Sunday 30th April - Daily List

That was the week that was... - timetabling, scheduling, preparing,

1.Start thinking about my timetable for the term ahead, check that I've got most of what I need prepared for at least the coming week

2.Preparing for Monday - master copies for photocopying, pack lunch ready to be packed (no bread - ah, that's a bit of a complication when trying to make sandwiches...plan B... )

3.Monday - first day of term, staff training day. All day. And a surprise piano lesson in the evening - I thought she was starting later in the term.

4.Repack my bag from Monday to get it ready for Tuesday.

5.Tuesday - Term" proper" begins - sort of. Piano teaching in the morning, school teaching in the afternoon, piano teaching in the evening.

6.The full consequences of

• Staff Training Monday 
• Bank holiday Monday 
• school SATS exams
• annual school music festival
• routine hospital appointment

on my schedule for this half of term hit home. Time to work out how and when to reschedule lessons that are affected by all these infractions upon normality.

7.Wednesday - was that I normal teaching day? I think it might have been, no, wait, the morning school cancelled because of school photographs. It looks as though Wednesday 3rd and Wednesday 24th May could be the only Wednesdays I can get there this term... time to revise the revised schedule...

8.Thursday - now that was a normal day. All day. And even in the evening!

9.Friday - This was actually a Friday, although the afternoon went a bit wild. I rocked up o the school, spent The Whole Afternoon reminding the class what they had been learning in their ukulele lessons last term, so that they could present it to their parents in the afternoon.

10.The Weekend. Ah, bliss. Nothing timetabled for Saturday, Sunday, or Bank Holiday Monday. No, wait, what's this text? Could I please play "Amazing Grace" on the organ at church on Sunday? Why not - I've nothing in the diary!  

23rd April - Book Reviews 5

The Villa in Italy - Elizabeth Edmondson
A Man of Some Repute - Elizabeth Edmondson
A Question of Inheritance - Elizabeth Edmondson

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Villa in Italy" first as escapist, light romantic fiction. The plot is gently far-fetched - four strangers brought together to stay in a beautiful villa, back in the 1950s. Everything provided by their mysterious, recently-dead, benefactor, while they work out why they are the four particular people who will benefit from her will. The connections between the four are also a little far-fetched, but who cares? Fire-flies, fountains, mystery, art, sunshine...

The name of the author sounded familiar, and I discovered that she also writes "Vintage Mysteries" which I had already read some time before. So I re-read these - again, set in the years after the second World War, centred on the family that owns Selchester Castle. No sun, fountains and fire-flies this time, but a gentle sufficiency of murder and mystery. They would probably make an excellent period thriller series for evening TV - maybe when the "Midsommer Murders" mine is finally depleted?

Death in a White Tie - Ngaio Marsh

I enjoy these dated, period detectives, so I'm glad that Inspector Alleyn is on TV gain. We watched "Death in a White Tie" recently, and I've got the talking book read by Benedict Cumberbatch. So I listened to the story again. It's much better when you know what is going on - you can see the clues second time round rather than trying to remember how it was done. But Ngaio Marsh writes dreadfully over-wrought, class-conscious love-scenes. Not that they become very physical - it's just the terribly, terribly high-minded way that Alleyn has of expressing himself. I blame a prep-school and public-school education.   

Friday 21st April - Deer, Lewes,

Friday 21st April - after a bit of "what shall we do today" type of conversation, we decided to go to Lewes and see the Anne of Cleves House. Something we've been meaning to do for a very long time. The house is at the "wrong end" of Lewes, at river level, so if you have gone to visit the castle, or look around the shops, you are more than inclined to leave it until next time.

Driving along the A272, which, for a change, was relatively quiet, we were startled when a stag crashed out of the hedge on the right and crossed in front of the car. He hit the brakes, and we managed to give it about a foot of clear road in front of the bonnet. The doe which had been following it turned back into the hedge and forced its way through, away from the road. The car behind was lucky to miss us, by inches, mainly because the driver swerved into the path of what would have been oncoming traffic if there had been any.

The image of the stag, desperately running in front of the car, will stay like a photograph; I am trying to work out what kind of deer it may have been but can't decided.

