Canadian Christmas

Canada is supposed to be the snowy frozen north, but in fact, where I am is around 900 kilometrees south of home. And it's wet and rainy, only a bit cold at between 2 and 6 degrees Centigrade most of the time I've been here. Unlike my house, theirs is very well insulated and you can strip down to bare arms, not huddle on the sofa in a fleece with an extra blanket. Here's a morning view. 

We've done a few trips out. One meant going cross country for the interesting route. But Ontario is flat with long straight roads and all the farms are huge and look the same with a farmhouse, outbuildings and some silos. Not surprising then that we got a bit lost on our way to London. But when we got to the London museum, it was worth it for the current exhibition of photos and stories of Londoners today. 

Being as I'm flying carry-on luggage only, they've been careful about giving me Christmas presents that I can take back. One present was a massage, something I'd like even if I weren't flying. We drove into Woodstock to MendMassageTherapy and Stephanie W looked after me. Normally I massage my body by moving it and this made up for the lack of exercise. We've ehad a couple of evenings of karate, which was fun but that's closed for Christmas and the best exercise I'm getting atm is walking, walking to the golf club, or to the gas station or round the new estate - SiL called it a sub-division.

It's rained and rained and rained again so we've not been for walks in what would be muddy treks. However, when the rain held off, we went to see the Simcoe lights. This is a several acre park of Christmas lights, lights in the trees, lights on trucks and vans and mobile stalls, reflecting in the light of the adjacent lake, many sponsored by local businesses.  Families were walking around with small and larger children, stalls offered hot drinks, chocolate, cider. My photo doesn't do it justice - go and look at the Simcoe lights web site. 

For Christmas, SiL has got daughter an aquarium, and various bits of equipment to fit it up. We went over to Woodstock fish and admired the mollies and platties. Now she's checking their water chemistry and temperature. They've put it in her work office and it might give her an option for meditation and contemplation. 

And at last it is snowing. This new year's evening, we'll go out in the snow and burn the spare cardboard that's too much to fit in the garbage. We're goiing to burn the Christmas tree too, although it's too early to take it down, just because it'll burn well. 

Not on their perches any more

 It's not that all my friends are falling off their perches - thank god that most of my girlfriends are still around; it's that the two best friends in my life, R & A, have already fallen off. It's bit lonely sometimes without someone to laugh with, share with, chat with, someone to support and care for and who supports and cares for me.

And so this Christmas, I'm spending it happily three and a half thousand miles from home with my family. Luck comes with those who've had best friends. Best friends breed more friends.

Support group

You know the café culture in Mediterranean countries? Recent research suggests that they support older people so that they live longer happier lives. I believe that because last year I found a support group in our local coffee shop. Each morning I'd trundle pass these single people I knew taking another load of deceased husband's clothes to a charity shop. After the third morning, they said, "come and join us!" and they've been supportive ever since.

We have interesting discussions that range over psychology, philosophy and religion. M & I discussed Protestant and Catholic schism and Luther pinning his protests on the door - and we have no arguments about religion despite slightly differing views.

It isn't just company, something to get up for each morning. They provide practical support. One of them, P, is helping the octogenarian, JH, to clear his cellar. P also advised me last year on who best to fix my badly leaking roof. The octogenarian has nodded support to me when I worried about lodgers.

This week, I needed to get bells but didn't know where from. But when JT was describing her knitting a Christmas jumper for a grandchild, she happened to say she'd sewn bells on it. Hey presto! She could tell me where to find bells and I had what I wanted within half an hour.

Long may a café culture last in England.

Learning to sing

 My three-year-old g'child told me "You was singing in the bathroom, Nanna". Yes, I sing. I've been singing. I sang all day while I was learning carols by Chilcott, Rutter and Forbes L'estrange. It gives me pleasure to hear the music to learn new songs and to train my voice to make the sound I want.

