Spain (Part 1)

I don't get away to foreign fields as much as I would like these days. It doesn't really appeal travelling alone and friends have busy schedules (or other friends they go away with), so I don't get much opportunity. Kay quite rightly goes away a lot with her long-term boyfriend. I keep plucking up courage to travel solo. Maybe one day. Meanwhile, when Kay suggested she had a spare week in July during which we could do something together, I leapt at the opportunity. 

I've never been to mainland Spain before. Greg and I visited a few of the Balearic islands in the past, but never ventured onto the mainland. I guess all those horrible visions of Torremelinos and Benidorm put me off and those who did venture there came back with squiffy tummies. However, a recent read of Victoria Hislop's The Return made me curious to see Granada and Seville and to learn more of the history. I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War and had been quite alarmed at what I had gleaned. So with laptop before me and ideas whizzing in my head, I booked Kay and me onto a flight to Seville, a hotel in Seville for three nights, a bus to Granada and hotel for four nights in Granada, as well as the fight back to London City Airport (a first as I had never flown in or out of there). The weather forecast was for very hot temperatures every day and I did question the wisdom of a July holiday sightseeing in a furnace, but your intrepid blogger decided to cast all concerns to one side and go for it.

Seville did not disappoint. I found it easy to manage all the sights within a  10 minute walk of our hotel (I had deliberately opted for a hotel slap bang in the centre of the Old Town traffic-free streets). The shops were sophisticated, the local women immaculately dressed, despite the heat, the tourists more shabbily dressed in comparison. The ice cream parlours and tapas bars provided welcome shade in the 35C - 38C heat, as did the churches and palaces. Here is a mere small fraction of the photos  I took whilst there. More to come on Granada in another post...

Our hotel in Seville - Moorish style

Alcazar Palace

Alcazar Palace- beautiful ceilings

Alcazar interior -  intricate patterns

Alcazar interior - stunning walls and ceilings

Alcazar interior - stunning walls and ceilings

Alcazar interior - beautiful with every turn

Alcazar interior - stunning courtyards

Alcazar interior - even the doors are not plain

Alcazar interior - it gets better

Alcazar inmate

Alcazar  grounds

Alcazar  grounds

Shops with a difference

Public transport

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral -tomb of Christopher Colombus

Cathedral

Cathedral

Plaza de Espana

Plaza de Espana

Plaza de Espana

San Salvador

San Salvador

Santa Ana, Triana

Statue of Juan Belmonte - famous bullfighter

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Reunion

It's fifty years since I left school after taking A-Levels. It seems like yesterday, so how can it be fifty years? My school, at the time I was there, was an Inner London grammar school. It has changed over the years since - first to a Comprehensive, then a Technology College and currently is an Academy. I struggle to understand what this means in real terms, but am comforted to see the history of the place and the ethos is basically the same. A few buildings have been added on, but the Old Victorian ediface I knew is still the hub. One of our "Old Girls" is the newsreader and TV presenter Fiona Bruce.

Every summer, there are Old Girls reunions. I have only ever been to one. That was about 25 years ago when I dragged a 3-year-old Kay along with me for moral support. The date chosen for the reunions (always the middle Saturday in July) usually clashes with Kay's birthday, so I am never able to go. Not that I probably would anyway, as I am half frightened to meet up with old rivals and maybe see they are more successful in their lives. A lot of my very close friends live in other countries or at vast distances in this one, so I would not really meet up with anyone I wanted to spend time with, assuming anyone from my year group was even there. 

But this year seemed different. Kay was celebrating her birthday on the next day for a start and this year was the fiftieth anniversary of leaving school so I thought an immense effort on my part was needed. I couldn't let fifty years go by without celebrating.  So go I must. But what to wear?  First impressions are so important, particularly after fifty years.  I tried on dozens of outfits from my wardrobe until I was a fraction happy with what I chose. I have never wanted to have a flash car, but suddenly my 20-year-old Micra wouldn't fit the bill, so I decided to take the bus there - in London that is sensible anyway, as parking and traffic can be a nightmare and I wanted to arrive as cool as a cucumber.

