2010 - The Epic of Jansenish

A long time ago, in a village far away, there lived an unassuming family, in a cute little market town, in a lucky country, on a blessed planet around a stable yellow dwarf with a few years left to go, which they all called The Sun - though apparently being English they never got around to seeing. 
The Jansens were fortunate, but they didn't know it, because of course they were English, and the English are all trying to get out and immigrate to New Zealand. It should be noted that while trying to escape these shores they are trying to prevent vacuum fillers coming in.
Well, back to the family.
They were known as the Jansens, and since they were in England but the old man had a New Zealand passport, it was assumed they were on the run - because I mean who would live here. Or so the old man of the house was often challenged by the locals.
But no, believe it or not happiness was to be found in the middle of this land of snow and rain and bombs flying overhead (true story broke worldwide 25 Oct).
Much happiness indeed.
I am the old man of that family, and I want to tell a story of the ordinary and the intricate ways on our happy lot.

A Christmas Message from the Jansens

It’s Dec 3rd , the eve of Evelyn’s nativity number one for 2009, in which she is going to be an angel, inside a lovely outfit that fits that description which has been sculptured by Jane, grandmother on Victoria’s side, and well Evelyn has just been sick. In these days of health and safety you know what that means – no nursery for two days (period), no nativity (sorry but thems the rules), no angel (the outcome). She doesn’t know it yet.

Evelyn wakes up gently one summer's morning in Wales - May 2009

So goes Christmas for most of us – life, with all its ups and downs and vague remembering of the Christ-centeredness of Dec 25th, marches on oblivious to this man-made season of cheer, it dishes out it’s vicissitudes at allotted average annual rate. These days the vicissitudes are on a very minor scale for we are so closeted by our material wealth that a storm outside generally results in excitement for the kids inside, and a spoiled meal is replaced by a back up from the freezer.

On the moody way to Tobermory, Isle of Mull, April 2009.






Twenty something days to Christmas – too busy to count – and people at my work are on notice that their jobs are at risk. A couple of centuries or so it would have been much more assured death when one lost their livelihood. The third Christmas since this so-called global crisis of the 21st century unfurled on us, this crisis brought about by mad consumerism and debt-hiding instruments of uncanny simplicity. The non-Christmas turkeys are coming home to roost - if turkeys in fact do roost. This Christmas, there is the human cost of our excesses to pay for, and the reckoning is not going to be delayed by the pagan Christmas spirit that swirls about us - nope ! the spreadsheets did not build that in.

Staff at bmi wonder at the depth of the snows that overtook us on Feb 2nd 2009

In my own small realm, in the middlish middle of the English Midlands, I have watched the devastation of an economic model and 70 years of hard work to evolve an airline against the odds, a devastation that took 1 ½ years. But again I reflect, this is only money, it does not lead to families in the cold and damp without food and a roof over their heads. Our disasters these days are so melodramatic and relatively harmless.

I am wondering about the fact that if I don’t find the time to reflect in these 28 days of Advent, then I am myself sucked into the same fool-trap of mad consumerism that I rally against. So I do stop now, and I force myself to look backwards, then forwards, then sideways at my darling Victoria, who has said to me “…just get on with it and write your epic yarn.”

That's me taking another break way back in February, up on Calke Abbey after the snows.

I am putting Thomas to bed. We have a dry roof, and warm radiators, and we are content with one another. He looks up at the ceiling with a happy smile that tells you it is looking back with glee and forward with hope. I think of the total trust he has in Victoria and me. His little soul, Evelyn’s too, so full of infinite visions – so hungry and demanding like chicks in the nest, yet so precious and so worth it.

Thomas dressed up for School as a WWII era boy, outside our house.













Tomorrow I will walk Thomas to school, and Evelyn will come with me, but she will stay at home because she is persona non grata at nursery due to the almighty hiff last night. Victoria will be presenting at a NHS study course on her speciality – the human hand, and then Victoria’s hard year of work of presenting at conferences on top of work will be virtually over, and we can start to think about Christmas letters and gifts and cards and visits and pies and puds, and aunts and uncles, grand and great, and not so good, the godly and the godless, the wildly Welsh, the refined English, and the downright Kiwi.

As for me, just as Christmas arrives, my year of waiting patiently for shareholders and top management to move on is over, and the hard work is just beginning.  I will participate in a developing storm of airline dissection and integration. I am grateful that I am one who has survived. Although I am haunted by yet another collapse in airline fortunes, I was warned: they said it would be an exciting industry when commercial aviation was separated from Government ownership in the eighties, and then meddling indirect influence in the noughties.

