Himalayan Vistas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bhaktapur

Typtical Nepali thali

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

Peacock on the wall of a stupa in Bhaktapur

Chitwan National Park

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

Eight of us on the trip

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

We went crocodile seeking from a canoe in the river

Crocodile at Chitwan national park

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

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

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

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

 

nuff said

Pokhara

A dawn view of the range

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

The group, with Manoj, our Nepali guide

Learning to make momos

at a Tibetan refugee camp.

Making momos with Kathy in someone's kitchen 

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

You'd find these bowls of flowers at entrances.

This cobbler on the streets of Pokhara mended my sandal.

Bhandipur

 

Animals, including hens, roamed freely.

Children playing marbles in the street at Bhandipur hill station

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

the old women didn't like being photo'd

Such a beautiful plume

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

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

Nepali beehive. One of us is a bee keeper.

Annie being greeted at the village

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

Seond from the right is Jane, the RambleWorldWide leader.

Nepali beehives in the village

The traffic was 80% motor bikes. 

this stupa at Katmandu is a world heritage site

This is on the front of my 

Lonely Planet Nepali Phrasebook & Dictionary

You have to go round clockwise.

Blue and changes colour when you add lemon

With lemon juice it turns pink

Katmandu. 30 years ago my sister was here.

Last evening - at special meal out

the ceiling rose of my Katmandu hotel bedroom

Dancer entertainment on the last night

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

view as we left Katmandu

Priests near the river

How I met my best friend

Someone asked me how I met my best friend and who it was. 

When I was a young teenager, I came home from a tiff at school, the sort of tiff that teenage girls have, and miserably asked my mother who was her best friend. "Why, your father of course." she exclaimed without a moment's hesitation. It was a lesson for life. My parents were in love then and for the many decasdes that they lived after. 

 In my twenties, when I was on an airfield, (that's a good place for women to meet men, men with job, enough money to go gliding, and the ratio of men to women) I was asked out by several glider pilots One was a curly headed, blue eyed, intelligent, university student that I thought highly interesting. I put quick setting glue on my fingers and kept him for the rest of his life. 20 years. My best friend was my husband.

La Motte du Caire

 I carry on.

from https://www.cvvmc.com/index.php/en/webcams

I remember.

28 years later.

La Motte gliding club web site 

Piano lessons

Singing makes so many people happy, whether listening or singing. Sing high, sing low. Sing blues, or folk or opera or Eastern. The more I sing the more I learn about music. And being in choirs gives me a social life. However, when I can't sing something I try to learn it by playing it on my piano. Now I have three incentives motivating me to remember how to play the piano. 

1.  Watching BBC The Piano 
2.  a local choir director KB who seems able to improvise anything 
3.  Playing the songs I sing. 

Then, when a choir member gave me details of a local piano teacher, I contacted her. I've had a couple of lessons and improved some scales and playing the first 30 bars of "Farewell to Stromness". I'll play during the summer while I have so little OU tutoring and marking to do, and should make some progress. I wonder if playing the piano could make me as happy as singing does.

Old town activities

Someone told me to find somewhere more convenient to live. Where? Living in a town is not like living on an estate. For instance, in town, you have to negotiate traffic, find somewhere to park, walk to your house and talk to passing neighbours, whereas on an estate you can easily park in your drive and you can ignore neighbours. 

Every year or two we open our gardens, gardens that are hidden havens behind our house. I blogged years ago about about our old town gardens, at Secret gardens opening. We opened again this year and had lots of visitors to contribute to our charities (including Florence Nightingale Hospice). Here's a link to Ron Adams Flickr stream for this year's secret gardens. 

Living in the town means I can walk to the library, the bus station, the train station, the churches, the shops, the pubs (and drink without driving), the coffee shops to meet friends every day. The old town residents also get sociable with a wine tasting on the last Monday of the month, a street book club and s. Living here is convenient.

Is public transport worth having?

Is public transport worth having? Yes because it can change your life. I'll tell you three stories.

