A day of sadness, pride and. . . surprise.

Despite my prolonged absence, this Blog has now passed 25,000 hits! Thanks to all for your continued support.

Time has marched on during my silent period, and the school term mentioned as starting in my last blog.... has now come to an end already! We collected the children from school, and we attended a tea to say 'farewell' to the Headmaster, Dr John Bradshaw, who left the school at the end of last term.

Those of you who have read my book will recall me commenting on John; I have the highest regard for him because, in my opinion, every decision he made was with the interests of the girls under his care at heart - surely the sole requisite of a Headmaster? He made a point of knowing each child in the school (over 400 children) in detail - their achievements, failures, strengths and weaknesses, and all this in spite of the fact that he is totally blind.

John, his wife Sue, and his guide dog Sabre have been very much part of Peterhouse, and my children have benefited enormously from having had him as their headmaster. I am extremely sorry to see him go, and wish him all the very best.

On the final day of term, a farewell tea was held for him to enable parents and students alike to wish him well. Fittingly the tea was held on the lawn outside the Chapel - the physical, spiritual and cultural core of school life.

For me the most poignant image of the day was seeing John say good-bye to his Head Girl of 2014. Those of you who have followed the Blog regularly will remember my posting of 11/11/13 titled "Bats, bangs and Peter's house" (you can access all past blogs at the top right of this page) in which I mentioned the appointment of Heidi as Head Girl for 2014.

This is Heidi saying 'Farewell' to Dr Bradshaw

So that was a really sad day, and I wish John, Sue and Sabre all the very best in the future.

And the 'pride' mentioned in the Blog title?

Well at the Final Assembly, my eldest daughter was awarded an Honours Tie. This is the highest award presented by the school, and is only given out extremely rarely. Both my daughter and the Head Girl were awarded Honours Ties, and this was a source of great pride for me.

It obviously had an impact on my daughter too, because she came home from school, went into her room and started tidying up - collecting all the unwanted debris and generally sorting things out. Having had to pack up and then unpack her bedroom in order to move house (she alone accounted for no less than 5 packing crates of 'ornaments'), my wife and I are convinced that she has some genetic material inherited from a squirrel somewhere along the line, because she has so many 'treasures' stashed away. Hence this clean-out was unprecedented and welcome! And very surprising.

After half an hour of tidying, sorting and putting aside those items which she no longer felt she needed, she emerged from her bedroom and went to throw all the unwanted items away...

So a day of sadness at saying 'good-bye' to John and Sue, pride in the award, and complete surprise at the clean-out.

Small though it may have been.

Have a great day!

Gamekeeper turned Poacher!

The Blog returns after a 2-month hiatus!

Once again a long silence - 2 months plus, in fact, but connectivity, moving house, Retrenchment Boards and auctions have somewhat intruded. Then in the course of the move, my camera underwent an alternative ownership program, and I lost all the pics not yet transferred; I am now using my daughters camera. And to top everything off, my computer got sick and though still not fully recovered, is at least usable.

So this is a catch-up blog, just to let you all know we are still alive!

Back then, to January

At the end of January we held our auction sale at which the entire contents of La Rochelle went under the hammer. Well, not quite entire - there were two burned lampshades that even the inimitable Mr Holland was unable to palm off on unsuspecting buyers. But everything else went during the course of the day.

Including the Hotel cat - Shupa!

Here then, is a pic of some of the beds lined up in the car-park awaiting buyers....

 The day after the sale the girls came home from school to find the house and hotel completely empty, and two rather bemused-looking parents waiting for them. There were a few tears as the reality of leaving their home of the past 14 years (Courtney had been born while we were at La Rochelle) sunk in, and then we packed the car and went to Nyanga for the week-end, because we no longer had any furniture - all our household goods had gone into storage..

Earlier in January - about the 6th, I think, the children had gone back to boarding school, and because Cara had to start at 07.00 on the Monday morning, we had traveled to Marondera the day before, and spent the night at Malwatte - a very basic accommodation option close to the school.

