Extreme miming and Christmas decorations

When we were in Funchal, Tania and I went off to look at the cathedral, leaving Robert on a designated street corner to wait for Mas. We did not look at the cathedral as a service was in progress, so we went back to Robert, who had been watching a distinguished looking elderly gentleman with fascination. This man was clearly in a world of his own, and unaware of his surroundings, but was miming his emotions and response to what his mind was seeing in such an exaggerated way, that it would drop the jaw of any Shakespearean actor by his inventiveness.

For the rest of our holiday, Robert (taking a leaf out of the elderly gentleman's book) began to display silent and exaggerated responses to little things that he observed, such as a small hat that Tania was wearing, or a minute mark on a wall. Tania was not impressed by this behaviour, except to look at him from time to time and and shake her head in resignation and pity.

We planned to go to The English Church where a mandolin concert was being held, but we found that we had arrived much too early, so found a courtyard restaurant and had coffee there. Beside our table were various photographs of family groups in the Victorian era, and we were very impressed with how severe the adults looked.

Some of the Christmas lights.

Insects, miradouro and levadas

The next day we had breakfast in the apartment, and thought we would have a relaxed day, so we looked at our emails, did laundry and generally pottered about. I took more pictures of lizards and insects for fun, and some flowers.














After dark we could hear crickets all the time.































One of the usual stray, friendly, dogs.






At lunchtime we went to the Miradouro Cruz da Caldeira restaurant and had a light lunch. Miradouro means a beautiful view, and it certainly had one. The parking area is beside the road, actually on the roof, and the restaurant is on a lower floor, built out on the side of the mountain.

Tania and Robert walked back along a levada. The levadas are an irrigation system that carry water from the north of the island, through woods, forests and beside the terraced market gardens. They are rather like small canals with narrow footpaths beside them, for maintainance purposes, and were constructed 500 years ago. They also provide wonderful walks away from traffic.

Later we had dinner at the clubhouse restaurant where live music was provided, and we had fun chatting to some of the other guests during the evening.

Curral das Freiras, pirates and mountains.

We set off to visit Curral das Freiras (Nun’s Valley), set in the bottom of basin shaped valley. In 1566 the nuns living in a convent fled to this hidden valley, because pirates were attacking Funchal, and they remained there. The valley was difficult to reach until fairly recently when roads were constructed. It is a very fertile place and is known for producing sweet chestnuts and cherries.

On the way we stopped at a restaurant on the side of the mountain and had coffee. We got talking to the owner who was Brazilian and spoke Spanish. He has recently written an amusing book about the psychology of male and female relationships, and he also showed us the plans for his property which he is intending to turn into a small hotel. There were two stray and friendly dogs lurking around his courtyard, one had such thick fur around his neck that he looked like a lion. We left intending to return for an evening meal.

We drove through the valley of Curral das Freiras, and then up hill where we stopped for a while and had a small picnic. We noticed small lizards sunning themselves on the rocks, but they moved so fast it was difficult to see them properly.

If you click on this to enlarge the picture it is possible to see the houses and terraced garden farms on the mountain side.















This is the roof terrace on someone's house.

We then went up to Sierra do Serrado which is 3,300 feet above the valley. The vermilion flowers are aloes.

We then walked down to where we had left the car, and drove through impressive scenery back to the apartment.
We had dinner at the restaurant as it was a folklore evening. After we had eaten lots of young people entered in traditional costume, and began playing folk music and dancing, which was very colourful. Before we understood what was happening we found ourselves propelled to the dance floor, and we joined in (except for Mas who was quick witted enough to avoid dancing).

High cliffs and Funchal sight seeing.

After breakfast the next morning we went to Cabo Girão which is a cliff, 580 metres down to the sea, and the highest cliff in Europe, before driving down to Funchal. Madeira is an island that was formed by volcanic action, and the sand and pebbles are black, except where white sand has been imported. Terraces have been made up the sides of the mountains, in every available place, and food is grown on them, even on this perpendicular cliff.