The three-year-old knows he has lots to learn. I haven't heard him singing yet. When he does, I hope he finds life long pleasure in singing or at least in listening to others singing.

And I trust soon he'll learn to say, "You were singing, Nanna" instead of the local dialect "you was".

Educational issues of yesteryear and today: corporal punishment

Someone (JD) was telling me of his mate having to do four hours training on LGBT and woke and mental health and grumbling about wasting his time on issues that are not getting his job done. JD tells his mate, “Well don't do it", but, and here's the rub, if he doesn't do those four hours training then he loses half his bonus. Do the training and tick the box! 

 I see the papers are asking the government to advise schools on how to deal with trans issues. "Trans" it wasn't even a word a generation ago. I compare the handling of this educational issue with issues 50 years ago. Teacher training then involved you writing essays for and against corporal punishment, now not an issue to be debated. Then the arguments included that corporal punishment just left the person administrating it feeling satisfied, without changing the child's behaviour, and possibly the administer hurting the child in fury rather than justified chastisement. 

When it came to practice, I remember hearing of a relative hitting a step child with a wooden spoon, not her hand as the mother might have done. If you use your hand, then you know how hard you're hitting and hurt yourself too if it's that hard. When I was at school, in infants' year one, I had a teacher who'd tell the little boys in the stream on the far side of the classroom, "I'll tan your bacon" and she'd take the little boy, put her over her knee and spank him with her hand. At junior school, the teachers might give you the ruler, flat on the palm of your  hand -it stung. The head teacher would give the strap. My first dead husband got the strap once for throwing a board rubber or something across the classroom - probably something the teachers were doing anyhow! The last time I saw physical chastisement was having to witness a child in my class, Micky A, receive the strap of the head master, because he'd skipped school. It all had to be recorded in a book in the head's office. Poor old Micky - strapping him didn't seem like encouragement to come to school. At the end of term, he skipped again, and I didn't tell. Another little boy had given me an end-of-term present - a pottery dachshund - very tasteful, and Micky had observed me thanking him enthusiastically. When  Micky turned up next, he presented me with a pink plastic dog! It was so sweet of him, and I was sad that someone in the staff room commented that he'd probably nicked it from Woolworths. That lad and I had expectations of each other. He could read well, memorise Shakespeare and I don't know why he was so bad at maths because he was bright. Something had gone wrong with teaching him maths in the infants - maybe he'd been playing truant. At the end of term, after school, I was clearing up the classroom when Micky and his 13-year-old brother turned up. For some reason, his brother (a graduate of Borstal) decided to grab me with both hands near my neck. He was only a child and I wasn't going to react, but Micky said, "Aw, leave her alone. She's all right!".

 Maybe now teacher trainees have to write essays for and against use of chosen pronouns?

 In August 1996, we had another lovely family and gliding holiday in La Motte du Caire. It was a family holiday because other families came with their children who played with ours regardless of language differences, other mothers I could chat with, lovely places to drive out to, like Gorges de la Méouge. We took photos; we have one of our daughter learning to ride her bicycle with her father holding on to balance her. Our son, who wasn't enamoured of yet another trip to an airfield, was learning to help launch gliders by holding the wing tip.

At that time, the gliding site didn't have its webcam. Here's how it looks today, just as warm, empty in the middle of the day. The 23rd August 1996 wasn't very good gliding weather because the thermals were too small and required tight turning, but it was still good enough to glide and so people launched, including the club's new two seater with the CFO and an early solo pilot having a check flight, and several private owners too, from Germany and England. 

Volvos

The news is that they're not going to be selling Volvos in the UK any more. I used to drive one. The first time I remember a Volvo was sitting in the back seat, not trusting the driver - a young man (Richard C) I didn't know - and I rudely peered over his shoulder between the seats asking about the fancy dashboard. I'd not seen that fancy a dashboard on cars I'd driven before. 

