A Year of Reflection

I hadn't been looking forwards to the anniversary of Cherry's death, a year ago on November 21st 2017, but it is certainly proving to be a time for reflection. I still think about her every day and the sense of loss is, if anything, stronger now than it was then when its effects were to some extent dissipated by the sheer shock of the event, by the need to get over it and by the immediate administrative tasks that followed. Every time I switch on my laptop, the rotating and continuous display of photographs of Cherry through the ages kicks in. I find myself smiling at them, partly in automatic answer to the great beaming smile on her face (unless as was quite often the case she was looking at something else - nearly always with feathers -through her binoculars !) and partly because of the happy memories that they evoke. This is less true of the more recent ones taken of her during what turned out to be the last year of her life, although being the gutsy and courageous person that she was, she was usually still smiling then too. Photos like this are much more difficult to take because they betoken imminent loss rather than the pleasures conferred by her past presence. But both sorts are reminders of my lovely Cherry and of how much poorer my life is now than it was then.

            After a year of this I suppose I am now resigned to my new state, though I still speak to pictures of her around the house and stroke the fleece she wore that is still on the back of the chair in front of her bureau. I still go to 'my' side of a double bed wherever I am, kick mine out but leave hers tightly tucked in.  And I guess I always will, perhaps because as a historian my natural inclination is to look in the rear-view mirror. But I also now realise ( I had never consciously thought of it before, like most people I suppose) that one should think of people one has lost not merely acknowledge that one probably will.

            On the plane coming over to Boston, I watched an indifferent film in which one of the characters said, 'If you don't remember someone out loud, they die twice.' I think he was absolutely right . Oddly, without realising it, Cherry and I used to talk about that point in connection with my dismay when encountering piles of anonymous family photographs in junk shops and the like of people who had in effect been abandoned by their descendants, and so stripped of a kind of immortality. I find myself understanding why Juan Peron carted the body of his dead wife, Eva,  all round the world with him. I don't think the practical, down-to-earth Cherry ever quite felt as I did that 'dead' doesn't mean 'gone.'  Maybe that's also part of the reason why there is such interest these days in family history at a time when so many people say that the traditional family seems in terminal decline ? Perhaps. But it certainly helps explain why I am so pleased that back in the UK the family are coming together  for a commemorative firework party (which sadly I shall not be at) and Cherry's Book Club in All Cannings are holding a special event in her memory. (My plans to mark the occasion by illuminating the Church were  cast into disarray by thieves stealing the lead from the roof a couple of weeks ago). One of Cherry's art friends in Australia texted:

            I will be thinking today about Cherry and the number of times she made        me laugh. What a great loss she is to all who loved her,

which I think says it all.    

            In any case, the past year has been one of trying to come coming to terms with all of this and what has undoubtedly helped, apart from the extraordinary level of support from friends and family, has been the fact that I have been so busy. At one level at least this has provided a major distraction from grief, and a reason why it hasn't paralysed me, which it could very well have done otherwise. Also I am lucky in being able to take refuge in continuing the naval work which I still enjoy. This doesn't stop sad thoughts of course but it acts as an antidote.

            The major project in this connection of course has been my move to Newport, Rhode Island where I've taken up a temporary job at the US Naval War College, some years after my theoretical retirement from King's College London. Cherry loved Newport and would have been thrilled to pieces with the idea of spending some time here, so it's not a complete break with our shared past. Indeed one of the best photos of her that I have around is of her leaning against a large flower container outside The Breakers one of the famous Newport mansions of Bellevue Avenue with that particular elegance that was characteristic of her, a thoughtful finger to her mouth.  Another shows her growling, fingers clawed, next to a Liondog in the Chinese teahouse of Marble House another mansion nearby, and my neighbour but one

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Revisiting these spots shouldn't be too difficult as I have ended up renting the superbly furnished carriage house of a 'private' mansion on the same avenue, in fact directly opposite the gateway to Belcourt which I think was the last mansion we visited maybe three or four years ago. Just as well I didn't know then that I would return in the future to a very different life in the self same spot. (Underneath there's a rather eerie shot of Belcourt taken in the dusk from the window of the guest bedroom.  You can almost imagine the ravens of Edgar Allen Poe flying around to roost. The pictures at the end are of 'my' house and my next door neighbour.) 

Getting the house, leasing a new car, opening a bank account and starting the long process of 'onboarding' into the naval college has been and continues to be a major preoccupation. But everyone there is being very welcoming and some friends have even invited me to their family Thanksgiving which is nice.

 

So, within limits after a year without Cherry, I have the good fortune to be in a reasonable state I think. Still sad of course, but positive about a lot else. One big downside of the move is reduced contact with the family. I miss that too, not least news of the grandchildren growing up faster than can be imagined. Violet's gurgles and coos have, I gather condensed into conversation. How Cherry would have enjoyed interpreting them.  

         

   

Defeating the Bureaucracy

 

The last blog showed how I felt about my struggles with American bureaucracy. Well, I finally triumphed and cut the head off most of the serpents in the contest. This was achieved on Thursday October 4th when in the glittering building of the new US embassy in Nine Elms, London that Trump was so rude about,  I finally got authorisation for a work visa.  But there was still a sting in its tail. I had to collect the wretched thing ! This I managed, from Chancery Lane, five hours before my flight to Newport !

