Summer was good(ish)

Summer was fun, perhaps cos daughter was home. Together we got new hens.

The college of education that trained us for teaching decided to award us honorary degrees, which meant getting together with old friends from college.

A nephew of my husband's got married. He'd married someone from South Africa so had a wedding there and then another service and celebration over here for his side of the family and her UK friends.

Husband and I went on holiday with SD #2 and her family to Bavaria. From our holiday house we could see para gliders circling.

Late husband would have been 65. This is the last photo of him, taken the first day of that holiday, on the gliding field in France.
Our mother died.

Then daughter emigrated.

Preparing for October

This last week I've mostly been preparing for our holiday. I've packed and repacked, listed what to pack, found a suitcase to pack, window shopped for other suitcases. So all rather muddly and messy.
The hens have someone to keep an eye on them and collect their eggs - not many at the moment.
WE're going on our first cruise ever. Normally we go on rambling holidays with the company Ramblers.
But this time we're going on one of their Cruise and Walk to Discover the Baltic. We go through the Kiel Canal, to Copenhagen, then Tallinin in Estonia, and spend a day at St Petersburg. We return via Riga in Latvia and Warnemunde with a trip to Rostock, before coming home. It'll take two weeks.

Big big books

I do wish that publishers would create books that I can carry. Look at the size of this Jodi Picoult book - a hardback that didn't cost much, yet it is enormous. Compare its size to those paperbacks of the fifties and sixties, and of earlier, when books were expensive. Then you could fit a book into a handbag, or even a pocket, to read it as and where and when was convenient. Now you need a desk to hold these big books as you read them because they are so heavy.
One of my favourite old books is Arthur Ransome's Old Peter's  Russian Tales, which is a small now battered red book of six and a half inches by four and a quarter inches by less than an inch.  The edition I have was printed in 1942 and became my mother's in 1943. It is small enough to hide in a deep pocket, or a small handbook, light and easy for travelling. Perhaps I'll take it on holiday in October.
Do we have to be so ostentatious that we show what we're reading instead of just enjoying that private moment in another world?

La Motte du Caire gliding

La Motte du Caire airfield used to have a web cam but it's not been working for six months. Today I cannot look at the airfield, out to the mountains.

Belonging to sports clubs

"Tell us about sports clubs you have belonged to", asked a Toastmaster.
Now I belong to a tae kwon do club, where I kick people, or rather I get kicked, cos the idea is that it's a defensive martial art, and I should be able to block kicks and punches. I like the club, not only because of it being a fun way to get and keep fit, but also cos I learn new things, things I find hard to do and so I achieve when I do them. And on top of that, it's a mixture of people training, old and young. I'm probably the oldest in the club, but I train with 16 year-olds and even with six-year-olds. That can be fun.
Decades ago, I joined a gliding club. As a young single woman, I immediately realised this was a good idea for the amount of talent on the field, literally on the gliding field. Many healthy young men with enough energy, intelligence and money were out on that gliding field. You have to have a job and some money to afford to fly. So there weren't many women competing for attention but plenty of men: tall men and short men, men in the services and men at the local university. Some were highly educated, but one, learning I was teaching English as a Foreign Language to non-native English speakers, said, "Oh great! I'm trying to get my English 'O' level." That was not a good pick-up line for me. One young man was tall and blond and beautiful and intelligent - he hardly noticed me. Another somewhat plump chap with straggly whiskers would come on the field in wearing green operating theatre pyjamas being a trainee doctor. The summer of 1976 was incredibly hot so the pyjamas were understandable because they were so comfortable. I discarded him because of his desert's disease (wandering palms).  My language students and I had to beg lifts out to the airfield, and one day a curly haired young man with thick rimmed 1960 style glasses and a geeky jumper picked us up in a big white Volvo estate. Not trusting his driving I sat in the back but leaned over to remark on all the fancy dials on his car's dashboard. That drew his attention to me. When we'd finished gliding, that evening, several of us went out for a meal together, foreign students, green pyjamas, blond beauty, geeky glasses and I. Then we went back to someone else's for a drink. But finally, geeky glasses and I finished the evening together for coffee.
 
Fellow toastmasters, I married him.

Another funeral

Mum's older cousin died a few weeks after her. He was the last of her cousins, the last of  that generation.
This photo is of him on the canal trip we made in 2013 at Birmingham, a family get-together that one of my cousins organised. Thanks to him I knew my mum's cousin and his family.