He drove us - me and some foreign language students - from Oxford city centre to Bicester Airfield where the Oxford University Gliding Club had a new two seater, bought just before all the students left for the summer, so a debt and no students to start paying for it. The gliding doctoral students staying in Oxford realised that the tourist trade could help so targetted the language schools offering trial flights. I was teaching and I came too. 

After my first flight I felt sick, so when an enthusiastic student (Dick C) suggested I join the club and learn to fly I agreed, thinking that if I flew I'd be so busy that I wouldn't be sick. 

There was plenty of talent on that airfield and not many women to compete with. Several young men made overtures. I can't say how forward Richard C was, but a few weeks later he'd insured me to drive his green Volvo estate. So I could drive it to retrieve him when he landed his glider out!

Volvos are good for towing glider trailers.

Being late. Visiting an old friend

Last November old friend PC and her husband came here and presented me with a blanket that says "it takes a long time to grow an old friend". He died suddenly in January. This week I went to see if I could help PC with some of his technology - and he was very technical. A geek. But on the way a couple of lights on my car computer dashboard lit up and I had to stop at a garage. The first garage had broken equipment so I went to a second garage to check. sorted it. Switched off alarm. Drove on. low on fuel alarm comes on so I stop at a third garage. I' am  now late.

When I arrive my lovely old friend beams at me having being worrying about me and not got my email - which I can't easily send when I'm off wifi. She showed me a lovely colour photo she'd taken of her husband in November 2005. He's holding a dead phasant by its feet. I'd killed it driving over to see them them and the stupid bird flew in front of my car. I slung it in the bag where it revived and started flying around until it collapsed of shock. Dead on arrival. My arrival was late. But P&P are the best of firends to turn up to with a dead pheasant because they enjoy eating game and weren't fazed to pluck and gut it.  So despite me being late and them worrying that I'd slipped on leaves, they were pleased with the unexpected food parcel. So pleased that apparently PC wrote a poem about me. Being late again this year she showed me her poem. She called it NOVEMBER LUNCH. Here are some lines from it:

... she was late as usual....

we worried

As you do about an old friend

Driving alone on wet leaves

Then she arrived with a present

A few feathers on the parcel shelf hinted

It was a plump pheasant

Broken by being in the wrong place

It would still be alive if Liz had been early

Just 2 minutes would have made the difference.....

FAther's day and birthday

 It's a bit crap.

Living with au pairs

R was Finnish. She was sensible and reliable making her a good start to having au pairs. When after a week of briefing her, I hesitated, she told me “Go on Liz - go and work". 

L from Hungary was I think our second au pair, arriving emotionally mature for her age, and in many ways very confident. She'd left a boyfriend in Hungary - she's still with him decades later. L's English was good despite having grown up behind the Iron Curtain when they preferred to teach Russian in school. She was one of the first out after the wall came down. She had and still has a philosophical approach to life. She's highly intelligent yet like most au pairs who arrive at 18, not a university graduate. Years later she's now at university. She got on particularly well with daughter, G, inviting her to come and stay with her when she went back to Hungary. The child broke her arm skating there, but L dealt with it, getting her medical treatment and to ring me without panicking me.

S also from Hungary was next, but only for a few months because au pairs tended to come in September and my work year died down in October, unless I did a bit of exam marking, and didn't start again till February. I still regret not keeping her with us for those winter fallow months. But we had a break. 

When work started again M from Slovakia came. He told us he was a triathlete and so would go out on his bike, then come back and grumble about British kerbs compared to Slovakian more dropped ones that he could quickly mount to get out of the way of traffic. The appetite of an 18-year-old young man was a shock - he could easily eat a whole loaf of bread a day. He amused the children though with his escapades, such as going out to fetch them from school without taking his key. Fortunately, he had left his bedroom window open - and fortunately no burglar arrived before he did. In front of the children, he dragged the wheely bin to the porch, climbed on it and into the house – not a good example. To me, the main point of having an au pair was to mind the children when I was working, so I could work. Minding the children in those years meant fetching them from school and bringing them home safely, but other mothers at the school gate reported that M didn't hold my five-year old's hand to cross the road. He was far more concerned about his bike and that was a worry. He had little idea what a child would do, recklessly providing the younger one with paint while he went back to watching the sports. He played chess with our son. "Of course Miss L" he'd say to me, "I'm going to beat him because I'm better than him." He was a pleasant young man. He'd lost his mother some years earlier and had a good relationship with his father who came to stay with us for a few days. He wrote when R was killed obviously identifying with the childrens' loss.  I'd like still to be in touch with him.