With dry mouth and pounding heart I approached the oh so familiar building I had spent seven teenage years in remembering like yesterday the sweat of exams, the hatred of hockey and the heartache of teenage boyfriends. Within two minutes of arriving, I was approached by someone who looked vaguely familiar and, staring at my name badge, she announced who she was. Yes, indeed, someone from my old class. Amazingly, we got on like a house on fire and chatted non-stop for a couple of hours reliving the past fifty years and what we had each done with our lives.  It was like we had never been apart, we got on so well, we swapped emails and promised to stay in touch.  If only we'd had the internet and facebook in our day, it would have been easier to stay in touch!

Having had a rather difficult tooth extracted a week ago and still in some degree of pain, I managed to negotiate my first true solid food in the form of crustless sandwiches, scones, cream and jam and a fruit meringue with lashings of tea in china cups and saucers, all without it dribbling down my face. I wandered corridors and peeped into classrooms, retracing my steps as an 11-year-old entering the school and as an 18-year-old saying goodbye to our much coveted sixth form attic rooms, the "cool" place to be.  All in all a very satisfying visit to my old school and to quote a line from the cartoon Chicken Run "All my life flashed before my eyes". But it was most definitely not "very boring".

Under arrest

If you don't hear from me for a while, it is because I've been locked up in Holloway Prison. No joking! 

I've just had yet another one of those phone calls supposedly from Her Majesty's Tax Office, informing me that I am being charged with fraud for non-payment of taxes. I was then told by a very posh voice to press 1 to speak to an adviser. If I didn't, the voice told me in no pleasant tone that I shall be arrested shortly. To which I shouted down the phone "Oh good, I look forward to seeing you".

Over the last year or so, I have had quite a few of these scam calls on the main landline phone, but today was a first, because the call came into my mobile/cell/handy phone and had the additional threat of arrest. I wonder how many people fall into the trap or how many little old men or women have a heart attack with the shock.  It must pay off. I suppose if one in a thousand hand over their money, the scammer gets a result. 

Summer at last

The hunt for the perfect television goes on, but meanwhile it was the last choir choir session of the term and an informal choir appearance at a local church fete on Saturday. Many of the choir couldn't make the time or venue, but there were still enough of us to make it sound good. Children were briefly disappointed, as their bouncy castle was deflated, so we could put on a 45-minute performance, which went down well with the adults thankfully.  We sang tunes from the Beach Boys,  Abba, Adele and too many more to mention. The weather, after weeks of unpredictability, was sunny and hot. Beefburgers and sausages sizzled on a nearby BBQ.  Summer is here. Fingers crossed.

This is just a handful of us

Rehearsing last minute at home

Hectic

The last few weeks have been hectic, so my attempts to follow blogs and write my own has been somewhat lacking. Many apologies.

First I have been trying to arrange a few escapes over the summer. One to celebrate fifty years of friendship with my two closest friends, having met them on university campus as nervous 18-year-olds leaving home for the first time. We plan to have a few days together back in the town where we studied and revisit old haunts, though fifty years on, it might be more sedate!  Another break is to Spain with Kay. Having read The Return by Victoria Hislop, we are both keen to visit Granada and learn more of the history. I have booked flights, hotels and connections all by myself, so research has taken a while and made me go bog-eyed in the process.

I have, in the attempt to do something for the local community, also volunteered to help out at the local food bank. That takes up a whole afternoon once a week and has been a sad insight into the shortcomings of the government towards people with financial or mental difficulties.  Nobody should be begging for food in this day and age.

The main reason for my preoccupations has been the demise of my television. In the last six years, it has failed on three occasions, each time being the backlight giving up the ghost. Twice I have paid for someone to replace a new backlight at the cost of £99 each, but when it went a third time a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was not cost-effective to buy yet another backlight, when I could get a new TV for  three times that cost. Buying a TV should be a simple thing, I thought. Easy peasy. Hmmmm. Not so in reality.