The car that had been tailgating us, continued behind us for several miles, but at a much, much greater distance.

Onwards, without further incident to Lewes!

We parked behind Waitrose, opposite the brewery.



Most of the parking in Lewes seems to be at the bottom of the hill, at that end of the town. It meant quite a long walk, through charming, narrow little back streets and alleys until we got the other side of the railway station. This part of Lewes is called Southover, with interesting buildings and ruins here and there. We cut through a public park, to find it had been part of the gardens of an imposing Elizabethan Mansion, latterly a school, and now flats.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property/flat-4/southover-manor-house/southover-high-street/lewes/bn7-1ht/2234828

Eventually we found the Anne of Cleves House;

. Lunch in the cafe, and then a prowl round. IN the bedroom upstairs they had one of those chairs that turns into a table;

It's quite hard to find a picture of one on the internet, especially when you are not sure what the proper name for it is;

http://www.antiquesnavigator.com/d-79036/chair-turns-into-table-antique-doll-dollhouse-furniture.html

I've since discovered it is called a "chair and tilt table". This one sold for $5 but you can see it is rather small. Whether we ever get to own a full-size one of these is another question - but he has a fully equipped shed now...

It was very interesting, looking around the house, and reading up on the history, all emeshed with The Battle of Lewes of 1264 (Simon de Montford, Henry III and Brother Cadfael) and Henry VIIIth, Thomas Cromwell, dissolution of the monasteries, history of iron making in Sussex, cannons (and therefore the Armada).

We walked up, up, up the steep hill to the top of the High Street, emerging from the little snicket to the left of Lewes' famous bookshop;

which was quite a good way of checking on how my lung function is getting along these days.

Luckily there's lots to pause and look at on the way up, including the un-nerving sight of a small girl sitting down on her three-wheel scooter and letting it take her all the way to the bottom. My heart was in my mouth, but her mother wasn't bothered so I assumed that she'd done it before and survived. I should have asked for an autograph as I expect she'll be a famous snowboarder or something in ten years time.

Back down to the car, via various shops, and an uneventful drive home.  

Daily List Saturday 22nd April - Flooring

Flooring and Floors

1.The parquet floor in the house I remember first. All the way through the downstairs. And the electric floor polisher that was required to keep it shiny. My mother said she used to sweep all our toys behind the large armchairs in the sitting room at the end of the day.

Our next-door neighbours have the same kind of floor in their downstairs, but covered with carpet. This is the first moment that I have realised that our house, and that house, were built within a few years of each other.

2.Tiles - the next house had red tiles in the large hallway. Cold underfoot. I expect they needed polishing too. I remember my mother using the electric floor polisher to deal with the gigantic mahogany table, that, when fully extended with the extra leaves and the support leg, filled the room and could seat the twenty. A contrast to my aunt, who has a similar table, and was adamant that one had to polish it by hand, with the grain at all times.

3.Black rubber underlay. The sitting-room carpet in the first house I lived in after we were married had worn away to just the black rubber. Which, having seen the remains of the pattern in the unused corners of the room, was a blessing.

4.Earth. My grandmother's sitting-room was apparently a bare earth floor when she bought the cottage. That was replaced with, I think, cork, and a carpet in those jig-saw rectangles that you still see occasionally.

5.Flagstones. My grandmother's cottage again - the passage through the house was of stones, worn into a landscape of hollows and hills. Lethal, as one grew older. I would be sorry, but completely understanding, if the people who live their now had replaced them.

6.Marley Tiles. Unspeakable. To be covered up, ripped up, replaced. As we did in the house before this one.

7.Wood laminate. One of the most beautiful features of our house is the wooden floor that covers all the downstairs, and the hall, stairs and landing. It replaces

8.Carpet, the most hideous dark brown sculpted pile carpet, that we had to pay extra for when we bought this house all those years ago. I hated that carpet from the day we moved in, and I'm still rejoicing at the transformation the wood floor has made. He did it, all by himself; I smile every time I see the neat work where the stairs turn a corner.

