Over the past few months, I’ve been copying and pasting all my previous blogs into Word, editing them, and in some cases, completely rewriting sections that were clearly not up to par. I set myself this task after being (thankfully) incorrectly diagnosed with bowel cancer, thinking it would make a rather meaningful Christmas present for Charlotte, Jamie and Sarah, and, with any luck, serve as a small legacy for the future.

The finished product comprises just under 1,500 A4 pages, from which ten books of roughly 250 pages each have been created in PDF format. A local company bravely agreed to print them. Since May, while waiting for Sue’s operation, I’ve used any scrap of spare time to collate the blogs. Being mostly housebound, supporting Sue and juggling the glamorous world of household chores, I often found myself working on the books at 4 or 5 in the morning. Early bird gets the word count, apparently.

It was only recently that I discovered that every time I re-edited a blog on WordPress, the system sent an email alert to subscribers. Given the sheer number of edited posts, this must have been maddening for some, like digital whack-a-mole in their inbox. My sincere apologies to anyone who thought I’d taken to compulsive blogging at dawn.

As of 7 December, Charlotte is still suffering from an unknown allergy or infection and remains unable to eat properly. She is waiting for a series of allergy tests to be scheduled. We are, as you’d imagine, very concerned.

Despite everything, the family have been embracing the festive spirit, decorating houses, attending bazaars and pottering around Christmas markets.

Sarah and the family have launched a delightful little venture called House of Cast, which is great fun and brings in a bit of pocket money. This year, Alice has been able to help and has revealed an inner entrepreneur, taking to selling plaster casts, such as a duck, with remarkable enthusiasm. Little Archie is still far too young for commerce and is far more interested in investigating the other stalls, often at speed.

Lee and Sarah have also adopted a festive tradition beloved worldwide: Elf on the Shelf. Alice and Archie adore discovering what mischief the naughty elves have cooked up overnight. If we’re being honest, the parents enjoy it even more.

Living in a small village with an excellent community spirit, the family throw themselves into many local events. This year, Alice even made the front page of the village magazine after joining the crowd who greeted Santa on his sleigh.

They also managed to catch a performance of The Snowman at the local theatre, an essential ingredient in any proper Christmas season.

Meanwhile, Jamie and Ruth, devotees of Christmas markets, took things up a notch this year and drove to Belgium in the Lamborghini. The ferry crossing from Dover proved… interesting, as the Lambo had to board with the HGVs because it’s far too low to ascend the normal car ramp. As well as visiting the markets in Bruges and Antwerp, they met up with friends from Jamie’s FXLearning business.

Annoyingly, on the 7th of December, the TV lost its signal, and the upstairs en-suite toilet valve decided to give up the ghost as well. On investigation, the mast-head amplifier for the TV was showing an overload, and, despite swapping the base unit with a spare, it still refused to latch onto a signal.

The valve, once dismantled, looked perfectly innocent but stubbornly refused to let water into the cistern. The following day, I bought a new valve and replaced the defunct one. Feeling diligent, I used a small dab of Plumber’s Mait to ensure a decent seal. However, when it came to putting the lid back on the container, it had mysteriously vanished from the en-suite floor. Despite a thorough search by Sue and me, it was nowhere to be found.

A few weeks ago, I lost an SD card that disappeared from the mantelpiece, only to reappear two days later as if nothing had happened. Strange times indeed.

I arranged for an aerial fitter to check the TV system the following day, assuming he doesn’t vanish into thin air as well.

On the day Storm Bram swept across the country (9th December), Sue discovered a small lump in her abdomen at the site of her keyhole surgery. After phoning the hospital and making an unsuccessful attempt to join the telephone queue for a GP appointment, she made a dash to the surgery, where the earliest available appointment was on Friday morning. She was advised that it appeared to be a surgical issue, and that the Friday consultation would determine what action, if any, needed to be taken. She was not experiencing any pain.

With a storm blowing through Leicestershire, it was certainly not the ideal moment to start putting up any outdoor Christmas decorations, but to distract myself and encourage a little festive spirit, I braved the wind and showers. A couple of days earlier, I had placed the snowstorm projector in front of the garage in readiness for the cartoon Father Christmas image that now covers the garage door. Once it’s dark and the projector is switched on, it looks quite Christmassy!