A couple of years ago, I was in Miami on my own for three days. Three days - that far away in frightening Miami on my own till I met up with my family. The first day, I got on a local bus to go down town and explore. Watching the people on the bus, I noticed s an old man who was chatting with someone else on the other side of the bus, and when she got off he came and sat next to me, which was a bit scary. But he told me all about himself, how he'd come years earlier to the States, and he told me where to visit in Miami, recommending buses to take that would take me all round seeing the best bits. So I followed his advice and for the next two days I saw lots of Miami.
Another story is of when I was at teacher training college in London and would go home on the coach to see my parents in Manchester, sometimes the overnight coach. Sitting sleepily on the coach, the man next to me wanted to talk, but I didn't - I didn't know him and I didn't see a reason to talk with a stranger, and I was happy reading. He moved to the seat behind me. Then he spat at me. I didn't believe it until he'd spat at least twice, and even then it was unbelievable. It wasn't until I changed on to a Manchester bus and he followed me, still spitting, when I exploded, "stop spitting at me!"
The third story is on that coach another time. I was doodling and the young man next to me I sensed was watching, but then he started to write. He got off the coach before me, leaving a post card on his seat. I picked it up and read: he told all his contact details and a little bit about himself, asking me to write. We were both too shy to talk. We might have changed our lives.

Holiday with "strangers"

 This Easter I spent sharing with 20 other people, three three-generation families and an old friend I've known since 1976. She and her husband had been joining this annual Easter meet for decades, he being one of the orginal chaps from uni who would arrange to go on walking holidays staying in youth hostels.  Two years ago they suggested that we join, realising that my husband and I had so much in common with their friends of fifty years. We could not go two years ago, but I joined them last year, a year after my husband had died. 

They're a splendid sociable lot with intelligent conversation that my husband would have enjoyed as much as I do. There's not as much walking as they must have done originally, but they'd do outings that suited the youngest generation, who ranged from five to 19. 

One day we went with kids to The Corris Centre where we could see all the craft shops, Arthur's Labyrinth, or spend three hour down a mine, accessing parts with climbing ropes, and a maze (I liked the best)

Another day, the eldest generation visited the Red Kite centre with some enthusiastic photographers snapping the best pictures. 

 I enjoy people's company, getting to know their lives and interests and worries. I liked all of them from youngest to oldest. What hit me was how much I've moved on from when I joined them last year, cold and lonely and still mourning. This year I'm more settled and happy and warmer - probably helps that I've fitted a new gas fire in our kitchen!

C's not v well. She came banging on the church door at choir rehearsal, to say that she wasn't well and couldn't rehearse. Why did she come out? Someone told me that she got lost the other day and wandered around for a couple of hours, that she's going through a bad patch. Her husband isn't too well either and he's her carer. These are smashing people that I've known and done things with for years. 

C used to do so much and had so much responsibility. She used to run modern dance classes. I'm not interested in modern dance, don't understand it, but I'd do it for fun. Like the first time she taught us a piece for a flash mob. Husband and I and step daughter #1,who likes modern dance all joined in and danced in a very quiet square one Sunday morning years ago. C persuaded us to learn more dancing and we joined in several classes and performances. One was the "March of the Montague and Capulets, which we performed in the dark, carrying candles. I video'd that one. Here is a link to the video on vimeo to see it: Lanterns. Another time, s daughter #1's husband, who's a painter, painted a class rehearsing and you can see s daughter #1 and husband and another student, Hazel - all very recognisable from their body positions.

It's good that we have some records of the fun we had then.

Vintage clothes

 The joys of grandparenting mean I get invited to school nativity plays, ballet performances, concerts and plays. This month was a new one: a vintage & recycled fashion show. It was inspiring. The girls paraded confidently - even my shy g'daughter - displaying their creativity and sewing skills. Several used newspapers - and one had origamied a tutu of a skirt that wrapped round her like a big black and white ball. Another girl had used natural dyes to reuse and old dress, and another had beautiful flowers made of recycled material sewn down the split seam. 

One outfit brought back memories when they announced that it was patch work. Yet it was patchwork of a metallic material and I remember patchworks of cotton fabrics. Natural fabrics mattered.   We used to use cheese cloth and lots of lace and bought kaftans in Petticoat Lane, London. I've dug out my suitcase from the attic with my favourite 1970 dresses that I couldn't bear to give away or throw out and I shall share them with this grand daughter. 

And there's the beautiful blue velvet cocktail dresses with swinging side panels that I inherited from my own aunty who'd worn it in the late 1940s-1950s.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Practical support

 A couple of months ago, I posted about this group of old people what meet at a coffee cafe every morning. The oldest in the group fell over his pegs just before Christmas and broke his hip. He was in hospital for a week then discharged home and has carers coming once a day for six weeks. 

