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.

Christmas 2015

23rd visited family in Oxford
24th visited family in Buckinghamshire
25th entertained family at home
26th visited family in Hertfordshire
27th entertained family who were banned from visiting most people because of chicken-poxy three year old - poor mite.  He called it Christmas pox.  Got a sense of humour that lad.

Didn't have to travel as far as last year, so it was enjoyable, without the stress of driving.

Roll on 2016, and we're looking forward to the panto this weekend.  Oh yes we are!  Happy New Year

Three degrees removed

Last year MiL moved out of her home and passed on an heirloom to us - a square piano.  This piano had been her mother's before her, and it has been in the Green Room at Drury Lane, before being taken up to Sheffield and played in the theatre there during the war.  After her mother died, it stayed with her father and then with her stepmother, who had it for decades.  Her stepmother wasn't a pianist, and didn't really appreciate this piece of furniture, at one time apparently she considered pulling out its insides and turning it into a drinks cabinet! When her stepmother moved out of her home to a care home, MiL had the square piano again.  Being the worse for wear, she had it restored, lovingly and carefully restored by Douglas Hollick.

But transporting it to our house meant it needed retuning.  Our musician neighbours put us in contact with the Royal Academy of Music where we found someone who now enthusiastically tunes our piano.  He's going to contact Douglas Hollick to talk about the piano and whether to tune it up.  At the moment he's tuned it to 392 herz because otherwise it is going out of tune too quickly.  When he came this year to tune it, we discovered that he knows my late husband's best friend from school - my husband's friend's friend makes us three degrees apart I guess.

New years' travelling plans

You don't want to spend a fortune on air tickets to another continent and then not stay for more than a couple of weeks. I have such a dilemma in that I haven't been to see my brother in the States for 16 years. I last went to visit brother and his wife in 1996 when they paid for us to spend Christmas with them after my husband had died in August. Christmas promised to be very bleak that year, and I was devastated, deep in mourning. Since brother & wife hadn't been able to fly over for the funeral, which would have been an utter waste of money to fly so far for a couple of days for the sake of someone dead, brother paid for daughter, son and me to fly to Vegas and to stay with them for three weeks. Son had three weeks holiday from his new school, and I just took daughter off for the last week of her school term without even asking permission.

I remember those weeks well, brother's very sensitive care for all of us, sister-in-law's welcome and companionship, and they kept us busy. They took us to visit the Vegas casinos (keep within the paths because we were with children), see the white lion, and the first time I saw Cirque du Soleil. I'd never heard of it then, but it was the most amazing circus, with no words, just acrobats, and clowns. They weren't nice clowns though. SiL told us that we weren't going to have seats near the front in case the clowns picked on us. And we watched one poor man following a clown who had his tickets and was showing him to his seat, along the aisle, along a row, over the back of some seats, along another row, over the back of some seats, then the clown tore up the tickets! The poor man was stranded.

But I haven't been to see brother & SiL since. They've come here several times, and
my son has visited them twice, but I've not been there. Mainly I've been engrossed in bringing up my children, first on my own, then I remarried, and have been building relationships with my new family, and husband had paid work too and didn't retire until 2008, by which time I was well into my PhD, so couldn't travel too much - except for that trip to India for the Navjote. I could travel to academic conferences for my studies, and even got the expenses covered, so I managed to get to a very eminent conference in Canada in 2010. This year I presented at a conference slightly closer to home, in Amsterdam. Now I have no academic affiliation that will support me at conferences, so I'll probably only go to a couple in Oxford, and might even gate-crash those, depending on how much they cost.

So I want to go and see brother & SiL in 2012. I've arranged my Open University tutoring so that I am free in September for two or three weeks, and husband's agreed to it, though he hasn't yet agreed to more than two weeks and we haven't yet booked our tickets. I expect we can do more than just stay with brother & SiL like I did last time, because now we don't have lots of children to look after. In 1996, SiL had three children and I had my two. I visited them earlier in 1988 when between us we had five children under school age, and we went nowhere but the supermarket, which was my excitement of the holiday - I'd never been in an American supermarket or anywhere in America for that matter. So my previous two trips to the States haven't been very good, and I've had little to entice me back, but this time husband and I might hire a car and go some other places too, like the Grand Canyon, or Zion National Park, and if we go in September, SiL says the temperature is good and we could go alpine hiking up Mt Charleston or visit their holiday hut.

