To Old Friends And New Memories

Viv & Rob Kleinjan
Apr 27, 2024
8 min read

After Viv’s final surprise birthday party in the Netherlands we left together with Ayo to Don Papa our home in Austria. The house again made its next step; the main entrance was insulated and refurbished and our new fireplace was installed. On our first day we tried it but we were a bit too enthusiastic. We have learned now that we need to pre-heat the house otherwise the chimney remains too cold. When it is too cold the smoke can't get out of the chimney. It has to go somewhere, so in the room as we experienced.

Armin ordered 6 cube of wood for the fireplace. It was dropped in front of the house, we had to pile it up. First Natalia our neighbour came to help and suddenly, 5 more neighbours were helping out. Now this was done in a really fast time and afterwards we had a few beers on our patio.

We stayed there for a week. It always feels totally relaxing. A perfect house, a perfect wife, skiing and relaxing. While we were there Jack had his 29th birthday. He wanted a special keyboard to be able to compose his own music. I volunteered as his manager, but first we have to wait for his first hit.

We travelled together back with Stena Line from Hoek van Holland to Harwich. We took the day ferry and I worked from the boat, which actually went very well. The day ferry is faster so we arrived at home in the evening.

Next day I went back to work and did a small tour of the UK, London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Edinburgh and back to London. I had an Off Trade conference in Newcastle and Viv came over so at the end, so we stayed there for the weekend. Newcastle is an ‘interesting’ city, especially when it is crappy weather. During the day it wasn't looking great, but at night the city comes to life with clubs, discotheques and very scarcely dressed drunken young ladies. On Saturday we went to Edinburgh for one of the things on my English bucketlist, a 6 nation rugby match, Scotland against France. It was a great experience and we had brilliant seats. The match starts with a pied piper and I assume also the unofficial national anthem of Scotland, 500 miles from the Proclaimers. We were sitting at the West side of the stadium and had a great view of the Old Castle and skyline of Edinburgh, the've made the East side one ring lower lower. The match was intense and entertaining. It ended in the very last second of the match with a try of Scotland. If it was approved Scotland would have won. Everybody told us, it should have been approved, but after waiting for several minutes the Video Referee decided; no try. At football the referee would still be in the dressing room, protected by Police, his family would be in hiding. At rugby everybody shook hands and congratulated each other and went for a pint. What a great sportsmanship!

Directly afterwards Sil, Dana and the children Sep and Guusje came to London. We had a very nice dinner with them at a Spanish Restaurant called Iberico. We might have been a bit ambitious in our restaurant choice. We are too long out of children, but we had good food and a very nice dinner. Viv also joined them to the Harry Potter Experience. Officially it is announced as; Discover the magic of Warner Bros. Studio Tour London! Explore authentic sets, props, and costumes from the Harry Potter films. It would be nothing for me. I am not a Harry Potter fan. When Harry Potter is on television I am somewhere behind the couch. Viv was very enthusiastic when she came home. They've spent hours there, Guusje and Sep loved it too.

Every year we do 2 times a year our brewery visits where we update the locations on state of our business as well as to connect with them, since we as management team are far away and not always visible. This year I joined the trip to Hereford, our cidery. To get there you travel via Wales and you need to change trains in Newport. In Newport everything in the trainstation is bilingual. From there you take a slow train to Hereford. At every stop the station is announced in Welsh. It feels as being in another country. Viev and I will surely go back there. I also went to our Tadcaster brewery this year. The name of our brewery is John Smith’s. A beautiful brewery. If you have some time free then you should read about the 2 brothers Sam Smith and John Smith and their 2 breweries.

During the weekend we had lunch with Rachel and Ian at The Ivy at Covent Garden. We had a great time and lunch was fabulous. It was a belated birthday present, since they could not make it to Viev’s surprise birthday party in January.

Luckily we have almost always nothing to do ;-). So, we decided to have another week at home in Austria. Robin had two friends over from Zoeterwoude childhood, Lianne and Marlieke, who lives in Deventer ;-)The girls were learning how to ski and did also cross country. I've seen them only a few days, but it was fun and they introduced a few new games to us.