Since I last bought a TV, things have moved on. There's 4k, Smart, HDMI, USB, HD, LED, QLED, sound bars, TVs as big as your house. Having established what size you want, the rest requires a sit down in a cold room with a beer. I decided I wanted a modest 43 inch (remember the days when you were told not to let a TV dominate a room - not these days -  a 43 inch is apparently classified as small). The size was the easy part. I then decided on a Samsung Smart 4k all-singing, all-dancing model. I'd had a Samsung before and the reviews  for the one I chose were fantastic. So far so good. Next step was to order one from Argos. I've set up TVs  many times before for both me and my mother, so didn't need one delivered or set up for me. I lugged said TV home, only to discover, when I had switched it on and entered my wifi password and other details, that  it wouldn't load up any channels other than the four in-built demo ones. I tried various things to load them up but to no avail. I rang Samsung and they talked me through back to factory settings and then forwards again to load channels with the same result - no channels found. "The TV", they said, "must be faulty, so you need to exchange it".

Back I went to Argos to exchange it and lugged the replacement home. When it got to loading the channels, the same thing happened. Yet again I rang Samsung. I could hear them scratching their heads. I ventured that maybe plugging the BT set-top box (which records programmes or pauses/rewinds live ones)  into the TV might be the problem, so, having disconnected that, the channels loaded. Samsung was glad to get that tip off me!  However the picture was so dark and grainy, it looked like all the action was down the bottom of a coal mine. I fiddled with the personal settings until the backlight and brightness settings were off the end of the scale, but still the picture was extremely dark. Samsung was speechless and didn't know what to advise. Needless to say, I put everything back to factory settings, lugged that back to Argos too and got a refund.

Since then I have been out and about grilling TV salesmen, researching Which? reports and other sites online and am more confused than ever which is the best one to get. I am slightly nervous that connecting an HD box set to a 4K TV is part of the problem although the experts tell me it should not be a problem at all. Meanwhile I am watching a tiny 18 inch TV  (which I resurrected from the bedroom) from my armchair across the vast distance in my lounge and my eyes are going in separate directions, so much so that I got a terrible migraine one day last week and took to my bed! The search continues...........

courtesy of PinClipart

Falling Off the Wagon

I was once given the statistic by Alcoholics Anonymous that for every ten alcoholics that try to give up alcohol permanently, either by detox, rehab or their own efforts, only one will continue to stay off alcohol for the rest of their life. This means that nine, yes NINE, will succumb to the demon drink again.  Greg was certainly one of those nine. I suppose, if someone were to tell me to stay off chocolate for the rest of my life, I would forever be thinking of chocolate. It's like when you decide to go on a diet. All you can think of are the yummiest, calorie-rich foods on God's earth and crave them until - to hell with the diet!  Or, if told not to think of a black cat, your mind will more than likely  conjure up a black cat.

I have rarely seen programmes or plays on TV where anyone relapses. Usually the die-hard alcoholic stops drinking and everything in the garden is lovely forever more. Fiction can bend the rules better than fact. But lately there have been some instances on TV where reformed alcoholics have fallen off the wagon and the acting has been very realistic. Phil Mitchell in Eastenders did a very good portrayal a while ago and more recently Peter Barlow in Coronation Street. There's going to be a no doubt harrowing serial start tonight on Channel 4 called The Virtues about a recovering alcoholic who falls spectacularly off the wagon, drinking to numb his pain as his son emigrates to Australia. Won't be easy viewing,  but sadly it will be a case in favour of the statistics.

Photo courtesy of Radio Times

Relatively speaking

I don't have many surviving relatives. (Cue for violins.) I am an only child, a widow, both parents are dead, and I have no aunts or uncles or cousins. Strictly speaking, my daughter Kay is my one and only close living relative. 

My mother was one of three sisters, so technically I did have aunts, but they died under the age of five. My mother had loads of aunts and cousins, so technically I have many great aunts and second cousins, although I can only count about three that I just about stay in Christmas card contact with, the rest having disappeared into the ether many decades ago before I was even born and are now presumed dead.

On my father's side, it is a whole different ball game altogether. Having escaped from Nazi Germany, the family was pretty much fragmented. My father's mother came from dubious Jewish stock. Dubious in that they were not practicing Jews at all, but merely had some strains of it going back generations. Enough for Mr Hitler to want them gone. No matter that my father and his brother  were christened as Protestants and confirmed too. My paternal grandmother had two sisters and five brothers.  The two sisters, my great aunts, although married,  never had children and managed to ride out the war by hiding in Germany. I met them both in the 1960s and 1970s before they died. Two of my grandmother's brothers died before the war, leaving three brothers, whom we believed never made it out of concentration camps.  If you are a little confused by the above account, here is my father's side of my tree.