Maybe husband and I will visit India in 2013, or I wonder when I could visit with daughter. When I was in India in 2008, I watched all those young women, and I missed my 17 year old daughter, and I watched them together and thought that she would get on with them. But daughter is finishing her first degree this year and may have a job without much leave in 2013, so she won't have the time to come with me. On the other hand, she loves linguistics, and has just spent a year studying maths in French in France before returning to Bristol to finish her maths degree, and is considering taking a masters in linguistics. At the moment she's looking at studying in Dublin or Wales, and she's job hunting. I wonder if she could study languages of India or linguistics in India. Then spending money to visit India with her in 2013 wouldn't seem like a waste of a fortune.

Bowling together

Bowling together [1], not alone, demonstrates friendship, networks, and links.

My girlfriends, together with their partners or child in some cases, along with some very close members of my family went ten-pin bowling for my birthday. Some friends came from very close, being neighbours, and others from miles away, people I knew when our children were small, friends from the Open University, and friends from tae kwon do.

Unfortunately friends from belly dancing and toastmasters couldn't make it or we could have had some performances and speeches.

Husband made a wonderful cake - the best tasting he's made yet, and he bakes good cakes. He iced it with numbers

00111100

People gave me wine, flowers, smellies, chocolates and books, so I'm having a week of luxuriating in the bathroom. There's sparkling Saumur left to share if you have the time to come and visit me.

I don't know who gave me a dozen pink scented roses - they're beautiful. Thank you, friend.

---

[1] Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York ; London.

Travelling

Travelling was the order of the day that first Christmas. The priest at Christmas mass reminded us of those travellers to Bethlehem. And I remembered that we'd travelled to see my parents, my daughter had travelled to get home to us, that the roads of England were chockablock with travellers for Christmas.

Last year we fetched my parents to us, but this year they are too frail to make the journey, even if we fetch them, so devoted husband suggested that we went up there and did Christmas for them, and aged aunty. Husband loves baking Christmas cake, mince pies, plum pudding, and willingly did the turkey, trimmings and vegetables. Then on Boxing Day we went to watch Mother Goose in the Georgian theatre with aged aunty. Aged aunty enjoyed it - it was her suggestion that we went to the pantomime, though she complained the fun was spoilt by an older woman who wanted her to come in the lift with her as if aunty were a hundred!

And now we've travelled home again, leaving parents quiet for a few days before my brother visits them.

Volcanic sticking

The Icelandic volcano ash has affected British based people who travel by plane:

• Step son is stuck in Finland. Fortunately his wife and children are happily holidaying in the lakes with her parents
  
• Colleague's husband is stuck in Serbia, which means she can't go out this weekend because she has to mind their two boys.
• Our French lodger booked a return plane flight.
  

Fortunately, step daughter #1 is home, having travelled to Italy by car and ferry - how wise!

A web site "Watch Air Traffic" that shows you air traffic in Europe shows very little movement today. It also says "Users on line: too many"

LOL

Plumbing

Twas on an July morning that the ceiling first fell down,
Our lodger had a panic and ran into the town,
To find a phone and ring us where we were away
In Italy with family to have a holiday.

Oh it all made work for a working man to do! (copyright Flanders and Swan)

We replastered the ceiling, after our plumber assured us that he'd fixed the leak in the shower above. But this holiday it leaked again. Our plasterer looked horrified - I don't blame him because he's done a beautiful job - but at least we had a working shower for our guests. Because:

1. In September when fixing the leak, the plumber also fixed the plumbing so that the toilets stopped flushing hot water
2. But that meant that the family shower gave only luke-warm showers, never hot.
3. So he came back and diagnosed that both showers needed some replacement part.
4. In October we ordered the shower parts, and most parts arrived but not all.
5. In November we had all the parts
6. In the first week of December the plumber put them in.
7. In the second week of December the en-suite shower gave only scalding hot water.
8. In the third week of December the plumber fixed the en-suite shower.
9. In the fourth week of December the family shower leaked and apparently it doesn't work properly if someone else is using water in the bathroom, or the washing machine is on at the same time.

