Happy Christmas from the Jeffrey Family!
Welcome to our annual Christmas Newsletter, with a flavour of what we’ve all been up to since last year.
Inevitably there’s been some significant changes with Dan moving out to join his brother at Royal Holloway – more below.
The recent disruptions to travel because of you-know-what meant we couldn’t go away for the past couple of years, but we made up for it this year by taking two trips: one to the Canaries and one to Antigua (see the fabulous Viv Richards Cricket stadium, right).
A highlight of the latter was definitely being shown around this beautiful and historic venue and even walking out into the middle of the pitch with the groundsman! The pitch looked pretty amazing to bat on.
Alison
This year I have stayed at the same school with a different role. I am mainly back to being a year-one class teacher which I enjoy.
As we mentioned above, we have been fortunate to get away to get away twice this year. This is the view from the sunset bar in Gran Canaria. We also went to Antigua during half-term. My school has become an academy which means they have a 2 week break in October, so we decided to take advantage of this.
Antigua was relaxing and warm, and I even hired a car and negotiated the potholes without damaging anything.
Andrew and I joined Dan at his leaving ball. as he said goodbye to Eastbourne College and a lovely group of friends. I cannot believe that he is now 18!
Andrew
Unsurprisingly, it’s been another busy year. Work-wise, I am still teaching every Monday, and this has become consistently my favourite day of the week. It’s one thing to talk to teachers and help them to get the best from their students, and quite another to actually do it oneself week in week out, so I’ve relished the challenge. It’s also so refreshing to have a staff of colleagues again; self-employment can be a lonely business sometimes.
Also work-related, my annual trips to Ireland for their maths week resumed this October. It was so good to be back, though I’d forgotten how tiring work travelling can be, and have had to find my way back in to it slowly.
I have also been busy with writing, creating videos and logos (a new side-line!) and my CPD work has started to pick up very noticeably after two quiet years.
Thanks to the train strike this month, I was forced to drive to Liverpool to deliver the Annual Christmas Lecture to the Liverpool Mathematics Society. This coincided with the horrendous weather, so it was a pretty exciting trip!
By far my most memorable experience this year though was the 4-day, 400km charity cycle from Nice to Nimes, via Mt Ventoux for the wonderful Starr Trust charity. I’ve done some pretty insane challenges in my life, but I’m pretty sure that none of them have come close to this. Next year we are taking things a little easier, doing Bristol to Brighton via a lap of the Isle of Wight.
I’ve come to realise that my ADHD brain needs to take on constant challenges, so this year I set myself the goal of completing a full ‘Iron Man’ triathlon by the time I’m 60.
Talking of ADHD, I am STILL working on my book about it, but inevitably other things keep getting in the way and distracting me – I am DETERMINED to finish it by the end of January!
Ben
I have had an enjoyable year: here are some of the highlights.
Firstly at the beginning of the year I started doing “winter nets” for my cricket club. This made me come on in leaps and bounds and improved my sporting confidence overall. It also helped me improve my school sporting achievements, which in the spring got me to the 2nd team.
When the blessing of an eight-week summer holiday came fast upon us it brought with it the first of two holidays, this one being a trip to the rocky hillsides of sunny Gran Canaria which was truly relaxing and lovely, but just couldn’t live up to what was to come in the October half term: The Royalton five-star hotel in the Caribbean. This came with a unbelievable amount of amenities, my favourites being the beach-volleyball court, infinity pool with a swim-up bar, and lastly an all-inclusive coffee shop with a breathtaking view. These were just a few of the things I enjoyed (I promise this wasn’t a paid brand sponsorship) but more to the point this year has been a really memorable one that I have truly enjoyed. The many memories I have made will be cherished in the (hopefully many) years to come.
So all in all this has been a good year (and I quite liked the holidays if you couldn’t tell.) So for reading this I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Dan
Firstly, apologies for the length of my update – it’s been a busy year for me: turning into an ‘adult’, leaving formal education, heading off to uni and moving out of the home I’ve lived in for 18 years to name a few things.
The first few months of the year were spent stressing and revising for my A-levels in May and heading around the country watching Brighton games.
Exam season came and went in a flash and before I knew it, I was no longer obligated to be anywhere at any time for the next few months. So, like any self-respecting 18-year-old I packed my bags and headed off for a relaxing ‘cultural’ break to the tranquil Spanish resort of Magaluf.