 

                 After this high drama it all seemed very relaxed. First, then, to Newport, but not yet to ‘come aboard’ as they say as there’s still reams of paperwork to be gone through; but informally I chatted with the Admiral and various colleagues and started the process of getting a Social Security Number, the next hurdle. Coincidently I was sent a picture of the  ceremony I missed.

The real point though was to have a day looking at rental properties with Susan, my ‘realtor.’ I ended up going for one on the very sought-after Bellevue Avenue where all the famous ‘Mansions’ are to be found – not because of that but because the place I saw was quirky and full of books and antiques. A daft measure of suitability perhaps but it has a nice homey-feel to it. More organisation and paperwork to come, though.

I was only in Newport for a couple of days and was taken back to Boston by another smart young man from the Transportation section; this one was a carpenter where my first pick-up driver was a barber, both being part of the ship-services team. They were both articulate and interesting to chat to; I thought with people like that in it, there can’t be much wrong with the US Navy.

Next stop was Toronto and onwards to Vancouver. I arrived too late to get the last flight to Victoria so checked into the airport hotel for a few hours before taking the 0615 flight the following morning. From there to the very grand Empress hotel, where I met colleagues in the lobby and then boarded the bus for a day at sea on HMCS Vancouver, which was fun with the navy showing off the ship’s capacity for steep turns.

Cherry was fond of Victoria, the nearby Munro’s bookshop and the former Empress hotel before its recent refurbishment where we once had a very nice dinner trying not to notice the mice running about on the floor of the famous Durbar dining room. Other guests were not so relaxed about this. It still feels wrong being in such places without her, otherwise enjoyable as it is. It was the same a few days later when I went for a walk along the seaside promenade in the Chilean resort of Vina del Mar and came across the Cap Ducal seafood restaurant jutting out over the rocks, into the sea and amongst the pelicans. I took a photo of the window table that we used to use, and thought how lucky I was then not to know what was coming, just a few years later. Further evidence, if still wanting, of the need to make the most of what you’ve got while you’ve got it.

After what is now a third trip to Valparaiso, I feel as though I’m beginning to know it. It’s scruffy at the edges and covered in graffiti, the majority probably qualifying as art but about a third just the usual unsightly mess, often on otherwise charming buildings. Built on 35 hills,  it’s full of precipitous and idiosyncratic corners and covered in gaily painted houses, often a mixture of wood and corrugated iron, perched on impossibly steep slopes. Loads of artists retreats cafés and restaurants looking out over the bay. I kept a look out for ‘our’ teahouse with a very English name, but didn’t see it. I did though get inside the old Admiralty building and the Naval Club, both far grander than our rather mundane British equivalents. One has to keep a straight face, though,  when hearing of the exploits of their main naval hero (apart from Lord Cochrane, that is); he rejoiced in the name of Arturo Prat. But I don’t think he was one. 

This trip to Vina del Mar and Valparaiso was at the back end of the second round trip of the month into Uruguay and Chile courtesy of their respective navies. Montevideo is a pleasant place, not very grand and it’s hard to accept that the water it fronts is actually a river estuary, except for the brown colour of the water. Here and in Valparaiso, I was given so many books, medals and diverse momentos that they had also to get me another bag so that I could carry all the booty back to the UK. I was extremely well treated, continuously wined and dined, always short of time and sleep, with my own minder/bag-carrier and car.  These were also repeat visits, but in neither place could I find the hotels we stayed in last time, but otherwise enjoyed myself hugely – and found all the chat interesting. A flavour of the proceedings can be found in the following link, courtesy of the Chilean navy…

https://www.armada.cl/armada/noticias-navales/con-la-presencia-de-geoffry-till-destacado-historiador-naval-y-profesor/2018-11-01/104114.html

    

A Varied Summer

Next door, I heard, were going to  hold a double 21st Birthday party on the Friday night and it was likely to go on 'a bit late' and held in a marquee fairly close to my bedroom window. I couldn't leave the country unfortunately, as I had a morning commitment  (Wiltshire Historic Churches)  beyond  Cirencester  the following morning. Inspiration came. I would spend the night at my old college at the Defence Academy near Swindon - for the first time in more than 10 years, and catch up with some academic work at the same time.

This was a great success and something of a trip down memory lane, as they say.  The place was very quiet that weekend as the only course in were some Army reservists and I had a useful and quietly enjoyable stay. Military people, I have found, are nearly always very chatty and I picked up all sorts of interesting tittle-tattle about what was happening - it was very much like old times, and made me feel quite nostalgic. So after supper I went into the rather grandiose  'forum' with the flags of all student countries around the first balcony and went to what I always thought of as 'my' picture. When we were back in Greenwich over 20 years ago I noticed it in one of the department's storerooms, behind a lot of old junk, leaning against a wall, unframed, unprotected and with a big hole punched in it from where someone, years before,  had pushed an old overhead projector against it. We rescued it and got the naval 'Prizes Store' in Portsmouth to restore it. By an anonymous mid 19th Century painter, it shows the Foudroyant blowing up in Nelson's Battle of the Nile. A knowledgeable friend at the National Maritime Museum valued it as £50,000.  It's by far the best picture in the forum- I felt rather proud of it !

The accommodation is pretty functional - not at all the kind of thing that Cherry used to like.  The College has inherited the old naval custom of providing the bare minimum -  (and the inclusion of a tiny private shower would have been regarded in many naval establishments as grossly indulgent) - you even have to bring your own towels and soap. But you can't complain at an entitled rate of £16.52 a night, and the 'full English' the following morning set me up for a fun day touring Churches around Cirencester.