I am therefore the sole surviving member of that family.....or so I thought.

About 12 years or so ago, I put my family tree on a website called Genes Reunited. The German side looked pretty much like the one above. Very vague, few dates and no other descendants except me. Time went on and I forgot all about that entry on Genes Reunited. About a year ago, I was contacted by a man (Peter) in Hertford who said he thought we might be related on the German side, as my German grandmother's (rare) maiden name was in common with one in his family.  It turned out after some digging, that we weren't related, but he put me in touch with another man called Ed with the same (rare) surname as my grandmother. It turns out Ed and I are related. We are second cousins. Ed's grandfather, Richard, was the brother of my grandmother.  It is true that Richard and his son Alfred had both ended up in a concentration camp. Richard had been killed, but Alfred had survived the war and been liberated by Americans in 1945. Out of gratitude, Alfred emigrated to America and lived there raising a family - Ed and his twin brother also called Richard. 

Ed wrote to me recently and said he and his family were coming to Scotland/England for a holiday and would love to see me briefly in London on their way through back home. I met my second cousin for the first time at the weekend, together with his wife, two grown-up daughters  and Peter who had put us in touch in the first place. We met in an Italian restaurant in central London and the hours just flew by, as we swapped stories of what we knew of our respective grandparents, great aunts or uncles and our own lives. I had brought along many old photographs of ancestors that Ed had never seen, as his family had not had the good luck to keep or pass on photos in the holocaust.

From having nobody surviving on my father's side, I now have a whole unit living in New Jersey as shown by the tree below. Without the internet, this would not have not been possible. If only my father were still alive to tell that he had a cousin he knew nothing about. Bittersweet or Schadenfreude, as the Germans would say.

In other news, today would have been Greg's 70th birthday. Kay and I intend to celebrate in his honour at his favourite local restaurant. To remember the good times and less of the bad.

My local park

I have written before about the amazing parks that are within walking distance of where I live. One is wild woodland with a stream, but, bizarrely, with a few football pitches tacked on. The other is more cultivated with a big lake and tended rose beds, a children's playground, a cafe and an information centre. I have visited the latter one so many times, when I used to take Kay as a child to the playground, then later to walk the dog on a daily basis and in the last few years to work as a volunteer at the information centre. I also go once a week to help an elderly friend walk her dog, as without me, she is afraid of falling. I have taken many foreign visitors to my local park and many comment on how amazing it is to have so much greenery in the middle of one of the world's largest cities.

The lake is full of all kinds of ducks, swans and geese. The island in the lake contains one of London's largest and most spectacular colonies of breeding herons. Once a year, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds comes along to hold a Heron Watch event and yesterday was that day. The banks of the lake were littered with binoculars on tripods. The trees on the island are littered with grey heron nests and the heron babies are now about 4 weeks old, but to my surprise are almost fully grown, except they are fluffier than the adults. There must have been at least 30 babies.

The weather was not brilliant and I had forgotten to charge my camera, so to my annoyance the battery gave out after only a few photos. Here is the best I can offer...

Heron island. Click on the picture to zoom in and see how many herons you can spot

So many herons living in one tree

A mandarin duck having a nap

An Egyptian goose eyeing me up

Death of an alcoholic

People are naturally always very sympathetic when they find out I am a widow and more often than not ask in hushed tones what my husband died of. When I tell them he was an alcoholic, their look turns from one of sympathy to complete incomprehension, particularly if they knew him slightly or worked with him. He or more precisely we were very good at masking it.... from friends, from neighbours, even from the immediate family. Denial is not just the prerogative of the alcoholic.

My own reaction to his death was strange. When someone has a terminal illness brought on by no fault of their own (let us say a stroke, heart attack, cancer or any number of the cruel life-taking illnesses there are), it is easier to feel so sorry for the patient, to tend to their every whim, make their dying as comfortable as possible and grieve heavily for them after they have gone. After all, it is not their fault.

