Guided tour to theorem country

What's a theorem? An assertion you can prove is true, at least that's what I'm asserting following yesterday's seminar at an Oxford University Continuing Education (OUCE) day.

If you've seen the Theorem of the Day web site you'll get a flavour of what the discussion was about. The presenter was the author of that site. Now that site is not easy, not the best way to get to learn about theorems, if you know nothing to start with. Theorems are challenging. But if you like thinking, then you'd have enjoyed the day. And it did help to have some maths.

The participants included relative amateurs like myself, retired maths teachers, chemists, physicists, an eminent professor of biology, a couple of sixth former, a member of the Institute of Mathematics and her husband who'd done a PhD in maths - but not this field she hastened to assure me.

Planning a birthday party

• invite people: write cards, send emails
• book the venue
• get husband to bake cake, and tell him how to ice it
• check children & brother's family are coming
• get decorations
• plan brunch
• arrange people into teams of 3 and then of two to play against each other - or let them choose their opposition
• think if I want to say anything
• plot 60 good things about life.

Memories of music: the Hallelujah chorus

The Hallelujah chorus comes from Handel's Messiah. My dead husband introduced me to this music when he used to sit of an evening on our brown sofa, his one long leg resting on the other, his arms conducting enthusiastically, and me playing ignorant pleb. When they sang, "Oh! We like sheep..." one day I responded, "and I like lamb!" causing husband to choke a chortle at the impiety. With practice, I grew to like that magnificent music.
Years later, would-become-new husband took me on our first real date to hear The Messiah. He was, unbeknownst to him, onto a winner that brought me happy memories.
This year The Next Stage Choir performs the Hallelujah chorus. I sing with the sopranos. The high notes challenge me and the long holding of breath challenges even more but the choir master and fellow sopranos say it will come with practice, so I'll practice. With practice, I'll get to sing it.

Lying or writing clearly

Do you want to write clearly? Adding adjectives to your writing blurs its message, mendacious writing. I suspect though that often my students write like that, not because they're lying but because they don't really know what they're talking about but if they write enough words, perhaps they'll say the right one that persuades me to give them the mark!

Watch Pamela Meyer's TED talk on 'How to spot a liar' at http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar,which is intriguing and informative. I love where she shows small babies, toddlers and five-year olds and even a chimpanzee lying - it shows a level of intelligence that gets you out of trouble or gets what you want. It shows an understanding of other people.

Not that I'm recommending lying - I would lie to avoid hurting someone, and I think Meyer suggests that when she uses examples of lovers and spouses. Watch it.

Another father's day

 Another year, another father's day, another birthday

Gliding field at La Motte du Caire, end of the day

Not
http://www.cvvmc.com/index.php/en/webcams

Lectionary 10

"Lectionary 10" is what it reads on the front of the weekly leaflet of the Faith Lutheran Church last Sunday when I visited with daughter and daughter's partner (dP). You can find its web site at www.faithlutheranbrantford.com
The services are not unlike those I've attended elsewhere for years: start, say hello bit perhaps, sing, pray, sermonise, pray, pay, pray, eat & drink, pray, it's ended (deo gratis). I like the way the FLC write it up as: gathering, word, meal, sending.
Yesterday's sermon, perhaps a tad long, revealed a depth of tolerance for difference, in recounting a similar Lutheran church near San Francisco where in the eighties a number of male members kept dying off, before they realised they had AIDs and were gay, which is something not tolerated by some. The congregation still accepted them despite protesters standing outside the church with placards saying it was a sin. When the pastor revealed he too was gay, the congregation said, "yes, we know. You're still our pastor" and when the bishop tutted, the congregation said, "yes, we know. He's still our pastor", and he stayed their pastor.
That's Christian tolerance.

Busy, busy first day when we visited Niagara
and then drove in this newly hired car to Waterford to see Glen's karate class. We didn't get back to our B&B in St George till well after ten o'clock, so I got to drive in Canada in the dark.
We got to eat poutine.

Canada

We've flown over to Canada to visit daughter, G, who now lives in Ontario with her partner, G.  We plan a lot of activities: visiting Niagara, touring Toronto, canoeing down the Grand, playing karate at her partner's club, eating poutine, meeting her partner's mother who's flying over from the west coast.
Husband has twitched his back and is a bit uncomfortable if he sits for a long time, so we have to adapt what we do. At this very moment, he's reading his newly acquired (my old) iPad with the newspaper on it, his crossword, access to the cricket scores. He appears to be happy.

