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.