Uncategorized – Page 18 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Scrolling Back.

I knew I couldn’t let this day pass, unrecognised. This is the day when, exactly a year ago, my son-in-law Phil died. I want to remember that. But I also want to remember how proud he would be of the way his family has made a go of their unwanted new lives together, despite the grief, the empty place at every family gathering. Ellie’s successfully relaunched their business: the new website went live late yesterday. The boys started at high school, and are doing well – they’re sporty and busy. Ellie’s out to prove that she’ll see her own cancer kicked conclusively out before the end of 2017, and she’s got the bald head to prove it. Brian the dog declines to grow up,and recently ate his bed – again. Luckily, he’s lovable with it.

Phil would be proud of all they’ve achieved. I am too. They’re doing well. But there’s still a Phil-shaped hole at the centre of their family, and I guess there always will be.

Fanny the Champion of the World

Death in a digital age is a funny old business. On Facebook Memories, a photograph has just flashed up to tell me that three years ago today, we were on a family day out to Liverpool, which we all enjoyed, save for the gnawing feeling in my stomach that my husband’s difficulty swallowing was not good news. Two years ago this week, or so it tells me, our little family was on a wonderful holiday, which we’d booked to celebrate our wild assumption that the whole shitty cancer thing was behind us. One year ago this week, my husband was lying in a hospice bed in our sitting room, dying.

Messages, wall posts and photographs have popped back up on my phone from this day last year. We’d told our wider circle of friends, through Facebook, a few days after my husband had been given a couple of weeks left…

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Snapshot Saturday: a heartfelt wish

This week’s WordPress photo assignment challenges us to share a wish.

I have chosen an image of the cheerfully optimistic and colourful prayer lanterns we saw so often suspended from the ceilings in the Buddhist temples of South Korea to illustrate our family’s wish, which will come as no surprise at all to regular readers of this blog.

We’d like my daughter Elinor, aka ‘Fanny, the Champion of the World‘, to be cancer-free by the time her twin boys become twelve. Then they, and we can truly celebrate their birthday, shadowed since they were eight by the cancer firstly of their father, then of their mother. It’s chemo-time at the moment. Not much fun, but all in a good cause.

It’s everything to ask. But surely neither greedy nor unreasonable.

Snapshot Sunday: Adverts repurposed as breakfast

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is ‘Repurpose’. We’re to submit an image of something of our own that we’ve put to a new use. I couldn’t come up with anything worth a snapshot, even though I’m rather keen on ‘repurposing’.

Instead, I want you to come with me to Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. I was there almost ten years ago as part of my Indian Adventure. I loved this town. It’s not quite on the tourist trail, as its glorious and extravagantly carved temples remain unpainted. They are not vibrantly painted like those in nearby Madurai, so Madurai gets the foreign visitors.

I stayed* with a young American academic, Gwen, who for seven years had made Thanjavur her home. She whisked me about on her motor bike, introduced me to her Indian friends and neighbours, asked me to run errands for her in the market where nobody spoke English or saw tourists much, and took me to tiny back street shops to buy freshly prepared and sizzling-hot evening meals.

I was by myself though, when early one morning I came upon these goats. They’d found a new use for the adverts pasted on the walls of a house. Look.

And here’s the cow that was tethered outside Gwen’s window. It’s found an unfortunate use for the pile of rubbish tumbled into a pile on the corner.

View from Gwen's window — View from Gwen’s window

Finally, here’s a different use for a pavement. It’s become a canvas for traditional drawings in fine sand. These designs frame the lights which lit our path homewards every evening during Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light.

And here are three picture postcards – temple views.

Thanjavur: Breehadeeswara Temple.

Temple elephant, Thanjavur

Thanjavur: Periya Kovil Temple

* via ‘Couchsurfing’, a scheme which matches travellers with locals, who offer beds, local knowledge and friendship.

January 20th in Washington, Wakefield and Bolton

We’ll all remember 20th January 2017, the day Donald Trump took his oath as President of the United States. No comment.