The amazing thing about our stay there was the fact that I used to set out for a day's shooting from that very building as a kid of about 15 years old. It had been a house occupied by the Maberleys whose son Will and I used to take a couple of rifles and disappear for the whole day in the bush. The old house has now been converted to Guest Accommodation.

Here are the three girls at dawn on the veranda of that building - ready for school...

Cara, our eldest, has her own study this year as a senior pupil, and she took no time at all in settling into her school accommodation.....

By Zim standards, she is extremely well looked after in terms of her bedsit/study, and even has her own bathroom with shower, basin and toilet. Lucky kid!

Having settled the girls back into school after our Nyanga trip, we made our way to Harare where we moved into a cottage in the garden of some friends and past guests at La Rochelle - the Jongelings. They offered us the cottage in their garden for then next two months at a very reasonable rate (compared to the rest of Harare!), so from being their Hosts to their Guests was a quick transition - and thus the Gamekeepers became the Poachers.

The cottage was quite small - here are some photos of our Lounge, our Dining Room, our Study/Office, the children's bedrooms, and our bedroom...

Ok - so it was only one photo... but it does indeed show all of the above! Our new home was quite small, but definitely cosy, and very much appreciated!

We have now moved into our permanent Harare home - more pictures to follow. Suffice to say we are safe, settled, and hopefully I will post on a more regular basis. And maybe one day soon I will find a job?

Have a great day!

Pictures of before....and after. Scary stuff.

So the times, they have been a-changing at La Rochelle Hotel. (Just in case I am accused of saying they have been a-changing at La Rochelle itself!).

We have been busy fellows over the last few days, and the entire contents of the hotel are now in the lounge (general furniture), the dining room (cutlery, crockery, glassware, kitchen equipment - 'small'), Stateroom (sheets, pillows/cases, blankets, duvets, curtains, fire extinguishers etc) and the back of the kitchen (washing machines, fridges, freezers, ovens, and the hotel cat - Shupa)

So today is just a quick tour of La Rochelle - before..... and after. Ooooops - make that La Rochelle Hotel!

Here is the Lounge - before we started moving stuff around - laid up for a Christmas Dinner that we hosted...

And here is the same Lounge today. With 'stuff' all ready to be either sold or burned...

Here is how the kitchen looked before. This photo was taken during service of the last dinner we served - on 30th December 2013.

This is how the kitchen looks today - tonight in fact! This photo was taken from the exact same spot.

 

 

On the night of the 31st December, we hosted our usual New Years' Eve party - where folk with kids of roughly the same age as our all come to the hotel, bringing with them their drinks and food of some sort. This year we asked everyone to bring meat for a braai, and then either a salad or a pudding, and we just have a party - with no charge for the folk attending at all. It is our way of saying 'thank you and good luck' to local community every year. We had about 160 people, and had to put up a marquee because the weather was a little odd. As it turned out - we had a clear night.

 

So this is how the hotel verandah looked on New Years' Eve 2013/14...

 

 

 

and how it looks today ten days later... slightly different!

 

 

This is the dining room as it is today - with crockery, equipment and glassware scattered around...

The final picture is of the dining-room - as it was.

And this is, for me, a rather poignant picture, because it is the very last dinner served at La Rochelle Hotel, on the evening of 30th December 2013. Just as we had hosted a fantastic family group over Christmas, so too were we blessed with a fantastic group over New Year. In the fourteen Festive Seasons we have spent at La Rochelle, these two groups were the very best we have ever had the pleasure of hosting over this period.

And disturbing too, because when I told these very last guests that this was the very last dinner to be served (a 'Last Supper', sort of), and how sad and forlorn I was that it had come to this, they all seemed to find great humour at my predicament, and the laughter at my expense went on well into the night....

Not only the guests - if you look again, you will see the waiters also laughing at me.

Which is exactly the way that our time at La Rochelle should be remembered! Decent food, drinkable wine, great company, and above all, lots of laughter.

Have a great day!

A brain drain - or a drain brain?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I very rarely devote an entire post to one person. However today, for about the third time ever, I shall do so, because I have some photographs of my daughter which cannot go unpublished!

