June - December 2019 So Much Has Changed, So Much Stays the Same

I am writing this in April 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, trying to catch up on lost blogtime! I restrict myself to an hour a day as I try to spend at least two hours working in the garden. Today has been the first significant rain for a month and I also need to get my small room ready for zoom art on Thursday.

Back to June 2019, but first a slight catch-up. While in Co.Mayo, I emailed June at Dover DC to get any gossip. She replied that she was leaving (she had been there longer than me!) to work in Sandwich. So it was that one day during the Summer I met her in the Sandwich COOP by chance and that led, eventually, to meeting up with others from DDC.

June and July were a bit of a blur. It was now two years since Barbara had died and I sensed the weight of grieving had finally lifted. I visited her grave on the anniversary of her death and nothing had changed. I also visited Doris, who was now completely flat-bound due to leg ulcers. As the management were taking down the mobility scooter shed I took her scooter away with me to store at the cottage. I had an appointment about my nose at the local hospital where a basal cell carcinoma was diagnosed and the consultant said I would need an operation to remove it and that might require cheek flap surgery. The bad news was that his list was full and I wouldn't hear anything for 6 months to a year. I became quite depressed and threw myself into gardening and painting.  There was also a hangover from Ireland to resolve. Unrealised by me, Pauline had inadvertently made Pamela uncomfortable as Pauline was still learning about TG sensitivities and had clearly 'put her foot in it'. The friendship between Pamela and Nikki is matched, if not exceeded by the friendship I, as Nick, have for Peter - something exceedingly rare for me. Understanding the issue, we agreed to visit again in December ... which was rapidly changed for a Christmas visit.

The weather was generally good and I started another cull of dresses. It was difficult to believe just how many apricots I was going to harvest and, despite being abandoned for several years, both the gooseberries and blackcurrants were prolific. Then there were the tomatoes ... masses of them. By August my painting had changed, I seemed to know what I was doing! I was pleased with my Artichoke.
I bought an ice cream maker and started with apricot ice cream before moving on to rosemary (delicious) and blackberry (the blackberries came early this year). In between we were organising 'Pauline's Trip' back to Offenbach.

We decided not to try anything else but a gentle drive, stopping at Aachen and Bad Nauheim. On 2nd September we headed off.

We really like Bad Nauheim. We were last there when Pauline was on a 'kur'. It was there (I think) that we were able to buy some Jugendstil prints that we still have. The weather was perfect, both there and at Offenbach where we stayed at the Hansa, the hotel we stayed in when Pauline had her interview at KWU in 1977. While at Offenbach we had dinner with one of Pauline's old colleagues before heading off to Mainz via Darmstadt where we wanted to see more Jugendstil architecture (and the Russian Orthodox Chapel): 

Staying at Mainz we had a Greek meal and the next day met other friends for a visit to the local winefest on a rather damp day. We then headed off to Dinant on the Meuse for a night before a final stop at the Dunkerque Auchan and home.

I was due to start two adult ed courses that week - Drawing, and Watercolour Improvers but the Drawing was cancelled. The Watercolour course was run by the tutor who had taken my first course but was in Sandwich, not Dover, and there were only four of us. So September quickly passed as did October. I did take quite a few photos but a considerable amount of time was taken up trying to 'cure' my laptop that had suffered corruption during a windows update. In the end it was so frustrating that I bought a new laptop before we headed off to the west country in November.

November was a little similar to our March trip. We stopped for the weekend and spent time with old friends in Dorset before setting off to see the N Devon coast, stopping at Barnstaple, and seeing some more 'three hares' before arriving at Truro. After a few days there we headed over to Dartmoor via Bodmin, particularly the area near the Minions. The weather was atrocious and we had already picked up colds in Dorset. Nevertheless, Parke was very good. We had a good dressed day out, despite the very cold weather. Combestsone Tor and theWest Dart at Hexworthy were revisited.

We then headed towards Bellever, stopping en route for a picture in the open. At Bellever we revisited the stopping place where I had been to on my first trip. The car played up on the way home ... ESP messages, which we had first experienced in January coming back from Ireland. The garage had replaced a couple of sensors in the turbo which seemed to solve that problem, but the warning light came on immediately I picked up the car! The garage are very good and immediately ran a diagnostic test (normally £50) for free and identified a new problem that the faulty sensors had been hiding - a new injection system was needed. All told, solving the problems cost about £850. (And I thought I'd been managing my pension so well, but the car is 'old' in modern terms!)

No long after we got back we were packing up for another visit to Brighton. This time it was to see Van Morrison. I was a little uncertain about it as I had seen him in the late '70's when he walked off before his set ended but he and the band he had assembled were superb, playing a mix of old and new with Gloria as the finale (after he had left). We agreed it was a better evening out than when we saw Joan Baez. By now we were into early December with two weeks to go before heading off to Ireland, again!