9.Shag pile carpet in the kitchen. Oh yes indeedy. The second house we lived in had this. The owners must have lived on fish and chip take-aways; I call tell you know that shag pile does not belong in a kitchen.

10.Sometime in the future we will replace the many unsatisfactory floorings in our bedroom with wood laminate. The cheap beige carpet that was there when we moved in more than thirty years ago is not wearing well - we are through to the floor boards in most of the main areas, and the boards are not of good quality so we can't just strip out the carpet and have done.  Every so often I take a pair of heavy-duty scissors and cut away another trailing, frayed section of carpet, and hoover up the crumbling dusty underlay. We've got four rugs down over the worst patches... It will be a might job, though, to do a sliding block puzzle with the furniture and put down a smooth, splinter- and nail-free floor.

Daily List Friday 21st April - Slugs

I did this one in my head as we were driving along yesterday...

This inspiration came from our visit to Copyhold Hollow on Thursday.

Slugs

1.The pitying / indulgent looks given to me by one of the visitors and the owner of Copyhold Hollow when I admitted that I threw slugs over the back fence. It is not as bad as it sounds - we back onto common land, so I am not chucking them all into a neighbour's garden. But, as the other ladies kindly informed me, slugs are homing creatures. I knew that. Did you? I was just hoping that a good long distance lob over the wilderness at the back of the house would be enough to discourage them. Looks like 20m should do it - I'll need to measure to see how far I can throw them.

2.How else to get rid of slugs; "I think they should be killed as quickly as possible. After all, it's not their fault that they are slugs. I chop them into bits with my spade." so says one of the people in the bizarre conversation continuing from item 1 above.

3."I gather them in a bucket and feed them to the chickens." said the other lady. "Now that's a very sensible idea," replied lady number 1. I've gone off the idea of free range eggs from the garden gate. Although that's probably me just being a bit too sensitive.

4.Do you remember, back in the days when half-a-grapefruit for breakfast was the fashion, and you scraped away at the flesh with a blunt teaspoon and sprayed juice everywhere? And then everyone's flowerbeds had up-turned grapefuit halves here and there to lure slugs to their doom?

5.And beer traps - drowning them? What a waste of beer. Unless it was mass-produced chemical ales, in which case the slugs were welcome. They should have been more discerning in their tastes.

6.We went round a very beautiful NGS garden last summer, with a bed row of perfectly uneaten hostas under the hedge bordering the tennis court (it was that kind of house). In among the hostas were little terracotta houses, like miniature dolmens. There were slug pellets hidden inside... It all looked very decorative.

7.Not only do we have to contend with Spanish bluebells,

Spanish Bluebells

Native Bluebells

             
there are also voracious Spanish slugs to consider.


8.In fact, who knew that there are so many different slugs?

9.Slugwash Lane - we drove past a little country lane with this extraordinary name. Who used to wash slugs? With what? Why? You can buy £4,000,000 houses down there. Imagine paying that sort of price to live in Slugwash Lane?

10.Yesterday evening I covered the earth in my "kitchen garden" with this new-fangled sheep's wool pellets which is meant to dissuade slugs. While doing that, I found that a snail had taken up residence just inside the lip of my pak choi container. That would explain why so many of my pak choi were missing their newest, most tender leaves.
  faugh - what a stink. I should have used disposable gloves.

But it seems to have worked - when I checked this afternoon the Pak Choi and spinack are looking no worse that they did yesterday. I didn't bother to cover the sping onions as they don't seem to be so popular.

From a review; "Oh and until it rains you will have a delightful smell of Australian sheep farm ..."

They are not wrong.

Thursday 20th April 2017 - Copyhold Hollow Gardens

We visited this garden today.

I don't feel as though I am invading someone's privacy - you can find out about this place easily from the bed-and-breakfast site or from the National Garden Scheme site. The pictures show what a lovely place this is - although don't get your hopes up about staying there - the bed-and-breakfast part is now closed. I would have loved to have seen inside the house and to my great satisfaction there are some lovely pictures still up on the bed-and-breakfast site of the bedrooms that one could have stayed in.

I was fascinated by the house which dates from the 1500s. Above is a view from the paving at the side, and below from the font gate onto the road. Just look at those wayward room levels to the right of the front door. Was that a stable? or a store?

