A Lull Before Tuscany

It came from nowhere. I was sitting in the conservatory reflecting happily on the brilliant day I'd had the day before with the Wiltshire Historic Churches Trust, (when a great bunch of chums had visited four really interesting local churches, with much chat and a nice pub lunch - all of which I was asked to record in pictures and words) when I was struck by a sudden shaft of grief. I couldn't for the moment work out what particular thing had sent it my way until I realised that, at the same time, I had been idly flicking through the pages of the latest National Trust magazine and had chanced across a reference to Holcombe Hall. This had been the bucket list target of our last big adventure, the decidedly mixed excursion to Norfolk last October. It had been a great success in some ways but in Cherry's then state had been over-ambitious and we'd abandoned the finale, which had been at long last to make it to Holcombe Hall. In effect I had been ambushed by something I hadn't seen coming.    

 

 

In fact this happens all the time, as I come across pots in the freezer marked 'blog' in Cherry's inimitable style (Spaghetti Bolognaise !) , the notice of Cherry's funeral in an old copy of  the Parish Magazine,  endless correspondence dealing with probate matters and of course the belated condolences that are still trickling in, mainly from abroad. We heard recently that donations in Cherry's name to her two favoured charities, Dorothy House and the RSPB were £633.01 and £512.25 respectively. Slightly weird sums but nice all the same.  Robyn Long  from Australia sent a batch of postcards that Cherry had sent her: 'She was such an enthusiastic and observant traveller and I thought your grandchildren might like an example of her handwriting as a keepsake...I couldn't bring myself to discard them...'  It took some resolution on my part to look at them, I might say, but I was glad I did. From Malaysia, China, Japan, Korea and Spain, they were testimony to Cherry's exuberant and excited pleasure in travel.  Another recent reminder was from the hulking 'Mark the Alarm'  (as Cherry christened him)  our Welsh provider of the household alarm system. Interestingly,  he's an ex-submariner although I imagine it must have been a squeeze for him even in today's much bigger boats.  When he called recently to service the alarm, he said Cherry was 'brilliant - his favourite lady, always with a welcome, but 'feisty....telling me I talked too much.' He recalled one time appearing with an apprentice learning the ropes, who Cherry discovered was a pond expert. Without so much as a by-your-leave she pulled him out of 'all that boring stuff' and they spent an hour sorting out the pond, while poor Mark did the alarm on his own and had his coffee. He didn't seem to hold a grudge.

Although all these 'reminders' of Cherry and my loss are bitter sweet I welcome them because they help preserve the linkages between her and me, just as does the picture show that comes up on the computer  screen when I doze off and leave it for a while. For that reason I'm a bit reluctant actually to eat the 'blog' I referred to earlier. This even applies to watching and then deleting telly programmes that Cherry had hopefully recorded to watch some day but never did. I did though, starting with Andrew Marr's  'Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers' but it took some resolution. This feeling was echoed by one of my closest friends who said that my '...point about moving stuff and "slipping something that moored Cherry to Wansdyke Cottage" ' was affecting....Caught by surprise I was: how our material stuff is reflective of entirely un-material 'other stuff.'   An American friend said that he thought of his long-departed wife everyday 'with equanimity and serenity' and I know I will too one day after most of these tangible physical reminders have succumbed to the inexorable demands of 'normal' life, and got watched, eaten or whatever.  But at the moment that 'equanimity' is a long way off. I read somewhere recently that someone else in my position found that they had become more emotional about everything, not just their loss, and I have been surprised to find myself much the same. Even to the ridiculous extent of misty eyes when the English women netball team at the Commonwealth games won gold through a last-second goal.  I take not the slightest interest in sport and only saw it on the news  but it was a bizarre example of the way that other people's emotion, of any sort, sparks unexpected reactions in me.

Unless taken off my guard like this, I am not usually in this hyper-sensitive state, as suggested by my pleasure in the Church visit already referred to. I also spent an enjoyable day in Salisbury where the car was being serviced reading the proofs on my latest book in various coffee houses - and the cathedral refectory. I neither investigated the site of the nerve agent attack, nor contacted local friends because the said proof-reading (an activity I find tedious beyond belief) was desperately urgent and needed to be done - and imprisoning myself in such circumstances was a good way of ensuring progress !  Oddly, I quite enjoyed it.

Keeping busy, if only through sheer necessity, has been a hallmark of these three weeks between Easter and departure for an Italian holiday with the family. Of course, they all look to my interests in the meantime and both Christopher and Philippa have visited. Philippa remembers that almost the last thing Cherry said to her was a request that she keep a sharp eye on my fridge, and sure enough a pot of fruit was found growing white furry things  needing to be disposed of. Minnie the cat is a matter of concern too (more or less than me I'm not sure). She's virtually lost her sight and keeps walking into things until her whiskers provide last-second warning, but at the moment is eating well, looks after herself, purrs a lot when cuddled, and finds the litter tray most of the time, so we are all maintaining a watching brief. She's had her first get-well card too from Peter.        

