Christmas in the Mendips

I spent four nights over Christmas at a hotel in Loxton, December walks in wind that blows you over, dripping nose and despite good walking boots that I’ve worn before, I got a blister and couldn’t do the third day of walking. I spent it wandering around Wells, its cathedral and bishop's palace moat.

The hotel food was like school dinners - sloppy. No fruit, no cheese course. The last dinner offered pork casserole, but when it came it not only had little pork but looked like a gelatinous mess. Dee said she would write to the hotel to complain. Nevertheless, I’m grateful someone else planned, someone else cooked, and served, and someone else is washing up.

I’ve people to talk to, 24 ramblers, Justin was here last year and Sue. Not here not in Loxton but with RWW at Malvern in the Abbey hotel.  Deb from London though born in Blackpool has had BC and so has Gwen. Gwen has done the Zoe programme and we had a long discussion about its benefits and what we'd learned from it. Her partner / husband Ray, worked at the RAE in the seventies and eighties. He was a scientist who counts, a metrologist. Metrologist not a meteorologist. I thought that was combinatorics. It’s not statistics. Dee works in Scotland. Helen couldn't walk because she'd broken her foot. When one of the leaders, Jon, asked her about gluten-free bread she explained about good food and unprocessed food and timing of meals - all the things that Gwen had reported on from learning on her Zoe programme. In the morning, Jon said he'd looked it up and would follow up.

November is the time to plan for December. The first half of November is boringly empty; the second is too busy with TMA marking, emailing to agree extensions, buying stamps, planning presents, attending grandchildren’s school events: concerts, fairs, nativity plays.

Why do people suddenly get sociable when I’m so busy? I went to lunch with friends twice in the last fortnight. I’ve extra choir rehearsals for Christmas performances and the BCS has an interesting Christmas lecture next week. Aylesbury speakers were short of a speech so I’ve volunteered and prepared one.
And it’s cold but I’ve got the boiler people coming in next week so can’t go to see  #1 grandson’s school play.
No wonder I end up a bit stressed with a sore throat. Hope it doesn’t make a cold. But I don’t think I’ll be fit enough to give that speech.

October for family

This October has been a month for my family because my daughter is over in the UK for a couple of weeks and we're meeting her brother a few times.We've also managed to get my brother and SiL over to chat with daughter. And she's meeting her cousin, the one who's marrying in Geneva in June.

We've had a variety of activities. For instance, the first week, we went up to London to renew daughter's passport, and took the opportunity to window shop in Liberty's. One weekend, we went to Opuz for supper because they had a guitar duo, and we went again on Sunday to share lunch with my SiL and her son, who daughter has always got on with. And son & DiL did something special in St Alban's cathedral at the middle weekend. This Wednesday, we met SD#2 and her two, to walk to Staddy's gate near Chinnor. We drove up to Lincoln to share time with them there on holiday, exploring its catheral and museum.

After doing all that, driving to St A's, and to Lincoln and back, I'm pretty tired but it's been as good as a holiday for me.

Still kicking

 Yesterday I attended one of the pre grading sessions for red and black belts and practised one, tow and three step sparring, mainly partnered with red belts. I'm now second Dan and have been for some years, but I don't demonstrate enough power to move on to third Dan. I'm chuffed I got this far anyhow. Playing takes up some of my lonely empty time, still makes me smile, and keeps me measureably fit for an old woman.

I wish there were more women in the club.

La Motte du Caire 29 years after

 

View north of the site

Map and photo taken from https://worldcam.eu/webcams/europe/france/8705-la-motte-du-caire-gliding-club 

Doing things alone and help

Some months ago the b*y fox or foxes got into the hen run. This shouldn't have happened because its door has a drop down catch that is fox proof. However, when I erected the run, five years ago, I put it directly on soil. This has led to some issues, one of which is that the uprights have sunk as the earth has risen, meaning that the door level changed slightly, which meant that the catch didn't always drop into place, and it couldn't be seen. All the fox had to do was worry at the door, lean on its top rail and it would open. 

I want to fix this. I've got one paving stone that I've used as a trial and moved it under a corner upright. I decided to get a few more pavers to put under the other uprights. I went to B&Q to get them. But I couldn't pull the flat base trolley out; someone did it for me. But then I couldn't steer it, so I walked down to the pavers to find they were a foot above my head. A notice said to ask for help, but help wasn't available and the tills were busy so I went home. Today I tried again. I didn't touch the trolleys but went straight in and asked for help, which arrived almost immediately. Ian fetched a trolley and explained that you don't push them; you pull them because the steering wheels are near the handle. He pulled it. We reached the paving stones and he loaded them onto the trolley, wheeled them to the checkout, I paid and he wheeled them to my car and loaded them. In the meantime, Graham, our builder, had whatsapp'd me about access so I warned him I'd be back any minute but stopping outside my house with these pavers. Bless him. He saw me and immediately came to help me unload them, stacking them half way down the garden near the hen run.