Observe what the group is doing: bringing him coffee every morning, collecting his newspaper voucher from him and collecting his paper, bring his vegetable delivery upstairs to his kitchen for him, checking his bathrrom wall for metal before they put a gripper bar in. And we just chat with him. It's good.

Canadian Christmas

Canada is supposed to be the snowy frozen north, but in fact, where I am is around 900 kilometrees south of home. And it's wet and rainy, only a bit cold at between 2 and 6 degrees Centigrade most of the time I've been here. Unlike my house, theirs is very well insulated and you can strip down to bare arms, not huddle on the sofa in a fleece with an extra blanket. Here's a morning view. 

We've done a few trips out. One meant going cross country for the interesting route. But Ontario is flat with long straight roads and all the farms are huge and look the same with a farmhouse, outbuildings and some silos. Not surprising then that we got a bit lost on our way to London. But when we got to the London museum, it was worth it for the current exhibition of photos and stories of Londoners today. 

Being as I'm flying carry-on luggage only, they've been careful about giving me Christmas presents that I can take back. One present was a massage, something I'd like even if I weren't flying. We drove into Woodstock to MendMassageTherapy and Stephanie W looked after me. Normally I massage my body by moving it and this made up for the lack of exercise. We've ehad a couple of evenings of karate, which was fun but that's closed for Christmas and the best exercise I'm getting atm is walking, walking to the golf club, or to the gas station or round the new estate - SiL called it a sub-division.

It's rained and rained and rained again so we've not been for walks in what would be muddy treks. However, when the rain held off, we went to see the Simcoe lights. This is a several acre park of Christmas lights, lights in the trees, lights on trucks and vans and mobile stalls, reflecting in the light of the adjacent lake, many sponsored by local businesses.  Families were walking around with small and larger children, stalls offered hot drinks, chocolate, cider. My photo doesn't do it justice - go and look at the Simcoe lights web site. 

For Christmas, SiL has got daughter an aquarium, and various bits of equipment to fit it up. We went over to Woodstock fish and admired the mollies and platties. Now she's checking their water chemistry and temperature. They've put it in her work office and it might give her an option for meditation and contemplation. 

And at last it is snowing. This new year's evening, we'll go out in the snow and burn the spare cardboard that's too much to fit in the garbage. We're goiing to burn the Christmas tree too, although it's too early to take it down, just because it'll burn well. 

Not on their perches any more

 It's not that all my friends are falling off their perches - thank god that most of my girlfriends are still around; it's that the two best friends in my life, R & A, have already fallen off. It's bit lonely sometimes without someone to laugh with, share with, chat with, someone to support and care for and who supports and cares for me.

And so this Christmas, I'm spending it happily three and a half thousand miles from home with my family. Luck comes with those who've had best friends. Best friends breed more friends.

Support group

You know the café culture in Mediterranean countries? Recent research suggests that they support older people so that they live longer happier lives. I believe that because last year I found a support group in our local coffee shop. Each morning I'd trundle pass these single people I knew taking another load of deceased husband's clothes to a charity shop. After the third morning, they said, "come and join us!" and they've been supportive ever since.

We have interesting discussions that range over psychology, philosophy and religion. M & I discussed Protestant and Catholic schism and Luther pinning his protests on the door - and we have no arguments about religion despite slightly differing views.

It isn't just company, something to get up for each morning. They provide practical support. One of them, P, is helping the octogenarian, JH, to clear his cellar. P also advised me last year on who best to fix my badly leaking roof. The octogenarian has nodded support to me when I worried about lodgers.

This week, I needed to get bells but didn't know where from. But when JT was describing her knitting a Christmas jumper for a grandchild, she happened to say she'd sewn bells on it. Hey presto! She could tell me where to find bells and I had what I wanted within half an hour.

Long may a café culture last in England.

Learning to sing

 My three-year-old g'child told me "You was singing in the bathroom, Nanna". Yes, I sing. I've been singing. I sang all day while I was learning carols by Chilcott, Rutter and Forbes L'estrange. It gives me pleasure to hear the music to learn new songs and to train my voice to make the sound I want.

The three-year-old knows he has lots to learn. I haven't heard him singing yet. When he does, I hope he finds life long pleasure in singing or at least in listening to others singing.

And I trust soon he'll learn to say, "You were singing, Nanna" instead of the local dialect "you was".