A couple of readers queried my statement in the post about 'hats' that was published on 2nd December 2013, where-in I mentioned that we had been to South Africa to take one of my daughters for medical evaluation. Folk asked which daughter, and what was the problem?

This, then, is my daughter whom we took to South Africa...

The problem goes all the way back to February, when she started complaining of sore calves after sport, and she found that whenever she went on a long bus journey, her legs 'went to sleep'. Initially we thought it was a torn or damaged hamstring, but he situation developed to the point that when she swum 2 lengths in a gala (swim meet) in November, she cried from the pain. This is a kid who won a gold medal at a Level One Gala in South Africa a couple of years ago competing against children from all around Southern Africa.

She also plays squash, and in January was selected to play for Zimbabwe in her age group at a tournament in Harare...

Those of you who know her, will attest that she never does anything by halves, and this was a worrying time for us.

Here she is - in a typical pose of quiet reflection. (This photo was taken as she was studying hard for an important mathematics exam)....

So what 'evaluations were done - not just in South Africa, but also in Zimbabwe? Well, the list is impressive. All in all she underwent 3 MRI's, an X-ray, an ultrasound scan, a CT scan, and a nerve conduction test. She also had a brain scan, and these are the images I would like to share with you today. Here is the top view:

Then  the side view:

 

Then there is this - most astonishing picture, which proves that not only is her brain devoid of tumours and swellings, but it is, incredibly, of normal size! I sincerely hope her teachers will print it out and keep it as proof to show her when next she does something unexpected...

So - my daughter has a normal brain.

Hard to believe, isn't it?

In conclusion, the problem was eventually traced to a viral infection of the nerves in her leg, and she is now taking medication which will, hopefully, remedy the problem.

A large and sincere 'thank you' to everyone who included her, and us, in their prayers over this most difficult time.

Have a great day!

Carols, snoozes and fans everywhere!

Greetings, and a very Merry Christmas to one and all!

It has been some time since my last post - a Conference and then the build-up to Christmas have meant that I have been a busy fellow, and not able to spare the half hour-plus needed to get a blog together. Apologies, and hopefully things will calm down enough for me to write a little more regularly

So - yesterday was Christmas. Our last at La Rochelle and what an extraordinary Christmas we had!

Those of you familiar with the hotel will know that I normally cater for 120+ on Christmas Day, and we usually serve lunch out by the pool. But this year, with the uncertainty as to how many staff we would have left, I decided to just cater for the in-house guests. The Lunch itself was unremarkable, with Haddock Pate, Tomato Soup with Gin, Baked Ham in Sherry/mustard Glaze or Stuffed Chicken, followed by Malt/Caramel/Chocolate Ice-cream or Brandied Fruit Pudding with Coffee and Mince Pies to end. Pretty standard stuff.

What was remarkable, extraordinary, and quite frankly very special, was the Carol Service we had on Christmas morning after breakfast. The hotel had been booked by a family, and they decided that they would like to have a carol service, instead of driving 17km into Mutare to Church. We also had staying with us an extremely talented pianist...... but no piano in the hotel.

So - what to do?

Quite simple really - after breakfast all the Guests wandered down to the school, where there is a piano. This photo is of the walk home, but you get the general idea: guests and family all over the show:

At the start of the service our pianist checked the instrument. The school was a little hot, but no-one seemed to mind, and we had seven carols and seven readings. Having watched the 'Kings Carol Service' (from Cambridge) on television the previous day, I can safely state that while we may not have matched their performance, we certainly didn't fall far short of it! Indeed, our participants far outshone their erstwhile counterparts in England for grace and decorum. Here is photographic evidence of the La Rochelle Christmas Service of 2013:

Not the most traditional of Christmas decorations - but colourful all the same. And painted palms on the walls instead of the usual pine tree....

For such a small gathering, (and here I am being a little modest), our singing was excellent! 'Hark the herald angels', 'Away in a manger', and 'Once in Royal David's city' rang out through the mountains with much enthusiasm

'Thank you' to our guests for an amazing and special memory!

