The Gerrard Chronicles 2006
Avis Saltsman & Ken Baldry's Xmas Newsletter

Best Wishes for the Season

from

Avis Saltsman & Ken Baldry

The 'card cover' to the left is:-
'Collins Music Hall'
drawn by Avis as it was in the 1890's.

See this link below!!!

Links to the other pages

Extended family

Campaign Trail

The Art Scene

Traveller's Tales

Business Column

Last year's Newsletter

Next year's Newsletter...

Avis, Ken & Family

XMAS DAY 2005

Xmas dinner at "Desperados", a desperate attempt by Mexicans to do English. This used to be "Granita", the site of the ill-omened dinner between Tony Blair & Gordon Brown at the time of the leadership election in 1994. Maybe the name change reflects this!

PRAISE FOR THE N.H.S.

Ken doesn't "do" ill normally but he was all January, to the point of cancelling his ski holiday. His doctor, Tony Kerman, packed him off to University College Hospital for tests for prostate cancer, which lasted until October but which concluded that there was nothing wrong with him, although some of them were exceedingly intrusive, involving miniature TV cameras & searchlights into what Avis described as her private property.

Everyone at UCLH in Mark Emberton's Urology team (nicknamed by Ken, the "piss-takers") were very helpful & even charming. Avis had more good experiences with the NHS this year, culminating at Moorfields Eye Hospital, where two surgeons simultaneously sorted out her eyelids. We will not hear of any criticism of the NHS. So there.

Ken ill

Win

AUNTIE WINNIE IS 90

Ken's Aunt Win's 90th birthday was celebrated by a selection of family & friends at lunch in the Old Cottage Restaurant in Kegworth, her home for the last 58 years. She was the country's expert on lettuces & tomatoes at Nottingham University's School of Horticulture at Sutton Bonnington nearby.

AVIS' BIRTHDAY AT WOTTON

The Gladstones, Davis & April, remembered that Avis' birthday was on a Sunday this year & invited us down to their country seat at Wotton. We were rather unprepared for the magnificence of this Sir John Soane building (rather mucked about by later architects), only having seen it from the distance before. Nor did we expect a walk round the garden to take a couple of hours. It was very kind of the Gladstones to lay on a superb lunch & interesting company.

Wotton

DON'T REPLACE YOUR KITCHEN UNLESS YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO

Massive rising damp & the gradual collapse of the cheap & nasty kitchen bequeathed to us by the Scottish Tories we bought the house from lead to the inevitable. November was spent trying to co-ordinate plumbers, damp-proofers twice, kitchen deliverers (or non-deliverers) & joiners, with the cooker delivery thrown in, did not drive Ken round the bend. We ended the reporting year with 85% of a kitchen, which functionally is only half of one. Grrrr.

Next page is the Extended family


Contact: Ken Baldry or Avis Saltsman, 17 Gerrard Road, Islington, London N1 8AY +44(0)20 359 6294 or e-mail him or her This page's URL: http://www.art-science.com/Xmas2006/index.html Last revised 1/12/2007
The Gerrard Chronicles published by Ken Baldry & Avis Saltzmann 17 Gerrard Road Islington London N1 8AY ©Ken Baldry & Avis Saltzmann 2006.
All photographs & text Avis & Ken Baldry except where credited. Published using Adobe Go-Live CS on an Apple Mac G5 with Nikon 5400 images and Canon LIDe 50 & 7400 scanned images.