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Much less happily at this time I was still enmeshed in the toils of American bureaucracy. To take advantage of a very attractive offer from the US Naval War College, I have to get a work visa and a security waiver. Both were applied for in late June/early July. Their non appearance makes the starting date unclear and hugely confuses every aspect of planning for the Autumn. Finally I  heard, three days before a booked flight to Newport, that my 'petition' for a work visa had been approved. What took a wretched five hours on lap top and phone was the discovery that getting the visa issued and collected would take another two weeks despite being an 'expedited' person of 'outstanding ability' and include a possibly de-railing interview.  It meant I missed my Hattendorf  prize ceremony. Apparently they put up a big picture of me in absentia and were told to clap loudly enough for me to hear in London. (They didn't !) 

Up to now I had always found that Chinese immigration was the most challenging in the world once India had largely finally sorted itself out. But the US is in a complexity and difficulty league all of its own, with arcane rules and descriptions,  phone answerers who try to help but have thick non-American accents and sound as though they speaking from the bottom of a well. Worst was to come, when I arrived for my interview at the brand new glittering US embassy near Vauxhall I was turned away as they had advanced its date (because I was so important ??!!) but not told me. Extreme stress, melt-down only narrowly avoided. I really felt like Hercules or Laocoon wrestling with serpents, but at least kept my clothes on.

Later I discovered that it was because they had my wrong e-mail address, but several hours of work revealed that neither I nor they could change it. Fortunately Simon came to the rescue creating a new address for me using their version of it, and this diverted their e-mails to me at the correct one.  

But apart from all this, life continued. I lunched with university friends, Tony, Maya, John and Melanie at 'The Compasses' a lovely old pub in the middle of nowhere west of Salisbury. Philippa, Chiff and the kids plus Christopher came for the annual apple squashing the following day We produced 33 litres of real apple juice, utterly different from the stuff you buy in shops, and celebrated with a nice lunch at the National Trust cafe in Avebury before walking the stones as usual.   The weekend after that,  young Violet made her first appearance here, courtesy of Ruth and Simon. A real sweetie-pie, she went up the Marlborough downs behind us in fairly steady rain, field-mice, buzzards and deer all coming out to be present at this historic occasion. I'm sure she will take after me, having seen her lulled to sleep by 16th Century lute music.

The following weekend off to Burgess Hill, Phil, Chiff and the kids to witness the spectacular torchlit march of the Sussex Bonfire Societies through the town. Chiff was up north watching Scarborough getting beaten in the last minutes of the match. Barney looked after me making sure I had my fortifying cappuccino at Caffe Nero. Martha was in the parade, Philippa in the escort.

It was all fire and smoke, bangers and marching bands rounded off  with an impressive  firework display. How they get away with it in Sussex in these days of oppressive health and safety regulation I cannot imagine  - but I'm really glad they do. It was fantastic, the great fire-banners flaring away over the heads  of the crowds lining the High Street.

More quietly we all really enjoyed a trip to Lewes the following day, seeing Anne of Cleves House (not her home, just part of the marriage settlement) and the castle that towers over the diminutive houses below to a surprising degree. And so home, rounding off a delightful weekend, and a really enjoyable month, by being able to buy 10 naval/history books for £2 from the Chapel Bookshop in Petersfield ! 

In the National Trust garden at Hinton Ampner  on the way up to Burgess Hill,   I had already pondered on the fact that life was still generally enjoyable despite  the crippling loss of Cherry.  I  had just joined and found absorbing an introductory talk on the garden; my companions of course were nearly all grey-haired couples. I thought about this afterwards over a cappucino. Obviously, now, I would have enjoyed it even more had Cherry still been with me, as the pleasure of her company would have been added to the pleasure produced by the occasion. I wondered whether I, like most people I suppose, had in the past sometimes fallen into the habit of taking the apparently permanent presence of my  loved one almost for granted, rather than treasuring it as the positive but possibly temporary delight that it was. Maybe it's one of those things that you only  fully appreciate when you lose it, or are about to lose it as I was last year. Make the most of what you have seems to be the moral of all this, trite perhaps, but true all the same. And of course, it still applies.          

End of Summer expansions, excursions and distractions

The big event of the mid-summer period was the arrival thanks to the efforts of Ruth and Simon (and I’m sure he would agree it was in that order !) of the latest member of the family, Violet Sarah Till, weighing in at 8lbs 13 oz.  This was a cause of massive delight and all-round excitement in all the family. She was named in honour of two of her great grandmothers (my mother Violet Dorothy and Ruth's nan Sarah)  thereby preserving all manner of family traditions.

Unconscious of this great weight of responsibility, the new baby remains ‘super-chilled’ even at night and commands the allegiance of all.

There were weird and sometimes poignant coincidences in her arrival. Her father likewise weighed in at well above  8lbs, was over a week late and ‘super-chilled’ - giving Cherry and me very few disturbed nights. She was born in the North Middlesex hospital, while I was born in the Middlesex hospital, but I guess not quite the same one. 

The fact that Cherry (who would have been over the moon at the whole thing)  was not there to see it made the event a touch bitter-sweet for me. In fact Simon and Ruth were only in a position to announce that a baby was on the way a few hours after Cherry’s funeral and she arrived the day before what would have been our Golden Wedding anniversary. Violet Sarah’s appearance plus a number  of unexpected messages of condolence from family and friends (including from one Peruvian admiral who I thought spot on with his comment ‘We saw in her a very enthusiastic woman with great inner strength.’) quite took the edge off what could otherwise been a very sad day for me.