Hugo had been working in the garden and around the hot tub. He had been building a staircase down the mountain and made the hottub lay out and the structure's looking great. He has also started his pet project, building a private gym in one part of the garage. Step 1 is painting the walls and they painted beautiful mountain landscapes. We agreed with our neighbour Andre, that he will build a wall in the garage with an extra door. He will do this in May. I look forward for having it ready. When we left, Hugo and Robin stayed. Hugo finished his work around the house and he did great, when the weather was poorly he was applying for jobs.

Robin went back home. She and Armin had their own project at home during their holiday weeks.They made relaxing terrace at the front of their house where Daisy can ran freely and they've made a terrace at the back of their house with a barbecue. It looks really nice. Armin and his father did all of the work themselves. It looks great to be handy, saying me with my 2 left hands. Armin was driving with our car with a trailer and on it a shovel machine to dig in the garden. He was stopped by the police. His back lights weren't working, but then the police officer asked for the total weight of the machine and the trailer. It was too much over maximum weight and the fine was only 80 euro's. The police officer said," do what you have to do, when I drive off I can't see anything, can I?" He was lucky, he had a friendly police officer and a not too high fine that morning.

Viv travelled back by ferry again together with Monique Bracht. Monique is an old schoolfriend from Viv from Kindergarten. They also went to the same elementary school , middle and high school. Then after school they've lost contact for quite some time, but Facebook brought them back together. They had a few great days together and I only joined them during the weekend. They went to Camden and Monique wanted to see Harrods. I joined them to Mamma Mia, the musical. It was really good and we are now planning to take some friends to Abba, the Party.

Viv’s knee is getting worse and worse. She has been barely skiing this winter. When it is really bad she can hardly walk and the nights are painful too. When she uses a crutch it takes away the pressure from her leg and she gets a bit better mobility within a few days. She has been living with a bad knee now for a very long time, it's an old hockey injury from 1990, but it's starting to get worse. We went to a orthopaedic surgeon and he confirmed that the cartilage in her knee is gone, it's bone to bone. Based on the Xray he would recommend a knee replacement, but since she is still walking a lot and new knees have a limited lifetime, he also offered injections to delay the knee replacement. She decided to go for the injections.

Unfortunately there's not much difference with before the injections.

She also has been making some great paintings and I hope she will add some of them to the blog. I believe she is very talented and also has the typical artist thing that she can only paint when she has inspiration. My own Pablo Picasso could be famous, but likes to make paintings for friends and gives them as a present.

We went for a weekend to Warwickshire to visit Bill & Brenda, our friends from Poland. It's always a lot of fun with them. In the evening we went to Stratford-Upon-Avon. The birthplace of Shakespeare in 1564. Funnily enough also Bill comes from that area and he even went to the same school! No, he is not living forever, the school is simply very old from 1200 something. In the evening they took us to a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play was called ‘Ben & Imo’. Until halftime we were struggling a bit with what the play was about. In the break we were explained that Ben is short for Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holtz. He is writing the opera Gloriana for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was a play of almost 2.5 hours and done by only 2 people and they knew every line by heart. The next morning we went for a tour with Mintie. Mintie is their classic VW bus. The sun was out and we drove to a picturesque little village in the Cotswolds called Stow-on-the-Wold. Brenda and I bought some lovely jewellery.

Finally Theresa and Steve Cranmer were coming to London. We know them for a long time but now they were here! Last time we had seen them was at the wedding of their daughter Lauren in Tampa, Florida when we lived in Nigeria, this was February 2022. We know each other from Munich and Jake, their son, and our Jack, were really good friends. And Hugo always adored Jake. Steve and Theresa have been before in London, so there was not really a touristy program. They really came to catch up with us and we had a great time together.

Friday night Viv organised a surprise for them. We went to the flight club at Victoria. There came Rachel and Ian Bray as well. In the afternoon Susie March came to our house to surprise them. Her husband Rupert came to the flight club in the evening. The flight club is basically like bowling but than with darts. We thought this way it's better for them to stay awake after a short night and a long flight for them.

Saturday Viv and I went for the first time to Tower of London and visited the crown jewels, a big wish of Steve. We had dinner in China Town, again really good and went to Greenwich, where there is a nice market as well as the Cutty Sark. For those who don't know, Cutty Sark represents the pinnacle of clipper ship design and was one of the fastest ships of its day. Aged 14 years, Cutty Sark started recording remarkably fast passage times, under her Master Richard Woodget, and became the dominant ship in bringing wool from Australia to England.

Steve and Theresa left on Monday second Easter Day and started their tour of Europe.