Now what do we do? We're still thinking, but we've survived the holiday and most have us have managed to wash or shower or bath enough.

More working relatives

While I'm blogging about relatives to be pleased to know, I've realised at least two more whose activities may make a difference in the world. My various cousins have several children, two of whom are involved in a petition save the Mansour family from deportation. Here's what a Facebook page says:

Description:
At 7am on Wednesday 1st July neighbours in a Moss Side street watched in horror as the Mansour family were forcibly removed from their home by a large group of police and immigration officials.
Five years earlier, the family led a prosperous and successful life in Egypt. After months of harassment and serious threats to the family, Mr Mansour sought help from the police. Shortly after this he was arrested on false accusations of insulting Islam. He was detained in solitary confinement for seventeen days and tortured.

Having fled Egypt leaving all his possessions behind, he was then helped by the Bishop of the Christian Church he attended who gave him refuge and arranged and paid for his flight out of Egypt. After a short period in Dover, they came to Manchester where they have settled. The children have thrived at school and the family have formed good relationships in school, at church and the wider community.

How then, have we arrived at a situation where the family is in detention awaiting deportation?

After having twice been let down by law firms who despite being paid up front failed to represent the family at vital hearings, their status was downgraded from asylum seeker to illegal immigrant. This has put them in line for immediate deportation. The family fear for their lives if deported and Mr Mansour would almost certainly be arrested and tortured on his return.

What can you do to help?

• Sign the petition at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/29140.html
• Email Phil Woolas, Secretary of State for Immigration and Alan Johnson, Home Secretary at: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
• Pass this message on to as many people as possible to do the same

The Mansour children go to a school not far from where my family used to live, a school that my mother probably visited as part of her work, so they're in my kind of community. See this link to the Catholic Independent News on the campaign.

My cousins' children either work at the Mansour children's school in Whalley Range, or are providing legal representation for them.

Working families

I don't support the recommendation that MPs' spouses don't work for them. It's normal and natural for families to work together, whether they be spouses or children. Watching the farmer's son helping on his market stall this week in the Aylesbury Farmers' market, the child was both learning, and contributing to his family's business, and to society in general. He could be proud of his contribution. I know that some MPs have abused the system, but bad cases make bad law, and this recommendation is one that ought to go, not be implemented. Let the spouses work.

Waving or drowning

Remember last week the news about the balloon boy family? For those of you who dismissed the family with the child not in a helium balloon as a trivial episode, Mike Todd found this cartoon to pull us up short:

http://miketodd.typepad.com/waving_or_drowning/2009/10/hello.html

Italian holiday

We've spent a week on holiday in Italy at an agritourismo here called Cergallina with family. Lovely.

"We" is husband and his son and family, so I got the chance to know them better. Their two little girls are five and nearly three, so interested in everything and interesting, but needing a lot of time and attention. Their mother seems a tad tired, having two pre-school children, when nearly all her time is devoted to them. I think a mother needs the friends and family who share that time with her because for a couple of years there's hardly any time for an adult life.

Husband and I stayed for a week. Son and family stay two weeks.

"Here" is a hamlet, where it's quiet except for the buzzing of flies off the cows, chirping crickets the shouting workers watering the vegetable patch, and occasional braying donkey. But it's not an isolated place. From the bench under the fruit trees I can see a village in the valley. At night I can see lights in various different directions, like Vernasca to the north on the other side of the hill ridge. This page shows you where. But it's quiet enough for son and family to have visited her at least three times. His wife's sister-in-law comes from a village twenty minutes walk away. The quiet pleases them, and the animals and swimming pool please the children. The animals include at least two cats, a cow and her calf, two mules, a donkey, some horses, geese, hens and ducks. Granddaughter tells me that last year she rode on the horses, and I have a video of her riding them this year.

