A year to remember

Another year has gone by and a lot has happened.  My parent's house was finally sold and we managed to clear it out on time for the new owners to move in.  Since my last writings my children and grandchildren have prevented me from getting bored.  I have been decorating at our youngest son's new home.  Stripping wall paper, removing old paint, painting the ceiling and doors, putting up new wall paper ....that were the main activities on my Sunday programme for about 6 weekends in a row. The whole house had to be redecorated except for the bathroom.  That kept me from mischief.  The Saturdays were spent looking after 2 or 3 grandchildren that are in motion all the time except when they are asleep and I would have loved to take a nap too but I couldn't. You can imagine that, between the redecorating and the grandchildren I am a very fit granny now, I even developed some arm muscles. Not that I mind.  Meanwhile, I have made a start clearing out the two rooms in our house we want to redecorate.  One of the rooms is even a presentable guestroom now.  The fact that my brother considered staying the night on New Year's eve meant that I had to get the room ready, clear out all the clutter and have it thoroughly cleaned.  A bit of time pressure is always welcome in my case and extra motivating  Still a lot needs to be done before I can say the rooms are ready, but I seem to have more energy and hopefully I will feel like this for some time to come.  It was fortunate that I was energetic these past few weeks.  We had a small party on my birthday with the family and a couple of our youngest son's friends as he and his girlfriend were going on holiday the next day and so they could not be with us on Christmas eve. With all 6 of our grandchildren here and 11 adults it did get a bit crowded and it was a very full house indeed.  On Christmas Eve, the family again came tot our house for dinner.  And on New Year's eve, my brother and  sister and her 3 children had dinner at our house.  My weekday evenings are still partly spent with the amateur theatre group, rehearsing 2 nights a week.  The performances are on 24 and 25 January and the week of the performance we rehearse every evening.  And 1 night a week I am still learning Italian.  So in case you have been wondering why I hadn't written on my little blog for a while, you now know what I've been up to.  We also almost booked a holiday tot Uganda, with friends that I have known since school.  The trip included going tot watch  gorillas.  But we decided not to go, for various reasons, so we have no holidayplans as yet.  There will be though and I would love to take a trip to London again, or Paris and maybe some friends can come over and stay with us now that we have a guest room.  Things to look forward to in this New Year.  I do hope you all have good times coming your way in 2014 and wish all of you a healthy and happy year.

No rest for the wicked

Why am I writing this on a Sunday evening you might wonder.  I have been rather busy these last weekends and during the week I am working.  It has been the most wonderful summer.  Sunny and warm.  Almost every evening, I could still sit in the garden when I got home from work.  Some weekends, we took care of some of our grandchildren, while their parents were working in their future home.  We had a plastic inflatable pool in the garden and they loved that.  Those of you who read my previous scriblings know that houses play a big role in my life at the moment.  My parental home is now officially another family's property and concern. The deed was signed last Thursday.  We spent some Saturdays clearing out the house.  It took 3 of us 2 full days to clear out the garage alone (that has a cellar).  Not as bad as the attic but almost.  Saying goodbye to the house was not that emotional for me.  My childhood home is actually the house we lived in with my grandmother and was actually her house, untill we moved to the house my parents had build when I was ten.  My childhood to me, are the years we lived in the small dead end street.  There were less cars back then but because it was a cul-de-sac, almost none came into our street.  Many children of about my age were living there so we played outside on the street most of the time.  It was even safe enough for roller skating; The old ladies would sit outside on chairs on the pavement in front of their houses when the weather was good.  They would be watching us, chatting and knitting.  We would sometimes go visit them and play card games.  I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and I have fond memories of her.  She was in her late sixties when I was born, so I had an old grandmother.  I guess I spent so much time with her because I am the eldest and it was normal for me to be with her when my younger brother was born and later my sister. But I remember I really liked being with her. She sometimes cooked for the 2 of us and I would have dinner with her and not with the rest of the family.  My grandmother died when I was 12 at the age of 80.  I remember the funeral and clearly remember it made me sad to realise I would never see her again.  I can only hope to be in my grandchildren's hearts as she still is in mine. I do have good memories of te house we just sold, but somehow I don't consider those childhood memories.  The next step now is our youngest son moving house tomorow.  I have taken off some time from work to help out a bit with the decorating;  All this physical activity does have an added value.  I am getting fitter and I am actually losing weight without strict diet.  On the days that I was not working in one of the houses, I spent some time with the grandchildren. Yesterday we spent the afternoon with 2 of them.  I enjoy that immensely and they are so energetic that I don't have problems to sleep well at night.  A busy time is coming on at work too and the rehearsals with the theatre group for the play in January have started 2 weeks ago, aswell as my Italian course.  No rest for the wicked as the saying goes.

