News of grandchild no 5

Me siento un poco deprimido esta mañana. Tom, Lucy, Julia and Aureliano are on their way back to Ecuador after spending a couple of weeks with us.

I am writing this in bed at 7am in the morning and there’s no little moley under my duvet. The gang should be an hour or so from Mexico City, where they have a 10-hour stop-over before flying on to Quito. They will reach Quito around midnight GMT which should be 6pm in Ecuador.

Two weeks goes so fast, it seems only a day or so since I was picking them up from Heathrow. Margaret’s big worry was that they would have forgotten us, but Julia recognised me straight away and Aureliano, who was only one year old when he left, was also clearly excited.

Julia had been worried that we might have died, that Holly might have died, and that Margaret might have thrown away her things. Over the next couple of days, it was lovely to see her relax back into her English routine and to rediscover all her toys and possessions.

Julia has grown up a lot. Her language has come on (especially her Spanish), and she’s bigger and more independent. She left us in the midst of the terrible twos and she returned as a ‘threenager’, so there was the odd tantrum, especially towards the end of the holiday when I think she picked up on the general mood of depression (from us that they were going back and from Tom and Lucy the stress of a day-and-a-half cooped up in a plane).

Aureliano is more daring than Julia (he’d love to be able to jump) and he soon settled down into a routine. He’s only grumpy if he’s hungry, so if he starts to cry, give him some food. Aureliano speaks Spanish, but understands English even if he has few words. His vocabulary is mainly:

Teta – he wants breast milk
Nom-nom – he wants food
Chao – goodbye (accompanied by a wave)
Por favour – said in an especially pathetic voice when he wants breast milk and Lucy isn’t inclined.
Hello – which is pronounced the Spanish way, without an H and with a ‘yuh’ sound for the double L (eh-yo). This is also accompanied by a wave and is so incredibly cute.
His name for Julia is "oo-a".

He can also whistle (amazingly) and loves to sing and dance.

The big news that Tom and Lucy brought back was that they are going to have another baby. We will have a fifth grandchild. The baby (my bet is another boy) will be born in October and the plan is to return to the UK in September, about a month before the due date.

They will live with us for a while and then, depending upon visa requirements, they will either go back to Ecuador until September 2020 or get their own place in the UK. They want the child to be born in the UK, so he or she has a British passport (like the others). It’s relatively easy to get an Ecuadorian passport and citizenship, not so this inhospitable country.

So we have something to look forward to in the autumn, but back to this month …

Sadly, Aureliano picked up some kind of bug within a day of arriving. On Saturday, he was playing nicely in the garden when there were a couple of incidents. He was a bit slow going down the slide, so Julia gave him a shove and he crashed a little at the bottom; then he tripped on the uneven path and fell over. I think he was getting tired, but had I known him better, I would have realised something wasn’t quite right.

In the afternoon, we went to Springfields at Spalding, which is an out-of-town shopping area with playground. It was a bit of a cold, blowy day and both Aureliano and Julia were very grumpy when we tried to buy them shoes (normally it’s a real pleasure for Julia). We then went to the play area, which was OK, but Aureliano wasn’t really happy, despite doing his best to enjoy it.

Sad-looking Aureliano doing his best to enjoy the ride-on tractors
at Springfields in Spalding.

That evening, he vomited and went off his food and it took him three or four days to get over it. He’s a stoical little fellow, but we were all worried. Once he had recovered, he never stopped eating – he loves a boiled egg (or two) for breakfast and he loves fruit (grapes and kiwis were a big hit). Also, you can’t go far wrong with pasta and pesto.

Lucy is potty training him and he’s got it pretty well sewn up, although he does like to make the “poo face”, so there were a few false alarms.

We didn’t have anything planned for the holiday, so it was a bit of a muddle. Should we go to London? Should we try Center Parcs? In the end, we found a barn conversion for three days near Reepham in Norfolk and Max and Inna were able to join us.

The barn was rather nice, very spacious with underfloor heating, so it felt very comfortable and it was really well fitted out.