"Slightly nutty Nanna"

"Slightly nutty Nanna" is the fond epithet afforded me by one of my relations, a SiL. I quite like SNN. If I weren't slightly nutty, I wouldn't at my age be able to do the physical things I can do, like tae kwon do. It's thanks to another relation that I took that up in my early fifties, keeping a teenager company. Now another teenage relative keeps me company at tae kwon do.
Slightly nutty Nanna last week had the good luck to be invited on holiday in Bavaria with a family of young relations, where we climbed every mountain (well we walked up one),  and drank copious amounts of Bavarian beer, that is, some of us drank beer and none of us drank copious amounts.
One afternoon, leaving Gran'pa behind, we went for a first ride ever for some of the shorter members of the family, in a cable car, and a round trip walk in the lower slopes of the mountains. We saw black butterflies with white tips, a huge ant hill, and several cows or bullocks with bells called scheller.

We crossed a bridge on the way.
"Beware of the trolls!" warned SiL. SNN threatened to puke on them to scare them off.

Our Ferienhaus (holiday cottage) was near the bottom of the mountains, but still an 800m walk up from the town (Oberstdorf). Each day, above the summit of the mountain, we watched yellow, flamingo pink and white sails of hang gliders whose pilots must have taken the cable car on and on further to the very top. Somewhere up there, they jumped off into the air a couple of thousand feet above our Ferienhaus, soared in any thermals they could find, then glided down to the landing field in the valley below us. You could hear a raucous chain saw and the rushing of the river, an occasional bird twitter and an engine from the cable car vibrate far off from the house. Husband alias G'pa stretches out on the path sunbathing his hands sheltering his eyes

Mum

My happy mother, beautiful mind, fun to be with.

May month

May was a busy month for

• work, which I enjoyed because it included a writing week with research colleagues in a Cotswold village. See some photos on Twitter or Facebook
• meeting old friends from decades ago when honorary degrees were awarded at the Royal Festival Hall 
• visiting aged auntie and getting her old carpet changed for new. No flying carpets, or magic lamps or genies sadly. 
• washing a hen. And losing an old one.
• Just a nice month - sunset near us

New hens

I'm back to five hens now. Two new ones joined us a couple of weeks ago. One is a Rhode Island Red, and the other some sort of Ameraucana, with a fluffy tail and a coronet of feathers. We'll call her Crown or Queenie (to go with Lady Grey).
Lady attacks them both to make sure they knows their place in the pecking order. Here's Ebony. Her feathers are black with a glint of petrol green.
And we're getting eggs again. Good.

Three funerals

Going to three funerals in less than a year is a bit unfortunate. This week the third of the funerals was of a colleague, Sheligh, a couple of years younger than me. She used to tease me about being older than her, yet she's died. She got liver cancer. Why? It's supposed to be rare, yet I know three people who've had liver problems, two died, one had a transplant.
Sheligh used to help us with all the practicalities of research, like finding recording devices, and she kept our grumpy director of studies in order, inquiring sweetly when he was effing and blinding, "problem Geoff?" She asked to go part-time, but they said it was a full time job, so she retired early. They first replaced her with a part-time temp - so much for it being a full time job, and then removed the post. In the meantime, Sheligh who'd thought to fulfill her pleasure in gardening, developed arthritis in her fingers and couldn't enjoy that part of her retirement so much. Then the cancer - they discovered it too late to do anything. She leaves a husband and four children. Sad.

Family influence

Today is my son's birthday. He influenced his family, and one really good influence happened on a car journey. Son sat next to me as I worried about my doctoral viva, and he told me about Toastmasters, the club where you practise speaking in front of people. He asked me to speak for two minutes about my doctoral topic, and I did!  Shortly afterwards, I found our local Toastmasters club and joined. It was such a useful experience that I told his sister, and she joined. Then a year or two later, when his step-sister had to make a speech at a wedding, she joined, and she got her partner to join too. The two of them got so involved that they were on the local committee helping out a lot.
All through the influence of one member of the family.

My hen, Gigi

I had a hen and my hen pleased me and I fed my hen under yonder tree. Pretty hen, Gigi, is no more. She'd been sitting around looking sorry for herself for the last five days, walking, no, waddling, less and less. Tuesday she sat under the Hazel tree, which when I noticed because the other three hens came running out to me but Gigi just stayed nestled in the leaves. Each day got worse. Yesterday morning she struggled to leave the coop, so I took her to the vet.
The vet said she was egg bound. Gigi hasn't been laying eggs for weeks and months, but I wasn't surprised because of it being winter, and she is a bit old at three years. But apparently she'd still been ovulating, the yolks had got stuck at some damaged place in the oviduct, and accumulated in the abdomen, gathering germs. The swollen abdomen made it hard for her to breathe, and eating when you can't breathe is difficult. Her crop was empty and she was very thin. Poor thing looked as unhappy as my 93 year old mother.
I left her at the vet's.

