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 .