Thirty years on

La Motte du Caire.

Today, for the first time in thirty years I was so busy that I didn't have the time to take the photo of the glliding site. You can see only the shadow of the mountains and two parked gliders.

Daughter remembered and has WhatsApp'd me to chat. <happy>. I moped a bit at the beginning of the month, the time we set off optimistically on that gliding holiday, but today I was too busy from 9 till 4.30 at a tai chi teacher training course, and that occupied me pleasantly. It's something I can learn and do for the next few years - doubt if I'll manage another 20 let alone 30.  Maybe ten. What has he missed? Half what of what should have been his life too. His children growning up, his career, more gliding, electronics, hi-fi, wi-fi. Wi-fi didn't exist when he was killed. Getting his MBA. My later degrees in research. His children's graduations, their marriages, his two grandsons. <sigh>

Pensions and mortgages

How unfair it is that the baby boomers got such a good deal on buying houses and super pensions. No. Hang on a minute. Not everyone bought a house - we still had council houses then. Till Mrs Thatcher let people buy them at a 70% discount and then they stopped bulding new council houses, so now we're extra homes short.

The male baby boomers might have bought a house and had a super pension but the women didn't get super pensions if they got one at all. And as for a woman getting a mortgage - not on her own - she had to have a man as guarantor. And to get a mortgage - okay yes houses cost less, but you couldn't get a 100% mortgage and you had to have a deposit. Until the mid 1990s, the deposit was calculated mainly on the man's salary - something like 3 times his annual salary and one and a half of hers. Hence late husband and I got a £25,000 mortgage. Work out what we were earning. On top of which, remember that the interest rate was 16% so we didn't start paying back anything other than interest for years.

And a pension, for a woman - not often. Baby boomer women who did work were often in lower paid jobs and hence with lower pensions, and they stopped full time work in their twenties, worked part time from their late thirties and got even smaller pensions. Some part-timers, like university lecturers were not allowed to contribute to a pension so I asked a specialist in pension provision from my bank to sort out a pension for me. But I was not encouraged by the question, "why do you want a pension when you've got a husband?"
So give over with the jealousy.

Family wedding

June 6 was a gloriously happy day being nephew's wedding in a garden, in Geneva, Switzerland. Hordes of us invaded to meet his wife's family and celebrate their marriage.
The invitation to us all meant we four siblings, met for the first time since our mother died, nine years ago. We flew or trained in from the US, Scotland and England. Who knows when or if we’ll meet again? Nephew, T, has three cousins who married quietly during the years of Covid and lock down, my daughter on another continent, giving us only 23 hours’ notice! 

The build up days of the week before the wedding included an evening get-together. Our side met Friday evening at an Auberge where half the family were staying. Prosecco and nibbles followed by pizza or pasta if you wanted to avoid gluten.  I got to meet my nephew, C's new wife, and nephew, G's girl friend. I left after we'd got through a couple of bottles of wine or more, but the twenty and thirty year olds went to a whiskey bar found a wonderfully smooth one, made locally, so local that it was the bartender who made. It's great that these cousins too have got see each other and meet their partners after so many years - the last meet up being their grandparents 60th wedding anniversary in 2010.

My grateful thanks to T & I for inviting us all, and to I's parents for hosting us in their garden.

First jobs

Coffee group people were discussing when we started first working and what our first jobs were. The men said they'd done paper rounds. You were allowed to do those even before you were 15 but I couldn't because I had to get an early bus to school five miles away. One of us, JH, went straight into an accounting firm and trained as an accountant. Most of us didn't go to university. I didn't.

My first job was as soon as I was allowed, immediately after my GCEs. I went down the high street, starting at the garage because friends had got jobs in petrol stations, going in every shop and asking. You didn't have to take a CV with you then, just ask. I think I went to my favourite shops first, like the art supplies, but I didn't have to ask in many because the supermarket took me. Silly thing was they knew I'd done maths GCSE and thought I could do arithmetic so put me on the veg counter. Can you work out how much a quarter pound of apples is if they're one and six a pound? Remember it was pre decimal. 1/6!

They moved me on to check out where the till did the arithmetic. I still managed to mess up though. Because every time someone asked me for carrier bag at the end of the transaction, I'd input the whole cost and then the thruppence extra for the bag. How many times did I do that? But it made the till not balance at the end of the day. For some reason, they still kept me on for five weeks of that summer, and then I stayed there doing Saturdays throughout sixth form. Patient and optimistic manager.

I was naive and vulnerable to the more worldly workers there. At 17, I passed my driving test, and my parents would let me drive the multi seater Bedford Utilabrake around. I must have told someone at the supermarket what I was driving. Anyhow, after a few weeks, I got a message that the lad working on the butcher's counter would like a date with me, which was a compliment but a surprise as we hadn't talked much, if at all, and I had no idea what we had in common or what we'd do on a date. Fortunately, one of the older women warned me off, that he was going to ask me to come with the Utilabrake and drive him and a load of mates. So I made an excuse and refused that first ever date!