Strangely,  I am still not wholly reconciled to the simple fact that I've lost Cherry.  It's as though my mind has refused to accommodate so painful a reality and I have somehow shifted into a parallel reality in which I am getting on with things, generally making the best of it, still enjoying life as I'm sure Cherry would have wanted, but deep down  wondering, all the time, if I'm not in a kind of dream and that one day I will wake up to find everything as it was. It's a kind of protective mechanism,  I suppose, but one that is quite often outflanked by all manner of reminders of reality. These can be the most mundane and trivial of things, such as coming across the last bag of mixed nuts that Cherry ever bought at the Duty Free in Qatar airport .

Dream world or not, things have progressed. As expected, the gloriously hot weather stopped a couple of days before the Powell tribe and I went to Clovelly for a week.

The first day was fine, and everything that a day on a Cornish beach should be, surfing, a bit of sunburn, a pinch of sand in the sandwiches, pasties etc etc. After that things got rather more challenging, although we did have quite a lot more beach time all the same . But we did some cliffwalking, enriched some local potteries,  tried out my ghillie-kettle on the beach, visited churches, had a cream tea and all except Philippa and I enjoyed a watery assault course in driving rain near the "Big Sheep."

On the going-home day, Christopher and I walked the length of the Doone valley on Exmoor in unrelenting drizzle and strong winds. I showed him the rock where in the past Cherry used to sit waiting for me, allegedly bird-watching !

Christopher had joined us at Clovelly half-way through having done a good section of the North Cornwall Coastal Path. With a heavy pack, this was a real achievement, but even our ‘iron man’ became a touch discomposed when discovering he’d picked up some 50 loathsome little ticks that jump on you from the long grass, stick their heads in your flesh and start sucking your blood. Back at Wansdyke after the holiday he managed to locate the BBC Countryfile on Exmoor for us to watch, only to find that virtually the only item of interest in a singularly disappointing programme was one on ticks and the dangers of unrecognised Lyme disease. Just what he needed to round things off nicely.

The Powells recovered from Clovelly by fleeing to the sun and blue sky of Greece while I got on with things at home in a period dominated by attending to Minnie the cat (who needs a special diet to counteract a failing liver), getting in as much harvest as the wild animals that frequent our vegetable patch would allow and wondering if I would ever hear enough from the various branches of the US bureaucracy that I am currently engaged with in order to make some definite plans for the fast approaching Autumn. I met some of my prospective colleagues from Newport at a naval conference in Peru shortly afterwards.

Optimistically and forgetting that it was their ‘winter’ I had taken along a swimming costume ready for some productive lounging by the hotel pool, only to encounter the chill grey skies that usually cover Lima at this time of the year.

Still, we were all looked after extremely well throughout – fed much too much, had recourse to far too many of their delightful but deadly ‘pisco sours’ and when not in conference were shown the sites. The highlight has to be the famous ‘stepping horses’ of Peru in an evening show at an ancient Hacienda outside Lima. Apparently they are the only horses which set down each hoof separately, rather than two by two. The result is a weird form  of locomotion where their legs whirr round like wheels while the rider stays exactly level. They are impossible to photograph properly, especially on a phone but I have a great video, complete with the local silver band providing enthusiastic encouragement. Lima has lots of 16^th and 17^th Century buildings and loads of Spanish colonial art of the period, plus an extraordinary gold and weapons museum I asked to be taken to, which has everything from sumptuous pre-Inca gold-ware, (including their God of the Sea),

suits of armour, the biggest display of spurs I've ever seen,  Herman Goering’s paperknife and General von Runstedt’s revolver.

Also, following Philippa’s example in Greece, while visiting the magnificent Convent of Santa Dominica,  I entreated the aid of Santa Rosa del Lima for Cherry who enjoyed all this tremendously the last time we were here.    

    

Anger management, Minnie's adventures and nautical events

The 4th edition of my Seapower book has just come out. It's an update and a revision and has some new material later reinforced by the visit to the library of Salisbury cathedral mentioned in an earlier blog. It's a bit longer than the previous version because, try as I might, I couldn't abandon as much material as I took in for new. I'll be interested to see whether aficionados of maritime strategy will spot the tiny Chinese ensign on the mast of the ship on the cover and, I hope, get the hidden message. But my initial reaction to its appearance had nothing to do with any of that.

 

This was because under the pressure of a tight deadline from the publishers (who were nonetheless very sympathetic) the book was completed during those very difficult final months of last year when Cherry was slowly failing. I wrote the book's dedication to her knowing full well she would be unlikely ever to see it in print. I didn't show the draft to her, thinking she was well aware of what I felt and that it would upset her. Ever since, I have wondered whether I took the right decision. It's one of those countless things I could have said or done, but now can't, that contributes to the guilt I feel as I survive and she doesn't. 

 

It's a natural reaction I suppose - and so is the sense of anger bubbling away underneath. It all seems so unfair to me, as I'm sure it does to everyone else in my situation. Inevitably, when bad things happen there's a tendency to find someone or something to blame.  In Cherry's case, it's hard to avoid focussing on the apparent failures of the many health professionals in Singapore and the UK that were involved.