I would love to write more about that trip but unfortunately my memory of the trip is somewhat lacking. After recovering at home for a little while, it was off again with my friend Max on a 4-day odyssey through France to Cannes in the south where we rendezvoused with his family and stayed in a villa just outside the city for around 10 days. This trip was definitely the highlight of my summer, with the climax being a trip to the Monte Carlo casino. After swiftly losing all my money, we drove the Monaco streets and I got to pretend that I was winning the Grand prix around the streets of the principality whilst giggling like an 8-year-old.
However, all good things must come to an end, so after gallivanting around the continent for a week or two I headed back to England for 24 hours before heading off to Gran Canaria for another holiday with the family.
I’m not sure what I did to deserve such a great summer but whatever it was I will be trying to replicate this next year. After yet another wonderful two weeks in the sun I returned to England to my A-level results to find I had been accepted into the same University as my brother- Royal Holloway.
So, come September I left my childhood bedroom for one last time and headed off to Egham to start a new chapter. I would love to tell you about Freshers week, but once again my memory is a little patchy.
One thing I do remember is somehow getting a job at the same pub as William, through a combination of luck and nepotism. From there I have spent the last few months making settling down and making some great friends. I’m really enjoying the university ‘experience’, although it did come with some shocks such as my clothes seemed to stop magically washing themselves and that if I don’t wake up in time for work or lectures no one comes bursting through my door in an aggravated state to wake me up..
Despite this I have really enjoyed my newfound freedom but have enjoyed the financial benefits of spending time at home and not having to spend money to simply exist. I am once again not sure what good deed I did to deserve the quality-of-life I’ve been treated to this year, but in October I once again set off, this time to the beautiful Caribbean Island of Antigua.
Despite the time difference necessitating 7AM wake ups for maths exams, I had an amazing two weeks of doing pretty much nothing in the sun.
It’s been a busy year, but a great one, and if 2023 can leave me with half the memories that I’ve made this year then I’m looking forward to it.
Will
Post pandemic peak, 2022 has felt, at least personally, like the first year somewhat resembling normality. I travelled, I studied, I conquered.
Leaving the green and pleasant land for the first time since 2019 I was determined to make the most of my remaining time outside of a 9-5 universe. In June I visited Amsterdam and Dubai – where I managed to fall off a snowboard, a sandboard and a quad bike (in quite some style) – with friends from university, before popping down to Gran Canaria with the family. Upon my return, my new girlfriend, Lana (she’s great, more about her later) whisked me away to Paris in a refreshingly modern role reversal.
We made our way back to Egham to commence our final year of study. In October came reading week (for those who don’t know, this is the university equivalent of half term. Also, presumably to suggest that this is not, in fact, a holiday but a chance to catch up on outstanding work and read both ahead and around the chosen subject). So, I did what any self-respecting final year student aiming high in life would do and disappeared off to Antigua for a fortnight. Calm and beautiful, cannot recommend highly enough. As I discovered this term, Lana is an expert in finding last minute cheap travel deals and not keen on letting her expertise go to waste.
As a result, we have visited Barcelona, including the fantastic Montserrat, and Milan, preceding the most spectacular train ride of my life thus far to St Moritz in the Swiss alps (icey and pricey), Frankfurt and Berlin, before a well-earned rest in Cape Verde, described as the African Caribbean. Having visited the Caribbean several times, I would partially concur with this statement.
I have entered my final year as an economics undergraduate at Royal Holloway. I would like to enter the financial realm and therefore have been applying to a wide range of finance-based graduate schemes with a view to commencing in September. I have enjoyed the difference between firms’ approach to assessing candidates. The aspect that has perplexed me the most has been the consistency with which firms wish to know the job held by the ‘main earner in my household’, specifically when I was aged fourteen. Go figure.
I continue to work at the university pub, where I met, and continue to work with, Lana. Never a boring week in our pub, Dan has recently joined the team having joined Royal Holloway and between the three of us we can share some fascinating insights and stories. In March I was promoted to the role of Bar Supervisor, a role I have enjoyed not least because I have always had thoughts on people in positions of authority – teachers, coaches, politicians (a topic best left alone methinks) – and this new post allowed me to implement some of these ideas. Presumably my approach was at least palatable, as I was informed just last month that I have been selected for promotion to duty manager. I look forward to ditching the uniform and being corrupted absolutely.
So, I travelled, I studied and finally I conquered. The University of Sussex, specifically, in the cup, on my debut. This year I was selected to represent the university in men’s football. My travels have somewhat limited my early season availability but from January you will be able to find me at centre-back, marshalling back fours from Havant to Hackney.
Here I am enjoying a couple of ‘Marley’s in Antigua. After the fourth, I found myself spontaneously humming various reggae tunes.