M from France didn't want to be here and thought I should give her more time off and more pocket money so, worrying about her attitude I rang the au pair agency who told me she'd been in touch with the agency complaining. She'd also been complaining to a French neighbour. Neither neighbour nor agency could see her point. I suggested if she wasn't happy then she shouldn't come back after Christmas, but she decided to come back, and shut up. She ate lots of Nutella and cheese and biscuits, then toddled off to the GP to complain that she'd put on weight, then complained to me that the GP couldn't or wouldn't help her. (She hadn't put on a lot of weight at all). By summer, since she seemed happier, she and I agreed that she'd return in the autumn. Then she didn't get in touch. Eventually I rang her father and asked (I spoke pretty good French). He explained that no, hadn't she told me? she wasn't coming back because she was going to university. I never heard from her again, even though R's death in France must have been in the French newspapers. 

When M backed out without warning me, it was a bit late to get an au pair through the agency, but I was in touch with L in Hungary who had a classmate who wanted to be an au pair. Be warned – she was a quite different personality from L.

So, Z from Hungary arrived. She arrived with a different contract from planned, a different situation because husband R and I had worked together, but R had died. He wasn't there to take over the children on Saturday when I was out running tutorials, and the au pair had to be available on Saturdays. Z did the job perfectly. Her sociability also was an antidote to my depression, despair, and sadness at the time. About a month or two after she arrived, I was sitting at the kitchen table when Z came through the back door with three young men following her. I'm going, "Er? Who's coming in my house? What happened?" She had a way with men. The first year, at the local pub she befriended a young man still living at home with his mother. She got him to lend her a bike. I wouldn't have strange men or au pair's boyfriends stay in my house. Not safe when I was a single mother.  So, Z persuaded him to move out of his mother's house so she could stay with him. She enjoyed cooking, like baking a big freshwater fish like the carp you get in Lake Balaton. Carp isn't an English dish, and not usually available so that was an expensive meal.  The second year with us, she met a new boyfriend with a house, so she stayed with him some weeknights, when his wife was in the flat in town. Z wanted to drive and he lent her a car. You could drive for a year without the test, and then you must take it. She took it in his sports car. I think there was a problem passing.

She baked a carp for our neighbours. One evening she was round there when boyfriend arrived with wife! She kept me amused. She didn't realise till the end of the two years she stayed with us just how bad I'd been when she arrived. She asked me why I hadn't said something two years earlier - because I was too upset then. She was too young to realise.

Anita also from Hungary, via the agency came for the last two years of au pairs. She was very shy coming to the Hungarian agency at least for the first visit, with her mother. She was then so nervous that she couldn't or wouldn't dare do anything, believing that her English was too bad. Then in December I took the children and her skiing in France, and she realised her English was better than her non-existent French. She was good with the children, even with P getting more awkward as he grew older. And she talked with our neighbours too, getting advice on how to handle him when he was stroppy or in the way of a particularly aggressive neighbour, like a Saturday when I was working and there was a neighbour’s party. P upset Mr J who picked him up by the shoulders or neck. Then P ran home and A worried because normally I wouldn’t let the children be at home by themselves, but the neighbours advised her that that P would be safer and better and happier in the garden by himself, and they’d explain to me. She stayed two years and watched romance blossom between A and me. Now she's a mother herself. 

