If you were hoping to read a ghost story worthy of M R James, as I hinted on our Christmas cards, you’ll be disappointed. This is just the story of another year; part bad, part good, some tears, some laughter. But roll on 2015. 2014 was not a vintage year.

JANUARY

The worst came early: Yvonne’s mother Betty died on January 11th. It was on her late husband Toby’s birthday. In December we had moved her from her beloved St. Fillans, which she and Toby had built in 1951, into a bungalow in Elm Road, Bishop’s Stortford. She gave up. She lasted four weeks, then died in hospital in Harlow from complications following an operation. We had spent Christmas with her. She never got out of bed.

FEBRUARY
Betty’s funeral took place in appropriately turbulent conditions. A gloomy day with the rain lashing down; bitter, with a howling wind. The crematorium had had a power cut so we grouped there in the cold and gathering gloom, peering dimly at the service sheet.  Nevertheless there was a wonderful turnout — I never knew she had so many friends, friends who loved her so much.

On February 14th a 110mph wind brought down four trees at Murmur-y-don, broke several panes of glass and blew down a garage wall. The garage stands alone in the grounds, and has solid stone walls 30 inches thick. What brought the wall down were the roots of a huge pine tree buckling in the wind.

The weather did improve — on the 22nd we had coffee in the garden in London for the first time this year.

MARCH
I gave up whisky for Lent. Wales promptly lost to England.

We went to Harlech via Runcorn where we collected 12 panes of hand-curved glass to fit the ones broken in the round window by the storm, at a mere £59.33 a pane. However the lovely Nationwide insurance company sprung for it — and rebuilt the garage wall for us. Meanwhile Milo enjoyed a brisk ten-mile walk with us from Dolgellau to Barmouth.

And in London we had the house repainted front and back, with nesting boxes for swifts installed under the eaves.

APRIL
To Wherwell for my sister-in-law Brenda’s 80th birthday. 80 is obviously the new 50. What a glorious day — best of the year so far. I got sunburnt and went scarlet.

I am also scarlet with shame and embarrassment. We installed a huge new window on the top floor in Mount View Road … and it’s plastic … I am so sorry. But to paint and maintain the outside of the wooden window we had to put up scaffolding every three years, and that’s £1,200 a pop and rising. At least we now have a crow’s nest balcony on which I can stand every morning looking out over London and bellow I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!

MAY
BorrowMyDoggy.com came into our lives. This is a brilliant web idea whereby people who live in dog-free flats can borrow dogs to take for walks. Milo has ten times more walks a day in him than we can cope with, so we signed up with alacrity. Our masterstroke was remembering a lady in Crouch End had described Milo as “the George Clooney of Golden Retrievers” so Von put that up on Milo’s page and we got swamped. He was awarded “PAWsonality of the Month” and featured in an ad for the company. In addition he was awarded free Life Membership. Henceforth, he has informed us, he wishes to be addressed as Meighleaud.

We donated my Redactron, the first computer I ever bought (1979, £5,000), to the American Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. They sent a team of fine art removal specialists to take it away. Here’s a link to the story.

JUNE
To Berlin for the CEPIC picture library conference. We rented a penthouse apartment in the heart of the city on Unter den Linden (there’s posh, yes) with views towards the British Embassy and the Brandenburger Tor. Business was brisk; we held a party for foreign piclibs at the Embassy and spent the weekend after the conference as Berliner tourists. Many of you will remember that I lived in Berlin for three years in the 1950s. In the 96°F heat we got more walking done than we actually needed, but at Sans Souci we discovered the delights of the Eiscafé. So there is an alternative to beer on a sweltering day.

Damien left fotoLibra to return to France after nearly six years with us. We miss him. He’s still working for us, but now based in Lyons.

I went into UCLH for a radical robotic prostatectomy. The ‘robotic’ bit means that during the op the surgical team was off in the pub having a pint and a laugh. Apparently I was upsidedown in a St Andrew’s Cross position for 4-5 hours. When I came round there was an angel at the foot of the bed. “Oh God,” I thought, “I’ve died and I never had a chance to say goodbye.” It was Von. Of course.

I discharged myself the following day and the taxi on the way home hit so many sleeping policemen that my stitches burst and I emerged soaked in blood, thanks to Camden, Islington and Haringey’s traffic calming measures.

Dunno what happened in the last two weeks of the month, except I was a vegetarian teetotaler — by choice — for about ten days.

JULY
Both my sisters came to visit the invalid. I was very grateful but only dimly aware. To Lord’s for the first day of the England v India test with James & Bill Lake.