If I could use a time machine

If I could use a time machine, I'd go twenty years ahead of now and avoid the boredom of lonely retirement and being socially useless. I'd jump straight to aged decrepitude and senility in the hopes of oblivion. Then the rest of society couldn't accuse me of being a drain on the younger generation that can't afford degrees or mortgages, and there's not enough of them to support baby boomers in retirement. In the eighties, baby boomers could get mortgages and pay the 16% interest, and Thatcher hadn't yet sold off all the council houses so that was an option too.  Baby boomers' parents could retire early cos there were so many younger people working who could therefore pay for their retirement pensions.
And if I wind my time machine forward, I could skip being taxed on the Open University degree I got part time without a government grant or support while I was paying that 16% on our mortgage.

Aged auntie died

You know how they talk about the squeezed generation - those people who have aged  relatives getting doddery and still have children to bring up. Well they ought to call it the hugged generation because your children hug you and your aged relatives need you. But I'm no longer the hugged generation because my children are quite grown up and the last of my older relatives has gone. Aunty Eileen died in the middle of this month of March after too many bugs in her increasingly frail body.
Here are some links to when I blogged about her:

• Setting up my power of attorney for her: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/legalities-and-paperwork.html
• Dealing with council officials: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/sheltered-housing-and-councils.html
• Bringing her and my parents to our house for Xmas: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/driving-ocotgenarians.html
• Bureaucratic banks: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/boo-to-bureaucratic-banks.html
• Confusing conspirations: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/conspirations-to-confuse.html
• Visiting for Xmas: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/travelling.html
• Support plans: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/crumbs-and-buns.html
• Caring people: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/ageing-aunty.html
• Things and stuff: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/memories-are-made-of-stuff.html
• Stoic: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/lifes-not-good.html
• Pets, or not: http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/aged-auntys-cat.html

Now I'm drafting an eulogy for her funeral next weekend. What should I write?

Eileen and her big brother, Joe

Visiting Ireland with her parents, 1947

She had a wicked sense of humour

Bridesmaid at Joe & Jean's wedding, 1950

Frustrating week - snow stopped all:

Frustrating week - snow stopped all:

• choir
• tae kwon do
• face-to-face tutorial
• getting back from North Yorkshire where ancient auntie moved from hospital to care home for respite. At least auntie can now see out of a window and watch the snow.

On top of that, the university union, UCU, called strike action, which meant I couldn't do an on-line tutorial.

Votes for women

A hundred years ago this week, one of my grandmothers got the right to vote. She was old enough because she'd been born in 1888, but the other grandmother was only 18. She had to wait another ten years till she had the right to vote.

Working then and now

Have you written your CV? Do you have a job? What is a job? If it's some action that you get paid for, then you probably count it as a job, rather than a chore.

I've worked since I was 16. As soon as I finished taking my GCE exams, I walked down Chorlton high street going in every garage, hairdresser and shop asking for a job until I got one in the local supermarket. The supermarket manager must have asked me about my background because someone got excited about me having taken (I hadn't yet got the results) maths 'O' level. Consequently, they put me on green groceries. This required weighing produce and then doing complicated arithmetical calculations in your head, like if apples are one and seven pence ha'penny a pound, and this customer wants six ounces of apples, then how much must you write on the brown paper bag?*
Maths is not arithmetic; maths is patterns and logic. I can do patterns and logic (though I didn't know it at sixteen). I cannot do mental arithmetic, and I particularly cannot do mental arithmetic when under stress. Can you?

I was rapidly taken off the green grocery counter and put on the tills instead. The tills were fairly amusing because you met lots of customers, usually women and you had a machine to add up all the purchases, even the extra carrier bag that they asked for after you'd totalled. The first day, I used to put the total back in the till again and then add the few pennies for the bag so I could be sure the sum was correctly calculated. Unfortunately, this meant that at the end of the day, the till was short of the money for all the extra times I'd used it as a calculating machine.