On Thursday, Tom, Lucy and Inna went to Norwich with Aureliano; Max stayed in to look after the dogs and Margaret and I took Julia to Roarr! – Norfolk’s very own dinosaur experience. Arthur loves Tamba Park on Jersey and I expected this to be a big hit.

It was a big hit in the wallet. They charged us £45 to get in, but we’d driven up to the place and I didn’t want Julia to think grandad was a skinflint, so I coughed up. On the way up the drive, there were strategically placed dinosaur models. I pointed them out to Julia and she said: “They’re only bones.”

I thought she was going to be singularly unimpressed, but once we’d paid and went through the door, there was a seven-foot dinosaur that moved its head and roared as we went past. Julia was terrified! Not a bit scared, she was absolutely terrified. We had to carry her past a couple of other models (silent ones thankfully) and took refuge in the indoor play area. This would have been a huge success had she not seen the velociraptor near the soft-play slide. She managed a snack and drink and a very quick play in the ball pit where the dinosaur couldn’t be seen.

We ventured out and she was interested in the mammoths, the Neanderthals and sabre-toothed tigers; she also enjoyed the mini zoo and the farm animals, but we had to leg it past the T-Rex on the way back. So Roarr! Wasn’t a roaring success. Lucy said later that Julia had been frightened of dinosaurs and she’d told them they were all dead so there was nothing to worry about – there were only bones left. I think she was happy with that explanation until the bones moved and roared.

It was windy and showery, not great weather for the beach, but Max and I took the dogs to Sheringham in the afternoon. I was hoping the tide would have been far enough out to expose the sandy beach, but it wasn’t, so we walked part-way to Weybourne on shingle. It’s hard going and the whippets were not too impressed.

On the beach at Sheringham - hard going on the shingle.

The barn came with Netflix and, that night, we watched Roma, a film that’s won loads of awards. It was very good – made me cry (which isn’t hard).

Chilling on the sofa.

It was still windy and showery on Friday. We all went to Hunstanton for a walk on the beach. Aureliano was excited to see the sea, but it was too cold and windy for the children, so they headed for Hunstanton town and we walked on the beach with the dogs. The whippets were much happier on sand than shingle and really got some speed up trying to catch redshank. They even had a short swim/paddle when they found themselves on the opposite side of a creek to us. Normally, they don’t like water (even paddling in puddles) but Ollie did once jump into the river at Toneham when he saw Holly swim across to the other side. I think he expected to be able to walk across and it was quite a shock when he couldn’t. He got out fine, but it took a while for the adrenalin to wear off. This time Archie managed to wade/plunge across the creek, but Ollie chose a deeper section and needed a few strokes. There was a slight panic in his stroke – they’re not water dogs. Tom took this video of us collecting shells on Hunstanton beach - click HERE. 

We all met up again and had lunch in a pub on the way back. They were very accommodating of dogs and children, so that was nice. The food was pretty good too and because I wasn’t driving, I allowed myself a couple of pints of Woodforde’s Wherry.

In the evening there were a couple of rounds of Catan, a board game. Lucy won both games (no surprises there – she’s as ruthless as ever).

It was a really nice break and a good place to stay. I found Reepham a bit pretentious (too many antique shops and fancy food stores) and it’s a nightmare to walk around because the main road through is fairly busy and the pavement disappears whenever the road narrows. It does have an interesting church (or churches). Two are built, end to end, so that it looks like one church with two towers. Why didn’t they build one big one? Who knows – God’s house has many rooms!

We had a nice drive back along the B-roads to King’s Lynn, Max headed back early because Inna had a baby shower and Tom & Co headed to Sheringham for a look around.

I had enjoyed reading Room on the Broom and Stick Man with Arthur and so I bought the books for Julia. She’s always loved books and it was interesting reading stick man to her; I could see that she was really worried that he might not get back to his family. She’s developed a level of understanding and empathy that wasn’t there previously.