The full story of this will have to wait until I feel able to go through my diary (which at the moment I couldn't face) but briefly things started to go wrong on Cherry's last birthday at a very enjoyable conference-trip to Sri Lanka in November 2016, when she lost her appetite at our birthday celebration by the sea and nearly threw up on the flight back to Singapore. We thought she might have picked up a bug of some sort and so a couple of weeks later as she was still feeling below par she saw her GP back in the UK. On the second morning of a Christmas trip to London when we went up to see some exhibitions and stayed, for convenience,  at the Paddington Hilton, Cherry frightened the life out of me by suddenly saying she 'felt funny' and then passed out rolling onto the floor in a dead faint. She came to five minutes later just as I was calling for a doctor. We abandoned the rest of the trip and came home. Her blood tests were inconclusive and didn't indicate anything very much  so we went back to Singapore, hoping for the best.    

Back in Singapore, Cherry just felt marginally under the weather, running low temperatures and with less energy than usual though, as usual, she made the most of what she had. She was operating at about 80 per cent I would say. However on Valentine day, she rang me to say she suddenly felt much better. This seemed wonderful,  but sadly, it didn’t last. The lady doctor on campus wasn’t very sympathetic initially, dismissing her symptoms as mild to imaginary, but despite that in early February sent her to a consultant who did more blood tests and then they dramatically pulled her into the brand-new all singing, all-dancing Ng Teng Fong Community Hospital. The Singapore system is very good, its staff generally trained in the UK and US. The hospital  even has a shopping centre in the basement which patients, in their pink or blue pyjamas can use as well as the public. Initial thoughts were an abscess on the liver. The first really bad moment was when Cherry was wheeled back to the ward, telling me tearfully as I met her in the corridor, that they found they couldn’t drain it, and so the prognosis seemed wrong.  She realised this at the time, seeing the look of surprised dismay on the doctor with a tube trying to do it down at her side. 

Now that cancer seemed increasingly likely, they rapidly did more tests. One day I went in and Cherry cheerfully greeted me from the bathroom.  So I was shocked when she told me that the Consultant had just confirmed that it was cancer. I remember putting my arm around her, and her saying something like – ‘No, don’t I’ll fall to pieces…’ That set the tone for the rest of her time.  Superficially we treated everything as matter-of-factly as we could.  Shortly afterwards we had a long discharge talk with the Consultant who showed us all the scans, saying that they showed the disease was actually gall bladder cancer that had spread to the liver in a complicated way. He said we should get back to the UK as soon as we conveniently could, business class he recommended, and gave us a package of documents and a CD of the scans for the further treatment. Long term low fever, he said, was a cancer indicator. His prognosis was that Cherry had ‘good prospects of long-term survival.’ Cherry reminded him of her congenital heart condition and he admitted that was ‘a complication.’

Once back in the UK, we swung into immediate action and rapidly found that Cherry’s heart condition was much more than ‘a complication.’ Also, when the specialist first felt the tumour I could see from the expression on his face that he was already very concerned. That was bad moment for me, which Cherry of course didn’t see. All the same through March and into April we found everyone first exploring her heart condition and then saying that this would have to be treated first - and of course recovered from. The gall bladder/liver op would be like ‘running the marathon’ they said, and she would probably not survive it, otherwise. We were both totally frustrated by this knowing that all the time the cancer could well be spreading. ‘I’m prepared to take the risk of an op’ Cherry said, but we were assured that no surgeon in the UK would perform it without the heart condition being resolved first. We even got a second opinion from another cardiologist, without effect

They set a heart repair operation in train in Bristol, but on April 25^th, we heard that the latest scan showed that after six to seven weeks of fiddling around the cancer had now spread to the stomach wall. This being the case, there was no point in proceeding with any of it, and the view was that  Cherry was best advised to make the most of the time she had left. This was the worst moment so far. The journey home from Bristol that night in the rain and dark was ghastly.

Thereafter, under yet another consultant, the accent was on palliative care – making the available time as long and as enjoyable as possible. Part of this was a fairly mild form of chemo-therapy, administered by some really nice people at the Bath Clinic. Cherry even bought a wig, only to discover than it wouldn’t be necessary. Bad side effects were very few but after an encouraging start, the course was stopped when it became clear that it wasn’t arresting the disease. We learned afterwards that palliative chemotherapy in this case only works for one in three people.

And so in all this where was the fault ?  Of course, for everyone it was an uphill battle anyway since gall bladder cancer is difficult to detect in the early stages when more easily managed. And from the start the way it had attacked the liver meant surgery would be 'challenging.' But it’s hard not to conclude that the real problem was the heart condition, which added complexity and cost several weeks of potentially valuable time. Cherry had always known, but not worried, about this condition which was inherited from her mother- who suffered no consequences  and died at the ripe old age of 92.  Her heart was supposed to be regularly checked by the NHS but this somehow fell by the wayside many years ago and it was only when she was being checked for something else towards the end of 2015, that we discovered that the situation had deteriorated and become ‘acute.’ 

Shortly afterwards in 2016 this was then checked at the hospital in Salisbury. Even then, the  consultant there said there was nothing to worry about and that they would only do something if and when the condition became ‘symptomatic’ and Cherry still had no symptoms at all from this condition and in fact never did.  They said she would probably need surgery in about five years time. Six monthly check-ups were recommended and the next showed no change but we heard no more after this. In retrospect, we should have been more proactive about this in early 2017.  So if there was a fault in all this, it was both our letting the matter ride (and especially mine in making us so busy and always rushing around)  and partly the minimalist policy at Salisbury in taking the relaxed position that it did – none of us taking into account that though this wasn’t a serious issue in its own right, it could really become so when combined with something else. On that basis, a more proactive policy would surely have been better ? This point will be made to Salisbury. The several weeks spent on further investigation when back in the UK probably didn't help either. The cards were stacked against us, one way and another. 