In the second year at college, I was too far away to work at the supermarket, but one day some friends were interested in finding Saturday jobs, and a few of us went job hunting together. We asked in Harrods. They like Lorrie who already had retail skills, and took her on, but wouldn't put me in fashion. They offered me a job in their posh Swedish sandwich bar on the fifth floor and I worked there for about a pound a day for nearly a year. You got a free lunch with the option of the most enormous creamy gateaux. But the clientele were not always very nice. One of my fellow waitresses (we only cleared tables because it was self-service), was nearly 16 and in a children's home about to be thrown out to live on her own. A customer called her over and told her that his wife had dropped a shilling and she could have it if she liked (to pick it up).

Then the Irish girls at college told me that William Hill, the bookmakers paid something like £1.50 a day and I went there instead. Nicer work and easier than being on your feet. I worked there till I left college, including working at their offices in my home city in the holidays, even being given the responsibility for opening the offices. You meet a variety of interesting people in a bookies.

This is why I sing

I now sing with two f2f choirs and an online one. Why? because I was born Catholic.

I sing in the local Anglican church because it's high mass, which means we learn a lot of ancient choral music. Someone who used to sing there told me they needed sops so I joined for the Friday rehearsals. That was someone in Next Stage Choir who knew I live near this church. I was in NSC because Fionnuala used to play the piano for its director, and she told me he was opening an Aylesbury branch. F plays the organ at the local RC church, and my daughter was there at a service when Fionnuala told her that the church choir needed singers, whereupon my daughter volunteered me. I'd given up going to services years earlier but I like to sing, so I let them twist my arm and I sang at the Saturday evening mass (A view from the pew) until lockdown when the choir atrophied and never restarted. But by then I'd joined NSC Singing it's a wonderful Christmas)). In lockdown someone in a locl choir told me of a newly formed online choir, (https://ejh2.blogspot.com/2020/10/singing-in-isolation-and-singing-in.html) now called HomeChoir, which is fun and amateur and lighthearted and you learn a few songs, folk, and pop, and church and made up and maybe send in recordings. HomeChoir spawned Choir of the Earth, which encouraged us to sing parts, record and upload them so their techie people can make a concert performance of all our voices. Choir of the Earth has taught me the Messiah and Memories of music: the Hallelujah chorus), Elijah, Bach, Beatles, Abba songs, Haydn's the Creation, opera choruses, Rutter, Bryd's Mass in five voices, and recently, we're learning Joanna L'Estrange's beautiful adaptation of Vivali's Four Seasons.

Both choirs, NSC and Choir of the Earth and arrange trips to perform in various places. NSC has been to the US & Canada, Arizona, Germany and is planning a trip to Finland in November. Choir of the Earth is planning a performance in Leipzig and is advertising a course in Lincoln cathedral next January - I might sign up.

But I wouldn't be in CotE and NSC and St M's choir, if my daughter hadn't been talking to the RC church organist because I'd been born a Catholic.

Poor news, dim thoughts

 CBA in March, nothing to write about. Well I could write about two cousins dying, and another cousin putting himself in a care home. Mmm.

What is romance?

Is my DS romantic? CQ asked me. Her son isn’t unless he’s told. At coffee one man, P, suggested that putting your socks in the laundry basket was romantic. He teases. Old J had no suggestions. T told a tale of a friend whose wife had been away. “Thank goodness you’re home” he'd greeted her. “I was about to go out to M&S and buy some underpants. He’d walked past the clean pile every day but couldn't see them because she’d not put them in his drawer. He could take an engine apart but not see a pile of his own clean underwear! My first dead husband, Richard wouldn’t have known romance if it hit him in the face. At best he’d tease like P. On an early date with him, he stared into my eyes, then said, "hang on, you've got something on your eyelash" - it was mascara. T told a story of him and his late wife…. On an early date, her hand crept across the table so he moved to put his hand over hers when she grabbed an asparagus stick. No romance in her either!

Jane’s late husband sounds as romantic as my Adrian giving her flowers and chocolates. I'd come back from the campus to find a pile of G&B chocolate on my desk so would have to stay there and write my thesis. Adrian would leave chocolates on my desk - why is chocolate symbolic of romance?

When I was between husbands, courting, I sent postcards from my skiing trip to three men. One never mentioned it, another thanked me for it, but Adrian replied, not by post or phone, but by email, pretty new and technical for most people in 1999. And the content of his email? He replied with a poem, and a poem in French. So not only was he romantic, and courteous, but also was educated and enjoyed new experiences. No wonder he was marriable.

Burns night

I haven't blogged about Burns night for years: https://ejh2.blogspot.com/2009/01/burns-night-nanna.html

Burns night each January - it's an excuse for me to get me a haggis. However, haggis is too peppery for me unless I have bland neeps with it. I may or may not have mash - I often have no potatoes in the house because I rarely eat them.  We used to go round our neighbours on Burns night because she was Scottish and would encourage the celebration. But I don't remember any such BN parties here where I live now.

However, son and DiL get the chance to go to their club to celebrate each year. As far as I can see, it's one of the rare evenings they go out together, so I happily babysit their two bairns. They come back v late - I suspect Scottish whiskey has been drunk. This year son got to read a Robbie Burns poem, "For a' that" to the assembled club members. He'd had time to practise its rhythm and pronounciation this year so was confident. I think he enjoyed the performance. DiL enjoyed the company - she's sociable. They got home rather late but the bairns had gone to sleep hours earlier and all was quite quiet and I drove home along an almost empty A road.

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.