Joan enjoys working as a Learning Facilitator at the York Museums Trust delivering workshops for primary age children. She also fills the role of Social Secretary for the Claremont Terrace Residents Association. At church she continues to help with Twinklers, the name for the creche, she also makes some pastoral visits.

Barrie is busy as a churchwarden at St Michael le Belfrey and safeguarding representative for the PCC. He preaches from time to time too. He’s the chair of Restore (York) Ltd, the housing charity he started in 2010 for people who are homeless in York. This year he also helped to set up a new service where street sleepers can find shelter during the winter. And if that’s not enough he’s also chair of the Residents Association.

We both love making regular trips to Chelmsford and Cambridge to see our children and grandchildren, but this Christmas they will all be visiting us.

Next – Gallery of the rest

Interior – Garden Room

Since Warwick’s death  his room had lain abandoned – looking sad and neglected. At the end of February the builders arrived to transform the bedroom extension into a garden/sun room.

It wasn’t without its drama. The plan was to rearrange windows, add new doors and replace the flat roof. The alterations soon showed up the shoddy workmanship of the original shell. We agreed that most of the walls should be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.

Demolition

The builder we had engaged was brilliant. Despite the change of plans he kept us updated on costs throughout and brought the whole project to conclusion only a little over budget. He co-ordinated the team of general builders, electricians, plumbers, joiners and decorators almost seamlessly. When it was finished it was so much better than we had first imagined. Now it is our favourite room in the house with its huge picture window, arched doorway opening onto the patio. We added furniture and rug to make it a really comfortable sitting room in winter and garden room in summer. We could rent out the rest of the house; we spend so much time in this room.

On the wall is a framed Ordnance Survey map centred on Studley Park near Ripon, where Warwick’s ashes are scattered. We’ll always call it Warwick’s room and had he still been alive he would have loved it; but he has a heavenly home now and we are at peace about that. Next month marks the third anniversary of his death.

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Barrie, Ruth, Jan, Mark Stephenson

The first family meal of the year with the Stephenson family met up in Kenilworth.  It was a good evening although Jan and Bill were a little under the weather with a dose of flu.

In October Joan took on the mammoth task of offering to provide the Ashmore Family meal. She wanted to keep costs down and make the event as cheap as possible for the younger families with children. We hired the Burntwood Institute Memorial Hall so that the venue was with easy reach for families that wanted to travel home afterwards.

So with many hands making lighter work Joan set about providing a three course meal with three menu choices for over forty people. The event also marked what would have been Mum Ashmore’s 100th birthday so it was good to have a celebration that so many could attend. Sadly we were so busy not a single photo was taken.

After a year of running Barrie stood at the start on the Great North Run, the half marathon from Newcastle to South Shields, along with 56000 other runners. His time to the end 2 hours 19 minutes.

Preceding this challenge he had contributed 10km to Chase the Sun and run the York 10k, both in aid of Restore. This race as the shirt shows was for Shelter. In total he raised over five and half thousand pounds to help homeless people.

Running has remained a firm commitment in 2017, usually with three runs a week including the York Parkrun on Saturday morning with a steadily improving personal best times. Some of the most memorable runs have been with family members; son Matthew and brother Mark.

Will there be a marathon in 2018? He’s already booked into the Coventry Half Marathon, York 10k and the Great North Run – the Yorkshire Marathon is in October – will he have recovered enough for 26 miles? Possibly.

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