Getting back to the original point about anger management point, the uncertainty in all of this is I suppose one reason for resigned acceptance of the situation as just bad luck rather than anyone’s culpable fault – the sort of thing that could, and does, happen to anybody. The gall bladder cancer could well have killed Cherry anyway. The corrosive consequences of getting too bitter about all of this for enjoying the remembrance of the much, much longer and happier past and making the most of the present and the future is another reason for restraint, but that isn't to say it's at all easy.  I think about this, and all of the 'if only's' nearly all the time. But I mustn't let it poison things and so welcome distractions.

….Even bad ones ! Such as coming back very late one night from a short trip to London to find an agonized message from Jenny the cat-minder that Minnie was missing and had probably gone AWOL, two days before. I searched all around the garden with a torch, and drove slowly around the village with headlights full on fearful of finding a pathetic mangled little brown bundle by the side of the road.  The following morning I did a repeat job in the daylight, with equal lack of success. Unless she'd been carried off by a buzzard (something Cherry always worried about as Minnie's so small) I couldn't work out what could have happened to an old blind, deaf cat. So I phoned the vets. 'A small brown Burmese ?' they said. 'We've got her !' I couldn't believe the first story, that she's been picked up by an America tourist in the village of Horton, a mile away -and it turned out a Dutch tourist had found her wandering around outside our gate and thinking she might have been winged by a car took her to the nearest vet (which happened to be ours) and offered to pay any medical expenses. (That's another phone call to make).  She was totally unharmed and had been spoiled rotten by the  nurses during her two day stay. She still wants to go out in warmer weather and I have now a complicated system of closed gates and chicken wire to confine her to the garden !

 

Other much more welcome distractions are continued encounters  with friends and family and the highlight of this has to be our revisit to the SS Great Britain in Bristol with Great Aunty Shelagh. They have a scheme where small people can climb the rigging but it was unappealing in the rain of our last visit. This time the weather was gorgeous and Barney and Martha scampered up the rigging and then across to the ends of the yard-arm, high, high above our heads with the fearless agility of young monkeys. I knew it was perfectly safe, but am not amazing about heights, so taking pictures of them drove all other thoughts out of my mind !   

   

200 days and counting.

I suppose it must partly be the historian in me. I find myself seizing on things about Cherry that I need to record. I remembered how she called pencils ‘penKals’ with a hard ‘c.’ Postcards were never 'written', they were always 'rut.' The way she used to float on her back on the surface of a pool,  motionless, almost asleep whereas I would slowly submerge, feet first, when I tried it. It made sense that these things should pop into my head as I was idly splashing around in a hotel swimming pool in Bangkok, (as one does) , having just taken some notes in a poolside lounger - with a pencil.

I suppose that sub-consciously I am churning over such memories all the time but they only appear when sparked by something else. It's now well over 200 hundred days now since I lost her - it really doesn't seem that long.

Two days after the lovely if exhausting  family holiday in Italy, I was back in an airport this time on a work trip to Singapore and Bangkok. I did a couple of talks at the first place and participated in a workshop in the second. All on maritime themes of one sort or another and with congenial colleagues, many of them marvelling at Dr Mahatir’s totally unexpected election victory in Malaysia (ours isn’t the only electoral system that has gone haywire, but theirs at least did so in a good way) and the forth-coming meeting between Trump and Rocketman in Singapore.

 

 

Workshop schedules and the early closing of most sights meant I couldn’t revisit any of Bangkok’s amazing temples but I did get some wildlife spotting in a big local park, seeing some spectacular monitor lizards right by the path, and had a great lunch at the Naval Club on the river opposite the Grand Palace. I remembered the floating weed from last time (when Cherry and I stayed in the very nice waterfront Royal Orchid Sheraton some years ago. We also found time to take tea at the Oriental where Somerset Maughan did much of his writing). A Singaporean colleague told me the river weed was both edible and nutritious but I can’t say I fancied it.  

Back in the UK again, I had three weeks down-time to recover and prepare for the next bout of activity in Newport and Kiel at the end of June. I say 'downtime' but actually I am still finding it difficult to cram everything in and keep coming across instances of jobs left undone, and arrangements inadvertently missed. This even applies to the garden, where I suddenly noticed that the New Zealand 'thing' that we'd got from somewhere had burst into the most amazing  two foot tower of flower; apparently they don't do that very often. As expected, the Bird of Paradise produced for the first time ever, an amazing five flowers too. Much less happily, I find that the vicious forces of nature, whether rabbits, pheasants, pigeons, blackfly or slugs are much more attentive to my vegetables than I am. This has been quite the worst vegetable season I've ever had, even though on paper at least I've had far more time to attend to such matters.

Partly of course, time goes on enjoyable distractions such as a Devizes Museum Friends private trip to the Duke of Somerset's residence in Maiden Bradley (a bed for Henry VIII, memorabilia of Jane Seymour) which also gave me the opportunity for a lovely lunch with old friends living locally. I went into College a couple of times and met some colleagues from several years ago. One in commiseration said how shocked he had been when he heard about Cherry last year, apologised unnecessarily for missing the service adding that Cherry was 'feisty - she had real presence' which I though really perceptive. I lunched with some old university chums in Salisbury, having collected Aunt Ethel's repaired Art Deco clock and finally gathered in the last of the US quarters to complete Cherry's collection. 