Lime blossom tea - not for the wasps

The council, one of them, town or vale or county, has pollarded the limes in our street.
Perhaps this Autumn we'll have fewer wasp nests because there won't be as many insects enjoying the  sweet lime sap for the wasps to eat.
On the other hand, this year I won't be getting my fresh lime blossom tea from these trees.

Tae kwon do progress

My daughter needed to do a sport for her Duke of Edinburgh Award, and found and chose a local tae kwon do club, to which I had to take her. It wasn't a very salubrious walk however, so I would stay and wait for her. Boring!
Then I realised that Bytomic tae kwon do isn't just for kids; they were taking from six to fifty-six. I was then younger than 56 so I joined in. Years later, I'm still going, have attained first Dan black belt and know a lot more about Korea where this martial art started in 1956, than I ever guessed I would! And am I fit! From a health check I had a month or so ago my metabolic age apparently is younger than my chronological age by about 15 years. That means I'm metabolically younger than I was when I started tae kwon do.
I don't rate my skills highly though, so I need extra practice and training, probably more than the younger members do in order for me to keep up with them. Some ways I do that are to

• go to more than one class a week 
• cross-train with a variety of instructors, 
• attend the black belt sessions every six months
• aim to grade
• participate in tournaments

Now I'm so pants, so slow and clumsy that I have only participated in two or three tournaments. So you can imagine how chuffed I am that at yesterday's tournament I gained a medal for my pants patterns!
I must tell my daughter. And by the way, they've taken away the upper age limit, so if you're near or over 56, please come and join so I'm not the only older woman in the club.

Biphosphonate news

Today the BBC tells us that Osteoporosis drugs may make bones weaker drug.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39122541. Their apparent success has been that when bone density is measured, it is denser when on the drugs than off. But that doesn't say what the quality of dense is. The Eiffel Tower would be denser if you put concrete in its spaces, but it wouldn't stay up better. These biphosophonate drugs stop old bone being removed, hence old and new bone cells are present, and more cells equals denser. Now scientists have found a new way to measure bone, and find hairline cracks. Ha! I could have told you biphosophonates can't have been effective because it was such a horrible drug to take  We know biphosophonates are dangerous because they are so acidic that patients must stand or sit up to take it and stay upright for half an hour and take it with water only once a week, or inject it even less often.

In 2010, I broke my hand. Yet, they didn't check me for osteoporosis, despite being over 50.
 I should have got me enough vitamin D, then I wouldn't have broken the bone or got BC. But after the BC and prescribing a BC drug that induces osteoporosis, a DEXA scan showed I had osteoporosis so they gave me biphosphonates. A couple of years later, a DEXA scan showed I had less osteoporosis, and my GP accepted I came off the drug, not realising that I stopped them every few months because of the joint and bone pain that spoilt my tae kwon do activities. But I'd changed my diet and got more vitamin D (sun & supplements).

Imagine taking this drug from 60 till 90... that's when the cracks show - in people who live long enough to show the damage. Several of my aged relatives ought to get vitamin D from sunlight and oils. But how much sunlight does someone in a care home get? Zero. Or if in sheltered accommodation? Then once a week if someone can help to take you out. And what do carers do for elderly vegetarians who don't eat oily fish or liver as a source of vitamin D? Nothing. And the doctors don't advise the carers or warn the elderly people. Sad and wrong.

Coffee with mother

I go up to Yorkshire to see aged Aunty sometimes, passing my mother's care home on the way. If I'm there in the morning I make and share a cup of coffee with her. Mum likes coffee in the morning so I make some fresh for her. She doesn't drink much, and I give her only half a mug but she seems happy to have it. Otherwise she'd wait till the weekend when my brother is back from work and can go in and make her coffee. A mid-week coffee is the nearest I can get to giving her a treat.

24 October 2014 - the day before the wedding

Two years ago, son and daughter-in-law married. Here's the video we put together in a hurry the day before when we realised it was a bit difficult to find the register office https://vimeo.com/109978971. It's a beautiful castle - an amazing place to marry and much more romantic than Aldershot register office where his father and I married nearly four decades earlier. Mind you, the officer at Aldershot was lovely. We were overwhelmed of course and hardly took it in, not helped by my tardy arrival though I kept telling my parents a bride couldn't be late for a wedding at a register office, so I was in tears!

