Time travelling
An atrocious hangover this morning. Woke up at 7 feeling very poor indeed. Had a slow breakfast, concentrating on not choking on my food. Mum's cure was to walk for three hours or so. We headed up to the airport, and then back through all kinds of Ruette Tranquilles, waterlanes, paths and roads back. Many were new to me, despite having roamed this corner of the island all my life.
Passed our old house on the way back to the hotel. Time has blunted the painfulness of seeing it out of the family. But everything that has been done to the house has made it uglier, such as putting tarmac over the front gardens, and erecting a small wall made of breeze blocks, which is a shame. It looks diminished and run down, and no longer like the 16th Century cottage that has loomed so large in my life.
In the evening around the corner to have a late Sunday lunch with Betty and her mum Mavis, who will be 90 next year, and is still bright as a button although these days “me and stairs we don't get on eh”. She mentioned her late husband would have been 101 if he was alive today. I remember him fairly well, and playing a hand or two of euchre with him in the old Patois bar of the Captains with my grandfather.
I enjoyed hearing Mavis talk. She is a keen knitter but does not do it on Sundays, having been told off for doing so by her mother some 80 years ago. On Mavis's wall is a photo of her parents on their wedding day, 102 years ago. Time travelling. Mavis told us how she did not drink, since getting drunk once with her husband and some Germans during the war.
We sat around a real fire, and Betty's new hearing dog Penny, who is a black spanielly mongrel sits so close to the flames that she almost cooks herself, occasionally bolting out to the corridor to pant and cool off before returning to warm up again. Like some kind of canine sauna.
Back to the hotel to call Lorraine, and have an early night.
Below a house above Petit Bôt.
An atrocious hangover this morning. Woke up at 7 feeling very poor indeed. Had a slow breakfast, concentrating on not choking on my food. Mum's cure was to walk for three hours or so. We headed up to the airport, and then back through all kinds of Ruette Tranquilles, waterlanes, paths and roads back. Many were new to me, despite having roamed this corner of the island all my life.
Passed our old house on the way back to the hotel. Time has blunted the painfulness of seeing it out of the family. But everything that has been done to the house has made it uglier, such as putting tarmac over the front gardens, and erecting a small wall made of breeze blocks, which is a shame. It looks diminished and run down, and no longer like the 16th Century cottage that has loomed so large in my life.
In the evening around the corner to have a late Sunday lunch with Betty and her mum Mavis, who will be 90 next year, and is still bright as a button although these days “me and stairs we don't get on eh”. She mentioned her late husband would have been 101 if he was alive today. I remember him fairly well, and playing a hand or two of euchre with him in the old Patois bar of the Captains with my grandfather.
I enjoyed hearing Mavis talk. She is a keen knitter but does not do it on Sundays, having been told off for doing so by her mother some 80 years ago. On Mavis's wall is a photo of her parents on their wedding day, 102 years ago. Time travelling. Mavis told us how she did not drink, since getting drunk once with her husband and some Germans during the war.
We sat around a real fire, and Betty's new hearing dog Penny, who is a black spanielly mongrel sits so close to the flames that she almost cooks herself, occasionally bolting out to the corridor to pant and cool off before returning to warm up again. Like some kind of canine sauna.
Back to the hotel to call Lorraine, and have an early night.
Below a house above Petit Bôt.
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