Julia and her friend at music club

The weather picked up thankfully and the second week was much warmer and less windy. It meant the children could play outside, but the time flew by. Faz came up to see Tom, Lucy had to go to Cambridge for a day, Tom and Lucy spent a day in London and a day in Baldock, there was some last-minute shopping for Marmite, Yorkshire Tea and Ginger Nuts (essential supplies for Brits abroad).

It was nice to go back to Crowland soft play and to Thorney Park – two old favourites – and Margaret loved taking them back to Matthew Coates music sessions and to Play and Chat. Julia met a little girl at music that she’d not seen for a year. Margaret said they knew each other straight away and gave each other a huge hug.

We were amused by how much Aureliano loved the purple buggy. He wakes up around 6am, starving hungry, but needs a sleep at lunchtime. We found the buggy a perfect way to get him off to sleep. He loved being tucked in and wheeled around, there would be some contented singing for a while, then ZZZs.

I ran them all back to Heathrow on Friday for a 10.30pm flight home via Mexico City, where they had a 10-hour stop-over before heading on to Quito. It was the cheapest option and seems to have worked reasonably well. I hope the Ginger Nuts weren’t too crushed when they unpacked.

Aureliano will always have a snooze in the buggy

Catan at the Barn - Lucy won 2-0.

Books Read in 2019

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

This was a 65^th birthday present from Max and I found it quite a hard book to read (which is why it took me almost six months). I kept reading it and putting it down for a month until I finally finished it in early January.

Macfarlane poses the question: are there any truly wild places left in the British Isles? I guess that depends upon your definition of “wild”. There are some wild places in Thorney – my allotment until I took it over and the patch of land next door hasn’t been disturbed for 15 years.

So my definition of wild is probably much less rigorous than Macfarlane’s. He sets off to visit a list of places he has identified as fitting his definition and they include remote islands, coastal strips, bogs and mountains. The usual suspects are there – Rannoch Moor gets a chapter – and I found his writing in the first part of the book a little unconvincing. There didn’t seem to be a connection, he didn’t seem comfortable or happy in the places he wanted to experience.

He did seem to visit them during periods of extreme weather and there was a piece about spending the night on the summit of Ben Hope in the middle of winter, which sounded quite reckless (unless he was exaggerating his predicament). In the latter part of the book, he seemed more at ease with the “wild” environment he was visiting, but it was a lot less wild Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex coasts, lost holloways in the south-west … These were the more interesting bits, but then he’s off again trying to find an arctic hare in Derbyshire in the middle of a November storm.

I’m going to pass the book on to Sam who has been watching and enjoying the YouTube channel of a chap in North America who goes wild camping in the woods.

The Spanish Civil War by Antony Beevor

I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War, except that when I was little Franco was still something of a bogeyman. Spain (and Portugal too) was a place you didn’t want to visit – run by a fascist dictator, backward, dominated by the Catholic Church (and don’t forget what they did in 1588). My knowledge of Spain was limited to what we read in the Daily Herald – they killed bulls for fun, they threw donkeys off church towers, you could be arrested for wearing a bikini.

Later, I read Ernest Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and then Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Later still, I read a little about the Anarchist movement in Catalonia and I have been referring to events in the civil war during my Spanish lessons. Poets, composers and artists we may look at during lessons (such as Manuel de Falla) were greatly affected by the war. Falla, the greatest Spanish composer of the 20^th century, lived in exile after the war and refused to return to Spain despite being offered a generous pension by Franco. The Gipsy Kings were descendants of Basque gipsies, who were forced to flee to France after the Republicans lost the war.

Beevor’s writing is pretty much a factual, chronological narrative, and is easy to read; although the complicated pre-war politics and multitude of unfamiliar names do make you pause quite often and say: “who the heck is he and what side was he on?”

The background to the war is one of immense poverty in Spain, with industry (generally) and land (absolutely) in the ownership of a small, wealthy class. There was dissatisfaction with the monarchy, including a dispute over rightful succession, and dissatisfaction among the poorer classes with the Catholic church. A strong left wing movement - including socialists, communists and anarchists – had arisen (especially in the Basque and Catalan industrial areas) and to complicate things further, there was a desire for Catalan independence, while the Basque country largely was a semi-independent entity.