Aldershot 1978

The next weekend, in a more leisurely fashion, new husband and I were strolling round the local supermarket when a woman greeted us, and then as we stared, she said, "what were you doing last Saturday?" and we stared again, realising that she was the officer who had registered our marriage. How nice of her.
Someone took some informal photos that show the officer but I can't find them.  Here's an official photo as we sign, looking more relaxed than we had been feeling half an hour earlier. You can see my mother's cousin and my brother in the background The pendant I'm wearing was a wedding present from my new mother-in-law, who'd been so pleased to find something so pretty and appropriate. I've passed it on to my new DiL.

Visiting the city of Barcelona

Our holiday includes two day trips to Barcelona, the first being last Wednesday and the second tomorrow. On Wednesday, we looked round the old Gothic quarter, going round and round till I was utterly lost. I made an audioboom recording and took a few photos. See Swarm, Instagram and FB. Then husband and I dashed, short of time over to see the Sagrada Familia, Church of the Holy Family,which was fantastic worth a visit.  Gaudi designed it and despite building starting nearly 100 years ago it is not yet complete.

Here's the front door: a dove amongst the flowers

What most impressed me were the towering pillars, splitting at the top into branches, emulating a high forest, and the archways - effigies something between Disney world and Gothic.

East window of Sadrada Familia

The west windows reflected warm colours of sunset (above and here) and the east were cold colours (here).
 But time was short. We learned how the metro works, used it and arrived at the meeting point in time. But the meeting point was place de Catalunya, a huge square , and it took us half an hour to find our group. Too stressful and exciting.

Tomorrow we go back there, after seeing the Hospital  de Pau, to meet my cousin and his partner for lunch. Looking forward to it.

Back to Catalunya

Roman bridge

Years ago I was in Catalunya, La Escala to be precise, on holiday with a French family. Now I'm back again, on holiday with my husband. We're staying in this ancient castle in Cardona and learning about Catalan battles and history, and salt mines. Here's the misty view from our bedroom window one morning.

Salt mine

This enormous salt mine, 1300 metres deep, is here, has been here since the Romans paid salaries in salt.

But in the twentieth century rather than mining for edible salt they mined for potassium chloride for explosives.

And quite an explosive history was round here. In 1711, the Bourbons thought they had the right to the city of Cardona, laid siege, but allies fought against them. The history of the siege and its outcome is here.

Aged aunty's cat

Aged aunty loves animals but where she now lives in sheltered accommodation does not allow pets. Some time ago, passing this carpet shop, I saw this cat in in the window, a sleeping marmalade cat, comfy on the carpet. But it's a model cat, made of cardboard and rabbit fur! I found where to get one and took him up to aunty last time I went. When she was looking the other direction, I placed him on her sofa then stood away.
"How did he get there?" she startled! He is so life like that he gives her a lot of pleasure. She's named him 'Marmalade' and placed in a corner where she won't trip over him, but she can see him sleeping in the sun. Now she tells me on the phone that she has the cat, that he sleeps an awful lot, and that she's introduced him to people who visit, and his name is... "just a moment while I think ... Marmalade!"

Mourning

RIC

I sketched this forty years ago. I am still pleased that I captured his firm jaw, the way his glasses hid his eyes, his unruly hair, and the slight irritation because he did not want me to sketch him.
Twenty years ago, on holiday we woke to a beautiful morning like this at La Motte du Caire. Those are the mountains where later that day, he died.
Yesterday, his brother rang me to tell me their mother has died. His brother is the last of that family - lonely.

Mourning this morning.

La Motte du Caire airfield today

Rio Olympics - tae kwon do

Great Britain is doing well again at the Olympics. Like four and eight years ago, I am following the tae kwon do. Tae kwon do means:

• tae - foot or kick
• kwon - hand or fist
• do - art or skill or way

ITF allows punches to the head and face as well as kicks to the body, though in competitions WTF does not. Hence the comment from ITF (International Taekwondo Federation) people that there is not much kwon from the Olympian athletes who fight WTF style. (World Taekwondo Federation). More info here.

We have Jade Jones from Wales and she's won a gold. Her coach, Paul Green, advises her to use her to kick high and fast and use her opponent's weaknesses. I'm somewhat slow of thought and foot. I can't move as fast as Jade and I can't do the spits so I won't get as high, though I have done head kicks, but how can I use my opponent's weaknesses? What coach can I find who'll show me how to do that?

