Luke

I know you are probably tired of portraits of my boys - but I am suddenly aware that Luke is 'leaving home' very soon and I did not have any portraits of him that I liked. So today I tried to remedy that, and he was being obliging....

As Luke will be studying Modern Languages at university (French and German) he has decided to take a gap year to improve his linguistic skills before going to university. We approved, as long as it was not a 'gap yah' spent bumming around Thailand wasting time and money. So in July he is off to Munich for a very intensive German course at a highly regarded language institute, and then on 1 September he starts at the University of Strasbourg where he does a term of French and lives amongst French students and hopefully converses French all day and every day! He is also hoping to play some rugby at the university. He will return home mid December hopefully to attend some entrance interviews at Oxford or Cambridge if he gets the results he hoping for, and then in January once he has his university place sorted he is off to France on a ski instructors course and to work as an instructor for the rest of the winter season. And then he will spend the rest of the time before uni starts trying to earn money working in bars and restaurants either in the UK or in France or Germany. It has taken quite a bit of effort to organise all this and I do hope it all works out as he is hoping it will.

Wasn't that a spectacular result by Germany last night in the football? I was laughed at when I told Luke at the beginning of the tournament that Germany would win the world cup...maybe I won't be wrong after all.