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.