AUGUST
The swifts depart without even glancing at our boxes. Great garden party to celebrate 30 years at 22 Mount View Road. Martha and Mike Shatzkin come over from NYC before and after their holiday in Dubrovnik.

We joined the local YMCA gym and now go twice a week for strength training and once a week for their Pilates classes. Von was immediately promoted to the Experts Class; Gwyn remained in the Pre-Beginners.

SEPTEMBER
To Kalkan in Lycian Turkey to stay with our friends Steve Fallon and Mike Rothschild in their fab villa.

It was an amazing experience staying with someone who’d written the guide book to the area — the Lonely Planet Guide to Turkey. Steve was greeted everywhere we went — Hello Steve! Have drink! Have food! He may not have been sea-green, but unfortunately for us, he was certainly incorruptible. Later we moved to a villa with an infinity pool and eleven chickens in the garden. We gave each one a name: Chicken Kiev, Chicken Chasseur, Coronation Chicken, Chicken Marengo …

Completely lost my sense of taste and smell shortly after my old folk’s ‘flu jab.

OCTOBER
Got the Phaeton back, after 273 days without its 5 litre V-10 engine. Went to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Drove back with Shatzkin as usual. I realised, as I gazed at the sumptuous lunch laid out in front of me by Alex Hanbuckers at De Herborist in the flat farmland outside Bruges, that I couldn’t smell or taste a thing. What a waste.

NOVEMBER
My old friend David Redfern, the world’s greatest jazz photographer and my Frankfurt buddy for 25 years, died. Lawrence Duttson, a Folly stalwart, died. Lovely funeral.

Succeeded in seeing the heart-rending poppy installation at the Tower on the second attempt — we’ve never seen such crowds.

We had the suicidally depressing fly-blown neon tubes in the Harlech kitchen replaced by 18 LED lights buried in a false ceiling. They look great. Managed to secure an ENT appointment on January 30th.

DECEMBER
Lewis Hamilton won BBC SPOTY. I have a vision of Sam Warburton picking up the trophy next year, after captaining the Welsh World Cup-winning team. Still no sense of taste and smell. Between now and my ENT appointment we have the remains of the Christmas goose and a trip to Paris scheduled for Von’s birthday. I might as well suck wet cardboard.

You’ll have had your Christmas. I hope it was a peaceful and blessed one. Now for the New Year!

I still can’t fight off an unshakeable spirit of optimism.

I shop at Sainsbury’s. Most people in Britain shop at Sainsbury’s.

I shop at Marks & Spencer. Most people in Britain shop at Marks & Spencer.

I have shares in GKN, formerly Guest Keen & Nettlefolds, one of the world’s leading engineering groups.

I have worked for various divisions of Reed Elsevier, the largest group of scientific, technical and medical publishers in the world and owners of the London Book Fair, the World Travel Market, MIPCOM and many other exhibitions.

These are not insignificant businesses. They employ a lot of people, have substantial turnovers and pay a great deal of tax. They have been trading profitably for nearly two hundred years.

Yet add the book value of all these companies together, and you will not reach the value placed on a few thousand lines of computer code called Uber, which is an app you put on your smartphone to summon a taxi in certain cities. It doesn’t work in Birmingham, Bristol, Bingley, Brighton, Bradford, Bournemouth, Barnstaple, Bridlington, Biddulph, Bridgnorth, Berwick or Blaenau Ffestiniog — yet today Uber is valued at forty-one BILLION dollars.

Frankly, that is insane. I hope the investors get a very, very quick return on their cash. Are they telling me that hailing cabs has a higher potential return than academic publishing, supermarkets, aerospace and the manufacture of drive trains (for the taxis that will come and pick you up) put together? They’re barking mad. (But very, very rich).

This is the South Sea Bubble all over again, or John Law selling the Mississippi. I doubt Uber will be around in 10 or 15 years. It’s being sued in almost every country in which it operates. It’s a convenient tool for helping you find a taxi. And other apps are available. It’s not like they’ve patented the corkscrew, for God’s sake.

Years ago I read a wonderful book titled “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. It was published in 1841, and it described Tulipomania, which seized the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century. One tulip bulb in 1637 briefly became the most expensive object in the world. Another chapter is titled Popular Follies of Great Cities. This rings an awful lot of familiar bells.

Give me Sainsbury’s. Give me Reed Elsevier. Give me GKN. Give me Marks & Sparks. Companies that are worth something. Companies that have actually benefited the world in which we live.

I can hail my own cab, thank you very much.