Here we go again

 So I am thinking to book tickets to America, at last, but the reviews, make me wary Play airlines does not seem to have a phone number and whilst the cheap airline has satisfied some of its customers, the rating is pretty poor, so whilst I have had issues with KLM I booked with them instead. Except now I cannot get through to them.   Why are online services so difficult to deal with.  

I am still not satisfied with the "help" I got from Booking.com.  I really feel they need proper Customer Services training. They cannot even tell me who I can complain to with my issues.   They do not seem to come under ABTA.  Even emails to the CEO has not elicited a decent response. 

Sadly even some face to face services leave much to be desired. I am mindful that when I have had students at my house I have never, despite all my best efforts got better than good, rather than excellent.  But whether it was the teaching or the food, my cooking after all, or the accomodation who knows, but I know I always try my best (but as my step dad used to say my best is not good enough) So perhaps my decorator tried her best and most things she did a great job BUT there is one glaring error,  it is clearly partly my fault as I did not take all the picture frame nails down,  I was so shattered after two weeks of moving stuff I did not even realise this I was just pleased to have got everything ready for her.  But she asked and helped take down shelves, so why not ask and take out picture fittings rather than paint over them and leave the original colour showing underneath. You can see I am seething.   All that money to have the perfect finish and then that.    I have asked her to correct the issue so wait to see what happens. 

The only good thing about really annoying services is it distracts one from sorrow.   So Virginia, died around the time of my 50th, her daughter was still fairly young at the time.   Jackie had a long and painful 4 years of terminal treatment,  but otherwise luckily all my friends have made it with me to their 60s/70s but then Jane, like my mum, suddenly and unexpectedly she was gone.   I was priviledged to spend time with the family saying goodbye yesterday.    She was N's Auntie, his African family, his first childminder, friend,  we had a couple of theatre trips together, she introduced me to Fela Kuti and we went on a family holiday to France .  I attended her eldest son's wedding and the christening of her grandchild  as well as having regular time at her home,     More recently we have gathered for coffee in Kentish Town so that is where some mourners retreated to after the church service to share our memories.  36 years of friendship.   Very sad  

So lovely to have some warmth in the sun in Zagreb and Maribor.

Two weekends,  two games, two Indians (footie fodder), and one new tattoo and most importantly time with N in Zagreb.  And in between four gentle days discovering the second main city of Slovenia, Maribor.  Time to mourn my lovely friend JG, who has known us both since N was a baby.    I stayed at the hostel, which is very nice, and had my own little room with cooking facilities, so could pretend I was living there.  I managed to potter, go up a mountain and have a swimming pool virtually to myself.  I loved just being able to sit in the sun and enjoy a coffee and walk across the bridge into town.  Lots of women my age there and families,  a couple of nice art galleries and even a castle and only two hours from Zagreb.    Magic. 

Meanwhile back in the UK my friend Bob was up in Suffolk working to get the vote out,  so it was brilliant on Friday morning to wake up to find that not only had Adrian Ramsay got in but the other three GPs had been elected.  

On top of the world.

13th June 1968 - My grandmas must have been just over 70.  She never moaned about things being wrong with her health, but she did say about some of them and she recorded many of them in her diary: left cheek very painful and inflamed."  She also describes pretty miserable weather in June for example this from June 15th and 16th 1980: "sun all morning but windy rain later heavy in night did not go out/ very winder and rainy morning cold too afternoon some sun but she windy."   Grandma worked till she was 70,  did all her own shopping and it seems had to go to the launderette to wash her clothes - this when she was about 83." went to launderette Tuesday tiring work. Ironing Wednesday and Thursday. "  

Grandma had no real help as she got older and even when I visited I was not really allowed to do anything, so how do I compare to her.  I know that having only worked part time since my 50s it could be argued my health is worse than hers, and perhaps friends will say I moan about being in pain a lot but it would be nice to think I could emulate her and carry on till 90 with virtually no help. I hope so, like a lot of people my own age I do worry about how I will manage.  But where I think my life really is different to hers is in the amount of time I spend going out and about (her diary show she had a life, but not so many visits to exhibitions or holidays and so on).  

I was very pleased on Tuesday to dodge much of the rain  and this summer feels like the worst on record till I read my grandma's diaries) to visit a good friend in hospital, she is slightly older than me and in worrying pain,  and then go on to meet a couple more friends to see a talk on Tibet which featured the redoubtable Sir Michael Palin and the force of nature that is Brian Blessed. He was only slightly younger than me when he went up Everest and now at 87 has more energy than a family of elephants.  I was just chuffed to get into town and back and had to rest most of the day to have the energy to go but I am so pleased I did. 

As a child I was always vaguely interested in explorers,  and from about 14 years on was itching to travel more and have more experiences.   But with climate change and the sheer volume of people moving around begin to question the focus I put on travel in my life.  (I used my pension to pay for trips for the last 7 years, but sadly the money runs out in July)  So it was interesting to learn about the early years of Tibetan travel and how differently it was viewed by the Westerners compared to the Tibetans but that even then it was marketed and promoted through film and a tour of Tibetan monks to the UK.   It was also lovely to see two greats share some memories.  

 

So some people have been travelling to places like the Himalayas for the last 100 years, for most Brits a trip to the seaside and perhaps one or two places abroad seemed exciting until recently and now there is an explosion in travel.   I hope I have at least a couple more big trips in me, (both financially and energy wise ) but I suspect it will be mostly local travel soon, though that is more expensive of course than travel abroad.  My friend Johnny who is slightly older than me just came back from three months in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, very impressive.   He did ask me to go with him, but knew I wasn't up to it.  However, I love watching programmes on travel still and of course whilst N lives abroad have a good reason to nip to Europe a couple of times a year.  