After six weeks of being more or less housebound, punctuated only by an early-morning bike ride and the weekly pilgrimage to Lidl on a Saturday to break the monotony of domestic chores, today (the 10th), Sue and I finally escaped. We drove to Corby for a spree at the discount Company Shop, followed by a viewing of the film Nuremberg at the Corby Savoy Cinema.

The film tells the story of a U.S. Army psychiatrist who finds himself in a dramatic psychological duel with none other than Hermann Göring. Not exactly light entertainment, but we found it thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking all the same. Russell Crowe delivered a commanding performance as the leader of the Nazi Party, one of those roles where you’re impressed, unsettled, and relieved he doesn’t live next door.

Ironically, the real psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, attempted to write a book about his experiences. It flopped at the time, possibly because people weren’t quite ready for his central warning: that fascism could also take root in America if its citizens weren’t vigilant. Some 65 years on, one can’t help but notice how uncannily prescient that cautionary note is turning out to be.

After her Friday morning appointment with the doctor, Sue returned to Willow Bank and reported that he believed the swelling or lump in her abdomen was not a hernia but either scar tissue or possibly a swollen blood vessel. It had already reduced in size since it was first noticed, and he advised that it was nothing of major concern and should continue to diminish over time. She should monitor it and make another appointment if it becomes painful or increases in size.

With Sue continuing to improve and now able to drive, on the 15th, I met up with John Lee at the Normanton Hotel on the shores of Rutland Water, while Sue delivered Christmas cards to friends around Market Harborough. As is our tradition, John and I meet each year to exchange cards and enjoy a walk followed by lunch. For the third year running, however, in his haste to meet up, he had forgotten to bring his card and promised instead to post it.

Although showers were forecast throughout the morning, the weather remained dry for our five-mile ramble along the reservoir’s north shore and across the dam, before striking out into the Rutland countryside and returning to the hotel for an excellent fish-and-chip lunch. John appeared to have recovered well from a recent knee operation and had no difficulty negotiating the two field gates we had to clamber over.

We encountered no other walkers and, somewhat surprisingly, were the only people taking lunch at the hotel, although several couples were enjoying drinks in the bar. During our two-and-a-half-hour tramp, we once again put the world to rights, politically and sportingly, and caught up on one another’s family news.

After heavy rain overnight, the following day, Sue and I drove through several flooded roads to attend Alice’s school Nativity play. We arrived in Newbold Verdon in the late morning to deliver Christmas presents and to enjoy a coffee and a chat with Sarah, before walking to the school and joining the other parents and relatives eager to watch their young ones perform.

We managed to secure seats in the front row, just a couple of metres from a grinning Alice. She was both a singer and one of the narrators, introducing the scenes and describing the story as this (thankfully) very traditional tale unfolded. In the past, Sue and I have seen and helped to organise dozens of Nativity plays, but it is always special when one of your own tribe is involved. Little Alice did brilliantly: she delivered her lines confidently, knew all the actions to the songs and sang beautifully. Well done to Mum for all the practice that clearly took place at home.

On a very different note, a few days ago, a video advert for a weapon appeared on my Facebook feed. It showed and described a fold-up, plastic rifle-like contraption powered by elastic bands, firing hardened plastic balls. It was said to be accurate enough to smash a glass bottle at 60 metres, and was claimed to be undetectable by airport security measures and entirely legal. Shocked, I completed Facebook’s complaint form, and today I received an email from the Google Trust and Safety Team confirming that my complaint had been upheld and that action would be taken against the advert.

I have to admit that I find it only mildly reassuring that the system appears to work. Surely there are algorithms capable of identifying material like this before it ever reaches a wider audience, and of removing it before the damage is done.

On a bitterly cold Wednesday morning, the long-suffering television was finally cured of its reception woes. Promptly at 9.30 am, an engineer arrived, to my mild surprise, a woman, accompanied by a male helper. In a brisk 15 minutes, they had replaced the base amplifier and restored normal service. Cost: £129. Expensive, perhaps, but at least we can now watch programmes without having to fiddle with the satellite channels.

While Sue popped next door to see Zaineb, newly returned and excited from a holiday in Antigua, I cycled into town for some grocery shopping. On my return, I set about redistributing logs from a builder’s sack into bins behind the shed, a task that felt sounds pointless but made transportation into the house on cold and wet evenings much more convenient.