Afterwards we drove down to Funchal to look around the town. The town is paved with black and white volcanic rock in mosaic designs. Very ornate, often very large, decorations had been put up everywhere, and there was an air of festivity everwhere, and Father Christmas was busy selling balloons.

There is an exotic garden in the centre of town , and there were lots of flowers in bloom.

We saw a small craft market and walked through it. There was leather work and embroidered things, and a lady making bread, but most impressive was a nativity scene which represented.

As we were leaving town we saw a sweet but pathetic dog curl himself up on the pavement ready to sleep, and we felt sad leaving him there. Later we learned that there are about 3,500 stray dogs and cats on the island, but they all seem to look fairly healthy as people feed them and put dishes of water out for them.

Madeira holiday

Tania and Robert picked us up early, and we drove off to Stanstead airport. We landed on an airstrip built out over the sea at Funchal, Madeira, just as it was dusk . Christmas music was being played, and the airport was decorated and lit up with the lights reflected on the polished floors.

The airport forecourt.

Robert drove us from Funchal across the town and up winding mountain roads to our apartment at Cabo Girão where we were all staying. The place was lovely, and there was a club house close at hand where we were greeted with a glass of Madeira wine. There were all kinds of amenities provided, including a restaurant where we had dinner later.






View from the restaurant.

Sunburn and The Cruel Sea

Today I was wondering whether to pack sun block cream for our short holiday, when it reminded me of another holiday with my mother.

As usual we had gone to Folkestone and were staying with my grandparents. We went down to the beach, me to swim, and my mother to read. As she caught the sun readily she always made a paper beak for herself and somehow stuck it on her nose to prevent sunburn.

I do not know how long I was swimming, but my mother used to call me from time to time to see if I had gone blue, and when I had, it was time to come out and get dressed and for me to have a hot Horlicks drink to get warm again. We used to go to a fisherman's cafe, and at the time they kept playing Ghost Riders in the Sky, on the juke box, sung by Frankie Laine; I loved it.

My mother thought it would be a good idea to go to the cinema and see The Cruel Sea, so we did. For once we sat in the seats to which we had been ushered. Usually we had to move several times before my mother thought the view was good enough which always involved a lot of grumbling from other people, and made me want to be invisible.

The film was absorbing and dramatic. When it finished, my mother remained sitting as the others left. She was in an isle seat, so they had to clamber over her. When they had gone she said in a horse voice to help her stand up. I tried, but she could not straighten her legs because sunburn had tightened her skin into a sitting position.

We staggered and lurched out of the cinema, with her walking in crab fashion, now reminiscent of Toulouse Lautrec, holding on to me desperately. It took a long time, but we reached my grandparent's house, and when they opened the door they were shocked, and then angry that she would be so foolish.

The next day she had to stay in bed covered in calamine lotion, and when she eventually got up she had to walk with my grandfather's walking sticks. For all following holidays like that, not only did she wear a white beak on the beach, but she wrapped herself up like The Mummy
with towels while she read.

Years later I found out that Nicholas Montserrat, who wrote The Cruel Sea, lived in Guernsey. His house was beside the view I painted called The Shortcut. (On my website)

Diane, Monika and Milan

Diane phoned today after returning from holiday yesterday. She had been to the Canary Islands stocking up on a little sunshine before Christmas, and I look forward to hearing all about it as soon as possible.


Today our friend Monika visited as planned. She is expecting a baby on New Years Eve, so wanted to visit while she could still fit behind the steering wheel, and delivered Christmas presents. Her son Milan was very happy playing with a basket of slippers and socks, folding them carefully and pulling all the socks on. He is very capable and can dress himself, and is talking all the time, and always laughing. It is amazing how developed his sense of humour is at such a young age.

Next time we see Monika will be after the birth of her baby, but we look forward to seeing them all soon in the new year.

How to murder your husband.