After the service, Christmas lunch was served in the hotel lounge, and while I cooked for that, my family went into Mutare and had a Christmas lunch with my wife's cousin's family...

With my work done in a hot kitchen on a hot day, and with the family having fun in Mutare, there was just one course of action to be taken that afternoon. Two good friends and I climbed onto my daughters bed - which has the best breeze through the windows in the whole house, I changed into a dry shirt, and we put our heads down:

And thus was Christmas Day at la Rochelle 2013.

So what was the highlight of  the day? Well, my vote goes to the 'opening of the presents ceremony' because, quite by coincidence, two of our daughters asked for exactly the same thing. So we bought them each what they had asked for.

The burning question is this.... which of my daughters do you think has been extra good this year, and which has been really rather naughty. See if you can tell:

 

Have a special holiday, and Merry Christmas!

Odd things that have happened.

 

Some really odd happenings. Today I have a melange of strange occurrences - and all quite interesting.

To begin with I have a copy of a report by Cynthia Hind - who was the top Ufologist in Zimbabwe before her death a couple of years ago. This report was brought to my attention by a previous guest - Patrice. As Della and I are shortly to leave La Rochelle, I thought it prudent to publish this article so that someone may remember it in the future. Whether you believe or not - it is indeed interesting!

Those of you who have been to La Rochelle may have heard me tell the story of the UFO landing which took place at the property in 1981. It was, and remains, the second-best-documented UFO 'incident' in Zimbabwe - the best-documented being the landing at a school in Ruwa. Della and I, I am convinced, actually saw that craft.... but we were not in Ruwa - we were in Victoria Falls. We were sitting at the outside bar at the Elephant Hills Hotel when we saw something very strange in the night sky the day before the kids at the school reported their encounter. But that is another story.

Here then, the La Rochelle incident. A contemporary report:

Location. La Rochelle near Mutare, Zimbabwe
Date: August 12 1981
Time: 1800

Twenty laborers returning from work in the fields at six o’clock, saw a fireball rolling across the grounds of La Rochelle, a Forestry Commission station some nine kilometers from Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe. In charge of the group was Clifford Muchena and he was as stunned as the others; they watched the one and a half meter diameter fireball move from one side of the lawns to the other, and then roll up the sloping lawn to an observation tower attached to the main house. “It walked up the wall of the tower” said Clifford “and entered the top window---then it burst into flame.”
Clifford rushed to ring the warning bell at the side of the house, to call one of the Game Wardens to come quickly. As he was ringing the bell, the fire ‘gathered into a ball again, came down the tower wall’ past Clifford, and then burst into flames again when it reached the Fantasy, an outbuilding which used to house the ex-owner’s orchids. Clifford ran to try and douse the flames, when he saw three men standing there with their backs to him. He was sure one of them was Andrew Connolley, a Game Warden and his Supervisor. He called out ‘Mr. Connolley, Mr. Connolley’ and slowly the men turned around, whereupon Clifford fell to the ground.
“I couldn’t see their faces because there was so much light shining from them that I had to put my hands up to protect my eyes. They were wearing shiny overalls…”
The power from the light forced Clifford to his knees and he remained there until the light went out. When he looked again, both the fireball and the men were gone.
“All the time I was very frightened” he said. Indeed the women in the compound, witnesses to the sighting, had run off into the bush with their children and were not easily persuaded to return. All the witnesses, including Naison Sampindi, Clifford Muchena, Eunice Kachiti, were convinced that what they had seen were ghosts, the spirits of their ancestors. Probably a shave, a lost spirit who has not found his way home because his descendants have not done their duty by him.

HC addition # 372
Source: Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews # 2

So - you be the judge!

On now to some photographs. Firstly, this astonishing image - can you guess what on earth is going on here?

Of course it was our end-of-term play put on by the children of the Penhalonga Correspondence Centre, located in the grounds of La Rochelle. This year was 'Goldilocks' - and here are the three bears...

