An English country girl in California: January 2017

What a year. It started so well, with fireworks on Ebenezer III at Pier 39 in San Francisco, watching fireworks over the Bay. The last few months were somewhat less enjoyable, culminating with the refusal of my computer to recognise my password, which denied me access to the blog post I had almost finished. This post is, therefore, being written on my old laptop, which is afflicted with Windows 10 and thus not as pleasant to use, and will be somewhat shorter. Probably a good thing - I seem to remember that I wittered on for a long time in my first version about the roll call of deaths and the rise of the orange-faced, mop-haired misogynistic loony that will shortly reside in the White House. No doubt you have all read quite enough on those subjects to last you til the turkey broth is finally finished, so I will resist the temptation to continue wittering. Suffice to say that we would all do well to follow the advice of The Queen in her Christmas Day Speech, and 'do small things with great love' to help counter the rise of hate-filled rhetoric.

Fireworks on July 4th, aboard Ebenezer III in San Francisco Bay.

A high point in a gloomy year

I write today at home in the Cotswolds, by a roaring fire with the rain beating down outside as if washing away the grime of the year just gone. It is a far cry from the clear skies that glittered above me as I walked Gabby on the beach in San Francisco this time last year. Much of my heart is still there, yet the green fields of England exercised too great a pull. I will frequently return to the City by the Bay, but it will never be quite the same. This autumn, when I was back in England, I received the news I had been dreading, but which I didn't think would come for a long time. Amanda, with whom I had lived and become great friends, had been suffering from cancer for several years, and in October had a bad fall that sent her into a steep decline. I flew back to see her and say farewell, and she died on November 14th, a year to the day after her beloved father. Her funeral was full of laughter and tears, as we celebrated a lady who was witty, kind, generous, brilliant, funny, irreverent and enormously good company. She and her dog Gabby made my time in San Francisco better than I could ever have imagined, and I miss her.

Me and Amanda, Christmas 2015

I would have loved to have brought Gabby home, but she is with

Amanda's family. I only wish she could understand that

I still love them, because I do!

So I begin 2017 with hope that it will bring happier times. I have started work part time for Porter Press International, a small but very high quality publishers based in a thatched Tudor barn in deepest Worcestershire, I will keep writing and pressing on with Gateway to England, getting back to the US as much as I can to alert people there to the best of British. I hold out hope of editing further editions in the series of Country Life collectors' editions, of which we have completed seven, all available to buy online from Amazon. Please purchase them and keep the bean-counters happy - there are so many more I'd love to produce! The year begins with a voyage up Baja California from Puerta Vallarta in Mexico to San Diego aboard Ebenezer, so watch this space for stories of ocean adventures...

Here's to a happy and successful New Year, and let's hope the orange one doesn't paint the White House gold!