When they are not concerning themselves with the cat and me, the family are all busy about their normal lives. Christopher has produced a diary of his amazing  time in the Antarctic, which by comparison makes this blog seem as dull as ditchwater. Here's the link - fantastic pics !  https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/antarctic-diary-greenpeace-part-one/

Martha had her 10th birthday, and to judge by the picture much enjoyed blowing out her birthday cake candles,  blue and safely nestled, of course, in rice.
 

Meanwhile Ruth and Simon have been busy nest-building on an industrial scale. He's put up false ceilings attended to suspect flooring, inserted posh new kitchen cabinets and so on. We were all especially impressed by the way in which he had to get a new bath through the window of their upstairs bathroom.  He makes it look so easy, but has confessed after several weeks of intensive DIY, he'd rather be out on his bike ! I heard all about it in Hastings when visiting them last weekend.  We had a really nice time, sitting on the beach in the sun, sampling several local cafes and exploring the old town and East cliff, coming down it by the steepest funicular in Britain apparently !

 As for me, the reappearance of a round yellow shiny thing in the sky after what seems months of clouds and chilly drizzle has been a welcome if very late opportunity to get out into the garden.  

Not that I have had much time for it because the sunny weather coincided with a really intense bit of academic endeavour on the book - the tedious and time-consuming business of proof reading, and even worse, indexing the wretched thing. I was determined to get it done before departing for the family holiday in Tuscany, on the same day as my absolute deadline. I only managed it by letting everything else go for a while. The worst day saw mestart at 0800 in the granny annexe at a big table where I could spread everything out- and finishing just short of midnight with only some very brief breaks along the way, to feed the cat and so forth. Tomato sandwiches at the keyboard etc etc. Really tedious.

One of the things I lost track of, curiously, was the actual date and that in some ways was a blessing, for I was really dreading ANZAC day, April 25th, the day they landed at Gallipoli along with the British, French and Indians. Quite often we have attended the dawn ceremonies that Australians and New Zealanders  organise. Their first exposure to modern war, It means a lot to them. The result can be quite something as dawn breaks and the event ends with what they call a 'gunfire breakfast' afterwards. We had a terrific one in Singapore, once,  as I recall. But for me ANZAC day now means something quite different, for it was the day last year we were told that Cherry's condition was terminal. I shall never forget that moment. The consultant was very gentle - ' not fantastic news, I'm afraid' he said. Cherry and I just looked at each other.   I have never been prouder of her. She asked the obvious question:  'How long have I got ? Years, months, weeks ? ' She mentioned that we were planning to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in August 2018 in Tuscany with the family. 'Not years' he said, 'you should plan for the short term,' adding 'but you're a fighter.'  We asked about chemo palliative care, the next stage in what the NHS like to call 'our journey', and then left. The journey back home from Bristol was quite appalling. It was dark, with heavy rain, and the approaches to the M32 were blocked off for roadworks with minimal signage - and we got comprehensively lost. It seemed the last straw. Eventually we reached Devizes, picked up some fish and chips and watched something mindless and escapist on the telly, Hawaii 50 Ithink. It was the very worst day of our life together up to then- but oddly things did get better, for quite a while. Cherry took it all extremely well, and I was obliged to be as matter-of-fact as I could be.  We resolved to make the most of what we had left, and I think actually did.

I wasn't looking forward to the revival of all these memories, especially as I was expecting the results of my own scan at more or less the same day, but fortunately in some ways I got the days wrong and the dreaded symbolic date passed in a welter of urgent business without my realising it. And now of course, Tuscany beckons and there will be a lot of other distractions too. Very exciting !   Just before I left for Burgess Hill, the first of our extraordinary Bird-of-Paradise flowers suddenly popped up. There are a record five of them coming this year. Cherry would have been delighted with that. 

Plugging on

It was one of those happy coincidences. The Brazilian Navy invited me over for a conference at just the right time, so I was able to say to Cherry something along the lines of : “ I think we should go away for your birthday – how do you feel about Rio ? “ This scored heavily with her and the trip itself was an unblemished delight from start to finish. We were taken to all the city's sights, Petropolis, the Iguaçu Falls and so on. But at one point we began to get a bit worried that Grandma  back in Allington wasn’t answering the phone. So Cherry detailed off one of our friends to go and check. She was fine and as he phoned back in the rain to report that all was well, he asked a shade bitterly ‘…and I suppose you’re sitting in the sun on Copacabana beach. ‘ ‘Well, yes,’ said Cherry,  ‘as a matter of fact we are !’ This became a ‘thing’ between them ever after.