 I also did a Wiltshire Churches trip on 2nd June.

The highlight of that was to be part of a 20 car convoy trekking into the gloriously unspoilt military part of Salisbury Plain to visit the utterly remote village Church at Imber. The car is still covered in the dust that resulted, three weeks after the event. Abandoned in 1943, the Army use the village and its wide surroundings for training; there was even a scattering of brass rifle cartridges on the path leading to the Church !

The Church itself was the 1000th that Cherry and I would have visited and recorded. We were really introduced to this wonderful pastime when as students we hitch-hiked around a very rainy and expensive Scandinavia. We found open Churches there, dry, free and even quite interesting, until one of our lifts - a Dutchman- hearing of this, went out of his way  to show us some really spectacular ones off the route and thereafter we were hooked. We married, moved to Dartmouth and really started our hobby there. I can still almost smell the damp little Church at Halwell which was one of the first we 'did.'

As luck would have it, though, this coincided with a half-term visit by Phil, Chiff and the kids, enjoyed by all. For me the obligatory trip to the New Forest had a poignancy in that while visiting one of its many ponds,  where Barney and Martha delighted themselves by getting really, really wet

I resurrected the little sailing yacht which has been un-thought of while rotting and rusting away in the garage for the past thirty years of more. When Cherry and I were going through her bucket list last October we stayed at Aldeburgh, and sat by the yacht pool there for a while, watching people sailing their little boats. That was where we had bought ours and I thought to myself then that I should see if it still worked. So I did, three weeks ago. A hasty bodge-up to compensate for the ravages of time resulted in moderate success. It did sail, but sideways most of the time. Further work needed ! Maybe.

This was another of the constant intrusion of things that remind me of my loss which hit me without warning. Like the sudden image of Cherry standing thinking about something with her thumb-nail on her bottom lip, or standing enquiringly, with her feet close together, head on one side, transmitting: 'Come on, what are you waiting for ?' loud and clear, without saying a word. Or my hearing of her telling Philippa to make sure that I washed and changed the bedclothes, bought underpants occasionally and managed the fridges properly. Or the sound of 'The House of the Rising Sun' (fondly remembered from Ally Pally student days) booming across the fields from the annual Jazz festival over the other side of the canal. 

I've been thinking about such reminders quite a lot recently. It was set off by watching 'Sleepless in Seattle' (I've always had a soft spot for Meg Ryan) when the Tom Hanks character said he wanted to move from Seattle because he didn't want to be reminded of his dead wife all the time. I had to stop watching it then. But I have since thought about what he said. I find the idea of 'letting go' like that quite unbearable and welcome the 'reminders,'  however poignantly painful they might be. Indeed I sometimes go out of my way to recapture them, as with the refurbishment of the Aldeburgh yacht. For that reason, closing down Cherry's accounts and all the wearisome administrative tasks of probate, has been really quite distressing  and for that reason too, Cherry's stuff is still strewn about the house as though she were still here.  At the moment, that's the way I Iike it, even though reminders of her last few months (like bottles of medicine that did very little good) are particularly hard to bear. Remembering the 50 years or so before that is much nicer, of course.

So, it's good to busy and not just dwell on, or even in, the past, I really shouldn't complain about constantly feeling as though I am about to be overwhelmed by a torrent of tasks and commitments and instead welcome the distraction they offer. With that in mind I enjoyed both of the back-to-back foreign trips that marked the end of this 'down' time, a return to Newport and a naval conference in Kiel.

Although it was flattened at the end of the war, there's much to recommend it, and I enjoyed staying in the elegant Yacht Club behind some roadworks and directly opposite the waters I was told where the German fleet mutinied bringing on the revolution that finally ended the First World War. I was surprised at how many people at Kiel knew my situation and were nice about it.    At both places, academic colleagues enquired closely how I was doing and I answered 'pretty well thank you', which I think is true, pretty well.    

 

Tuscany - where 'bugs is normal'

 

Well, that’s what the instruction sheet for our Tuscan villa said. Except for the poolside mossies that attacked poor Barney with gusto and a trail of ants that once appeared overnight in our dining room to feast on a jam smear on the table, we weren’t that bothered with them, in our otherwise sumptuous hill top temporary home a few miles from Lucca.

A tile set in the wall told us the villa dated back to 1659. It had plenty of room in which the nine of us could lose ourselves. Except for some modern paintings that were in such execrable taste that the more sensitive of us had to take them off the walls and hide them away, the villa made us all feel very privileged as we looked down on the village below us and across the valley to the hills opposite. There were statues, fountains, the biggest swing Philippa had ever tried, a private chapel with a mock Della Robbia Madonna, an olive orchard, a swimming pool where much time was spent, even though the water temperature was on the testing side and loads more. We thought all these opportunities for conspicuous consumption rather explained the great automatic iron gates, the metal shutters and the heavy iron door before the upstairs bedrooms that a 19^th Century owner had installed to keep any revolting peasants out. After dark, we even had fireflies in the grounds and as Beth's picture of our poolside gazebo shows, the grounds took on a magical atmosphere.