A job that I can't easily do on my own achieved comparatively easily with the help of those two men. 

Bird's nest

 Birds in our garden include the blackbird that sings each morning. A few weeks ago, my lodger warned me of a blackbird's nest in a bush near the patio, and to tell the gardeners not to disturb the birds. All seems well and the fledglings have flown.

Now that I can look at the empty nest, I'm both saddened and glad to see that it's lined with the soft white down from my chickens that the fox caught last month. 

“Alexa, play the radio”.

What is the first thing you say each morning? “Thank you for the tea” “Open the curtains” “No, close them! The light's too bright!”

One of my friends at TT college shared cultural interests with a male friend going together to classical concerts but she married a man from her shared geographic, cultural and ethnic background. A nice man, but without her interests and values. A couple of years later with two small children she sighed that she was often lonely but never alone. They divorced.

I’ve been married to men with values and interests similar to mine, men who paid attention to my interests and supported my ambitions. But now they’ve died.
My first words now in the morning are “Alexa, play the radio”.
Lonely and alone.

Anniversary

 

Flowers we liked. 

In early April 2022, I looked up and saw this display and thought, "Oh I'll show Adrian when he feels better." But he never felt better; he never saw them. He enjoyed the outdoors and plants and flowers and seeing this display would have made him happy. One of the last walks we did together was in the ward, because he asked to walk to somewhere where he could see outside, see the trees and we walked away from his bay, with his drip attached to see if we could see anything. But you couldn't see anything but roof tops from that ward.

Mothering Sunday

They call Mothering Sunday "Mother's day" in some places. My DD lives in Canada where it isn't a Sunday but some marketing day in May. A friend with an Irish background tells me that Catholics don't celebrrate Mother's day, but my Catholic family did. It wasn't a thing in church, not like it is in the Anglican church, but we just were extra nice to Mum that Sunday. One year I found a card for my godmother and she was really surprised and happy.

Yesterday we sang Brewer's Magnificat in D - it's wonderful. Then I went for lunch with sD#3, and then to tae kwon do. It was a day of doing my three favourite things: singing, family and exercise.

Why learn a language?

 Someone recently told me they spoke no Italian, but their son had married a woman with an Italian background and although she wasn't a practising Catholic or living in Italy, she wanted an Italian marriage. She described the hoops to go through to get an English bishop involved. Apparently, the C of E  bishop of Gibraltar is also the bishop of a lot of Europe including Italy. How weird!

DH and I learned Italian when similarly, his eldest daughter was marrying an Italian. although they married in an English register office, we still learned Italian so we could talk with his parents and sister. I thought it would be wonderful because their children would be bilingual, but sadly, 25 years later, they're not. Although their father was a house husband, he spoke to them in English, initially quite broken English because he came to England without any English and he and she spoke in French!  

When we were courting, husband and I used to meet  in a Italian evening class - local for him and I drove a long way for this! After a few years, we moved from that slightly informal conversation class, when DH enrolled us both on Italian As level. which I did not want to do. No more exams please. He worked v hard. I went and got a book of Italian songs, learned them by heart so I could speak Italian well. I did better than my quieter husband on the oral. when it came to writing exam answers, I tweaked my writing from whatever I'd learned in the songs, knowing I'd then got the right grammar, and I just needed to know the vocabulary. I got a better grade than I'd got in my A levels when I was 18.

Christmas again

 Christmas is sometimes for family and maybe friends, but this year it was for exercise because I went away to the Malvern Hills to stay in a hotel for four nights and walk three days. I can't remember enjoying my Christmas food as much as this year because I'd walked so much that I had room for lots of courses including puddings. Staying in a hotel meant I didn't have to plan the meals, shop and prepare and serve them and then do the washing up. A super staff of younger people did it all.

I went with Ramble Worldwide again (like I went to Nepal with, & to NI, and husband & I used to go to Europe with them). About 18 regular ramblers were in this group, two couples and a load of single people, men and women, all of us of a certain age and older. Only two of us are still working and that only two days a week. We both work because we enjoy the work and feel it's worth doing. The group included managers, a policeman, HR specialist, teacher, radiographer, a conductor (music). The leader had been a musician and music teacher (at Kings, Canterbury) for years, playing the flute and piano.

The first walking day was from Upper Wyche (near Great Malvern) to the town of Ledbury, a walk of nine miles. My app said 17 kilometers. Eeh! it was muddy. We tramped some of it off in Ledbury where we arrived with time to explore the shops that hadn't yet closed for Christmas but back at the hotel, we took off our boots in the foyer rather than tramp mud on the lovely carpets.