Exam results

The A level results have come out. I'm delighted for my nephew who has earned the place he wanted at the university he wanted. His mother is justifiably proud.
Ten years ago, I was in the same position, and my son won the place he wanted. He went on to the right university for him, coming out with a good degree, and then went on to get a Masters as well. A week later, on a French airfield, my daughter rang her school from the public pay phone to get her GCSE results. With no speaker phone, she repeated out loud what they told her for her nervous mother standing next to her.  She did herself and her school proud.
Like ten years ago, I've been planning to go to France, but things conspire. Elderly aunt might need some support this week; planes no longer fly to Grenoble; trains take seven hours, and no way am I driving 500 miles.  How did I do it in 1997 with two small children in the car? Even taking several days with a stop in Paris at friends and at a campsite on the way down, on my own, a single parent, - how did I do it? But I would now like to go away for a holiday in the sun.
At tae kwon do, I (discretely) asked a mother what her son's results were. His mother looked grumpy, muttered quietly what his results were but pointed out that anyhow he didn't need them to get where he wanted to go. Neither did I when I did my A-levels - I already had my place at training college so I had no motivation to do really well at my A-levels so I think he's done fine. I was on the point of telling his mother this and congratulating her to have got him through his first 18 years and he could start his adult life, when she grumbled about all these people on Facebook announcing their offspring's wonderful results.  It's funny because she's being putting on Facebook what a wonderful holiday her family was having in several different countries - it sounds wonderful and I'd love to do that too.  Was she boasting about her holiday, but grumbling when others boast about their children's successes?  No.  She was just sharing her pleasure.

God daughter's christening

One of my god daughters was christened years ago, in my years BC (before children), and I was honoured then that her parents chose me.  Here, with one of her god fathers, Iain, we are after the christening.

I felt even more honoured this last weekend that my now adult god daughter invited me to her wedding in St Paul's Cathedral.
I have an album of photos of her when a toddler, starting with her birth announcement, including one of her in what I assume is a nursery school photo, and one of her playing the piano - she started  early. As she grew up, I saw her less often, but see her mother every few months, a particularly good, loyal and strong friend to me.

God daughter and her now-husband dated for over 4000 days, including a year long round the world trip before at last marrying. They are obviously very good friends. It augurs well for their future.

Father's day

Yesterday was Father's day, the first year I've had no father.  I am not complaining though because some, like my children, lost their father before they hit double figures. I knew mine for decades.
He taught me to swim, taking me to Southport baths when I was tiny.

Father-of-the-bride

He advised me in my teens, "if you can't be good, be careful". He joked, with reference to our gliding, in his father-of-bride speech , "may all your thermals be little ones".
He proudly held up my gown hood when I achieved my OU degree in my thirties.
He enjoyed playing with our children in the following decades, taking them swimming at Richmond baths.

Achieved my first degree

As my mother's sight faded, my dad came into my life more and more, still supporting my life, as he helped our mother. His relationship with and attitude to Mum was the model I wanted for the men I chose as my husbands, my children's father and their step father. I'm lucky I had a good father, a father I knew, a father who loved me. I'm lucky I had him so long.
I wish my children could have had the same experiences.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL is how you get letters addressed to you from an NHS healthcare provider. The NHS provided me with healthcare in 2011 when I blogged my breast cancer in I like it in the glory hole. I had cutting (an operation), burning (radiotherapy) and just in case therapy (adjuvant aromatase inhibitor - drugs to stop oestrogen, just in case any oestrogen-positive cancer cells remain). About a year ago, I made "a uni-lateral decision" (quotes because that is what my NHS GP wrote to the consultant) to come off the aromatase inhibitors, becoming one of the 36% who stop taking the drug by four years. Last week, five years after the BC, I had a write-you-off (discharge) letter,

"Thank you for attending for your recent mammogram. I am pleased to inform you that your mamograms (breast x-rays) show no sign of breast cancer."

So that's it then.  No more annual mammograms. Well that might be it.  I do have calcifications and apparently calcifications can lead to BC.  We'll see. In the meantime, I shall continue confidently trusting a private GP.

Living together problems

Working from home today, at eight o'clock I sorted the laundry basket and put a dark wash on, while husband prepared to go out to his keep fit class. At half-past eight, he appeared interestingly half dressed.

"I can't find my gym shorts." 

I don't know where he last had them, but I've just put a wash on, a dark wash, of any material dark that I found in the laundry basket, so I can guess where his dark blue gym shorts are now. Apparently he put them in the laundry basket a week ago. Does this make me a housewife failure or did I just too enthusiastically wash all the other things? I still have all the sheets and towels from last week's lodgers to wash too. Oh dear.
But such is life when living with anyone, and I've lived with someone for over forty years.  Whether they be flatmates or partners, children or spouses, if you're going to live with others, then you just have to get used to it, their problems and your mistakes, their mistakes and your problems. I'd rather live with someone than on my own.