After lunch, Sue went off again, this time to see Lynne for yet more coffee and an extended chat,  while I busied myself in the kitchen preparing what may well rank as the worst chilli ever produced in a domestic setting. I unearthed a jar of Chinese chilli bean sauce lurking in the cupboard and, in a moment of reckless optimism, decided to use it. The heat was ferocious and the flavour distinctly hostile.

That evening, we bravely managed to eat about half of it: Sue with a small bowl and, foolishly, I with a much larger one. The remainder was placed beneath the fir tree as an offering, to see what the local badgers and foxes might make of it later that night. Earlier in the day, I had felt what seemed to be the start of a bout of cystitis, so I had increased my intake of fluids to flush it out of my system. It appeared to be working, but I had not reckoned on the “Chinese chilli effect”, which was to have dire consequences over the following days.

I woke feeling extremely nauseous and quite unwell. I spent the day in bed trying to recover before attending a Christmas dinner with my rugby chums later that evening. Meanwhile, Sue retrieved the jar of chilli from the dustbin and discovered that it was two-and-a-half years out of date. I had bought a couple of jars from a large Chinese food outlet next to the Royal Hospital in Leicester around January or February. The jar still in the cupboard turned out to be three-and-a-quarter years out of date, and it promptly joined its partner in the bin.

What of the badgers, you may ask? Along with our resident fox, they showed far more sense than I did and left the pile of Chinese IED well alone. However, during the morning, our four squirrels found it to their liking and, seemingly, suffered no ill effects. I, on the other hand, attempted to attend the dinner and had to be ferried home to bed by Jim, having managed to consume nothing more than a quarter of a tomato from the pâté starter.

By the following day, the nausea had subsided, but the cystitis had taken hold with a vengeance. I spent the day in pain and in excruciating burning sensation whenever I passed urine (every five to ten minutes). What an evil and pointless infection.

At 5 p.m., I rang 111, followed by an aborted journey to the Corby Urgent Treatment Centre, with Sue driving. We only made it to the end of the road before it became obvious that I could not continue. Returning home, it was another call to 111 and a promised appointment at the nearby St Luke’s Hospital. At 8.30 p.m., I received a call from a doctor who, after a few questions, sent a prescription to the nearest pharmacy (two minutes away), which Sue went to collect. Unfortunately, Sue and I had booked to see a film at the Harborough Theatre that evening and had to miss it.

Over the next few days, I remained in bed. The pain is hard to describe, but many times during the night, had a pair of scissors been to hand, they would have been used. Sleep was impossible, and the burning sensation utterly exhausting.

On the fourth day (Sunday), Sue and I were due to travel to Tenbury Wells to visit family friend Sheila, and to exchange presents with her and Sue’s sister Philippa, who was coming up from Devon with her husband, Paul. This, too, had to be cancelled. Paul had been ill earlier in the week, and his attendance had been in doubt, so I suppose he was relieved.

On Saturday, Jamie and Ruth travelled to London for his business Christmas party, while Sarah and her family continued what seems an exhausting round of pre-Christmas activities.

On the Monday before Christmas, most of the family descended on Willow Bank to exchange presents and enjoy an ice cream in town. Unfortunately, neither Sue nor I were able to join them.

The following day, the fifth day of medication and my seventh day confined to bed, there was still little improvement, so I rang 111 again. By 8 a.m., Sue was driving me to A&E at Kettering Hospital. By noon, we were back on our way home, having provided urine and blood samples and been prescribed a new five-day course of antibiotics. It was back to bed, hoping this time it would work.

While Sue and I were occupied with the hospital visit, Charlotte spent the day in the kitchen, busy preparing elements of Christmas dinner. This year, it would be only the Palmer-Shahs, Sue, me, and family friend Doreen sitting down to dine. Jamie would be celebrating with Ruth’s parents, while Sarah would be entertaining Lee’s parents. Jamie, Ruth and Nala travelled to Manchester to produce a YouTube video for his business and, as usual, enjoyed a visit to the Christmas Market.

Over the last few months, I set myself the task of thoroughly editing the family blog into A4 book form. Each volume runs to around 250 pages, and, thankfully, I managed to complete the work before illness set in. The finished books were printed as ten copies, with one batch each for Charlotte, Jamie, Sarah and myself. I then went on to convert them into e-book form.

The books are intended as Christmas presents for each of our children. I hope to continue adding to them as the years roll by, so that they serve as a lasting record of what the Palmers have been up to for decades to come.