Not that we entirely escaped our share of social realism: Philippa became waste management supervisor (it was amazing how many bottles we generated) and looked

after the four rubbish and recycle bins we had to feed and move outside the automatic gates. They each had to be locked – ‘this is Italy’ our hostess explained.

Our presence in Tuscany was thanks to Cherry who planned a celebration to commemorate our 50^th wedding anniversary this year. She was virtually with us, in photographic form presiding over the dining area, in the rather special toasts to her memory, and a long trail of lighted candles in any number of churches, cathedrals and baptisteries.

A sadder reminder was Leonard Cohen’s ‘Alleluiah’ playing in one of our pizzerias.  She would have enjoyed it though,  and the whole week.

And so, in our various ways, did we all. The Lombardo restaurant in the village, Santa Maria delle Colle, made for an elegant first night.  The village’s very basic pizzeria was nothing less than terrific – no tourists, unvarnished locals, excellent pizzas, very cheap, football in the background, the real Italy we thought.  

As true foodies,  Beth and Christopher conjured sumptuous meals for us all out in the gardens, conducted us to the best restaurants wherever we went and led an enthusiastic Martha and Philippa to a pasta making course in Lucca. Barney insisted on pizzas everyday naturally. Chiff was barbeque supremo, even in the occasional rain. Martha did her ‘good waitress’ thing. In short, everyone chipped in to the mammoth task of feeding us all, and clearing up afterwards, even me to a very limited extent.

Philippa arranged for a local chef to come and cook us all a meal for Chiff’s somety-something birthday. Followed of course by extreme bingo where, she tells us after long experience, the contestants fill up several sheets at the same time. Participating in that was one of the most intellectually challenging things I’ve done for a long time.

It wasn’t all food and after dinner entertainment, though. Simon and Ruth came over a few days earlier, reconnoitred the area and recommended the quite spectacular Calomini monastery up in the hills which Team Powell and I visited on our last day.

 

Quite amazing, but then so was so much else.

Beth and Christopher were particularly taken with the romantically decayed Villa Reale. I could see they were rethinking Walthamstowe. I liked it too, especially as the young woman guardian asked me if I was 65 and so entitled to a reduced fee. There were the excursions to Lucca – massive town walls, the Duomo in black and white Carrera marble and the famous Giulini tower with the oak trees on top where the heat and unregulated press of people caused Philippa to have a melt-down. A gin-and-tonic in the forum, where I had sat it out tapping away on my lap-top, restored her equanimity. And of course, there was Pisa, where all the world’s people seemed to be. They all clambered up the leaning tower.

I excused myself on account of having done it years ago shortly after it was built and my hip was hurting, but did make the baptistery roof where there was one of those special moments. A young woman, presumably one of the staff, just sang a few single notes; everyone stopped. The sound swirling around the domed roof was magical. Outside there were the inevitable photos of people holding up, or pushing over, the leaning tower. Martha injected some class into the proceedings by adopting a variety of improbable balletic poses against exotic backgrounds for the delectation of her teachers and colleagues back home.

Some of us did other towns too - Pistoia (where ‘pistols’ came from) and Pietrasanta – both much, much quieter. Only Beth and Christopher did Florence, in fact rather more extensively than planned as a couple of strikes delayed their departure by two days. In contrast, we had  a more tranquil time going out on the boardwalks,

through the reedy marshes of Lake Massarosa and some of us, at Philippa’s urging went mountaineering into the steep wooded Tuscan hills behind Calomini, stopping only with much panting on coming across a little old stone building embowered in nature, just ripe, I thought, for development as a writer's retreat.

It was all surprisingly varied – some places standing room only, for nearly all the others we were on our own. Often, it sometimes it seemed quite literally. At the Villa Oliva, Team Powell and I found the gate closed but an old and dubious notice said it was open. When no one answered the bell, we went in anyway and roamed around goggling at the fountains until apprehended by a gardener who appeared from somewhere, charged us (for a tiny entrance fee not with an offence) and then disappeared. Later, looking for an apparently non-existent loo, we stumbled up various stairways  in an extensive stable block (grander than Versailles our leaflet said) came across a door with a bunch of keys attached and found ourselves in someone’s living room, before hastily retreating. Only in Italy !

There was always something to marvel at. Both Chiff and Barney expressed amazement at how much really old art there was around, admittedly with rather different levels of approval. Much was totally unexpected, like pictures and statues of the fat people associated  with the Columbian artist Fernando Botero in Pietrasanta where he apparently lives or representations of American Pony Express riders in the repurposed cloisters. And then there were the amazing five layered villages of cinque terre which Ruth and Simon discovered just before the rest of us arrived .

Of course, not everything was perfect. Barney was eaten by the wildlife, I had hip trouble, Philippa had an ear infection and Ruth, now decidedly round, found introducing an oblivious little one to the delights of Italy quite tiring at times. The drivers in the party encountered some quite idiosyncratic motoring with much high-speed tailgating, refusal to make way for cars getting on the autostrada and a widespread tendency to pull out in front of you without warning. Chiff driving his big white Audi (we were the first to hire it) found himself entering into the spirit of the thing but agreed it was probably the time to go home.

That took some doing too. Pisa airport was terribly overcrowded and the plane was late; Christopher and Beth as already mentioned spent more time in Italy than originally allocated, but found that a couple of extra days in Florence, with the airline contributing to the cost wasn't actually all that bad -apart from the initial stress. But over we all undoubtedly had a lovely time, thanks to Cherry, even if we did need a holiday afterwards.