So returning to Rio without her was going to be very different. From the start there were poignant reminders of earlier times. I was scheduled to change planes at Schipol airport and that brought back unpleasant memories of our last but one return to England after a conference in Amsterdam in May 2017 when Cherry was in a challenging phase of her failed chemotherapy course. She had gone off the boil on our last day in Amsterdam and when we arrived at Schipol we found that they had changed planes and we had been taken off the new smaller plane, and offered another flight about six hours later. By this stage Cherry was feeling quite poorly. Fortunately other victims were nice to us, allowed me to go the front of the queue clutching Cherry’s Chemo document and after a degree of mystifying hassle, we were up-graded and put back on the plane. But it was a wearing experience and an early indicator of rough times ahead. And of course, once I got to Rio, Brazilian colleagues from previous encounters didn’t know the situation and asked brightly how Cherry was. One did know, and gently enquired how I was doing, which I was touched by. I looked in vain for the hotel where we stayed in  Copacabana and where we drank caipirinhas on the rooftop terrace. And then, another reminder, an e-mail arrived from a long-term friend saying he was organising a Lenten candle for Cherry at the Church where he sang.

But despite all this, the trip was a success. My colleague from Newport and I were royally looked after. It was very different, and I would obviously much rather have had the old trip pattern with Cherry, but it was fun for all that. The three work days were good, the audience vast, and at other times we were guided round all the sights both familiar (the Christ the Redeemer statue, the Sugar Loaf, the Colombo café in Fort Copacabana reckoned to be in the top ten beautiful cafes in the world) and the very unfamiliar – plus some favoured local restaurants. Our base was the Naval Club and Lodge, themselves rather nice. At the end at the Rio airport, I was tenderly consigned into the VIP/Business lounge by a party of no less than four dark-suited officials, who later conducted me to the plane on one of those fast electric trolleys. I felt a bit like a departing Head of State. Weird.

I got back of course to an unusually awful British Spring Day where the 8^o temperature and dull, weeping skies contrasted most unpleasantly with the 33⁰ and bright blue skies I had got used to. But at least the snow had gone away. In this part of Wiltshire we had three bouts of snow and the worst led to substantial drifts of snow, including across the back of our paddock, which took several weeks to disappear and very quiet roads for a while, except for tractors and snowploughs going past. I was glad I didn't have to battle through it. The snow was all quite pretty though.  

This picture shows our new goose. I say 'our' because it was a Cherry indulgence when we were coming back from meeting old university friends in Norfolk last October and stopped off at Anglesey Abbey, a National Trust house and garden near Cambridge. The weekend had been very successful but it had tired her out. Not so much though that she wasn't able to give the staff at the Abbey a piece of her mind,

as they say, for some lamentably unsympathetic treatment of people in wheelchairs. So effective was this that, mortified, they desperately made amends and gave us an individual guided tour of the bits of the house that were accessible. I guess that's what our penultimate Consultant meant by Cherry's fighting spirit and determination to keep battling on regardless. Hence also the absolute requirement to acquire the goose, even though she knew she would have no more than a few weeks to enjoy it. Three in fact. It was on that trip that I realised we were approaching a faster end than we had hoped for, when drawing up outside a particularly nasty but convenient Macdonalds I was shocked by seeing, in a sudden shaft of sunshine, how very jaundiced she was. Nonetheless, Cherry managed to enjoy quite a lot of the last of her time and kept plugging on.  She did, so I must, I tell myself.

I was reminded of one aspect of all this when all the family arrived for Easter and it was decided that we would re-watch "Paddington 2" - the film that we had seen, courtesy of Chiff, by hiring (virtually for free) the local cinema for the afternoon. Even though Cherry died only nine days later, it was a thoroughly fun occasion, followed up by a late roast lunch in a private room at the local coaching inn, called 'The Bear' appropriately enough. At Easter all the other traditions so associated with her- like a breakfast table laden with chocolate eggs and other goodies - were re-enacted. Ruth even reconstructed one of Cherry's distinctive 'Easter trees' made of branches of forsythia with eggs hanging off them, adding a couple of pieces of red-currant for variety.

 

Outside, the weather continued bleak, grey, windy and really wet. We managed a couple of walks, one round the village to the canal and another over the Marlborough downs behind the house to Adams Grave from where we could scramble down to peer at the very grey 'white horse' that prances along the hills above behind Alton Barnes.

Here we are straggling damply home with Adams Grave to the right. Despite the weather, the whole weekend  was another very happy and supportive family occasion. Our only worry was a concern that Minnie the cat could be failing. She wasn't her usual self.

On a final and happier note, old University friends, Tony and Maya e-mailed from Switzerland to say that by searching through the family's change, the last missing states in Cherry's collection of US quarter (dollar) coins were now accounted for and the collection was complete, undoubtedly to become a family heirloom in the future. Cherry would have been absolutely delighted by this as well as by the joys of our family Easter .