In the case of an alcoholic who has brought all of their physical destruction on themselves and more than likely caused untold upset and chaos within the family unit, it is completely different. Mopping their sweat-covered brow with love and devotion just isn't an option, when that person has poured gallons and gallons of alcohol into their system, ranted and raved till the wee small hours of the morning, drunk the housekeeping money or dented the car. You might still end up mopping their brow (if you haven't left them in the meantime), but with a feeling of resentment, anger, wistfulness for what could have been and a great dollop of see-it-through-to-the-end fortitude. When they pass on, it is usually one of relief for those who have lived alongside it for years: relief that you can sleep peacefully and return to a normal existence at last.

When Greg died, I was unable to cry (see here) and still find I am relatively hardened to what  happened. It is difficult to knock those self-preservation barriers down that I erected for all those years he drank. Now, when milestones crop up such as birthdays or wedding anniversaries, I naturally think of my late husband. At first, I was too numb to feel anything. As the years pass (currently nine since his death), I am beginning to mellow and am saddened by what he is missing. As a BBC journalist, he would have been so interested in the international and local events of the last nine years. I wonder what he'd make of Brexit,  ISIS, the demise of the Liberal party to name a few. He has also missed out on our daughter's excellent progress in her career and her love life. Knowing he will never walk her up the aisle is particularly upsetting.  He would have been 70 next month. How and where would we have celebrated, who would we have invited, had he been a normal healthy 70-year-old? He and I have forfeited a long and happy retirement together. Gone are the weekends away somewhere or travel to new parts of the world. (I know a few widows or divorcees who do travel alone, but that's not for me. I would stick out like a sore thumb and would not enjoy it.) There's still, after nine years, an element of anger over the fact that my wings have been clipped as well as his, but I also feel sad that he missed out on so many things that could have been possible but for the kamikaze alcoholic choice he made.

The death of an alcoholic is a funny thing and does not always fit neatly into the stereotypical form of grief normally suffered by the bereaved. Whether my anger or the sadness will get the upper hand, who knows? Only more time will tell. 

Nine years

Today is the ninth anniversary of Greg's death. Kay and I are going to the crematorium to lay flowers in the chapel. Sometimes it seems more than nine years, at other times barely possible that so much time has lapsed. We talk about him often - keen to keep him with us in the present; to chide him over his stupidity to drink himself to death; to lament his absence. To forget him is nigh-on impossible, despite the passing of time. How can you eradicate 39 years together? Most were happy, although they are unfortunately overshadowed by those last few years which were so full of the drunken nightmare, so that it is THAT which has stuck eternally in our minds. 

He was and always will be Kay's father. I am keen to keep his memory alive for her, the good side of him, the kind side of him, not the bad, drunken side. But with every passing year, I struggle to conjure up the details of his face or his voice. I have photos, of course. Cine film even. Not to mention cassettes of his voice as part of his work as a radio journalist. But the 3-D Greg is difficult to bring to the fore. He is fading away into the mists of the past, but still I feel the need to grasp hold of him and remember.

Last resting place

Thought for the day 1

A recent news report announces that cockapoos (cocker spaniels mixed with poodles) and labradoodles (labradors mixed with poodles) are now the favourite breed of dog, rendering others such as the West Highland White almost undesirable. There's also peekapoos (half poodle, half Pekingese), jackhuahuas (half Jack Russell, Half Chihuahua) and bullshihtzus (half bulldog and half shih ztu), not to mention many more combinations.

Not being funny, but didn't mixed breeds used to be called mongrels?

I have survived - part 2

Back in September I had our family bathroom modernised and dragged it into the 21st century. It was high time as it was stuck in a 1960s time warp. I wrote about it here. I find it stressful having workmen in the house, particularly when they behave like Laurel and Hardy, but don't like the idea of leaving the house to give them free rein in it either, so I end up on tenterhooks killing whole days at a time, keeping out of their way, not being able to relax to anything, but serving multiple cups of tea and coffee (Greg always used to say a workmen needs his thirst quenching regularly).