Christmas day was a short walk (five miles) from the hotel and up on to the Malvern ridge. Half way up the leader stopped and took out of her laden rucksack 18 mince pies and a bottle of sloe gin to share among us. Nice.

On Boxing day, the coach took us to Ledbury and we walked again through mud to Birtsmorton. It's about 8.5 miles and well over 20,000 steps. We should have seen distant views but it was atmospherically misty day. We reached the obelix on Somers hill but couldn't see it until we were almost there. Arriving at Birtsmorton well before four (we had to be sure to finish the walk by four, before it gets dark) we had time for a drink at the Farmers Arms before the mini bus took us back to the hotel.

You can see photos on Rockin' Roy's FB page.

Himalayan Vistas

Still travelling. Am following husband's example by booking walking holidays with the same company. Our last together was in 2019 to the south coast of Italy and then we'd booked NI to walk the glens. now I’m going further than Europe. I had a gap in work in November so I booked 13 nights in Nepal. The trip involved four sites: 

first fly into Kathmandu and then drive to Bhaktapur, the former capital city for a couple of days sight seeing. We visited Bhaktapur durbur square - you have to pay to get into the old town if you're a foreigner.

Next, we headed to the lowlands and Chitwan National Park to see rhino and crocodiles and a lot of birds. We travelled by boat, on foot through the jungle and in a jeep. After three days there, we went to Pokhara where we stayed in the best hotel - grand breakfasts. We went on a boat trip across Fewa lake, we visited a Tibetan camp and made momos. we walked round the lake in the evening. We shopped. I had a reflexology massage.

Pokhara, like Katmandu is a bit polluted and it was a relief to have a couple of days in the hill village of Bandipur, where the first evening, we walked out with the rest of the population round the football field to see the views of the Annapurna range.

Finally, in our mini bus, we drove the 90 km back to Katmandu. It took about seven hours because the roads are so bad after the monsoon landslides in September. But no road was closed. At Katmandu, we visited Durbur square, and also went to see the Boudhanath stupa, which has big blue eyes on all four directions. On the last night, we had dinner in Thamel, with Nepali spirit served and traditional Nepali dancing.

We flew with Qatar airlines. The journeys there and back were between 11 and 13 hours long, depending how long the transit time in Doha was. Jet lag wasn't allowed when we got there because there was so much to do, but when I got home again, I couldn't and wouldn't do anything in the evening for five or six days, allowing a day to catch up each hour's difference, and Nepal is five hours 45 minutes ahead of us.

Bhaktapur

Typtical Nepali thali

On our first walk - the Annapurna Mountain range just began to appear.

Peacock on the wall of a stupa in Bhaktapur

Chitwan National Park

   Travelling in our mini bus from Bhaktapur to Chitwan,
we saw this procession.
Something to do with a new moon

Eight of us on the trip

First sighting of a rhino near the river in Chitwan national park

We went crocodile seeking from a canoe in the river

Crocodile at Chitwan national park

They conserve crocodiles and
here are two year olds being nurtured until they're big enough to release.

Another day we walked up the hill to this waterfall.
We had to cross the stream six times. 

Half way up we met the local mayor and mayoress who were checking local facilities.

At Pokara, we got in one of these boats to visit an island in the lake first, and then to the other side to see a stupa and have coffee before being bussed back.The lake is man made.

 

nuff said

Pokhara

A dawn view of the range

He's determined to get thse two long poles down the hill.

The group, with Manoj, our Nepali guide

Learning to make momos

at a Tibetan refugee camp.

Making momos with Kathy in someone's kitchen 

If you are on Facebook,
 you can see where we made momos at
 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?
id=100091933461781.

You'd find these bowls of flowers at entrances.

This cobbler on the streets of Pokhara mended my sandal.

Bhandipur

 

Animals, including hens, roamed freely.

Children playing marbles in the street at Bhandipur hill station

Annie loved taking photos of the children and they were pleased to pose.

the old women didn't like being photo'd

Such a beautiful plume

The wood smoke is so polluting that in India the biggest cause of death amongst women is lung cancer.

You could smell wood smoke from the open wood fires used for cooking.  

Nepali beehive. One of us is a bee keeper.

Annie being greeted at the village

The group at the village before they gave us the local alcohol.

Seond from the right is Jane, the RambleWorldWide leader.

Nepali beehives in the village

The traffic was 80% motor bikes. 

this stupa at Katmandu is a world heritage site

This is on the front of my 

Lonely Planet Nepali Phrasebook & Dictionary

You have to go round clockwise.

Blue and changes colour when you add lemon

With lemon juice it turns pink

Katmandu. 30 years ago my sister was here.

Last evening - at special meal out

the ceiling rose of my Katmandu hotel bedroom

Dancer entertainment on the last night

These school children at Bandipur seemed only a year older than my grandson.

view as we left Katmandu

Priests near the river