Sharing our house

 We've had lodgers in this house for years. In the noughties, local schools had money for developing language skills so would bring in European language assistants who then needed to stay somewhere for a few months. A local teacher told us about them asking if we had a spare room and as our first teenager had left and gone to university totally clearing her room, we had a spare space. We took in language assistants from France, and Spain. They would come in October, disappear for a long Christmas holiday and come back for the Easter and half the summer term, leaving in May. This worked well for us because then our university student daughter could have her room back in her holidays, we had a little extra cash and the young (usually) assistant had a home with access to internet and kitchen. One smoked, which we didn't allow in the house, so set him up in the garden or on the roof. Once, one of our family commented that they'd seen a lodger hanging out of a window smoking, and "it didn't look like tobacco!" Another lodger had meetings and discussions in his room, which was nice - I think they were discussing Islam because someone had brought him a copy of the Koran. I did wonder after because the school the lodger worked at had an Islamic influence on its students and the woman later known as the White Widow had been a student there a few years earlier. 

Usually these language assistants were in their early twenties, though once we had a slightly older assistant from Spain. She complained that she had to take the assistant job because there weren't enough teaching jobs in Spain. She worried that we weren't paying tax on her rent and her father was a tax man in Spain. We explained about the UK's Rent a Room scheme allowing tax free rented rooms in your own house within a limit. Eventually, she found a teaching job in Spain and left us and her local school with little notice, causing the school problems but I could see her point - she wanted and needed a career. Her facebook page indicates that she's still happily working in Spain, 

Mad wife or astute woman?

BBC radio 4's report on Victorian depiction of mad women included a remark that all Shakespeare's plays were about how to kill a king and that Victorian novels were about how to get rid of a wife.

I know of a luckier Victorian wife, born Jane Johnson in Reading, who avoided being locked up, and despite twenty or thirty years of poverty, ended by having an annuity from her bankrupt husband. How the tables turned!

Around 1834, William Sugden, went to Melbourne, leaving his wife Jane with their three small children. As an illiterate washer woman, she must have found life hard, despite living for several years with his parents in Yorkshire. 

William moved to Tasmania where he ran a hostelry and had an affair that produced two sons. The business failed and he moved back to Melbourne where he ran another hostelry and as the first chief of police in the suburb of St Kilda, he became a well known public figure, strutting down the main street like the Queen's guard that he had been. . Then, in April 1843, he married a 19-year old woman, Louisa, daughter of an important business man and within six months she had a son, Arthur. Perhaps William had to marry her.

Somehow Jane knew where he'd gone and that he'd remarried. Jane and William had had a daughter, Caroline. Jane and her children had moved back to Reading where she had been born. Caroline there met and married the younger brother of the Mayor of St Kilda. Perhaps she, and her husband shared information with the mayor and thus discovered William's bigamous marriage, a scandal in Victorian times when divorce was impossible, and bigamy was illegal. 

Jane and her other daughter, Esther, went out to Melbourne in the early 1850s. When they came back to England, the censuses reveal that she was living on an annuity. 

Meanwhile, William was going bankrupt again. In the bankruptcy court, he had to explain the large sum of money paid out to a Mrs Sugden in London, but to admit who he'd paid it to would have revealed him as a bigamist. Thus he fell from grace. He died only a few years later, never regaining his wealth, and consequential right to vote. 

He may have been a bigamist, but he didn't marry the girl in Tasmania, and he didn't put his wife away as mad. In fact, given that he loved at least three women in his life, he was probably quite a nice person, definitely attractive to the women! And his wife wasn't mad. She was astute.

No respite

No respite. January is not a good start to this year. My friends of 50 years flew out to NZ to see a relative, something they've done for years. They both caught Covid on the plane, and a week later seemed to be recovering, when he died, so suddenly that there has to be a post mortem. His poor widow - away in another country. It's so hard. I've done that and know what it is to fly home alone to a house without him.