The gardens were quite subdued in colour at this time of the year. The hollow is actually a steep quarry, going up behind the house, of unpromising clay soil. The shrubs are all small; when one is used to the great mounds of camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas in the other Sussex gardens like Nymans, Borde Hill, Leonardslee (now closed) and High Beeches, the diminutive size of these ones gives the gardens an air of delicay. With so much ground revealed you can make out the shape and structure of the gardens as you follow the various meandering paths. The ground might be visible, but it was defintely not bare earth - primroses, primulas, hellebores, and bluebells were everywhere. Nearer the house "Dutchman's Trousers" were brightly in flower, and the wisteria was just coming into bud.

I'm writing like a travelogue. Download the magazine article here and read all about the garden yourself.  And do have a look at the pictures on the website. I'd like to visit again later in the year when the huge beech tree behind the house is in leaf, and the tree house is in a green leafy space within the tree canopy...

I enjoyed the understated colours, the dull greys and greens and brick colours of the house. I liked the lack of showy, flamboyant, giant heads of flowers.

It was also fascinating to catch little bits of conversation between the owner and the visitors. "Everything in a flowerpot is for sale" became, "Ah, ladies, I'm afraid that the plant you have picked up is not for sale". Effusive apologies, by the would-be purchaser for her error - although, among the thousands of little plants lined up everywhere, it was fairly impossible to decide which might be for sale and which might not. In the end I resisted buying any plants simply because we haven't cleared any space in our garden to put them. However I have come away with some ideas for the "gloomy patch" down the shady side of the garden.  

It reminds me, in a way, of the setting for Mary Stewart's romance "Thorneyhold". It is a place where stories should happen.

Daily List Monday 20th April - Morning

1.Not that piece of music by Grieg. Of all the pieces in the Peer Gynt Suite, that is not my favourite.

2.New day, new start,new beginnings (cliche, cliche, cliche)

3.Darkness to light. Unless is it winter. Or horrible weather. Or too early insome other way, like being awake at 2am

4.Dawn Chorus - at York University it was more a case of "Those dratted ducks" than "Oooh, lovely dawn chorus". On Easter Sunday, the owls were hooting as we made our way to the meeting place for the dawn service. If you have clicked on the link, you will hear what I am using as a starting point for class music on 11th May.

illustration from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgNeH9_8l0w

5.Croissants, and fresh, real coffee. Or muesli, if it is an ordinary day. (I tend to reserve "Full English Breakfasts" for lunch or High Tea).

6.Looking at the weather - a Very British Thing. Other countries don't have Weather - it is the same every day of the season.

7.The moon, pale, looking transparent in a pale blue morning sky (I know it isn't - how can anything made of cheese be transparent)

8.The way the colours in the sky change - from inky blue to gold to pale. How colours slowly appear in the view.

9.Golden light creeping into the room

10.Saying "Good morning" to people, with affection and good intent.

Daily List Wednesday 19th April - Counting

It's a bit of a cheat, calling this a daily list. The Official Daily List is in a notebook by my bed. This is the copy, (unless I have done it here on the blog first, in which case it is more of a prequel). Since I can't be bothered to go upstairs and get my notebook, this version is not exactly the same. But, if I hadn't said, how could you tell?

Counting

1.Easter Eggs. Too many to admit to, especially if I was just counting the ones that I have eaten. I keep trying to get him to eat more, so that there were fewer for me.

2.Coins. I love counting money, which is probably why I have different piggy-banks here and there. There is an old cider bottle in the corner. It used to collect sixpences, then halfpennies, and now 5p pieces. I spent an entire Sunday School lesson tipping out the 5p pieces and letting the children count them, share them out (while making it clear that I was not GIVING the money to them!). We did, in the end, decide upon 5 charities to share them with, resulting in some surprised representatives receiving bags of 5p pieces.

3.Feynman was curious to know whether people "saw" the numbers when they were counting in their head, or "heard" them. He just had that kind of curiosity.

4.Counting stitches and counting rows. It's what you do when you knit. Over and over again. My godmother, who has lived in England since 1950-something still counts her stitches in her native Finnish.


