Grand Days Out
Penny finally took retirement in May, so time to address the items on our "Book-it list". This year we ticked-off some modest ones: Lea Gardens (fabulous blooms in quite large gardens); Bishop Auckland museums; Bowes museum for a mixture of the sublime silver swan (watch from 5:29 at the very least) and grotesque tat; David Austen Roses (very impressive again, but small scale); a visit to Birmingham to view the fabulous Byrne-Jones stained glass windows in Birmingham Cathedral, as well as spotting decorative architecture that has survived modernisation thus far. Destinations for the future include Sicily, but recommendations are welcome.
To mess with this romantic concept of doing things together; after some "training walks" in both Bristol and Derbyshire (including another Ukraine scouting group walk around Lyme), I completed a walk across the Pyrenees in two stages; the highlights being fabulous alpine vistas and wild flowers. The low points were hot valleys and some days of cloud and rain. Penny stayed home, apart from a visit with Rowena in July, then meeting up in Girona after the end.
My 250th Parkrun was completed in February, but I am not sure that my knees will ever recover sufficiently from the Pyrenees trip to allow me to progress much further.
The children came back home! So we had to make space
Rowena left her job in Madrid in July in order to take up teacher training in Manchester in September. She is enjoying her school placements and participating in a women's football team. With much shorter notice Clara came back from Bristol in August to start a new job locally, again with the National Trust. She's absolutely loving the new "community engagement" job, tasked with creating wildlife ponds alongside school & community groups, and actually in charge of a significant budget. Clara took up a place in a shared house about 3 miles away in early October.
With two Spanish visitors in August, we had a massive house clear-out in July to free up bedroom space. Interesting what you can find to throw out that had languished untouched for so long. Selling a 30-year old pair of boots on Ebay for £50 was quite the surprise. Other beneficiaries included local Scouts, charity shops and our local free bookshop.
April 2024 Solar Eclipse; Toronto & Niagara:
With Storm Kathleen creating logistical havoc on 6th April, it took us 12 hours to fly to Toronto via London instead of via Dublin. Nick (my brother Owen's brother-in-law) generously drove us to Niagara Falls on 7th and gave us a walking tour around the main attractions on a gloriously sunny day.
The 9th of April was another blue-skies day, but we got wet anyway.
In contrast, Eclipse Day on 8th April, was heavily overcast until late afternoon. We took a bus North to the botanical gardens to join the select few who also wanted to get away from a very crowded Niagara Falls area. Everything went dark for 4 minutes; the birds went a bit bonkers; the horizon all around glowed like a bright sunrise. Just after totality the clouds thinned slightly to show a slowly enlarging crescent of Sun.
The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is quite something: the Canadian Indigenous culture and Natural History are outstanding, with a world-class interpretative display of fossils from the Burgess Shale.
The Eternal Sudoku puzzle
Marley, one of our beloved black cats, died September 9th, age 12. I had taken him to the vet surgery in the morning. He had been somewhat subdued in the previous couple of weeks, showing rapid breathing. After tests, the Vet wanted to tranquillise him for some x-rays. I didn't feel happy leaving him while this was happening. The diagnosis was fluid on lungs and heart, so prescribed diuretics. He seemed OK once I got him home and he trotted off happily to the garden. I had instructions to remove a bandage on his leg that had held a canula in place. Handling him to do so triggered what is now a traumatic memory: he started frothing at the mouth and struggling to breath. He died shortly after, and it took me weeks to get over the grief and feeling of remorse. But I have rehearsed happy memories of him which helps. We buried him in the garden with "full honours", on a bed made of items of clothing from each of the four of us, including a pair of my underpants.
Gardening and jam making:
Marmalade again in January; not particularly good despite the significant effort required. Plenty of garden-blackcurrants to share again in June, but I pushed off on the walk to Spain so had no time to make any jam. I made a good harvest of locally-picked blackberries in August and some decent jam.
The plum and nearby damson tree yielded nothing this very wet and cool year. With the Pyrenees walk I missed harvesting the apples at the right time, meaning more for the squirrels and microorganisms. The small number of russets saved were excellent though. Pink fir apple potatoes in pots did quite well with this weather.
After the wonderful alpine wild flowers in the Pyrenees, I bought some seeds of hemiparasitic yellow rattle, which grew in profusion in the Pyrenees, to plant in old vegetable plots that I can no longer maintain because of my ruined knees & back. The backup is growing some seed in small plug-sets alongside grass seed as a host, which seems mildly evil.
Visiting parents
I have managed more than "once every three months" trips this year. Admittedly one was to attend the funeral of Auntie Tessie, my Dad's cousin. Interesting again to met the many extended-family relatives that I haven't seen in quite some time. Some were small children or teenagers when I last saw them; now grown up. It was a bit of a revelation to see how much affection there was for my Dad as he & Tessie were "close", having shared a childhood home for a few years. I suppose I hadn't seen it like this, but family holidays as a child, social events and family celebrations were spent with several of these people. We are having a 90th-birthday party for my parents on 7th December, with some of these same family invited.
We also go to North Wales about once every six weeks or so to visit Penny's Mum, which is usually accompanied by gardening or house DIY fixes and maybe a walk on the way out or back.
Happy Christmas 2024
