK to spend some time in Thailand on the way home. We planned to go to Krabi in South Thailand, a place that Cathy and Mike had last been to before we were married, (i.e. a fair while ago), where we had stayed in one of a dozen bamboo huts, accessible only by long-tail boats. We took a sleeper train down from Bangkok, even thought it was tricky to extract ourselves from the ticket touts.



The journey was multifaceted and an adventure in its own right. Unlike the rest of the trip, the long tail boats are still the same.



                                                                                             

The scenery was fabulous, but the property development that had gone on was beyond my imaginings. There must have been rooms built for thousands of tourists, from the reasonable up to the outrageously expensive. Indeed, it took several days to find our bearings, and to find the beaches, limestone caves, rock formations for jumping into the sea and the cheaper restaurants.
                                                                              

We took a day out on an old prawn trawler to go snorkelling at the good sites. I even saw a real live 'Nemo'!  Abi somehow managed to swim at an outrageous speed at the sight of a metre wide jellyfish, but someone later managed to catch up with her! There were lots of limestone cliffs and caves to go exploring around- good fun!





We only really got out of the tourist network ocasionally on the way home; We found a proper Thai evening food market while waiting for the train home, the kids were quite agog to try all the new stuff, and we had many different types of pastries and tropical fruits to eat on the train back to Bangkok. We also did the clothing stalls in Bangkok for a shopping spree, however we did suffer from not being Thai-shaped: we were all too tall, too short, thin or 'large', or simply curved in the wrong places! Nevertheless, Abi is still wearing the jeans she found.

We just made the connections home, sometimes with only  5 minutes to spare, to find that home and normal routines were waiting for us.