Evelyn and Victoria at Grandma's July 2009






It is 2009, and I am humbled by something else closer to home – that all my past assumptions about the future have been splattered against an unforeseen wall. Other people’s speculations, and my participation in them as a very small investor in pensions shares and currencies, have driven the fortunes of currencies in ways I had not anticipated, and because I currently live in a country that is not my long term home, I am affected. I recall the scripture that once brought my pride to a standstill in 1988/9 that says “..do not say tomorrow I shall do this and that, for this is arrogance towards God..” Well lessons have to be learnt, and I have learnt my lesson 20 years on. However for us all, on the whole, the vicissitudes of 2009 are not flood or famine or war or plague – they are minor economic reversals which cause me to stay put with my family in a happy place. This is hardly something to moan about.

Tom and Eve larking in the sun that comes around to illuminate our kitchen in June.

When my kids grow up, they will look back on 2009 and have no memories of recession - let alone grinding stomachs, shivering torsos, damp beds, stank clothes. Victoria will be able to remark that at a time when our kids are costing us more than ever, she can afford to drop back to two days from three. Thomas and Evelyn will only recall the Christmas shopping event in town with its hog roast and mulled wine, the town band playing, frozen walks on hard ground, teacup rides on the main road, Christmas lights, carols in the square, fat dripping goose, warm fires, their dearly loved Great Grandma Evelyn, Great Uncle Nevol, then the granddads, grandmas and countless uncles and aunts, and myriad mystery cousins on the other side of the world. I can come home with work in my briefcase, but not so much of it that I lay awake at night.

This October Evelyn Robarts-Arnold, Evelyn’s great grandmother, and Great Uncle Nevol turned 98 and 97 respectively.

Evelyn and Evelyn - what it's all about.








Victoria’s mother Jane has for the last few years undertaken the task of support and care for them.

Jane takes a break - summer 2009

We will be there for Christmas, and Tom and Eve will delight GG Evelyn and GU Nevol and vice versa.


Nevol, in typically laid back mode that has no doubt accounted for his longevity.



A few days later we will meander across the English south coast from Devon to Kent for a few days on the farm with Grandpa David, and Birgit – days which the kids really love for all the early mornings out tending the horses and sharing the back of a Landover with steamy dogs, and fantastic sauces poured over the richest of fares.

Grandpa David, Birgit, and their livelihood, this August at Haxted Mead Farm.

Victoria's sister Phillipa is not with us this Christmas; she is moving to Aussi in slow motion with her man, Dan. They will be in Thailand this Christmas. We will miss Pip, but perhaps less so in the future, because we'll be in the neighbourhood. Dan's a good bloke from Canberra.

Pip and Victoria at Haxted Mead Farm on River Eden, to tell the truth summer 2008.





I have a family in New Zealand, with whom I spent the first ¾ of my life, and I miss them keenly. But they will all be together this summery Christmas (yes summer) in Taupo at my mum’s place. I am massively blessed to think that we Jansens all still love one another and hang out together - given that the lives of we five siblings have been so varied. My siblings are themselves blessed with spouses who have in fact become brothers and sisters to the rest of us, and their kids are in every sense of the word part of each of us. I miss you guys.
At least some of you - brother Mike drags Suzi Georgie and Peter to meet our lot in Paris last New Year.

After a ¼ of my life has passed me by in a strange land, now so familiar that I no longer hear the accent, I have lost my links to old friends, and I have been remiss towards them. But I thank God for them all the same, and wish them all the best, and I hope we bump into each other again and renew something of what we had.

But life moves us all on, and with my Victoria, my closest companion of 13 ½ years and our two kids, life resembles nothing of the past. Life moves on, but we have the capability to shape our lives. Forces of history, the will of God, events dear boy, they may all affect the bigger world around us, but that hardly imposes on our own sense of happiness like the bits that we were given the capacity to take control of. Our relationships overwhelmingly dominate whether we are sorted or we are dishevelled.

Victoria and Thomas emerge up a small mountain under the Five Sisters, NW Scotland in April.

This Christmas I want to recall to mind my God and Maker who has blessed me, my Nana who opened my eyes, my Mum and Dad who grew me well, my wife who has changed and challenged and charmed me, my kids who have wowed me, our extended families who have sustained us, our friends who have blessed us, and my enemies who have extended me (Victoria and the kids have no enemies you see). God bless you all, yes even you!

Victoria and the children send their love. Look at some of the movies on this blog page, and some of the pictures in the link frames to the right and top of this blog to see something of them, as stylised by my framing. If you don’t believe it's as pictured, then come and visit us...and that's a threat.

Merry Christmas, From Victoria and Andrew, Thomas and Evelyn.