The 20th January was special within our family too. It was the day my son Thomas celebrated his 40th birthday. Really? How did that happen? Is it forty years since my son kicked and chortled in his pram, his simple world revolving round milk, sleep, fluffy nappies (no disposables then) and besotted parents? Now he’s a besotted parent in his turn. And nobody much remembers that it’s forty years since Jimmy Carter became President of the United States.

Thomas is no longer newborn here. All those colour photos got so faded. But here he is in his splendid woolly bear coat that I crocheted for him- all by myself — Thomas is no longer newborn here. All those colour photos got so faded. But here he is, nearly a whole year old in his splendid woolly bear coat that I crocheted for him- all by myself.

Unexpectedly, 20th January turned out to be even more special for our family. It was the day that my daughter Elinor, having seen off her husband to cancer nine months ago; having been diagnosed as a cancer sufferer only four months after that; having had one operation that failed to dig it all out; and having had a mastectomy only the week before last was declared cancer free. She’s got preventative chemotherapy and radiotherapy to face still, and breast reconstruction. But she’ll be fine. And that was more than we dared to hope only a few weeks ago.

Thomas and Elinor explore Glastonbury Tor, getting on for forty years ago

This makes 20th January a Red Letter Day for this family. Even Donald Trump can’t take that away from us.

Donald Trump was inaugurated in Washington DC. Thomas was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Elinor lives in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

‘May I have your autograph?’

I have another blog apart from this one. My other site records some of my family’s history, in a rather anecdotal fashion. Its readers are mainly not the same people as those who read this one. So just for once, I’m going to share a post from ‘Notes on a family’. I love my Great Aunt Blanche’s autograph album from 1903. I think you might too.

Notes on a family

Blanche Pickard in about 1903.

Among my family treasures is an autograph book, dating from about 1903. It has no signatures from the famous, or even local notables. Instead, it’s a record of young people enjoying themselves at the turn of the 20th century.

The book belonged to my grandmother’s sister, Blanche. In 1903 her father Arthur was a clothier’s salesman, and she was a tailoress, a machinist. Most of their friends worked in the textile industry in some capacity. They were ordinary working people, and not educated to a high level – though she and her sister were still at school at the ages of 12 and 14, according to the 1891 census.

Blanche and her friends had autograph books. They sometimes amused themselves in their spare time by filling the pages of each others’ volumes. Here’s hers. I’ve left out all the pages that simply had improving quotations from…

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Snapshot Sunday: Do you prefer your street names in French … or Tamil?

Almost ten years ago now, I had my Indian Adventure, when I travelled first of all with a small group of like-minded English travellers, and then solo round southern India. That’s when I started blogging, using TravelBlog, though I later transcribed it onto WordPress which may be more user-friendly.

The culture shock of arriving in Bangalore with its constant traffic noise, its motor horns, its street-cattle, its monkeys, its people, its eagles and vultures wheeling overhead is unforgettable.

A back street in Bangalore, and a few rickshaws.

Arriving in Pondicherry some three weeks later was just as much of a jolt. Suddenly I was transported (after a motorway journey which included goats grazing on the central reservation) to colonial era France. Here were policemen in kepis, elegant public buildings, corner shops selling baguettes and croissants.

Dept of Public Works, Pondicherry

My guesthouse was a charming 19th century throwback which would have been totally at home on the French Riviera.

My verandah at le Rêve Bleu.

Yet I was undoubtedly in India. There was a spot of building work going on outside my bedroom window. Here’s the delivery wagon:

A delivery from the builder’s Yard

Here’s a more up-to-date delivery lorry:

They don’t usually need reminding to ‘Sound Horn’

Here’s the school run:

School run, Indian style

And here’s the beach:

The beach at Pondicherry.

Here though is the photo which answers this week’s WordPress photo challenge: ‘Names’. A street sign which represents the many-faceted cultural references of what I thought of as my favourite Indian city.

