40 years and two generations later...

In 1972, Andy's mum and dad came to Geneva during their first summer together and took a picture of themselves standing in front of the jet d'eau. They had just eaten the best ice cream that Andy's mum says she has ever tasted, sold from a little ice cream stall at the harbour. Unsurprisingly, the ice cream seller wasn't there when we revisited the spot on a cold December day 40 years later but the water was still being pumped 140 metres into the air, so we recreated the photo, and this time there were two more generations of Buckley present at the scene. I doubt they ever imagined during that summer of '72 that they would be standing there 40 years later with their son, his wife and a grandchild on the way. Andy and I will try and make a mental note to recreate the same scene in 2052...

Summer of 1972

December 2012

The next two generations...

Andy's parents' visit marked the first Christmas spent outside the UK for both of us. And very nice it was too. Since I'm now 35 weeks pregnant and not allowed to fly, we invited both sets of parents to stay with us in Logras for Christmas, with my parents here for Christmas itself and Andy's parents here for 27th-31st December. Christmas in France is not so different from Christmas back home really: people still feel compelled to cover their houses in flashing Christmas lights and to dangle an 'escaping' Father Christmas from their upstairs windows; in the shops on Christmas Eve it's every man for himself as trolleys are used as dangerous weapons and there is a frantic scrum for the best looking bits of smoked salmon and the last piece of Camembert; and on Christmas Day, unwilling family members (in this case, Andy) are still marched out for a 'refreshing' walk around the village in order to earn that second helping of Christmas pudding.

Just look at how much Andy is enjoying himself...

Except that Christmas pudding isn't on the menu here, as the French prefer a chocolate Yule log and, as I've mentioned before, dried fruits aren't terribly easy to come by. I also had a job sourcing cocktail sausages and streaky bacon for the pigs in blankets - I had to go to the British market for those - and I couldn't get hold of crackers anywhere. In lieu of crackers, my mum spent Christmas Eve fashioning rather fetching hats for us out of newspaper, decorated with bits of ribbon (she did a sterling job actually, and I'd like to see it become an annual tradition) and my dad insisted we all think up a bad joke to tell at the table. Mine went as follows: 'Knock knock. Who's there? Wayne. Wayne who? Wayne in a manger.' And mine wasn't the most groansome.

Here we are all lined up in front of the Christmas tree sporting our fetching newspaper hats and post-dinner Christmas bellies (mine was either a particularly large lunch or there is a baby in there):

Who took the photo? I hear you ask. The cat? No, this was one of those beautiful camera-timer moments, in which Andy and my dad spent a good quarter of an hour finding a suitable spot on which to balance the camera and creating several practice shots to get the angle just so. My award for favourite snapshot of the holidays goes to their first attempt at getting this right. Notice my dad's bolt upright stance: he is taking the job very seriously.

Sadly, the only ingredient our French Christmas was missing was a bit of the white stuff. When two feet of snow fell earlier in the month, I felt sure that we would be in for a white Christmas. But two days of heavy rain and some soaring temperatures banished all the snow from our garden, and it's been unseasonably warm ever since. But being only 20 minutes away from the nearest ski slopes, we decided to take the cable car up to the top to get some suitably snowy views. Sadly, they also serve beer and hot chocolate up there. What a shame.