5.Counting pills. It's one way of making sure I have dealt out the right ones for morning and evening. Blue, pink, white, grey, yellow, shiny, chalky, large, small, round, capsule-shaped... until they change the supplier and the big yellow one becomes a small green one. Why? My top drawer looks like a mini-pharmacy. If I grow rich I will employ a PA to keep track of when I need to put in repeat prescription requests.

6.Counting little tokens; we play lots of board games when we are all together. Who's got the longest road? How much trouble is there on the board? How many victory points has he got?

7.How many seedlings have come up? How many have been eaten by slugs?

8.Sudoku is a bit of a "thing"; I like the "killer sudoku" games best. 7+8 or 6+9 = 15. 1+2+4=7. 6+8+9=23. I know these, and too many other combinations too well. Just a grid or so before bedtime.

9.Four. The number of days left of the Easter Holidays before term begins

10.Twenty-three. The number of days before I have to commit to the music exam entries. It's a bit nerve wracking, deciding on the 12th May who will be ready to take their exam on or after 12th June.

Yan, tan tethera. Did you know there's a wikipedia site for counting sheep?

And did you notice I haven't counted my "blessings"? It's one thing to do that on a regular basis but Quite Another to do that out loud.You might miss someone important out by accident and then what would happen?

Daily List - mud, Arundel - Tuesday 18th April

It won't last, you know, this daily list thing. You and I will both get tired of it sooner rather than later, I suspect. The idea is you make the list when you first wake up.

Today, I woke abruptly from a rather unpleasant dream where my car was just about to get buried in a mudslide and I had climbed out of the window and was balanced on the roof shouting at the men driving mega-earth-moving-machines to get them to stop. And also to try and work out how to get rescued. I'm not sure how I was rescued; I think I had to climb into the slippery bucket of the huge digger that had been dropping mud by my car, as bringing in a helicopter risked me getting blown off the roof. By then I was properly awake, and ready to go back to sleep again.

Seeing as it was also about 5 in the morning, list-making was not going to happen at that moment. However, later on that day we went out to lunch (at the Black Rabbit in Arundel). We only had two courses - no room for pudding and anyway we have a carton of posh custard and a bag of  bananas to use up tonight. Sitting outside, next to the river, looking out over the meadows across to the downs (me) or towards the castle (him), today's topic chose itself.

The River

1."The Wind in the Willows" which I have just finised reading. The River flows through the story. I've just started "The Willows in Winter" - a sequel written by William Horwood, and the River plays a leading role in that one too.

2.Looking for miniature water creatures in the River Misbourne, in Chalfont St Peter, with a sampling kit I got from some educational scheme for testing river water purity, when I was about 10. Test-tubes, and a hand lens, and an identification chart. Hot, and wet, and muddy, and not as exciting as it looked on the packet.

3.Long summer afternoons sitting on the banks of the little muddy stream at the back of our house. The children catching little fish - I've no idea what - and keeping them in plastic tubs until it was time to back. I had a rug to sit on, a flask of coffee and my book.

4.The tidal River Arun at Arundel - sometimes high, sometimes low. Today it was mid-way, slow, and deceptively unthreatening.

5.The River Ouse at York, creeping up the embankment, over the pavement, across the road and into the pubs. Our house was higher up the hill, fortunately.

6.The Aire in Leeds, black and treacly as it slowly slipped past where we were sitting in the gardens of Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds, one Summer afternoon back in the 1970s. Slow bubbles, methane, probably, certainly not fish, rose to the surface. Pollution was a real issue back then - we didn't settle as there was a definite smell...

7.The river running through the centre of Boughton-on-the-Water, and a duck-race (hundreds of little numbered yellow plastic ducks tipped into the water - if yours crossed the finished line first, you won a prize). Apparently the races have been abandoned. It's a long and complicated story (and we were not involved, promise.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/22/police-called-to-charity-rubber-duck-race-in-cotswolds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourton-on-the-Water

8.The river in the book "On The Banks Of Plum Creek" which called to Laura (Ingalls Wilder), and nearly drowned
her. I've always remembered the picture;



Luckily she managed to pull herself out of the water and run home.

