April 2015, first half

As I'm catching up a bit, April is clearer in my memory. I'm going to divide it into two, since I seem to have quite a few photos and for some reason, I no longer seem able to post very many at one time.

The month began with a bang, as we drove back home just before the Easter holiday began, and my son and family drove down on Good Friday. My sister arrived shortly afterwards, so we had a full house. I had hoped to see my other son and family too, but they took turns to be ill over the holiday, so we never managed it.

My son had to drive home to Manchester on Easter Monday, and my sister went back to work the next day, but my daughter-in-law and children stayed for 10 or 11 days. My grandson loves our house, and he can run about all the place in the 5 acre shared garden (for those who don't recognise Imperial measurements, it's more than 2 hectares). I did enjoy being home again, and the garden started to be lovely - we were very lucky with the weather, of course. This is one of the magnolias at the front of the house.



Unfortunately, I got a virus of some sort, and was thoroughly unwell for a couple of days.

Once I had recovered, we drove back to Manchester, having spent two really enjoyable weeks at home. Then we had to get ready for my grandson's fourth birthday, which was quite lively!

This is the birthday table, just before the guests arrived.




As you can see, it wasn't a big party - only 5 or 6 little friends, but that was quite enough. Quite a few of his classmates have invited all the rest of the class to birthday parties, but my grandson hasn't enjoyed any of them; it gets too noisy and rowdy for him, and on a couple of occasions he's come home in tears. He's much happier with just a few friends.

He demanded a cake with Thomas the Tank engine on it. Fortunately, the very wonderful Asda will print any photo you have onto white cake icing, so he chose what he wanted and my son designed the resulting A4 sized artwork, which was duly printed onto an A4 sized cake. I failed to photograph it without all the children in it, so I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine it, but he was delighted with it! It had his three favourite engines on it, as well as his name, and was much admired.

We were also fortunate with the weather for his birthday, so the adults sat in the garden in the sun, while the children were able to run about outside as well as inside, and play on the birthday trampoline. He had asked for a small trampoline for his birthday, 'just like the one belonging to the boy next door'. Unfortunately, it hadn't arrived by the night before the birthday, so we faced a trampoline-less birthday. Then my son had the happy thought of borrowing the child next door's one once my grandson was in bed.

He had no idea that the trampoline he unwrapped next morning wasn't really his, and bounced on it happily. When the real one arrived, we quietly substituted it for the borrowed one, and he hasn't noticed. They are both extremely similar, the one we bought him was the same colour, only very slightly larger and it has a different company name stencilled onto it, but he didn't notice that.

I was sorry to miss most of the spring in my own garden, but we have had some lovely spring flowers up here as well.



These gorgeous trees are at the entry to the park we walk through to school every day. We're very fortunate that the park also has a small playground, so, unless it's raining, my grandson plays on the climbing frame and slides every day after school, which gets rid of a lot of his surplus energy.

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March 2015

Dear me, I am so far behind with writing this that I can hardly remember March; it is already June, and I have nothing apart from entries in my calendar and photos of my family to help me remember March, so this entry will be quite short! I think we must all have been quite tired - this is a photo of Paul 'babysitting', and I have a similar, even more unflattering one, of me, and another of my son in the same position!



I returned from London at the beginning of March, and I know that my grandson and I continued to enjoy the spring flowers as we walked to school through the park, as I took quite a few photographs.



He goes to school either on his bike or his scooter, so I have to trot to keep up with him, but he does stop to admire the flowers from time to time. The middle of the month was quite busy as my sister came up for a week. My other son and his family also came up for a long weekend, which gave me time to appreciate my younger grandson, who has a very sweet nature and the most beautiful smile. So that made March a busy month for visitors.

The unfortunate event which happened in March was my being struck down by a kidney stone and spending the night in A&E, full of morphine. I haven't heard anything yet about why it happened, but it's the second time - the last time I didn't go to A&E because it passed off after several hours, but this time it really was unbearable and went on for so long. The stone had passed by the time I went home in the morning. Unfortunately, the hospital was too busy to send me for any sort of scan to look at the stone, and by the time I had a CT scan, two or three weeks later, there was no sign of the stone. March is a month I am glad to forget!