Only connect

Have you read 'Five ways to wellbeing'? The first suggested action for wellbeing is to connect.  Connect with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. I am lucky with my friends.  I still connect and am in touch with friends from

• school (See friends)
• tae kwon do (See http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/competitions-and-competing.html ) 
• gliding years ago (See gliding weekends, gliding club,  and gliding again),  
• friends abroad (See Norwegian gliding friend)
• studying for my OU qualifications and from work
• teacher training college
• comparatively new friends in this town where I've lived since remarrying
• neighbours
• lost friends that I refound through social media



AB

• friends of my late husband (FoLH), loyal and supportive to me in raising our children. 

FoLH

An old friend, my ex-doctor friend (ExDrF) connected last week, staying here overnight on her way to somewhere else, between places. Like me, my ExDrF has retired from her first career and is enthusiastically making her way in a new one and its work brought her near enough to visit. I hadn't see ExDrF for 15-16 years because I'd moved and she'd moved, yet we'd stayed in touch.  What a pleasure it was to talk with her! We remembered each other's children - she remembers mine so well it's a compliment; exchanged news on what they're doing - one of hers is doing a doctorate as is one of mine; one of hers is about to get married and one of mine has married.  We remembered the nursery school they went to, which friend had influenced which of us to choose that nursery and subsequent schooling decisions. We have mutual friends (like AB) who have similarly changed tack as children departed. I missed these friends when my children reached sixth form and university age because I wanted to share with them the end of that era, the completion of a job: bringing our children up ready to  make their own way in the world.
My friends support and enrich my life. I hope I do theirs. We'll have mutual wellbeing.

Mothering or grandmothering Sunday

Mothering my daughter years ago, I escorted her to tae kwon do, then joined myself.  When I got to be a black belt, my oldest granddaughter thought it so cool that a grandmother could have black belt in a martial art, that she too started learning tae kwon do.  She's learning fast.
She comes round on Thursdays after school and we chat. She's been doing theory of knowledge for her IB and tells me about various place value systems, such as ancient Sumerians used. I remind her that I have a video of her counting in binary when she was her little sister's age (seven) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAQaRwW72jI.
Her littler cousin (six years old) is impressing me by programming her Logo turtle to draw, not just a simple square or circle but a heart. That's as good as or better than my OU students do.
I used to want to boast about my children. Now I can boast about my grandchildren's achievements.

Reflections on blogging

Looking back over this blog, In the first year I posted ten entries, of which five mentioned our daughters.  Of the eight posts of 2005, half were about our children. In 2006, I more than doubled my writing (29 posts) and well over half were about our teenagers. Gradually I started writing about our grandchildren.
In 2006, I started full time study for a research degree. Starting research, was a new venture to distract me from gloom as I anticipated my role as mother reducing when the children left home. Yet during my MRes and PhD years of study, I posted 75, 144, 207 and 89 times, nearly always about the family, children and grandchildren, and then occasionally our older generation as they grew ill and died.
I wonder why I stopped posting. Perhaps I stopped  because I'd finished study, perhaps because I had new contracts to keep me busy, or perhaps the adjuvant therapy for my breast cancer slowed down my thought processes.

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.

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine - last night a housemate from many years ago, visited with a bottle of wine. He calculated my age and today remembered my birthday, sending me an email with birthday greetings. How nice is that!

Rehearsal of "Guys and Dolls

Just seen the dress rehearsal of "Guys and Dolls". It's witty, romantic, with wonderful singing & acrobatic dancing that's superbe in the sewer scene. They've been rehearsing it at Aylesbury and are about to start performing for the public at Manchester. See  http://www.guysanddollsthemusical.co.uk/. One of the cast staying with us offered tickets for the dress rehearsal and we're so glad we saw it.
I asked husband, "what do you think of the scenery?" "Some of it's very nice" he unhesitatingly replied with that look in his eye that meant he wasn't thinking only of the backdrop. Watch the women dancing, and the men are pretty good to watch too.
Go and enjoy if you get the chance.

Yellow month

Apart from the day the glaziers took the roof off the conservatory, it hasn't rained much this month and the leaves are yellow and gently falling.  In this photo, 38 years ago, the weather was similar. The rain held off and the leaves gently fell.  It was a good day and the start of a good life.
The men of this somewhat yellow photo have fallen now.