How Green is My Valley or is skiffle piffle?

 The Broxbourne Green Party tries to widen its appeal by doing the occasional walk/social.  It is always a nice occassion as they are nice people and it is good to spend social time together.   However, so far we have still failed to attract more than a few people along.  This months walk in conjunction with the Big Green Walk was no exception which is a shame as it cleverly combined very little walking through the very green Lea Valley along with stops for lunch, afternoon tea before culminating at the live music exhibition at the Lowewood Museum. Lowewood Museum.    Cliff Richard was amongst a number of local musicians who went on to work in the industry,  he was not there at the musuem, but one who had worked with the Kinks was . The musuem had somehow got people like him back in touch with former band members and they had played live at the museum in conjunction with a little exhibition about the early days of Skiffle and boys bands in Hertfordshire.  Really fun and interesting stuff.   

Parliamentary candidate Owen, who also plays a guitar in a band, discovering the origins of rock and roll. 

Another lovely musical event locally was the Julie Fowlis concert in Hertfordshire. I have only just discovered one of the local churches has got some top notch folk musicians in,  it had a homely feel to it, but then this stunning music.  

A Scottish sojourn and Cragside visited - at last.

Five beds in five nights is not very ecological, but as three were in youth hostels it was at least economical.                                                 

Looking out towards Helensborough. 

I revisited the Glasgow Youth Hostel so that I could spend time with family there, then hotfooted it to Stirling, where I succombed to the joys of Scottish cooking at the Brae Restaurant.  I do not think I have ever eaten before in a restaurant dubbed award winning but do not ask for coffee as it is seriously overpriced.  At the Stirling Hostel there were schoolchildren from the Czech Republic and Poland, which was intriguing and I would have said it was a lovely hostel, but when I tried to get my bag back having really enjoyed a long visit to Stirling Castle no one responded to my knocks or my phone calls or anything. And then the heavens opened too, so by the time I got the bag back I was well past my sell by date and needed a taxi on to my next destination - a lovely hotel for the night.   I had spent the day with a friend who I had meet on a Weardale Travel holiday and she was up in Stirling enjoying another such trip.  I could not manage the whole visit but the hotel enabled me to have dinner with her and breakfast even though she was on a coach trip with a whole bunch of other people.  So hotel and travel company very accomodating.  

Stirling Castle

It was raining so hard when I changed trains in Edinburgh that I almost fell out of the station and straight into the coffee shop oppositive, which just happened to be attached to the City Art Gallery.  Having enjoyed the free exhibition there, I almost headed off again, but the cheap train onwards was not for another hour, so even though I was shattered I headed across the park to the National Art Gallery.  Thank goodness I did.  One the atmosphere through the rain was very photogenic and two - the gallery has several of my favourite paintings in it - Glasgow Boys and Colourists.   And then it was back to Alnwick, my starting point for a trip to the Farne Islands, some time ago. 

Again I had intended to eat at the hostel to save money, but rather than just a cup of tea at Barters books in Alnwick the word Northumberland speciality grabbed me and I thoroughly enjoyed their version of rarebit.   But as a result I did not need breakfast as I headed out across country on a very scenic bus route to Cragside, the first house to have electricity installed in the UK.   I have seen this place on TV so often and everyone who has visited said it was wonderful and it is, especially in rhondodendron season, but it is problematic, the guy who owned it was an arms dealer,  and now even his plants would be controversial but it is a magnificent place.  I do not often get to visit stately homes and in a few days I managed a castle and one magnates home and several lovely meals out and two art galleries. Result.   And most importantly caught up with some lovely people - friends and family and cemented the joy I get from spending time up north. 

I booked only one room via Booking.com and all this was before I was locked into a battle with them about my missing holiday and the mental trauma of thinking I had, then hadn't, then had booked something with them.   The battle is ongoing.   I have somehow landed up with two accounts with them They have consistently failed to help me address this problem.  They keep asking hotels to refund me money because I missed my holiday, which I have never asked them to do and say it is nothing to do with them even though it is the platform I have a problem with. However, the fact that I have not been able to access my full hotmail  account for over a year has not helped. I have spent so many hours trying to resolve that one. I know I am not alone with such difficulties. 

Election called the night I was in Stirling hotel. 

Happy times and sad news.

Lovely weekend enjoying some sunshine, searching for the Northern lights and just going where the wind took us on a lovely romantic break in North Norfolk.  I tried crab for the first time in about 30 years, hidden behind cheese it was fine,  at midnight I almost fell in a bunker whilst out trying to find somewhere dark to look for the northern lights and prior to that we had watched a barrage of strobe effects that could have been the northern lights but were in fact the fun and games of the last hour or so of Eurovision.  What with that and a nice swim, great food, lovely hotel, and the discovery of a local animal rescue shelter we packed a lot into a short break.  

Shanties at the RNLI musuem

Sad news en route, about the death of the poet and campaigner Hubert Moore. Hubert wrote gentle, spare, humourous and incredibly perceptive poetry, often on the horrors of life e.g. on torture, through a unique lens reflecting on the differences within the parallel lives being lived on earth. A good, gentle soul, with a fierce anger about injustices.  

 And sad times for a young boy who was spotted inconsolate that his beloved THS had lost the women's FA cup today. Take that Joey Barton. Things have changed in the world of football.

Out at the count, not out for the count

The

BBC give us credit for reducing the Tory lead in the local elections, which cheered us up after not improving on our third places in most wards in Broxbourne.  The local election agent has lost tons of weight deliberately, not from the amount of work he has done to get the vote out which  has been tremendous, but after all that effort it was deflating not to have progressed further however four years on we are still in there, talking with the press, being referenced on TV and I think adding to the story of politics in Broxbourne and certainly making the Tories work harder.  

Receiving the results for the key ward.