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February 2015

In February, baby chaos continued. The baby continued to refuse to sleep in a cot or a Moses basket, and would sleep reliably only if her mother was holding her. In an effort to help, I bought them a ridiculously expensive thing called a Cocoonababy, which is supposed to replicate the womb and helps the baby to sleep alone; unfortunately, it didn't work either! Everybody we knew who had one told us how it had saved their sanity when their baby refused to sleep alone, but our baby wasn't interested!

Then we had an alarm because my daughter-in-law suddenly started to run a very high temperature; she had septicaemia after my grandson was born and could have died, so this time she needed to go off to hospital very quickly to make sure it wasn't the same again. My son took me back to my flat for my night things in case they kept her in, but after tests, they decided it was just a virus and sent her back home. So I was able to return to my flat and my own bed.

The emails I received from Paul every day revealed mixed enjoyment from the skiing. Breckenridge had been great in January as usual, but the snow in Canada where he went later was very poor this year, and he wished he had stayed in Colorado or Utah. He was on a Telegraph ski holiday with a British ex-Olympic skier; he took the same holiday last year to different resorts in the American Rockies and it was a great success, but Canada this year certainly wasn't. There wasn't enough snow, in fact it rained every day he was in Whistler so it was alternately porridge or sheet ice. I was very glad not to be there! Other Canadian resorts he also visited were not a lot better, and Paul looked forward to being back in Colorado. He says he won't ski in Canada again - though I think it could be a shame to make such a judgement on one bad year.

At least spring had started in Manchester. When my grandson and I walked to and fro across the local park to take him to school, we admired the snowdrops which were flourishing in January and early February.


Later in February, we admired the crocus.



This gave us the opportunity to practise lots of colour words - purple is not a word a small child often needs.

Paul left the ski resorts in Canada and moved back to Colorado, staying at Copper Mountain, where the snow was superb. He was introducing the resort to a friend he usually skis with in Utah when he failed to notice a tree root, trapped his ski, and twisted his knee. The resulting damage to his knee led to his being advised not to ski any more this season, and he had to come home a month early! I caught a train down to London to meet him and, once his ski clothes were all washed and packed away until next year, we drove back up to Manchester, where school half term was starting.

We planned to take our grandson out a lot during his week's holiday to relieve our daughter-in-law, but it was not to be; our poor little grandson got measles, and spent the whole week in quarantine and confined to the house.


He was quite spotty, as you can see from the artwork taken to school as part of his 'what I did in my holiday' project. Don't ask me why his hair is as long as his arms and longer that his legs, and why he has no nose; I think he focused on all the spots!

Once he was back to school again, we had visits from a friend of my daughter-in-law and my sister, and then as the month ended, it was time for another visit back home. I am responsible for a rental flat belonging to the development where I am still a director, so it was time for inspection of it and renovation planning so it could be let again.

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January 2015

January was not a great improvement as far as chaos was concerned, and I was too busy to take photos so this bit is without illustration, I'm afraid.

On December 31st I moved into the flat I rented in Manchester; it is tiny but it is furnished, has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a washing machine and a dishwasher (those were my main criteria for choosing a flat, apart from needing to be a short walk from my son's house and not on the ground floor because I would be alone until March). The bedrooms aren't a bad size, it's the fact that the kitchen is part of the small living room, so the dining table is minute and squashed into a tiny area and when I use the recliner part of my sofa, my feet touch the television.

A couple of days were spent moving in and buying the things of which I don't have duplicates. I didn't want to empty my house in Oxted, as I wanted to be able to return there from time to time without worrying about whether I had taken something essential up to Manchester. Like most people who have been married for any length of time, I have plenty of surplus stuff, like cutlery and plates and mugs and saucepans, and towels and bed linen. But who has two doormats? I was able to borrow a TV and stand and a vacuum cleaner from my son, so no major expenditure was incurred. Also Manchester has some excellent 'pound shops', so it wasn't hard to buy anything I lacked.