Always a glutton for punishment I decided to repeat the whole exercise, but this time to update my en suite bathroom, also stuck in a 1960s time warp. I employed the same plumber to do the work. He and the young lad he employs as his gofer make an excellent job of the bathroom, but manage to create havoc elsewhere. This time was no exception.

The old bathroom look like this.....

Yep. I told you it was dated. I've had to live with it for 30 years! 

The first problem was that the plumber couldn't start on the date we had agreed months ago, 14 January, but asked if it could be a week later. I always have to make sure Kay isn't working night shifts, when I arrange for workmen, because otherwise any noisy work during the day would render her sleepless. So far, so good, as she was not working nights if we shifted the dates forward by a week.

The next problem arose, when a day or so before the plumber said he couldn't start on the Monday 21st , as his last job had overrun, but would definitely start on Tuesday 22nd. As my job would take at least two weeks to complete, he was unable to complete the job by Friday 1st February as we had agreed, but it would run into a third week. Normally this would not be a problem, but on Friday 1st we were expecting a guest from Germany for the weekend - a young girl from Berlin, whom Kay had met on her travels in South America last year. They had become good friends and the girl wanted to visit us in London. I had hoped it would not be a problem as the bathroom work would be finished by then, but of course now it wouldn't be and the house would be in chaos for our guest's arrival. There was nothing to do but grin and bear it and accept the situation.

The first six days (Tuesday 22nd to Tuesday 29th) saw much banging and crashing. The old bathroom was ripped out and ended up in my front garden, new pipes were laid, plasterboard was sawn and hammered in (the dust from plasterboard is nothing short of several bags of flour being thrown around throughout the entire house despite doors to rooms being shut. I was even breathing it in!) Then came the plastering over the plasterboards, the painting of ceilings and the electrician arriving to do his bit. On the Tuesday afternoon, the young lad hosed down the front garden path, as rain had mixed the plasterboard dust out there into a gloopy mess, looking as if a lorry had dumped a load of porridge on the path. The plumber and his gofer lad then left me for the next three days (Wednesday 30th to Friday 1st) while the tiler came to do his bit.

The tiler got on with the job quietly and was finished by Friday lunchtime.  I was pleased at that because it meant I had the whole afternoon to get the place a bit straight for the German girl's arrival that evening. (I had decamped to the guest room while the en suite bathroom was being done, but it meant I had to vacate the guest room and move back into my room, change bedding etc and move all my stuff out.) Things were going well and I was more or less organised, when I happened to go into the integral garage in the late afternoon to fetch something and that is when I discovered it. 

The floor was sopping wet. We have an old bit of carpet on half of the garage floor (don't ask) and it was soaking up the water like a sponge. And on the carpet are three items of furniture belonging to my late mother which we had kept back for Kay for when she eventually gets a place of her own - one of them an antique bureau. All three pieces had their feet on the wet carpet slowly soaking up the moisture. I looked around and saw water pumping out of the hose. I should explain that the hose I keep in the front garden for watering plants out there is permanently attached to a tap in the garage. When I need the hose I turn the tap on and water the garden. Then I turn the tap off. Three days previously the young lad had used the hose, as I explained above, but had not turned the tap off afterwards. He had screwed the spout end in the garden shut and the water had backed up along the hose and was pouring out of the tap end in the garage. With a few hours to go before the German girl arrived, I managed to contact the plumber who flew over to my rescue, muttering about the lad under his breath. He helped me move the furniture to safety and the wet dustsheets covering said furniture ended up on radiators all round the house, as did our old drenched fabric frame tent which is the size of a small bungalow.  Goodness knows what our German guest really thought, when she arrived and saw the things steaming on the radiators but she smiled a lot and accepted what we told her, probably thinking the English are as mad as a box of frogs.

Come the Monday, the lad was extremely apologetic having been given a right rollicking by the plumber and the final stages of work commenced. By Tuesday evening I was able to wave them a hearty goodbye and regain the house to myself. I'm sure you're dying to see the transformation, so without further ado, here are the after photos.  I feel like a film star now, particularly with that big mirror. It might be another 30 years before I can face another makeover again, but for the time being I'm loving that new bathroom.