May 2021

On the first of the month we had a delightful surprise visit from our friends Ruth and Subash and their children Suresh and Ezhilvizhi to introduce us to their new baby, Rajendra. 

On the fourth I got my second covid jab at the Newark showground, just outside the town.  I can't help feeling a peculiar kind of pride in the way human science has risen to the challenge and developed effective vaccines in just a few short months.  It seems the risk has to be immediate and palpable before we can mobilise our efforts in this way, while we look on in despair at the challenge of climate change or just carry on as if it doesn't exist.

Our daily Poppy walks continue to give us exercise and continuity and a widening circle of friends.  This is Zak, a gentle giant who Poppy seems to adore.

This year has been fairly busy with celebrancy work and May was no exception, including my first funeral where I encountered rival funeral parties.  I met most of the mourners in the crematorium car park, only to have my attention drawn to a rival group assembled on the path to the chapel entrance.  It turned out that the man who'd died had had a son by an earlier marriage, who no one thought to mention to me.  There was clear hostility between the two groups and no way they could have sat together without a punch up.  I introduced myself to the son I'd never met and negotiated with him that although he and his party wouldn't be welcome at the service he could accompany me to the back of the hearse and "pay his respects" to the coffin, before it was unloaded and taken in the chapel.  I felt awkward doing this as funerals are, as far as I'm aware, public events to which one can't bar access, but I did it anyway and it worked, to the extent that following the son saying his goodbyes at the rear of the hearse his party retreated, while the funeral director ushered the other party in and locked the doors behind them.

Back on the water! (Almost)

After months of browsing Ebay and a mysteriously named site called Apollo Duck I finally made the decision to buy another boat.  For the first time in my boating career I let experience triumph over hope and actually went shopping for something sensible - a dinghy, which I could sail occasionally and store inexpensively at a local sailing club.  I then spent weeks trying to work out what kind of dinghy and even made an offer on a type of boat called a "scaffie", only to realise just in time that it would actually be too heavy for me manhandle.  To cut a long story short I ended up making an offer on a Cornish Cormorant which was kept down in Christchurch on the South Coast near Bournemouth.

Having got a tow bar fitted to our little Fiat Panda I drove down to Christchurch to pick up the boat in early April, my first long car journey since the first lockdown in March 2020.  Here it is fully rigged in our front garden.  It has a little bowsprit and a traditional gunter rig, which along with the hull colour makes her look a bit like our beloved "La Fulica", which I sold almost ten years ago now.  Over the years I've spent a lot of time sailing in my head, but weirdly I can only do this when I actually own a boat.  In the same way I am unable to fantasise about winning the lottery unless I buy a ticket.  I'm looking forward to many happy years of head sailing and maybe some real sailing too.

Spring at last

What a strange Winter it's been, biding time and tuning in to the various Coronavirus dashboards each day watching the numbers soaring and declining and reflecting on what it means for oneself and the wider world.  Sue and I have weathered it better than most I reckon, blessed by relative financial security and through our travels a degree of resilience to hardship and uncertainty.  Routine has helped, every other day I go for a run - this is the Queen's Scone and Devon Park on a wintry February, usually the home of Newark Parkrun, now suspended for more than a year.

Sue's two allotments have given her much needed space and as well as working on these she's turned the house into an impromptu greenhouse.  Here her cucumber plants are slowly taking over.  Fortunately they've now been relocated to the poly tunnel on the nearby allotment at Fleming Drive.  Actually I was quite sad to see them go.

On the days I don't run I take Poppy for her morning constitutional and now even the Canal and Rivers Trust have started their Spring cleaning by dredging the mouth of the local marina.  I took this a couple of days ago and today, 29th March is the first step for England out of the Winter lockdown, with outside meetings of up to six people allowed as well as the lifting of a blanket travel ban.  Here's to brighter and hopefully happier days ....

 

Poppy's friends

One of the good things about having a dog in lockdown is that you get out and meet people.  Poppy has made lots of friends on our regular walks around town and this is Charlie, one of her favourites.  Charlie comes to the riverside walk on our side of Newark most mornings on his mobility scooter.  He exercises his dodgy knee and feeds the birds (and the rats).  Poppy is always pleased to see him and he her.  Over the months we've passed the time of day together I've learned that he used to be in the Pioneer Corps and that he buys and sells antiques.  He also knows a lot about the town and its inhabitants.  Sometimes he gets to know one of the transient rough sleepers who turn up on the benches on the riverside walk from time to time and he has been known to bring them sandwiches.