Despite these disasters, the manager kept me on for the next five weeks of the summer holiday, paying me five pounds a week; and he took me back for the next two years of sixth form employing me on Saturdays and school holidays. Thus, I earned my tiny fortune that I spent on my two guinea pigs, one rabbit and twenty pet mice, or on Sunday train fares to the peak district, to trek for my Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme efforts. My brother got jobs in university vacations when he worked on roads along with Irish navvies. He earned a fortune compared to me, but that always was the differential between male and female wages.

What 16 year old now can get a summer job so easily? Over ten years ago, I encouraged my teenagers to look for something, but they came home explaining that everywhere they went, they were told, "Come back with your CV". They didn't get paid work till they went to uni where they got part-time jobs as librarians, tutors or lab assistants. One of our kids spent a year between uni and her first professional job working in B&Q, coming home grubby and proud that she'd earned.
My grandmother started working in a china shop at 14, my mother started teaching in an inner city school at 19, and I was 21 when I started teaching. Yet none of our children started working until at least 22. Several took gap years. One did a foundation year before uni. All of them have done masters degrees. So they're all highly educated, and took years about it.

But it seems hard for them to find and keep jobs.  I suspect my fourteen year old grandmother needed some way of earning her keep, some job that would pay her for her efforts so her auntie didn't have to keep her (her father having died and her mother emigrated). My mother wanted a qualification so she could support herself whether or not she found a husband who could keep her. Similarly, girls of my generation were encouraged to work before marriage, expecting to do hairdressing, secretarial or clerical work, and if they were a bit brighter they could be nurses or teachers. Most of them were not expected to go to university and some were actively discouraged. I started by East End primary kids with the enthusiasm of a twenty year old that thought she was doing good. Then I found teaching English as a Foreign Language was fun because of the intellectual challenge of explaining my own language. (You tend to take it for granted, automatically knowing things like the difference between "I do" and "I'm doing" or "you must" and "you don't have to" or "I could have done" and "I was able to do). A a job was a means of earning a living, of paying the rent, eventually a mortgage and contributing to society.
You used to aim to find a job. And you didn't always have to submit a CV.

---

*BTW, one shilling and seven pence ha'penny for a pound (twelve pence in a shilling and sixteen ounces in a pound) means that I probably should have written 7d on that paper bag. It'd be an easier sum at 1/4 (one and four) a pound because that would be 16d a pound or a penny an ounce.

The holiday I'd like

Isn't this the time of year to go and see the Northern Lights? Wouldn't it be wonderful to take a cruise up the Norwegian coast, stopping at the various towns on the way, and go right into the arctic circle to see the lights?
But suppose it was too cloudy the night we were there. As husband points out, how could we be sure of seeing the lights?

A view from the pew

Singing makes you happy. Singing brings joy to the heart. Singing heartily is like a work out and warms you up. So when my daughter inveigled me into joining our church choir, I agreed. Do you sing?
 Ours is a small choir, usually only three or four of us plus the organist. Our organist organises us, suggests pieces, and she gets us to rehearse. We learn to sing in parts: bass, alto, soprano. Our organist has a lovely clear alto voice that you can hear every week at the Saturday evening mass. We also sing at special masses.
We've sung some special masses in the last year, such as our parish priest's anniversary of his ordination. For these special masses, we've practised what seem to me quite difficult pieces, like Bruckner's Locus Iste, The Deer's Cry and Mozart's Ave Maria. This week we sang at the November mass for the dead. After the communion, the choir sang two pieces: The Deer's Cry and Jesu, lover of my soul. They sounded beautiful. The Jesu has four verses, which we harmonised.  The Deer's Cry  requires a solo voice with a choir later in the piece.  Listen to Rita Connolly sing it, or come to our church and hear our organist sing it.
If you came to that mass for the dead you heard and saw us light candles for and read the names of those dead of the parish. You heard and saw our parish priest's blessings over us at the end of mass, and you heard some of the loveliest singing. You'd have felt at peace, blessed and happy.

Influence of BBC micro today

Why has my daughter now moved to another continent? After recently attending a seminar on the history of educational technology, I now blame this event on the BBC.