Italy - azienda agrituristica

An azienda agrituristica is an Italian holiday place to stay where it's agricultural. It's like a farm holiday. We're staying at Cergallina, which you won't find on your GPS because it's not been uploaded on the database. In fact, Judith, the proprietor tells us, Cergallina is a name that she made up. Then the authorities told her that she lived on Via Cergallina, which she didn't like, so she asked how to register Cergallina as a locality. the town hall said she could change it to a locality because Via Cergallina was the name that post office held, so she toodled along to the PO and told them that they'd got it, wrong, that it wasn't Via locality, but the locality locality. Then the people at the PO said sorry for getting it wrong, changed their records, and Judith could go back to the town hall, who now agreed, because the PO said so, that locality was a locality.

You couldn't do that in England!

Break for a week

Family calls. I must away.

Home again

Son's back from uni for summer, or for some of it as he has plans to travel. Daughter's staying away in her new flat. Other daughter (step-daughter #3) is well ensconced in her university town. So it'll be a quiet summer. Perhaps I'll do my research work at home.

Post Christmas quiet

All is quiet again now. They've all gone back and I shall miss them. I shall miss the philosophical chats with son. We have debated the relative merits of particular approaches to research, and we had a great chat in the pub his last night home.

Daughter went back today. Her step-dad took her. Last night she was the chattiest she'd been for ages, and I really enjoyed her company.

Step-daughter #2 sent a lovely thank you card.

Step-daughter #3 got back to her rented house to find a huge electricity bill, and that her course work was many words too short, so wasn't so cheerful. But between us, I think her parents have helped sort those out a bit.

A ring at the door bell and step-daughter #1 is passing - 5 minute chat and away again. At least we have one child still with us and we have her children to look forward to as well.

New Year resolution

New Year resolution has to be not to give up.

1. I have to support husband and our two families. I start by refraining from offering my three beautiful step daughters juicy apples and spinning wheels. I have already refrained from hanging a notice in the window:
"Three lovely step daughters
living here with wicked step mother,
need handsome princes to rescue them."


Fortunately two of them have already found their handsome princes, who are really nice young men, even to me, their step-mother-in-law. And step daughter number 3 has turned quite happy over the last year or two.


2. I'm going to carry on avoiding other people kicking me at tae kwondo, while not thumping them too hard. I like the exercise and the laughter, not the thumps. I might move up a kup if I grade and get another belt. That's one of the tenets of tae kwondo - perseverance.
   


3. Then there's the research work, which has its good moments and its bad moments. Never ever give up until the dissertation is handed in, in September 2010.
   


4. And I'll keep writing this. Thank you those people who tell me they read it and even mention it on Christmas cards to us. You are so encouraging. I really appreciate it.
   

Family video

Oldest granddaughter went around with the flip video and took this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CNtqbMa0ok

Aunty's teeth

Through GenesReunited, I've recently got in touch with a cousin whom I never met but we share a common pair of great-grandparents. We've been comparing notes on what oral history we know so I checked a story with my mother about cousin's grandmother and my mother's aunty. It is so funny that I should share it.

She was teaching her class poetry, 'The charge of the Light Brigade' and they were reciting it in a very lackadaisical manner. 'Put some life into it' she said. 'FORWARD the Light Brigade!!' and her teeth  shot out and landed on the floor between the desks!  'Leave those' she  barked, and marched up, picked them up, turned her back to put them in, fixed the class with a beady eye and continued with the lesson! She had excellent discipline and there wasn't a titter but I bet they didn't half laugh when they got out. As she did. She told the tale with great aplomb many times. 

I wonder if the children there still remember the incident.

Quiet house

The only sound in The Mount today is husband and me rattling around in it. Daughter's gone skiing with school in half term, son's at uni, lodger's in Spain, and cat is in the garden, where it is staying.

I came back from tutoring yesterday evening, and found it weird because there were no children. I took on this tutoring job in 1989 because I could do it while their father looked after them when I had to go out on Saturdays and evenings, but now it doesn't matter any more - no-one needs to look after them the same.

Empty nest.

However, to my delight, eldest step-daughter and family were here. New baby smiled, nay - she laughed with me. The older two were in the garden playing. We've got a new toy out there - a rubber horse to swing on that we got from Luca's garden design. It must have gone down well as they stayed out for over an hour playing on that and with the toy kitchen that we have out there while their parents and grandparents had tea and chats in the warm kitchen.

Their company is something to enjoy now the youngest children are so often out of the nest.