Then there's Ruby, a lovely black poodley looking dog who has similar energy levels and who she loves to wrestle.  Ruby's owner Judy lives with her partner in a house overlooking the Trent.  They own an apartment in Spain and have a more cosmopolitan outlook than most of Newark's inhabitants.  So while Poppy and Ruby play we chat about the state of the world and how sometimes we miss the multi-racial mix of our home city, London.

Then there's farmer David, who we often encounter striding purposefully along the banks of the Trent going to feed his sheep.  David has spent his life with dogs, horses, sheep and cattle, who he refers to by their ancient name of "beasts".  We often have a wide-ranging conversation while Poppy looks on, sometimes impatiently.  David seems to know everyone in Nottinghamshire and his country dress and down to earth manner belie the fact that I suspect he is actually a big cheese in these parts.  He began one conversation one morning by explaining he was tired "having just got back from Penrith".  He replied to my comment that it hadn't taken him long by explaining he'd gone by helicopter.  A livestock sales agent had felt it sufficiently worth their while to charter a chopper and take a group of buyers up to the Lake District to view and buy at auction.  I can't see them doing that for a cash-strapped smallholder.

Farewell Anne, farewell Joyce

Early this month we got the very sad news from our friend Bernie that his wife Anne had died, following her second liver transplant just before Christmas.  Anne was a fellow public sector accountant and I'd known her since the mid-nineties.  Bernie and Anne came out to see us when La Fulica was in Catania harbour in Sicily in August 2003, when we were in the middle of that fantastic hot summer cruising the Italian coast and islands.  They did us the great and very generous favour of paying for us to jojn them in the Villa Politi, a beautiful hotel with pool in Syracusa.  Later they came to visit us in Puglia.  Anne's liver failed catastrophically and without warning about ten years ago and she showed enormous courage and determination over her first transplant, which gave her another decade of active life.  She was such a force in life it's hard to comprehend she's no longer here and I'm sad we didn't see her more often in recent years.

Last week my ex-wife Rosemary called to say hello, assuming we'd received her Christmas card saying that her mum Joyce had died in September.  We hadn't got the card, but it came as not entirely unexpected news as she'd been poorly for a while.  I only met Joyce once after to my marriage ended in 1989/90 and that was twenty years later in 2010 when I was doing an interim management job with Nottingham City Homes and I visited her, Rosemary and her brother David in the family home in Kimberley.  She seemed little changed from the placid and affectionate woman I knew all those years ago.  Her life was limited by her upbringing and social circumstances and I well remember the family teas, pretty much the same every day, of salad, ham, pork pie, salad cream etc etc, when Rosemary and I used to visit.  Although I remember those times I find it hard to recognise the me of today in the me I was then and with Joyce's death just a little bit more of the past seems to have become that little bit more distant.  RIP Joyce, you were a decent soul doing your best.

Christmas 2020 and New Year 2021

November and December rolled on in much the same way as the rest of 2020, with our lives narrowed and simplified by Coronavirus.  I took this photo on one of my morning walks with Poppy, the weather bright and misty for a change, instead of grey and damp.  Sometimes I really miss those bright dry winter days in Puglia, where despite the cold wind if you can find a sheltered spot the sun starts to warm your bones.

Every day I check out the infection and deaths data on the UK Covid dashboard and the international one maintained by the New York Times.  As the number of cases climbed relentlessly from early December it seemed inevitable there would be a new lockdown and Sue and I cancelled already tentative plans to spend Christmas in Devon with her sister Julie.  In the end we stayed home and had a Christmas not unlike the last one, gorging on duck, Netflix and Quality Street.

Poppy has been oblivious to it all and such an enormous psychological asset over the last few months.  Apart from providing us with the routine of dog walks and endless amusement she has also helped us make new friends on our morning walks, both dogs and humans, of which I must write more soon.  Here she is snuggled down on a comfy cushion donated by an older neighbour, who bought it for her sons dog only to find it was too small.  One morning she just came out of her house and asked if we wanted it.  In return I gave her a copy of this photo to demonstrate what a successful gift it turned out to be.