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After a strenuous climb up a path made from slate-like rocks that clank and tinkle harshly as they knock together under your feet , you gain the summit to find a stupendous view across the prairie in all directions , from the Rockies many miles to the west seemingly to the Great Lakes . As well as French she will be taking English , Biology , Maths with Statistics , and - - as a new subject - - Classics . We visited Steve Matheson and Phil McCrea , old co-conspirators from Essex university all those years ago , who had n't seen Anna since she was a toddler ! Ian 's sister Pippa and husband John were with us , and we had an unforgettably nice day - - which quite converted Carol to the maritime life . The two of them got on extremely well and had a great time . But one day she decided it was time to come home , and the next week she took matters into her own hands and flew back as a surprise , arriving on the doorstep the day after Ian 's birthday . He 's tall - - completely dwarfing both of us ( ok , ok , no great feat ) , looking down from an awesome height . A few years ago we started to put our letters on the World-Wide Web , and have occasionally corresponded with strangers who notice them , but to come up on The Guardian 's radar - - we were flabbergasted . First the hand-washing : they put a bowl underneath and pour water over your hand . There were about twenty separate venues and we sampled most of them . You start by trying to keep your fingers clean by sandwiching chunks of food between bread , but it 's hopeless . She does n't like it when the boat tips over too much , so is secretly relieved when Alex 's second hat blows off and master mariner Ian takes us about to rescue it . It 's lovely to hear her sit down to play in a quiet moment for the sheer fun of it . Over the years our many visitors have toured New Zealand and returned with wondrous tales : on this trip we checked some of them out ourselves . There was plenty of wine for us in the interval so the second half was a bit ropy - - but , fortunately , so was the audience by that time . Luckily for us Jake and his father are skilled in car maintenance and saved us a fortune in mechanics bills . Also , she has become frustrated by the extra constraints that are an inevitable part of study at a boarding school . It was a most enjoyable and sociable time . By now you've long given up trying to keep your fingers clean , your banana leaf is running with juices from the food , your legs are cramped , your bottom aches from the hard floor , and the kids have given up trying to stifle their laughter . Anna made her own plans to visit friends ( as your children grow , you sometimes just do n't want to know exactly what they're doing ) . It 's the first time she 'd taken on any kind of music programming , and found her years of Calgary Early Byrd experience an enormous help . We drove over the hills to the coast : it is astonishing how after a maze of inner-city freeways surrounded by concrete industrial wasteland you emerge quickly into narrow country roads winding through rolling farmland and sequoia groves . It took just one call to discover that there was an " armed offender " callout , and the local rugby club fifty yards away was abuzz with rifle-wielding cops . We met them in Graz in 1985 , and have since visited them in Newfoundland and Bonn ; they have visited us here .