Then the following attention-grabbing headline, and not, as you may surmise, from the Manica Post, but from Zimbabwe's 'premier' daily newspaper. It tells the tale of the dastardly plot by the United Kingdom to invade Zimbabwe!

And in case you are thinking I am joking - the details were confirmed by no less a person than the former President of Namibia, Sam Nujoma.

Why on earth the United Kingdom would want to 'invade' Zimbabwe is never adequately explained.

And in case you do not believe this is a Zimbabwean paper - the story on the left is about a woman attacked by a 'jumbo' - an elephant. If anyone wants me to sort out a subscription to this fine example of journalistic integrity - let me know!

Then this very strange sight which greeted me a several days ago, leading me to think the Berbers of North Africa had found their way to Zimbabwe:

But nothing quite so exotic - just Jim and Sue. Some of you may remember Jim from the post of 4th February 2103 titled 'You snooze, you don't necessarily lose!', when he fell asleep watching Superbowl, after waking me up at 01.30am to come and watch it.

Jim and Sue are good friends who undertake missionary work in Zimbabwe, and they stayed a few nights with me a couple of weeks ago. While they were here, we had an unexpected 'cold snap'. Being totally unprepared for cold weather and without warm clothing of any kind, they went to their rooms, grabbed their bath towels, wrapped themselves up snugly, and returned to the hotel lounge to sort out their emails!

This is such 'odd but practical behaviour' that I confer upon Jim & Sue the title of 'Honorary Zimbabweans'!

They even look like us:

Well... sort of! But how nice to have guests behaving oddly.

Have a great day!

And the 'Book of the Year' for 2013 is...

This past week has been a hectic one, with end-of-term plays, dinners, kid collections and carols. And in the middle of it all, we hosted a Book Club Dinner at La Rochelle.

Book Clubs may be an alien concept to those of you in the States and Europe who read this blog - never mind the rest of the world (amazingly we have regular readers from Ukraine, Russia, China and Norway! How do you think that happens? In fact, BlogSpot.com tells me that in my 'audience' statistics, after USA, UK, Zimbabwe, SA etc, positions 8 and 9 of most frequent page-views are 8 - Russia and 9 - Latvia. Latvia?? I can't even point that out on a map! If you are Latvian, and love this Blog - please email me at larochellezim@gmail.com and tell who you are), so here is how a book club works....

A group of ladies (and here I use the word in the loosest possible sense) form a club - to swap books. Each member contributes new books on a regular basis, and every month they get together and return the books they have read, and take new ones. Because there are not that many bookshops in Zim, and certainly a very small offering in Mutare, this is a great way for the girls to get books, and it also provides for a 'social' once a month. Every December they have a Christmas dinner, and we have had the privilege of hosting this at La Rochelle for the past few years. Obviously with our forthcoming closure, this will be the last one we host. Sadly.

So here is evidence of this year's dinner. The one regular feature of the evening is that the ladies all wear the most beautiful eyelashes. And when they fall off, because they are occasionally a little heavy, they are replaced immediately...

So it was that we had some very well-made-up ladies gracing our hotel:

The meal was decent enough, starting with a pate from Oak-smoked Haddock with Herb Mayonnaise, followed by Tomato Soup with Gin, then a Baked Ham with Sherry glaze or Roast Rolled Chicken with Herb Stuffing served with Hollandaise, then Christmas Pudding or Belgian Chocolate Ice-cream, all rounded off with Mince Pies and Coffee. Here is the pate about to leave the kitchen...

The highlight of the evening (apart from the jokes about the wooden 'thingy' given as a gift in the Chinese Auction) was the selection of the 'Book Club Book of the Year', and for the first time ever, the vote was unanimous. Last year, in a very divided ballot, the winner was 'Fifty Shades of Grey', and this year it was...

Then I asked them to tell me who was the author of the book they all loved so much, and everyone knew the answer to that one....

What a Book Club of distinction this is!!!!

If you haven't read this fantastic book yet, please go to Amazon.com, look for the print version of 'Sorry for that!', and order your copy now!

Have a great day!