Over the Christmas period, I continued to be unwell. Christmas Day was spent on my own at Willow Bank, clutching a hot water bottle, drinking as much liquid as possible in an effort to flush the bugs from my system, and watching Netflix. Sue collected Doreen as planned, and the two of them enjoyed a festive lunch, followed by tea and games with Charlotte and her family. Sue returned later that evening with a plate of Christmas fare for me to enjoy.

On the 27th, Jamie, Ruth and Joey arrived to drop off Nala before jetting off to Istanbul for a week. I had still not managed to shake off the cystitis and, the following day, Sue once again took me to Kettering Hospital for further poking, blood tests and urine samples. The outcome was yet another course of different antibiotics.

The following morning, after another bad night with very little sleep, we made yet another journey to Kettering Hospital. Following further blood and urine tests, I came away with a different set of antibiotics (that’s three lots so far). As we had Nala with us, Sue dropped me off at A&E before driving to Charlotte’s to wait for my phone call. As before, it took around three hours to be seen, assessed and diagnosed, and we were back home by lunchtime.

That afternoon and evening, Sue and I had planned to join Charlotte’s and Sarah’s families to see Cinderella in Kettering. Alas, I was still far too unwell and far too dependent on the proximity of a toilet to accompany them. Instead, I spent a quiet evening at home watching television with Nala.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We woke on New Year’s Eve to a hard frost of –4°C, the first genuinely cold morning since last winter. Many of the plants in the garden have stubbornly carried on growing; the carrots and beetroot would normally have been frosted off a month ago and died back by now, yet they are still growing and, unlike me, look remarkably healthy. Late the previous afternoon, I covered the rows with fleece to protect them from the forecast frost and plan to leave them under cover until the next vaguely warm day. By then, I hope to be able to dig some of them up and, rather ironically, put them into the freezer.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been taking Nala for very short walks around the block. She becomes visibly excited when she sees me getting ready, but as soon as we reach the road, she refuses to go any further. With a great deal of cajoling, we slowly manage to reach about halfway round the circuit, at which point she recognises exactly where she is and promptly drags me back home at speed. Willow Bank is clearly her safe sanctuary. She is very much a garden dog and takes great delight in sniffing her way around every inch of it.

New Year’s Eve began with Sue and me tucked up in bed by 10 p.m. Early celebratory fireworks were detonated at 10 and 11 p.m., and then, of course, at midnight, World War Three appeared to break out in Harborough. Thankfully, it didn’t last long.

Those young and hardy enough to be out celebrating were rewarded with a frost-free night, but at 3°C, a warm duvet felt far more appealing. Meanwhile, Jamie and Ruth were celebrating somewhere in the mountains of Turkey, facing an eight-hour drive back to Istanbul the following day before flying home to the UK.

As the year rapidly draws to a close, the wider world appears to be in a troubling state. Trump’s America feels broken, Putin’s Russia is on its economic and moral knees, Europe remains divided, and Xi Jinping’s China is emboldened by the vacuum this leaves behind. The signs are not encouraging for the future, unless, perhaps, you speak Mandarin. When only around 46 per cent of Americans can read beyond the level of an eleven-year-old, and many of the rest show little interest in anything beyond their own borders, it is hardly surprising that few recognise the storm that is gathering.

Some are pinning their hopes on the 2026 elections to undo what was so rashly voted for, but I doubt they will ever take place. It is not in the current administration’s interest for them to do so. More likely, emergency war powers will be invoked, perhaps against Venezuela or even Iran, conveniently justifying the suspension of elections. There is even talk of an American move on Greenland.

When experienced and capable leaders in both government and the military are dismissed and replaced by those whose sole qualification is their unwillingness to say no to Trump, widely regarded as little more than Russia’s puppet, it is hard to see who has the courage or authority to stand up and reverse the tide. I see no one equal to that task, and I fear it will not end well for what was once a great nation.

Personally, Christmas and New Year 2025 were memorable, though not for the usual enjoyment of family festivities, but because of an illness that prevented me from attending any of the get-togethers.

New Year’s Day dawned and, for the first time since 18 December, I felt as though I had turned a corner and was finally starting to feel better. With Sue now much more mobile, and the worrying lump from a couple of weeks earlier having completely disappeared with no repercussions, perhaps normality can at last begin to return. Perhaps it is New Year optimism, but I rather think not.