Once I had moved in, after three or four days we drove back to Oxted so Paul could get ready to go skiing; he was planning to be skiing in various places from early January to late March, so I would on my own in Manchester for almost 3 months. His itinerary included Breckenridge, then Whistler and some other ski resorts in Canada, then Copper Mountain, and finally Utah. I'd normally go too for at least part of the time, but decided supporting my son and his wife was more important. I'm a pretty crap skier anyway, and not likely to improve much at my age.

After Paul left for Breckenridge, I caught the train back to Manchester and started an early morning regime of getting up early, walking to my son's house and taking my grandson to school. He's at nursery now, one of the youngest in the class as he won't be four until the end of April, but he loves going to school and likes all his teachers, who are mostly very young and pretty. I collected him at 3.15, and we usually went to the playground in the nearby park for a while before heading home.

The new baby was due on January 26th, and we all hoped she would make her appearance early, especially since I was obliged to go to London on the 27th to attend the AGM of the organisation of which I am still a Director. In the ordinary way of things I would have given it a miss, but on this occasion, due to several resignations during the year, I was actually the only elected Director - the other 3 current ones had been co-opted during the year and had to be confirmed by election at the AGM. Also some of the attendees seemed to be alleging inefficiency of Directors and inattention of the auditors, so it was bidding fair to be a difficult meeting. In fact it was all highly unpleasant, and I am glad it is over now.

Sadly, the baby did not make her appearance early and my daughter-in-law was taken into hospital on her due date to be induced. My new granddaughter was born about 3am on the morning of Jan 27th, though I wasn't able to see her until the following day. Visiting hours are only from 2pm until 4.30, and by 1pm on the 27th I was on a train down to London for my AGM.

After a meeting which not not particularly easy, I spent the night in Oxted and travelled back up to Manchester next morning, arriving at lunch time and going straight from the station to the hospital to see my new granddaughter. She was able to go home the following day, and that was the start of real chaos.

She refused to sleep in either a cot or a Moses basket; she slept only if somebody, preferably her mother, was holding her. She was also wanting to feed very frequently, sometimes every 20 minutes. By the beginning of February, my daughter-in-law had done a week with virtually no sleep and was a complete wreck with a grey face.

Of course I had experienced no such thing because I was in hospital for a week and, though you had to feed the baby every 4 hours, the nurses took him away in between times so you got some rest. And he was sleeping in a cot by himself in the nursery, so by the time you got him home, he was used to sleeping alone and being fed every 4 hours. I never really did demand feeding, even though I breast fed them both until they were completely weaned - 8 months in the case of my older son and 9 months for the younger one - and I don't think I would have coped well with the constant feeding.

I don't remember the end of January too well. I did wish my husband had been there to help!

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December 2014

Dear me, I've never left it this long without writing anything here, people will be thinking I have succumbed to one of the many illnesses of which I constantly seem to complain, but it isn't that, it's just that life has just been too demanding for too long.

December was a very busy month. In between more visits to Doctors and hospitals, we fitted in visits to babysit my younger grandson when his mother was unwell, visits to take my sister shopping as she can't walk easily at the moment due to a hip problem, visits to the development where I am a Director to to do some admin work up there, and my own Christmas shopping. As you can see, there was a LOT of Christmas shopping!



Everybody came to me for Christmas, the first contingent (my sister) arriving on Friday 19th, followed by my older grandson and his mother on the 20th. My son came a few days later. I noticed that most other people's Christmas trees were far more elegant than mine; my excuse is that my grandson was almost solely responsible for the decoration, which I hope will explain some of the gaps!

My grandson, like his father, really does enjoy making things - various of us helped him put together a gingerbread house.



I'm afraid it didn't last very long!

In the garden outside, somebody even decorated a little Christmas tree which is growing near the garages. The heather was clearly impressed, so it flowered and that part of the garden looked quite colourful.


We were planning to be 9 on the night of Christmas Eve, as my older son and his wife and son were due to arrive then, but illness prevented that, which was a real shame.

All our guests left on Sunday 28th, and on the 30th, after a mountain of laundry, we drove up to Manchester where I have rented a flat for 6 months. It's a two bedroomed flat (to allow for visitors) in the same road as the church where we stayed last time but a couple of blocks south. It's about a 15 minute walk from my son's house. I wasn't really looking forward to being in Manchester, previous experience being that it's cold and dark and it rains a lot!