1. the BBC micro came out circa 1980, 
2. inspiring the start of the games industry in the UK by the 2000s, which is how 
3. my daughter met people through on-line games in the 201xs.
4. then she played gamers from other countries, even continents
5. then she met one special gamer
6. and emigrated...

all because of educational technology
I recommend Mike Sharples slideshow at https://www.slideshare.net/sharplem/introduction-to-educational-technology-55332225

Gunpowder

Did you watch BBC 1's "Gunpowder"? Critics have welcomed it, wondering why the gunpowder plot of 1605 had not been televised earlier. But watching it, its gory and brutal scenes of pressing to death of someone who wouldn't plead guilty or not guilty, or of hanging, drawing and quartering, you remember why you wouldn't want to remind people of the background, the context at the time, the persecution and killing of English Roman Catholics, their exclusion from Parliament and from the professions for centuries afterwards, despite their professed loyalty to king and country. It was dangerous to tell people you were a Catholic. Indeed, even in the twentieth century, I rarely told people I'd been brought up Catholic.
Once, on an airfield, somehow I mentioned my faith. My fellow glider pilot, a young Scottish woman, was astonished, "I've never met a Catholic", she declared. You'd have thought I had horns growing from my head. Unlike Muslims or Sikhs, Catholics are not visible. They don't wear distinguishing garments, and the most you might see if you're observant is a small cross or crucifix on a lapel.
As I was growing up, in one of the most Catholic parts of England, I learned that I was English, that we were loyal to our royal family, so loyal that I childishly announced after reading another fairy tale, that I was going to marry the prince of England. My mother informed me that I couldn't because I was a Catholic and English princes couldn't be heirs to the throne if they married a Catholic. Nothing daunted, I accepted that law and I loyally carried on being English and Catholic.
You might wonder why I didn't seek a foreign prince, like my daughter's found (he's her prince - not a royal prince) but after a stint working abroad, I decided I liked English men anyhow and came home where I soon met her father. And we lived happily for a couple of decades after.
There are two more episodes to "Gunpowder". It won't end happily ever after.

Ship's cabins

Cruise cabin

Our cruise bedroom, nay, cabin, was adequate with around 160 square feet, twin beds, a space between the beds for husband to stand with his arms on hips and his elbows at my eye height. It was an 'exterior' cabin, meaning it had a window or a porthole. It also had a bathroom, an easy chair, a small round glass-topped table, space for our empty suitcases, more space to store things under the beds, a desk with a screen on it to watch the ship's news and a tray for the kettle and tea mugs.  And there were four mirrored wardrobes with a dozen drawers.
I remember the cabins on the SS St Britain at Bristol, about half the length of this cabin, and not as wide. Each side held three bunk beds, where you berthed perhaps with five strangers.
I wonder how they  managed noro-virus on such ships in the mid 19th century. Here, on the Balmoral, at every entrance to cafe or restaurant or bar or lounge we are exhorted to use the sanitizer on our hands.  "wash, wash, wash" the captain tells us every midday.

Cruising the Baltic

Welcome Aboard The Aylesbury to Marylebone  to Waterloo then Southampton main station

We went by train and taxi to our ship, the Balmoral. This took us 2,444 nautical miles from Southampton and back via the Kiel canal, Copenhagen, Tallinn, St Petersbury, Riga and Warnemunde.

Our ship

The Balmoral has ten decks, 710 cabins, five dining rooms. Our cabin is deck 5. It can carry 1350 guests and 510 crew. Its maximum speed is 18.5 knots. Funny how I got used to hearing that engine speed lulling me to sleep each night. Eventually I woke to it realising that I missed the birds at dawn.

Vocabulary

I referred to our window in our room and got reminded that on a ship it's a porthole and we have a cabin with berths.

Ramblers

We're with the Ramblers group, about 21 people and a leader. We're all in the 'older' age range, old enough to have saved enough to afford this, and to have enough leave to go away for two weeks. Most members of the group have retired or gone part time. Three or four of the men have good heads of hair. Most people wear glasses. We have four single / widowed women, one of whom has Australian permanent residency. I don't learn names because I miss the first few minutes of the first meeting and they're never repeated. I pick most names up during the fortnight, one by one when we sit at the same tables for meals, which we do every night.
One of the innovations that Ian, the leader, suggested, was the use of buddies. When we go on tours, walks and trips, he can't always see us all to count us in and out. A partner might help, though not all of us have partners. So Ian's idea of a buddy is someone who isn't your partner you buddy up with and they check you're present and warns if their buddy is  missing. It works. My buddy turns out to have been an OU tutor like me, and like me, had done her degree and doctorate later in life. In fact, several of the Rambler women did their degree and professional training later in life, having been brought up for the teacher/nurse/typist until-you're-a-wifeAndMother life.
Ramblers briefings are usually every day at the same time in the same place but not for this trip because we only get briefed for shore visits so we sometimes forget and miss a briefing. Fortunately we make most of them. For shore visits we're advised to take insurance proof, debit card, passport, EHIC (for the EU countries Germany, Estonia and Latvia), phone with the number of the local agent. 

