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.