18.4. ‘24

End of a chapter.

It didn’t come as a big surprise but it is sad nevertheless. I went to Finland at the end of February/beginning of March. Darling Mother faded away in her sleep just after I had been.  To my great joy she recognised me when I arrived. The carer who was feeding her said ‘Who is that!?’. Mother looked up and said ‘Urpu’.  Waaaah! I am not sure how aware she was about anything during the rest of my visit. That’s what she had wanted, just to sleep away.

A happier occasion was a visit to Norway last weekend. It was my nephew Erwin’s baby’s name giving ceremony in Fredrikstad. His wife is Norwegian. It was a very happy event. It was as big a delight to meet Marthe’s family as it was to see our family all in one place. A special treat was to see Marthe’s family in their national costumes. They are works of art. Had I known that I would have been in my dress and Iain would have worn his kilt. I’ll have to check my costume if it still ok or if moths have had a feast. The Norwegians treated us like royalty! We stayed in an Airbnb nearby. As we had no car they picked us up and took us back as if they had nothing better to do. It was a whirlwind four days. All Norwegians speak English. At the event it was a mixture of Norwegian – which is Greek to me – and Finnish, but mainly English because it was the common language between all of us. It was delightful to start the conversation in one language and change into another in mid sentence, depending on who joined the group. The weather wasn’t ‘Baltic’. It was Scottish – windy and cold but not quite so wet. Saturday, the ceremony day was brilliant, all sunshine. During the trip to the beautiful interesting historic Old Town Marthe’s father was telling that Norway uses its oil revenue for purposes of common good like restoring and maintaining cultural places, historic buildings etc. Here I’d have a comment or two about energy policies in Scotland and Britain!

29.9.24

Where does the time go!?

It is now autumn and getting colder. In Dumfries and Galloway we didn’t have summer this year. Unless you count the four days in September and the odd ones during the summer months when it was pleasantly warm indeed. My garden table never came out of the shed. Well, saved me from sanding and varnishing it next year. We don’t seem to get the extreme weather like hard frost, heat waves ,torrential rain or flooding.

The veg situation improved  towards the middle of summer when we finally had more sunshine. The tomatoes and peas started to grow with vigour. The runner beans, indoors and outdoors grew well but in spite of masses of flowers there were no beanlets – until the bees arrived! I had lots of fibre in my diet after that. There are still a lot of green tomatoes, keeping me supplied a wee while yet.

It is now a race to get the place ready for winter. I have been organising the stick shed. Hm, need more wood. I have a dinky wee chainsaw to cut smaller branches – it’s great. It was a birthday present from No 1 Daughter and SIL. I love it.

I have had a couple of other breaks this year. Our annual trip to Pitlochry took place middle of September. It was just the cousin-in-law and I. My sister-in-law wasn’t feeling confident enough to come with us, due health issues. As we were leaving the hotel, Knockendarroch –fab food, fab staff – we booked the same holiday for next year – for the three of us.

The weekend after that we had girls’ trip to Stobo. It was my neighbour, the longest term friend here (44 years!)  and our daughters. It was only 24 hours but it must have been a good break – I came back knackered but mentally refreshed. You need to get away now and then to keep cabin fever at bay. It was most enjoyable, the food and drink. Visit to the hot tub was a revelation. At breakfast my hand was a mess. It was too sore to lift the coffee cup, stabbing pain on top of the hand, but after the hot tub and massaging jets my hand was cured. Interesting. I have often wondered if I could have a prescription on NHS for a holiday somewhere warm sunny and dry to ease the creaks in the joints. Somehow I don’t think it’s worth asking.

30. Nov 2024

Somehow, it is Christmas in 24 days. How did that happen? Once again, we know exactly when it is but leave it to last minute to do anything about it. It kind of has lost its shine, being on your own. The next generations get excited about it which is lovely to watch. Grandchildren’s presents have been sorted which is the main thing. Everybody else’s – I’m still waiting for inspiration. Because everybody my vintage, No 1 Daughter too, have house full of stuff. The best thing is to give everybody nice things to eat and drink. As for Christmas cards, I’ll not be sending many this year. The postage is just too much. To send four cards to Europe is nearly a tenner. That’d buy a bottle of wine. I have not even designed my card. White Christmas..? Not likely. The summer never happened. I feel cheated. Then again, Dumfries and Galloway has had it easy. We had no heatwaves, no drought, no high winds, not much snow. Many years ago, could be 30 years ago, some ‘expert’ said in the future seasons will be all the same – we’ll be able to tell when it’s Spring when there are leaves in trees. It’s looking like that here now. You couldn’t tell when Winter ended and Spring started, when Spring ended and Summer started and so on. Maybe summer next year will be good. I’ll be happy to varnish the garden table, paint the terrace wall…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year when they come.