Meals

Food on board was good quality, varied and plentiful with starters, soups, salads & main courses followed by desert and coffee.

A lunch menu

 One dinner menu for example:

Starters

citrus cocktail chilled orange and grapefruit segments, dressed with grenadine
roast beef rolls with asparagus
roasted strip loin, filled with grilled green asparagus and served on lettuce with sour cream and chive dressing. 

Soups

fisherman's broth : fish broth with carrots, fennel julienne and salmon quenelles
cream of lamb with root vegetables
mango gazpacho: cold mango soup garnished with red onions, cucumber, coriander & drizzled [sic] with extra virgin olive oil
I've cut out some of the creative descriptions

Salads

house salad with a  choice of dressing
a selection of market fresh seasonal ingredients with a choice of honey mustard, balsamic, Caesar, thousand island or creamy garlic and herb dressing 
Avocado salad with pineapple
a medley of diced avocado and pineapple tossed in an orange vinaigrette, served ... with lettuce

Main courses

pan fried lemon sole with butter sauce
grilled corn fed chicken breast
roast veal leg
lasagna al forno
salmon trio
and there was a vegetarian dish each day and a British dish of the day such as Suffolk stew. on top of that, grilled fish, pasta, omelettes were always available if nothing else met your fancy. Finally deserts were served.

Lunch in the Spey restaurant

If you had dietary requirements, your waiter gave you the dinner menu the night before to choose from and sorted it with the chef before you arrived. so for example if  you fancy the tagliatelle "perugia", but avoid gluten, then the chef would prepare it with gluten-free tagliatelle . 

On the last weekend, they arranged a Neptune menu - loads of seafood.

Fish picture - lettuce represents the seaweed

Seafood Neptune lunch

Unfortunately, it was the same day that Ramblers had our afternoon English tea. Having eaten so much seafood we had hardly any room for the dainty and delicious sandwiches and cakes with proper leaf tea in the Observatory lounge.

English high tea

Crew

The captain, Lars Juel Kjeldsen, a Dane who'd lived in Sweden, welcomed us to the ship and gave us midday updates on progress on sea days. He had a tag phrase, "it is what it is" about the weather or life.
On the last night, he gave awards to nominated members of staff for their particularly good service. I daresay they deserved it; i cannot think of time or place where all the staff seemed so happy to see you and serve you and talk with you and remember you. We had our stewardess, Joecyn and Billy our waiter. Both were from the Philippines. Perhaps that's why there were Tagalog classes during the voyage. I learned to say good evening to them: "Magandang gabi". I also met crew from Bali, India and Thailand.

Activities at sea 

Each day, whether or not a shore day, offered activities, announced in the ship's "Daily Times" a short newsletter that arrived in your cabin in the early evening. Activities included: yoga, Pilates, line dancing, ball room dancing, fitness classes,use of the gym,  Bridge, chess, craft, knitting. Classes were offered on Haiku, cooking Thai massage, iNdiean head massage. There were talks on Faberge & the treasure of the Tsars, on genealogy, Port talks e.g. on Copenhagen or the Hanseatic nations. Some went to bingo or quizzes, or gambling. There were shows every evening - one evening specialized on Great Britain and everyone sang English, Irish, Welsh or Scottish songs, wore red, white and blue, and waved Union Jacks.

Russian Capella singers

St Petersburg opera singer

In St Petersburg, we visited the cathedral in St Peter and Paul's Fortress where we heard these professional opera singers. The first minute is the heavily Russian accented introduction. Listen for the deep baritones in the last half minute. It's amazing. 

More cities to describe but others have described them before me.

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.