The Spanish ‘left’ was an unhappy coalition. The communists (some way from Stalinism) were the smaller party and not happy bedfellows with the socialists, while the anarchists, by definition, were not going to fit in anywhere. They wanted collectivism, no government, no money, no army … The fear of anarchy (it’s still a loaded word) led to a campaign of fake news against the movement across Europe. Catalonia in Spain was its strongest place and when allowed to, during the civil war, anarchists did run factories and farming in a pragmatic, efficient way. John Lewis and the RNLI, both held up as shining examples by many, are (you could argue) anarchist organisations.

The war started when the left won democratic elections in 1936. Leaders of the armed forces led a coup, which was only partly successful. The navy remained largely loyal and parts of the army also remained loyal. Franco emerged as the leader of the Nationalists and, helped by German and Italian military support, he finally won a bloody war that lasted three years.

Russia supported the Republicans, but did them no favours. Stalin basically took all the country’s gold reserves and gave them a few (no enough) weapons, but lots of communist advisors. His aim was to make the relatively small Spanish communist party the leader in government.

The role of Briatin, France and the USA was shameful. The British maintained neutrality, while providing Franco with considerable support; France wished to be more helpful but deferred to British policy for fear of upsetting its ally and the USA, led by a strong Catholic pressure group (including the Kennedy dynasty) also thwarted democratic government.

Had we supported the Republicans, some argue Hitler may have thought twice about launching the Second World War. At least, we would have had an ally against Fascism had WW2 still started.

The most shocking thing about the Spanish Civil War was its brutality. Franco said he’d reunite Spain even if he had to shoot half the Spaniards (and that’s pretty much what happened). His Moroccan mercenaries were ruthless murderers, rapists and pillagers of conquered territory, while Hitler and Mussolini used the war as a testing ground for weapons and tactics that would be employed during WW2 against France and Britain.

The bombing of Guernica is well documented, but Madrid and Barcelona (and many other cities) were carpet-bombed against the Geneva convention, civilian refugees were machine gunned by aeroplanes and weapons such a napalm were developed by the Germans. The causes of Basque and Catalan separatism were ruthlessly supressed, Castellano imposed across Spain and church attendance made more or less compulsory.

It’s extraordinary that all this happen only 80 years ago – one lifetime. What a mess Europe was in so recently and what a blessing that Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany are now democratic governments working together within the EU. |What a shame that some elements, especially within the UK, now seek to pull out of this movement for peace, co-operation and unity.

A week in sunny Tenerife

Just back from a week in Tenerife with Sam, Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse. We stayed at the GF Victoria in Adeje and it was great weather – up in the high 20s and lots of sun.

We went to Adeje around this time last year and stayed at the Roca Nivaria. This year’s hotel, another five-star inclusive package, was better for Arthur as the swimming pools were more child-friendly and there were lots of them.

It’s great to have a sunny, warm week in winter. While we were away last year, we had a really chilly February with a bitter storm dubbed ‘The Beast from the East’ but February 2019 has been unseasonably warm with record temperatures recorded and lots of sun. There were bumble bees and butterflies in our garden in mid Feb and all the spring bulbs are well advanced.

I could have got a sun tan working at the allotment, but you never know these things when you book.

Holidays are quite expensive and here’s (roughly) what this one cost.

Hotel - £2,500
Drinks and extras - £350
Flights - £350
Hotel at Gatwick - £100
Parking - £50
Dog boarding kennels - £120
Taxi transfers - £50

It’s around £3,500, so not one of those holidays where it’s cheaper to live in Spain than it is in the UK. We also had Jason Robinson in to paint the stairs while we were away, so that was an extra £470 – my poor old bank balance!

In the Sky Bar before the grandchildren arrived.