Breakfast at our house is usually a strange affair. While we have been getting up, bathing and dressing Mas usually does not see me, if he does, he stares at me blankly and without recognition; he cannot respond to a greeting of any kind. On automatic pilot he goes downstairs and makes the coffee.

When we are seated at the table, and after a few sips of coffee, all the vital signs return and Mas wakes up and, immediately, is ready to share his opinion about anything and everything with me. This often takes quite a time.

This morning while Mas was eating muesli I mentioned that yesterday I had received an e-mail written so quickly, and in such an abbreviated way that it was hard to understand, I told him the first line, and with a mouth full he burst out laughing. When he had recovered somewhat I told him the next part of the e-mail, which also caught him chewing muesli, but this time he laughed until he almost choked, and when he got over it he repeated what I had said, and began to laugh again until he was breathless and had tears in his eyes. In order to protect the innocent I cannot print the e-mail.

Mas said, after this, that it is too dangerous to eat at breakfast, and he will wait till later in the day, and eat alone. It occurred to me that this would make the perfect murder, and be an unusual method of killing for a detective story, and we started laughing again……..!

Canadian snow scene

Joan sent me this wintry picture yesterday from Ontario.

Lunch with 'Alternatives'

I am feeling a bit rushed at the moment, trying to do illustrations of eight year old children which is difficult, as I do not remember their proportions because it is so long since my children were that age; I had to borrow a friend's child for this purpose.


Yesterday I was invited to lunch by some of my 'Alternative' friends. Previously I went to classes to learn about various alternative therapies, but sadly my time seems to have shrunk this year, and I could not go this term. It was good catching up on what I have been missing, and meeting some of the new people who have joined the class.

St.Albans Market and lunch

We drove off to St.Albans to visit the street market and buy some fruit and vegetables, and also to meet Tania and Robert for lunch. The weather was a bit cold, and some people were wearing their overcoats.

We got our shopping, and went off to meet our friends at the Thai restaurant that we often go to. As usual we had a very tasty meal, the generous owner bringing all kinds of things for us to try as well as the food we had ordered, she then decided she wanted a photograph of us, but when I returned the complement, she ran away saying she was too old to be photographed.










Our shy friend.









After chatting a bit longer we went our separate ways, planning to regroup, before we set off on our holiday, to finalise our plans.

Thanksgiving Meal

We managed to get the house fairly shipshape before people arrived, and had the meal under control. Tania, Robert, Diane, Poppy and Ben arrived, and Pete who had survived a difficult journey due to railway maintenance delays arrived a bit later. We all had a nice time chatting, and the conversations were interesting. The meal went well, and as I had bungled the pies I made some meringue nests with fruit and cream to offer as an alternative. It was a really nice occasion, despite the cooking, and we are lucky to have such good friends.

The next morning, on our second coffee Mas said he felt really relaxed, and I said I thought another word for it was tired, and we both had a good laugh.

Pumpkin Pie Peril.

My main claim to fame as a cook happened many years ago, when during a dinner party, one of the ladies began to cry, and sobbed that however hard she tried she would never be able to make such good pastry.* It has been all downhill since then.
Luckily, since marrying Mas I only cook if necessary, as he loves to do it.

As usual we planned to have friends over for a Thanksgiving meal, Mas would make the starter and main course, and I would bake pumpkin pies. The day before Thanksgiving we roasted the pumpkin.

I think last year I cheated on the pastry, but decided to do it properly this time, and make the sweet spicy pastry that is so fragile it has to be rolled between floured sheets of greaseproof paper, and then very carefully placed into an inverted flan dish.

Things got rather tense in the kitchen when I discovered that I had made the pastry too fragile, and that the flan dishes were the wrong size. At this point Mas made himself scarce and beat a hasty retreat.

Eventually the two pies were placed into the oven and left to cook. Looking at them a little later, I found that the top flan dish had cracked and was leaking into the bottom pie which had puffed up and stuck to the oven rack above it, and the top got torn off as I removed it from the oven. I resolved never to make another pumpkin pie at this point.

