Nine hundred of us turned up for the garden party on Saturday afternoon - note Phil's new hat bought in the bazaar in Turkey. He enjoyed meeting up with Sir Sidney, a mate from his Wadham days back in the 1940's. It was a bitter sweet occasion -the weekend's events were delightful but Phil's best friend from Oxford days, Bob Horan, passed away last year and Phil felt his absence keenly - Bob lived in Oxfordshire for many years before his death so was a regular at these occasions. Of course each year there are fewer and fewer of Phil's contemporaries who make it back to College and those that do are often not up to much in the way of conversation. I think Phil found it a bit depressing at times and we will need to consider whether this might be the last year we do this. We have visited a number of his friends at home over the past couple of weeks and this may be the best way to keep in touch with them in future.
This was the view from our bedroom window across the quad - curiously they put us on the top floor of the college up 5 flights of stairs with no lift. Not many 84 year olds would have been able to mange that as effortlessly as Phil. I thought it was an odd allocation given that the staff knew Phil's DOB.