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October - November

Chaos begins

Once we were back from holiday, I had 5 days to do my post-holiday washing and ironing, and cram in a haircut, a visit to a gasrto-intestinal consultant, and an have an Endoscopy, before my family came to stay.

When I went up to London, I took the opportunity of of visiting the display of poppies at the Tower of London. They were certainly spectacular, just a sea of red. And of course, they weren't all there yet. It's quite mind-boggling to think of that many people being killed.


I've never seen so many people around the Tower, so taking photos was a longish process, involving queueing to get near enough to see anything at all. Mind you, I believe it got worse in November, and people were being asked not to come.

The day after my endoscopy, my sister, my daughter-in-law and my grandson arrived to stay. My sister was only able to stay three days, and left the morning my daughter-in-law's mother arrived from France. (There had to be some pretty swift sheet-changing.) Apart from the day when she arrived and the rain poured down, the weather was pretty good and she was impressed with the beautiful autumn colours in southern England.



This was taken in our garden, just as the leaves were starting to fall in the last few days of October.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much time for sightseeing with them all as my grandson became ill with a respiratory tract infection, and eventually we had to take him to my doctor to get an antibiotic. We had to change their train ticket back to Manchester as the poor little soul was too ill to travel. My daughter-in-law's mother left after five days to go back to France, and fortunately for us, she didn't develop the illness she caught from our grandson until she got home, when the poor woman was quite ill.

Three or four days after she left, my grandson was well enough to go home, and the following day I was back at the hospital for a long and comprehensive breathing test. The day after that, I got the respiratory illness my grandson had kindly passed on to me, and was ill for some time. Life went on around me as I languished in bed, and eventually I too had to visit the doctor for antibiotics.

On the day I got out of bed again, I thought I should get some air, though the weather was rather damp. So we had a rather muddy walk in Emmets Garden, where there was a wonderful display of autumn colours.



The day after that, we were off to Manchester again. My son and daughter-in-law are due to have a second child, and I am going to spend some time in Manchester to support them. So I spent nearly a week up there, trying to find myself a place to stay. I want to be close to them, but it don't want to stay in their house, which never works well for very long. Anyway, I selfishly don't want too many disturbed nights - I'm not too good if I don't get my sleep.

At the end of November, we came back home again because I had yet another hospital appointment on December 1st. I'm convinced myself that it's acid stomach juices from my constant reflux getting into my lungs which are damaging them and causing my breathing problems, but it seems to take several specialists and umpteen different tests to prove or disprove this.

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End of the holiday

Saturday October 18th
Because the last day of our holiday was a day of 6 trains, I resisted writing about it, leading somebody to ask me if I had, in fact, ever come back. So, yes, I did come back from holiday but it has taken me a couple of months to steel myself to write about it - I suppose it depends on how much you enjoy train travel, but I did not find 16 hours spent in trains was all that enjoyable!

We left Kanderstag at about 8am - not the best time for photos - but I did take a last few snaps as we walked the short distance to the station to remind me of the place.

The town is in an almost circular bowl and mountains which surround it are high, as you can see.




I imagine the place is often dark like this because it is completely surrounded by high mountains and the sun only reaches into the valley floor later in the day.

You can see the sun effect in my photo of the station.



The sun is striking the mountain tops, but it'll be a while until it shines into the valley. Although it's a pretty village, I think I might find it quite depressing to stay for any length of time, with louring peaks on all sides and only a few hours of sunlight around midday, when the sun is directly overhead.

Train number one took us to Brig, where we caught train number two to Geneva. From Geneva, train number three took us to Paris.

It was evening by the time we reached Paris, where a coach took us through unbelievably awful traffic (Paris needs a congestion charge!) from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord. After a short time in the very shabby Eurostar terminal, we caught train number four to London. In St Pancras we said goodbye to the rest of our group and went to the other end of the station to catch train number five, a Thameslink train to East Croydon. Train number six took us to Oxted, from where we caught a taxi home, arriving around midnight; I was too exhausted to unpack anything, and we just fell into bed.

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