Cathedral Street, Pondicherry — Cathedral Road, Pondicherry

In a couple of days I plan to re-blog an old post of mine which has something further to contribute to the ‘Names’ theme.

Snapshot Sunday: Advent Anticipation

Here’s our grandson, William. Each pocket of his advent calendar contains a new decoration for the tree. We anticipate that by Christmas Day, the tree will be fully dressed.

The WordPress photo challenge this week is ‘anticipation’. Click here to see more images.

A cancer-free horizon

A third Christmas with cancer as an unwelcome guest. Regular readers of my blog know my son-in-law died of cancer after living with it for two tough years. Regular readers also know that his widow, my daughter, got her own cancer diagnosis only weeks after his death. Regular readers have read some of her feisty, angry, witty pieces about this wretched disease. They know that her initial hopes : ‘Breast cancer is NO BIG DEAL’ vanished in the face of evidence of more and larger tumours. She faced more invasive tests and scans. Friday was results day.

A month ago, news that she will need a mastectomy, probably six months of chemotherapy, and perhaps radiotherapy as well would have pitched her, and all of us into a pit of helpless gloom. Now it’s a reprieve. Now we can face 2017 hopeful that after all this she will live, will see her twins grow up, will continue to be an important part of the lives of all her friends and family.

I don’t feel like glibly heading this post ‘Snapshot Sunday’ as I usually do. But this week’s theme, ‘New Horizon’ is relevant. My daughter – all of us – have a new horizon to work towards as her treatment seeks to return her to a cancer-free future.

Ellie and the boys' dog Brian dashes towards the horizon in Anglesey in August, just before Ellie's diagnosis. — Ellie and the boys’ dog Brian dashes towards the horizon in Anglesey in August, just before Ellie’s diagnosis.

In Praise of My Tits.

No words from me. Just this, from my daughter.

Fanny the Champion of the World

I’m quietly proud of this photograph. It was taken on holiday when our boys were about four months old, and I’d asked my husband to get a picture for posterity. It’s never been in the family album, but not because I care if people are offended by a photo of my tits doing the job they were designed for (hell, I’d tandem feed anywhere – once, I even propped up the children against my nipples on the window ledge of an overhead walkway at a service station on the M6, having fed them earlier that day during church communion.) I didn’t give a shit as long as the boys were nourished, but I simply couldn’t bear for anyone to look at the photo and think I’d chosen the hideous fabric on that sofa.

I’ve blurred out my face – not because I’m embarrassed, but because the two little generic-looking blond…

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Living in a Box.

It’s my daughter’s birthday tomorrow. No, not that daughter. Not the one we’ve just visited in South Korea.

The other one. My Bonfire Night ‘Remember remember the Fifth of November: Gunpowder, Treason and Plot’ baby. The one whose twin boys find their way into my posts from time to time. The one whose husband died of cancer not seven months ago. This will be the first birthday in years that she can’t share with him.

She could do with him by her side more than ever at the moment, because she too has now been diagnosed with cancer.

Her blog has the byline ‘Recently widowed. Swears a lot.’ If that’s going to bother you, don’t read it.

But I suggest that you do look at it, and get an insight into what it might be like to be widowed, young, and have cancer.

Fanny the Champion of the World

Who in their right mind looks forward to cancer treatment? Me. I need a break. I can’t physically find the time to fit everything in, and the idea of lying in a hospital bed waiting to get my cancerous bap sliced open and stuffed with silicone, saline or pig fat is suddenly not without appeal. I’ve come a long way in a few weeks – before, the idea threw me into a blind panic, but I’m so tired, and so ready to accept offers of babysits, dog walks, and help around the house, that I give up. I’ll trade anything – even my left breast – for a good night’s sleep and some time off work and away from the boys, who are in the throes of grief for the third year running. They’re sapping every last scrap of energy I have, and testing my patience to its limits. I adore…

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