Corfu visit: sun, sea, smells and sounds

We went to visit an old Norwegian friend who has a holiday house in Corfu, leaving just as the first English autumn morning dawned clear and crisp. In Corfu, there were so many flowers still blooming and the air was warm and the sea warmer - I summarised the week in two minutes at https://vimeo.com/141837801
Then we came back to the English autumn. Here, I see no flowers, but fruits everywhere and the bottom of the garden under the apple and pear trees smells of perry and cider. The leaves, though not yet fallen, are shades of red, russet, orange and yellow. I need three times as many layers of clothes as I needed last week in Corfu and next week I  might even use gloves in the morning.

New start

Today, my 91-year old mother, newly widowed, moves to a new care home in a new town.  She's blind and her hearing is going.  Is she brave!

Helsinki

Four tranquil days by the sea, even on the sea too, sailing round the islands, like Isosaari we spent this week.  'Iso' is the Finnish for 'big and once I lived on Big Robert's Street - Isorobertinkatu.  'Katu', the Finnish equivalent of the Swedish word 'Gatu', means gate or street.
Daughter and I wandered the streets of Helsinki
and the market

Red cathedral, Helsinki

and the cathedrals, red and white.
We had a lovely evening meal with a Sibelius concert - we should have stayed there longer.

Finland is full of trees, pine trees and delicate silver birch trees. And water seems to make up half its land in lakes, not rivers.  In the fields of Suomenalinnea (an island off Helsinki where the Russians built a Finnish fortress - the Gibraltar of the North), we saw no cows or sheep or signs of rabbits, though I noticed that several Helsinki women walked poodles or dogs that looked a bit like poodles.  The streets were clean and clear, and pavements were wide for pedestrians and separate tracks for cyclists.


We ate reindeer meat, and berries - lingonberries and something like blue berries that were very palatable.
The ligon berries were however so tart that your cheeks watered.  I found a use for them by mixing them in with the butter-fired mushrooms I cooked in the evenings at the YHA hostel.
In the hostel, we met the usual friendly sort of foreigners.  An Indian couple from Ahmedabad advised me to visit again, and a very English gentleman with bottle-bottom thick spectacles introduced himself with "how do you do?"  After the usual pleasantries about where we came from he started a long story about how he came to lose his driving licence, a story that entailed him drawing my attention to the braces that held up his yellow knee length dungarees that he'd made for himself so he could attach his wooden leg more easily. Eccentric?

Eurokangas fabric store

Helsinki train station

Daughter found the most magnificently well stocked fabric shop and had a whale of a time examining various cloths to turn into coats, capes and costumes.

Damp Devon

Each year for some seven or eight years, husband and I have taken two or three grandchildren youth hostelling.  This year we aimed to do it again, but this time two parents came with us, and my daughter. This year the company made up for the rainy weather.
We visited SS Great Britain in Bristol on the way down there, the most fascinating old ship I've been on.  I've been on older ships (in Stockholm and in Portsmouth) but this one related to relatives that I could imagine in the 19th century who might have travelled to Australia on such a ship. Its engineering is amazing.  How did they work out the maths to create those structures?  They must have applied calculus and had the machinery to create the propellor and the bows.
On the Monday,  thought we'd hide from the rain by investigating the hidden underground passages of Exeter.  Unfortunately too many others had had the same idea and it was fully booked.  So we paddled around,saw the outside of the cathedral, picked some blackberries at the park and ride car park and went to see my revered first mother-in-law.
Later in the week some of us walked up Dunkery Beacon, and we visited Dunster Mill and went round  Dunster Castle, which was probably the most exciting event of the break - husband left his brolly there.  Yes we needed umbrellas all week.

Wedding hats

One of our daughters is marrying and we're told we have to wear hats.   Here are some hats that daughter and I have made.

Last week, granddaughter #1 turned up at tae kwon do in her new silver hat!  And here are inspirations:
https://uk.pinterest.com/rowleypolybird/hatspiration/
I think I'll photo hats at the wedding.

Fine art - first class print making

My sister's been awarded a first class honours in her fine arts degree after eight years balancing part time study with part time work.  Her final exhibition was a couple of months ago - introduced here https://audioboom.com/boos/3275106-ba-fine-arts-final-exhibition-2015.

My sister specialised in print-making Exploring through print-making.   Some of her papier mache look like death masks, and that's on purpose because she was exploring the theme of mortality.  Mortality interested her because of a number of deaths in our family over the last few years while she was studying. Hear her describe her work on this theme at https://audioboom.com/boos/3276557-fine-art-mortality-with-cath-hartnett.