The Victoria is really nice. The room was great – we were on the fifth floor – and there are glass lifts at various points. We had a balcony with views of the family and adults’ pools, also an Atlantic sunset, there was a lounge, separate bedroom, en-suite bathroom and additional shower/loo. Two TVs, tea and coffee, fridge, safe and lots of wardrobe space.

The hotel is modern and quite stylish, with two bars, two restaurants and lots of sports/play facilities.

We were supposed to arrive all together on the Saturday, but Sam’s holiday package went wrong when the airline taking them to Tenerife from Jersey went bust. There have been several small airlines bankrupted as we head towards Brexit. It’s probably not all Brexit’s fault, but it is a major contributing factor.

It meant that instead of getting there on Saturday, his holiday was now Monday to Monday and so we missed two days with the grandchildren.

We spent Saturday looking around the hotel (that took a while) and popping into the nearby shopping centre to buy a hat. I’d left my Panama at home (you always forget something). There’s a nice open-air bar on Planta Cinco where it says you can watch the sunset over the Atlantic. You can, but another pretty hotel with a little bell tower blocks the view of the orb disappearing into the water.

The hotel was very quiet – there were only four people in the bar and definitely no need to worry about finding a vacant sun-lounger. Breakfast and dinner were in the price (not lunch and not wine). We took meals in the restaurant on the ground floor, which was a help-yourself feast (if you wanted it to be). I had fillet steak three nights (cooked to order), pork steak another night and once I went Italian and had risotto followed by pizza. There was a choice of sweets (a little on the sickly side) and a good selection of cheese. Breakfasts (for me) were porridge or rice pudding, followed by fruit, nuts and yoghurt. I had scrambled eggs and toast on a couple of days.

There was entertainment in the ground-floor bar each night from 6am to 9pm. We saw a decent singer and a violinist; a mediocre rock band playing covers and a useless pianist. We quite enjoyed the acrobat troupe.

Chatting to artists and people in the bar, it’s amazing what a small word we have become. A singer was from the Czech Republic and she spoke English, Spanish and Russian (at least), the violinist was Hungarian and he’d lived in Ireland and Spain (where he’d met his Argentinian wife) before moving to the Canaries; waiting staff were from Morocco and Venezuela (among others) and guests were from UK, Austria, Russia and Scandinavia (among others). It’s such a shame that the EU’s freedom of movement, which can allow a Czech singer to work in the Canaries, is being lost. As the world gets smaller and more open, Little England is pulling up the drawbridge and saying “we don’t want to be part of this.”

Arthur had enjoyed the open-air play pool on the Fifth Floor. It was paddling-pool shallow and had lots of fun slides for toddlers. He’d been on all the toddler slides on Tuesday and also in the big family pool on the Second Floor level in the afternoon.

It was really encouraging because he was quite nervous about water last year. I bought him a bucket and water squirter and Sam got him some Paw Patrol arm-bands, so we thought he’d be well set for the week. However, on Wednesday, he didn’t want to go in the water and wasn’t interested in the slides. He was coaxed in, but wouldn’t do more than paddle or play with his bucket and squirter. Saoirse was taken for a dip and tolerated the wet, but was not really up for it. She seemed quite shocked and puzzled by the experience.

On Friday, Sam and I (in an effort to encourage Arthur) went on the two big water slides in the deep part of the fun pool. One was rather nice, but the other was a high, closed tube that turned you over like a bobsleigh and gave my sinuses a jet-wash when I plunged into the water. Arthur wasn’t inspired by our heroics.

Our trip home was good. We left the hotel at 9.30am, Tenerife South airport was busy, but our flight was on time and we landed at Gatwick around 4.45pm. We got through passport, baggage and customs pretty quickly and were lucky to find a car-park bus waiting at the stop.

Head-to-head with grandma.

The roads were really quiet and we were at Friar Tuck’s in Whittlesey at 7.50pm for two Senior Meal Deals.

Jason has done a nice job on the stairs and Holly was delighted to see me on Sunday morning. I think a spell in kennels does her good, it makes her appreciate what a cushy life she has!

After-dinner cocktails (and rum)

Jason has done a nice job on the stairs.