Educational issues of yesteryear and today: corporal punishment

Someone (JD) was telling me of his mate having to do four hours training on LGBT and woke and mental health and grumbling about wasting his time on issues that are not getting his job done. JD tells his mate, “Well don't do it", but, and here's the rub, if he doesn't do those four hours training then he loses half his bonus. Do the training and tick the box! 

 I see the papers are asking the government to advise schools on how to deal with trans issues. "Trans" it wasn't even a word a generation ago. I compare the handling of this educational issue with issues 50 years ago. Teacher training then involved you writing essays for and against corporal punishment, now not an issue to be debated. Then the arguments included that corporal punishment just left the person administrating it feeling satisfied, without changing the child's behaviour, and possibly the administer hurting the child in fury rather than justified chastisement. 

When it came to practice, I remember hearing of a relative hitting a step child with a wooden spoon, not her hand as the mother might have done. If you use your hand, then you know how hard you're hitting and hurt yourself too if it's that hard. When I was at school, in infants' year one, I had a teacher who'd tell the little boys in the stream on the far side of the classroom, "I'll tan your bacon" and she'd take the little boy, put her over her knee and spank him with her hand. At junior school, the teachers might give you the ruler, flat on the palm of your  hand -it stung. The head teacher would give the strap. My first dead husband got the strap once for throwing a board rubber or something across the classroom - probably something the teachers were doing anyhow! The last time I saw physical chastisement was having to witness a child in my class, Micky A, receive the strap of the head master, because he'd skipped school. It all had to be recorded in a book in the head's office. Poor old Micky - strapping him didn't seem like encouragement to come to school. At the end of term, he skipped again, and I didn't tell. Another little boy had given me an end-of-term present - a pottery dachshund - very tasteful, and Micky had observed me thanking him enthusiastically. When  Micky turned up next, he presented me with a pink plastic dog! It was so sweet of him, and I was sad that someone in the staff room commented that he'd probably nicked it from Woolworths. That lad and I had expectations of each other. He could read well, memorise Shakespeare and I don't know why he was so bad at maths because he was bright. Something had gone wrong with teaching him maths in the infants - maybe he'd been playing truant. At the end of term, after school, I was clearing up the classroom when Micky and his 13-year-old brother turned up. For some reason, his brother (a graduate of Borstal) decided to grab me with both hands near my neck. He was only a child and I wasn't going to react, but Micky said, "Aw, leave her alone. She's all right!".

 Maybe now teacher trainees have to write essays for and against use of chosen pronouns?

 In August 1996, we had another lovely family and gliding holiday in La Motte du Caire. It was a family holiday because other families came with their children who played with ours regardless of language differences, other mothers I could chat with, lovely places to drive out to, like Gorges de la Méouge. We took photos; we have one of our daughter learning to ride her bicycle with her father holding on to balance her. Our son, who wasn't enamoured of yet another trip to an airfield, was learning to help launch gliders by holding the wing tip.

At that time, the gliding site didn't have its webcam. Here's how it looks today, just as warm, empty in the middle of the day. The 23rd August 1996 wasn't very good gliding weather because the thermals were too small and required tight turning, but it was still good enough to glide and so people launched, including the club's new two seater with the CFO and an early solo pilot having a check flight, and several private owners too, from Germany and England. 

Volvos

The news is that they're not going to be selling Volvos in the UK any more. I used to drive one. The first time I remember a Volvo was sitting in the back seat, not trusting the driver - a young man (Richard C) I didn't know - and I rudely peered over his shoulder between the seats asking about the fancy dashboard. I'd not seen that fancy a dashboard on cars I'd driven before. 

He drove us - me and some foreign language students - from Oxford city centre to Bicester Airfield where the Oxford University Gliding Club had a new two seater, bought just before all the students left for the summer, so a debt and no students to start paying for it. The gliding doctoral students staying in Oxford realised that the tourist trade could help so targetted the language schools offering trial flights. I was teaching and I came too. 

After my first flight I felt sick, so when an enthusiastic student (Dick C) suggested I join the club and learn to fly I agreed, thinking that if I flew I'd be so busy that I wouldn't be sick. 

There was plenty of talent on that airfield and not many women to compete with. Several young men made overtures. I can't say how forward Richard C was, but a few weeks later he'd insured me to drive his green Volvo estate. So I could drive it to retrieve him when he landed his glider out!

Volvos are good for towing glider trailers.