* possibly one glass too many of wine.

Nighthawking and bombs.

It seems that there is a problem of nighthawking; this is when metal detectorists illegally remove and keep antiquities that they have found on archaeological sites, during the night, and sell them on to collectors. There are others who legitimately use metal detectors and have added to the knowledge of the past.

I have always wanted to have a go at metal detecting, but like a lot of other things, (white water rafting and riding a horse to name but two) I have never got round to it. Perhaps this is just as well as I would probably unearth an unexploded WW2 bomb of some kind.

This thought may be due to an incident when I was a small child. My mother and I were staying with my grandparents in Folkestone one Christmas. After breakfast my mother and I walked down to the sandy beach, which looked very inviting, and was covered with snow that had fallen the night before.

My mother carefully lifted the barbed wire that was blocking the way to the beach (it was war time) and we squeezed under it and ran across the beach, stamping and making footprint patterns in the unmarked snow, and laughing. We were stopped in our tracks literally when a man with a megaphone began shouting at us to get off the beach, or words to that effect, as the beach was mined.

My mother carefully explained to me to walk in the footsteps we had already made in the snow, and to leave the beach. At the time I did not know what mines were, but the man almost incoherent with rage impressed me a lot. I do not think this adventure was mentioned to my grandparents when we got home.

Béla Bartók puzzle

I love Bartók’s ‘Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta’.
I listened to a lecture about it, which said the music is constructed like a cut gem, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and paint this very precisely. The instructions are as follows:

In the first movement he makes a circle of arches, beginning each arch with a 5th…the second arch is a 5th higher and so on, then down the other side to make a complete circle. Bartók then goes back around the arches, climbing down the ladders? When they meet he crosses over using 4ths and 3rds which cross the original sound arches.

The second movement uses this construction which is varied throughout. Then passages of major and minor distorted scales are used, before moving onto the 8 note scale (as used by some of the Russians). All these are interwoven.

The third movement is atavistic in that the sounds seem recognisable, but they are not. He employs the folk method of playing a violin to make an open note drone. The celesta, piano and harp combine to make an unearthly trembling using a texture of fragments, with the intervals of the opening, using 4ths and then tri tone returns.

The fourth movement uses rhythm not linked to harmony; simple rhythms that sound complicated and complicated rhythms that sound simple. The string section is divided into two, one playing from the left, the other from the right. Each line is a mosaic of 2 and 3 beats, which fabricates the sound of the cymbeline with the celesta, violin and piano making a twanging rhythmic sound!

If there is anyone out there who can work this out, please let me know as it will stop me obsessively drawing spider web constructions on the back of envelopes……..HELP !

Walking in Hertfordshire and an evening with friends.

My special walking friend Jana came for a brief holiday, she came over in the morning and we walked across fields from Elstree to Letchmore Heath by an indirect route. The day was sunny and bright and we had a lot to talk about as we walked. We stopped at the Three Horseshoes and had a coffees before setting off by a different route to return to Elstree again as it was getting dark and cold; we had walked for hours which was great.

The village of Letchmore Heath, and the Three Horseshoes were used when making the film The Village or the Damned ( John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos) and also for some of The Avengers series.

In the evening our friends Monika and Oktay came over with Milan, and we all had dinner which Mas had specially cooked for us, and the conversation ranged through all kinds of subjects. They all left around midnight, and we tottered off to bed having had a really nice day.

Below views of the Three Horseshoes, and the closest shot of Jana that I am allowed to show.

Evening sky

This is the view from my attic studio

Linda Blackstone Gallery

As arranged, I visited the gallery, and showed some of my art work to Linda. She said that she would only be going to show art at the Art Fairs from now on, and not using her gallery anymore. She took four of my paintings, and advised me to independantly enter some of the painting competitions,and she would get the pictures framed up for me for this. I was sorry to hear she will be giving up her gallery as it is very nice place with lots of natural light, and Pinner is an interesting place to visit, and convenient for me . I will sadly have to make an effort and see if I can find another gallery who will have showrooms at their disposal.