9. A boat holiday on the River Thames, many, many years ago. The foolish look on the dog's face when he fell in, and the terrible smell of wet dog when we drove home in the car.

10.And, of course, this, just downstream from the Niagara Falls.

Daily List - Monday 17th April - Sunflowers

So, ten things to do with sunflowers

1.They have such bright faces - sunflowers always cheer me up.

2.The flower heads follow the sun - there are loads of time-lapses on the internet like this one 

3.One little tiny seed produces all these new seeds, arranged in a beautiful mathematical formation.

             

4.They've clearly read the Bible - "John 12:24 "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over." OK, he's talking about wheat, but maybe they didn't have sunflowers there. (This comes from "The Message" - an interesting newish version)


5.They bring back memories of when I gave a packet of mixed sunflowers to a friend, tucked in a birthday card. He planted them along the fence in hs front garden, and they were amazing.

6.I like the seeds in my breakfast cereal.

7. Van Gogh, however you like to pronounce his name.

     and whichever version you like

8.I remember my father planting sunflowers along his fence too - they spent their life looking down the street to see what was going on, rather than delighting people sitting in his garden!

9.When the leaves first pop up through the soil, they wear the stripy seed covers like little hats, and cling on to them until they are ready to let go.

10.I've never yet managed to grow sunflowers.

Easter Sunday - 16th April

It is 8:15 in the evening, and Easter started just before 5 am today. I'm about ready for an early night.

My feedly.com is full of posts about Easter, the empty tomb, how the disciples felt about it, what we should do about it...

Here's my contribution to all the Easter excitement;

All, every single one, of the ten sunflower seeds I planted a week ago, chose today to make their first appearance.

The ones on the right are only just visible - they have come up are the day went on.

I've always loved the pun on Risen Sun and Risen Son. Sometimes I think God created words in the different languages just for the joy of language. This is one of my all time favourite examples.

Daily List - Sunday 16th April

It tells me somewhere on the internet that you should make a list of ten things every morning when you wake up. Apparently this will make you more cleverer. We shall see.

Today is Easter Day. It is 7am, and we have just come back from a dawn service at the top of the hill. I've consumed a bowl of porridge with maple syrup and just about stopped shivering. It was COLD up there!



Sunrise

1. Birdsong (today we heard owls)
2. Surprising the cats
3.Dark turns into light
4.Shadows become shapes become things
5.Breakfast (and first coffee of the day)
6.Monochrome world becomes multi-coloured
7.The day warms up - both in temperature and in the colour of the light
8.Sunlight reaching the blossom on the apple tree (assuming itbis going to be a sunny day
9.New day, new start
10.Opportunities....

Saturday 15th April - Book Review 4

Appointed to Die - Kate Charles

I am a sucker for period-style, rather retro murder mysteries. Not too much violence or blood, nothing to keep me awake at night. Kate Charles fits the bill completely. I had guessed some of the plot, but not all of it, but that never spoils it for me. Like doing Sudoku - I'm happy to be handed the answers at the back of the book if I'm finding it too much like hard work on my own. I don't read for work - that's what I do for a living! They books were on offer so I bought two - I'm trying not to read them both in one go.

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

I was reading this Very Slowly as a sort of "Lent" book - reflecting on the personalities, situations, behaviour, of the main characters. I've enjoyed it very much - squirmed a bit at Toad's dreadful hubris, sympathised with him when Badger is "jawing" at him, loved how tenderly Mole and Ratty look after each other when they each experience a crisis. It has stood the test of time well, for me. I've been given a paperback copy of  "The Willows in Winter", and also a DVD of the original story, which I can't wait to read/see.


   

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor

This reminded me a bit of "Miss Buncle's Book" by D E Stevenson, in the sense it is partly about the writing of a book. (Which reminds me, one day I must get hold of the sequel.) 

I was listening to a book programme on the radio in the wee small hours, when they started discussing "Angel" by Elizabeth Taylor - NOT the actress!. I was fascinated, so downloaded a book more or less at random.

