David & Clare Bewick – Christmas 2006

It seems strange to start with last Christmas, but as I seem to have settled into one letter a year that is where we left off last time. Christmas 2005 was the great Bewick family reunion in Australia, all 17 Bewicks in one place at one time. In generational order that is Joan, then Mum, Dad and Julian, then the 3 boys with their better halves, Clare & me, Andrew & Lea and Peter & Stephanie, then the 4th generation of (P&S) Lockie, Sophie, Tim and Josh and (A&L) Samuel, Danielle and Simon. Mum and Dad had taken over the local B&B, which as the old village school, was ideal. Between that and their house we had plenty of room to bed everyone down and a big communal room to use for the main events.

For me the trip lived up to all my hopes and expectations, it was a wonderful chance to catch up with the family and get to know some of the newer members. It is unlikely that we will every get a 100% turnout like this again, but I hope we do.

Diving as ever has formed an important part of our year. Clare and I started with a week in Western Australia after the family Christmas. We had dragged the rebreathers round the world and got good use of them getting close to friendly fish life off Exmouth. The diving was all fairly shallow and it was the wrong time of year for the Whale Sharks, but good diving nonetheless.

We have both progressed our diving training and are now qualified to use a “trimix” gas supply. This means the use of helium to thin out the stuff we breathe, allowing deeper diving. We haven’t used the depth much yet, but the whole idea is to work up slowly. For those interested this means we can now use the rebreathers to their design maximum depth of 100m.

Unusually I got a chance to get some nice diving in that Clare couldn’t take part in. I was part of a tri-service expedition to the Maldives in Feb/Mar. We were trying to find a ditched WW II Catalina aircraft, which we did. However, we weren’t the first as the locals had salvaged the majority of the aircraft to turn it into pots and pans, but at least we brought back enough information to satisfy the RAF historical branch. For anyone who might like more information we ran a web site during the expedition which is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davidbarryball/ I was the official photographer and produced a video of the trip.

The diving theme of the year continued apace with both of us holidaying on a dive boat in the Red Sea at Easter. There were a lot of rebreather divers on this trip, with excellent support from the boat, so we got some excellent diving and made a lot of new friends. There are a number of world class wreaks in the Red Sea, which on a normal day have up to 18 large dive boats on them. As we were a very experienced group we did most of the week’s sites in the “wrong order”, which meant we had them to ourselves. A magical week. The end of an intensive 6 months diving was back in the UK again spending a week on a boat, this time travelling far off the west coast of Scotland to dive the islands of St Kilda. Clare & I have been here once before, but as it is some of the best scenic diving in the UK it was worth the flog out and back to get there again. We were blessed with good weather and saw the islands at their best.

Part of the reason for packing so much diving into the first half of the year is that I was due to change from a fairly stable desk job in London to a much more reactive one working at the UK’s Permanent Joint HQ at Northwood. In this job I’m always at 12 hours notice and sometimes at 4 hours notice to head off anywhere in the world and deal with crises. In fact within a month of joining I found myself in Tel Aviv with the job of liaison between UK forces and the Israeli Defence Forces as we evacuated 4500 people from the Lebanon in July. I then took command in Cyprus as we drew down forces. At one stage I had 3 RN ships, 6 helicopters and 1000ish personnel, a very interesting time!

However, as much as I like this new appointment it will be short lived. After some 18 months rehabilitation I had achieved the required fitness levels to start the job in the summer, but have subsequently had a few further problems with my back, with a couple of uncomfortable flare ups. I have now been medically downgraded and can no longer deploy, so will be moved to a “gentler” job whilst we try and fix me again. I’ve had another MRI scan which has confirmed that my L5S1 disk is not what it should be; in fact it’s not very much at all! There is some way to go before I have a final answer on the impact of this, but the options very from full recovery to a medical discharge. A replacement for me has been identified and will join Northwood after Christmas. I will take his job which is based in Portsmouth. I don’t know much about the new job yet, but my priority will be rehabilitation.

We have not done much work on the house this year, although there is now some skirting board in the barn and Clare has done some sprucing up of paintwork. We had a little work done on the roof as a decrepit soffit board was the likely culprit in allowing a family of field rats to take over one of the lofts. They have been evicted along with the insulation they had managed to contaminate, and we have had no further visitors as yet. Fingers crossed.

We both made Aunty Betty’s 90^th birthday calibrations, which was great fun. She continues to impress with more energy and generosity of spirit than most of the rest of us put together. I have no doubt that we will be back for an even bigger event in 10 years time!

The other big birthday of the year was Clare’s Mum (Brenda), who had a lovely lunch party at a local hotel followed by proper Yorkshire afternoon tea at home to celebrate her 70^th. This was again a great event with many family and friends there. Brenda did take a turn for the worse a few weeks later, and we had a worrying time for a while. However, some excellent care from Barnsley Hospital got her back on her feet, with a best guess of some sort of viral infection to blame. She has now been thoroughly tested in every possible way, and thankfully should recover fully from the episode.

We will be hosting the UK Bewicks and Brenda for Christmas this year, and wish you all the very best

for 2007.

P.S from Clare:

I’m still working on the Trent 1000 engine for the Boeing 787, but without having to go to Seattle this year. We’ve now got engines on test and the aircraft should fly next summer.

I’ve now almost got all the way around the garden once – tearing out some old shrubs this year and replacing them, and planting a lot more bulbs. There’s one corner left to “tame” next year, and then hopefully it will be maintenance from then on.

Cardhu and Talisker are now two, and are a bit less mad then they were, but still good fun. They’re in their usual place – a hammock on a radiator, theoretically for one cat!