Affordable Art Fair

Ater spending time recovering from colds Mas and I were well enough to down to town to visit the Affordable Art Fair. Before we set off I went to the doctors and had the usual flu' jab.

We stopped at our usual haunt, the Oriel, where we had snacks and a glass of white wine in the cosy downstairs bar. We then took the AAF car to the fair where we spent all afternoon looking at the art work.

I began to think that the art did not seem as good as usual until I realised that my arm was hurting a lot and I was not feeling well. Mas on the other hand thought there was some very good art this year.

When we got home I began to feel like I had the flu', and this later developed and I felt ill for about ten days, but I will draw a blanket over this.

Last day in Guernsey

Saints Bay
We walked from Icart to Saint's Bay, eating blackberries along the way while people kept running past us along the cliff paths for a half marathon. We had a slice of gâche at Saints before walking up the hill.

We stopped to look at a large gathering of ducks on a pond, and as we left they all came out of the pond and followed us up the road, almost in single file. We were beginning to feel like Pied Pipers, but as they caught up with us, a man came out of his house with about three loaves of bread which he broke up and gave to them. After a lot of squabbling they ate the bread and walked back down the hill to their pond again.

We went to the airport by taxi, and flew back to Gatwick then Pete and I went our separate ways home. I got home only to find my poor husband ill with a cold.

Neolithic remains and friendship

Pete and I took the bus then walked along the coast for hours, and through a nature reserve where we saw some butterflies called Baby Blues locally. We stopped at a kiosk and had tea and chips, and I had cheese with them too.














We reached Lancresse common which has a golf course and some neolithic remains, one called La Varde which is a passage grave, and Les Fouillages which dates back to about 4000BC and is possibly the oldest remaining manmade structure in Europe as indicated by pottery found at the site. There is also a rock called La Roche qui Sonne for no obvious reason as the site has been dismantled and stones removed, but it is said that there was a hollow stone which when struck made a sound that carried for a considerable distance.














Les Fouaillages



















La Varde passage grave





























In the evening we met Poppy and Ben and went to the Bella Luce Hotel for another tennerfest meal which was very good, and the company even better.

Jerbourg to Fermain and poets

After another large breakfast we walked off towards Moulin Huet and walked up the Water Lanes pausing to make wishes in the well at the top, and then to Jerbourge and to St. Martins point and on to Fermain where we had lunch with ducks begging for scraps. We were amused to see the ducks swimming on the sea pestering people on boats for food.

We walked up from the valley and Pete went off to meet up with a poetry group called Poets in Motion, and I took the bus to St.Peter Port and mooched around town for most of the day.

Pete and I met in the hotel bar for a nightcap and to talk about the interesting evening he had with the poetry group.
















Fermain Bay

Icart to Torteval

Late morning Pete and I walked to Icart, then along the cliffs, up and down steps for hours until we reached Le Gouffre and had a really tasty Greek lunch at The Hollows, Pete enjoying a
retsina as well.

Icart

En route






We left the cliffs at Torteval and took the bus which toured most of the island.

Later, in the evening we strolled off to Les Douvres and had a meal there, then had an evening walk to Icart again before going back to the hotel.

Back to Guernsey

I flew over to Guernsey for a week, and was kindly met by Ben at the airport, and whisked off to La Barberie Hotel where my son was also staying. Pete and I walked down to Moulin Huet and looked in the Moulin Huet Pottery at some of the pottery and artwork that was for sale.

Later I walked to Saints Bay and strolled on the beach before walking to Icart, while Pete did some writing.
Ben and Poppy met us in the bar as we had planned to have an evening meal together as the hotel was participating in the Tennerfest. This is where the restaurants compete to provide outstanding meals in order to win awards for their cooking. One of the recommended wines was Chat en Oeuf (a cheaper version of Chateau Neuf ). We had a really nice evening chatting and eating.