The last photo is of a papier mache of our mother's hand, frail with age. Even through the paper, you can  see the wedding ring on her fourth finger.

Up, not about

My father is out of hospital after several weeks.  He and my mother are together to celebrate their 65 wedding anniversary.    But their spirits are not up.  Mum is happier now that Dad is with her, but he's bed bound, not only can't get up and out of bed but can hardly turn himself in the bed.  His only comfort is listening to audio books.  Mum was eating with other people in the care home till he came out, and now her only company is him.
As aged Aunty E keeps saying "it's old age and dry rot!" And Mum and Dad feel rotten.
Nevertheless, their loyal younger friends in the parish gathered today for their anniversary mass, signed a card for them, iced a cake and sent sweet smelling jasmine.  Mum and Dad must have done something special to have so many people care.

First Holy Communion

Allelulia, sing to Jesus

We sang as the last hymn of the First Communion mass today.  Most of the time, most of us did not sing because the choir sang, and because we didn't know the words of the hymns.  But this hymn, "Allelulia, sing to Jesus", is a hymn that a couple of my singing relatives know, and did they sing out with grins on their faces at the words

"thunder like a mighty flood"

They loved it. Mind you, I love their singing.

It was a lovely ceremony, with just ten children taking their First Communion at a Blackfriars family mass in Oxford.  The children concentrated on the mass, not sitting with their families but at the front, like guests of honour.  After the mass, they were presented not only with certificates, but also with a set of rosary beads each, and advised to bring them the next two visits because one of the Dominicans was going to do something with them.  I love that idea, not just giving a relevant gift, but helping the children to see it as more than just a pretty trinket, but as something to help them develop further spiritually.

What a lucky little relative we have who belongs to such a church community.

Lovely Lola lost

This young, elegant little cat, an adventurous beastie, has been living next door to us for nearly a year, getting bolder and bolder, tripping across our patio every day to leap over the next wall, into the court and out to the street.  She caught a pigeon on our lawn earlier in the spring, taking it down to the bottom of garden to eat it.  Twice I've found her in my hens' run, causing a lot of clucking, fortunately hens 1:Lola 0. Initially she teased our old cat Cheeky by pouncing on her sleeping, but gradually they reached a truce so Lola would pass without the pair of them spatting and she would eat Cheeky's food only when Cheeky had had enough.  Yesterday evening, Lola was surprised by big black Torres passing and they had a cat fight, which she lost, being trapped between two large plant pots. This morning I watched Lola chasing the flies on the lawn in the sunshine, and later sitting lady-like on the patio, perhaps smelling where she and Torres had been.
This afternoon she was knocked down in the street, and then run over by two or three more cars.  I've seen a squirrel killed in the same spot. I wish the council would put a speed bump just at that angle in the street where it bends slightly and if you go too fast you can't see quickly enough if there's an obstacle.  One day it'll be a child runs down the steps and under a car.

Holiday topics

Toastmaster topics master this week asked us to speak about holidays, e.g.

• "What is the best holiday you have ever had?"  
• "Do you prefer to holiday on the beach, or have a more active holiday like cycling?  Explain"
• "Would you holiday in the UK or go overseas?    Why"

One of us had to speak to, "Have you ever had a disaster on holiday", which should elicit a humorous litany of woes, but had she asked me to speak, it would have upset the room. The most disastrous holiday I ever had ended at a quarter to one on 23 August 1996. When the disaster happened, the holiday ended. Another of the topic questions was, "would you take out holiday insurance?" That August we had insurance as usual, but only for the usual four out of the five of our party, and I had to pay out a couple of hundred pounds to get one of us home!  Do I need to assure you that now I always have insurance?

The last topic was open to the room, "has anyone gone abroad on Xmas day?".  Yes - and that was probably one of my most memorable holiday, if only because it was the first one I had away from my parents and family when I was 22.  Booked in summer, whilst suffering from a party-induced hangover, my housemate and I flew to an Austrian skiing resort, Mayerhofen.  Housemate got all the gear, onesie ski-suit, gloves, hat, and I, not knowing if I'd like it, wore my English weather water-proofs.  Housemate put on her skis for the first time in our first class, faced up the hill, stood up, and slid backwards, thus promptly falling over.  She went back to the hotel where she spent the rest of the week, kindly donating me her fantastic onesie, a  garment I wore there and then, and for many years after both skiing and later on winter gliding fields.  I discovered I loved skiing and had some aptitude for it. I spent Christmas lunch alone on the top of a mountain, outside an Austrian ski restaurant, eating my sandwich and enjoying the cold crisp wonderful Alpine air - a good Christmas holiday.