I remember being fascinated by "Residential Hotels" when I was young - whatever could they be, and how did people live in them? Now all is made clear. Although living was what one was expected to do. Early on Mrs Palfrey remarks to Ludo "We are not allowed to die here". This was a story that pulled me into the world of Mrs Palfrey and the other elderly residents of the Claremont, in the Cromwell Road. 

Tuesday 11th April - Bicycles in Amsterdam

We're back now! But I'm just getting round to posting.

Here's Amsterdam Centraal - a magnificent station, where we pitched up on Saturday morning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Centraal_station

It didn't look like that when we got there - the weather was cold and grey, and the forecourt was bustling. The last time I was in Amsterdam I was probably about ten or twelve years old. I have almost no memories of that stay apart from the traffic, specifically trying to cross the roads. I still have occasional nightmares about that. 

No-one in Amsterdam walks about looking at their mobile phones - to do so means death. Probably. After a while you get the idea of which direction the nearly silent trams are likely to appear from. They ring their bell at you, so that you leap into the path of the tram coming the other way. 

Thankfully the buses, cars and motorbikes make more noise and you have a chance to hear them coming. 

But then there are the bicycles. No-one can properly imagine a city full of byicyles until they have been to Amsterdam. They hurtle towards you from no-where. I swear they use magic to appear when you least expect them. Dutch bicycles are not the highly-strung, light-weight contraptions like the ones that flit about the London streets, driven by skinny-ma-linky-long-legs all dressed in neon lycra. No, no, these are substantially engineered frames of an upright nature, with a tremendous sense of momentum and, great barrows on the front, full of shopping and children. Also, as far as I could tell, they are not fitted with brakes. At least, they never seemed to stop at lights and crossings.

So, when in Amsterdam, the best thing to do is take a canal trip. My pictures didn't come out, so these are all from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals_of_Amsterdam

An aerial photograph of the canals of Amsterdam

 .

Brouwersgracht

  

Herengracht

Sunday 9th April - A Day at the Beach

Back at the beginning of the year I started making a list of 64 things I'd like to do this year. The number isn't of any significance apart from that's how many lines there are in my notebook. However, "A day at the seaside" did feature, and on Sunday I was able to put a star by that item...

The occasion was a family gathering to scatter my mother's ashes on the beach where she grew up, in Ijmuiden, The Netherlands.



It is a long, long flat sandy beach, with dunes where she used to play with her best friend when they were very young. As children, on some of our occasional visits to the Netherlands, we had stayed in her sister's beach hut. I remember sand castles, and riding a horse, and kite-flying. Chips with mayonnaise, chewing zoethout (and spitting the fibrous strands into the sand everywhere). Gas lighting. Sun. Wind. The cold North Sea.


Now, after all these years, we were back there, along with many of the Dutch relations. Most of us hadn't seen each other for decades. The cousins we used to play and argue with are all grown up (like us!).

It was a hot sunny day, tempered by a sharp wind, just as it had always been in my memory. A "beach taxi" - now there's a brilliant idea - took us along the beach away from the crowds, to a quiet place among the dunes, and there, we made a depression in the soft sand, and deposited the ashes. We covered them over, and scattered petals, and taosted her memory with prosecco. Someone (was it her sister?) thought she would like a share in the drinks too, so we poured some of the prosecco over the petals.

It was all very casual, very informal, very easy. A little quiet, maybe, but not solemn. And afterwards we went back to a pavilion for a (very late!) lunch together and catch up on theevents of the past forty years.

Back in January, last year, leaving her bedroom in the nursing home after we had gone to see her on the same morning that she had died was hard, very hard. I felt disorientated, and rather at a loss as to what to do next (lunch, as it happened, proved to be the right decision then as well!).

Later in February, walking out the the crematorium at the end of the funeral felt entirely wrong, as though, once again, I was leaving her when I should really stay (as I felt on so many occasions when we visited her in hospital). I took the funeral wreaths home with me, at my cousin's suggestion, and re-arranged the flowers into vases. That helped a lot.

Leaving the spot in the dunes was easy - the sun shining, the wind blowing. We had brought her to one of the places where she had been so happy. The other funeral and memorial gathering had all been about "us" - the family. This one was about her.