Sunset in Paradise

A pure white sandy beach, the blue ocean, the sun, a sea breeze, it's nice and warm and tranquil, I am reading and somebody (our neibours on the beach !) just brought me a strawbury daiquiri with crushed ice, just like that.  What else could I want ?  There are a number of things I could think of, but it's near perfection to me, for a while anyway.  And those glorious sunsets ! Every evening any number of hotel guests would be on the beach trying to catch it on camera.  We did have a great holiday in Aruba.  The 10 hour flight was well worth it.  I actually could have stayed there for another fortnight, soaking up the sun, reading, eating drinking (!), swimming and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere.  Now that summer seems to be seriously delayed on our otherwise very nice seaside, I realise even more how lucky I am to have been able to be in the sun for 2 weeks on a wonderful holiday.  The hotel was super and everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, even the Arubans who were working.  Most of the other guests were from the U.S., some were South-American and so we kept forgetting that a large number of the staff also spoke dutch.  Aruba, although it has its own government,  is still a part of the Dutch kingdom and dutch is still taught at school.  So very often when we were talking amongst ourselves they would immediately say "maar jullie spreken nederlands !' (you speak dutch) and I guess they liked speaking dutch for a change. They even knew some programs from our flemish TV channels.
So I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I read 5 and 1/2 books, and apparently, people do notice what others do on the beach, unlike myself because when I'm reading I am like immersed in another world except for the times I'ld be asleep or swimming or watching one of the pelicans diving for food, a remerkable sight.  The friends we were travelling with, met a couple from Philadelphia (well actually 'near' to as they lived at about a 2 hour drive from Philadelphia) and when they joined us for dinner one evening, they said : 'Oh, you're the ones that are reading the whole time.'.  It is funny how relative distance is : they said they lived near Philadelphia (2hrs away) and they asked us if we lived near to each other.  Our friends said no, but I said : 'We don't call it near but to you it would be, it's 'only' 1 1/2 hrs drive .'
So summer is on hold here.  It rained all night last night and now it's grey and cold for the time of year.  I am writing this now on my lunch break because it's too cold to be out.  I would much rather be outside right now, with my book, I am on my own at work all day, kind of boring but it has its advantages.  But still, a bit of a chat now and again is a welcome intermezzo most of the time.
Meanwhile a lot has happened even in the month since we got back from our holiday.  Our parental home is as good as sold, so we will have to empty it out now in the next 2 or 3 months.  A bit of pressure is always good.  Our sons are both moving house after the summer.  Not into the same house obviously ! The eldest and his wife have bought a house but a lot of construction needs to be done before they can move in.  I have been looking after their 3 children 2 Saturdays in a row, while they were clearing it out.  The previous owner and the tennant had left so much junk in the house and garden that it has taken them 3 weekends already of moving the stuff out to be thrown away and still the house isn't empty yet.  Last weekend I didn't have to babysit the children, so I went over to help them.   I am even more determined now to start clearing our attic of any stuff I don't have a use for anymore.  Not that it looks anything like my son's house but still, I will do it.  Our youngest son and his girlfriend are also going to move to another house after the summer, probably October, meaning that for the next 4 to 5 months I will not have a lot of time to read, but that's not too bad.  It will keep me busy as always.  This saturday it's Ophelia's 3rd birthday and according to the weather forecasts, dare we believe it, the weather will improve from then on.  Keeping my finges crossed as our joint birthday present, a trampoline, does require a day without rain and we would like to have a small family BBQ, can you believe for the 1st time this year. 

Springtime

Springtime, should be sunny and fresh and green and hopeful.  That is how I expect spring to be anyway.  This year really is no spring at all. On monday morning, there was ice on my car again and it's almost May.  As I am writing, I am trying not to pay too much attention to the weather forcast on TV.   We had a couple of nice,  sunny and invigorating spring days so far.  last Thursday was really wonderful, sunny and around 20 ° C, but Friday morning it was foggy, chilly (8 °C) and raining. This weekend was sunny, but still too cold for the time of year. I am really looking forward to our holiday in less than a month.  We are going to Aruba.  That will be the most exotic holiday we ever took, but hopefully the first one of a series I am intending to take.  Meanwhile I am still trying desperately to get rid of some kilos.  I refuse to buy bigger size clothes.  That is an advantage financially.  Every down side, has an up side ! But I am very determined I will succeed, so I am sure somehow I will lose weight.  Well somehow means obviously I have to cut down on sugar and fat and eat more vegetables an fruit.  But hey, it is spring or is it ?  My parental house is still not empty and we haven't been able to sell it yet.  You probably think not much has happened apart from the holiday bur that is not entirely true.  Untill the end of March I had 2 rehearsals every week with our theatre company, and I am still following an italian course. I have been doing that for 5 years now, and this year we went on a weekend trip to Milan together.  We were a bit unfortunate in that the weather was more wintery than spring like - it actually snowed  while we were there!  The 'primavera' as the cycling race Milan San Remo is called, that was cycled on the Sunday we went to visit Bergamo, had to be interupted due to the snow and cold.  But otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed the sights, the atmosphere, the food (yes, it is no wonder that I have trouble losing weight), the people there and the company, and the art.  I am defenitely going back someday.  Yesterday I got some work done in the garden.  I bought lots of plants and filled many a terracotta pot so even though spring  is a bit late, I am hopeful and ready for it.  The previous weekend I managed some spring time cleaning around the house.  That should be the start of another project that has taken form in my mind.  I keep adding projects to my to-do list, I know, but I do have more energy than I have had at the beginning of the year, although with my hobbies, the family and work, I should not complain about a lack of energy.  The project I have added is renovating the rooms that have been standing emty for a while now(we have become 'empty-nesters').  The rooms are really in need of redecorating and when that is done, we can finally offer nice lodgings to friends or family visiting with us. So, that is what I have been up to, next time, I will have been on holiday.  I am still hoping to get some sun before, otherwise I will need some heavy sunscreen, at least, that is the ecpectation.

Looking back and ahead

I wasn't aware 2 months had past since my last scribblings. As you can guess, I have been very busy.  First I spent so much time contacting my former colleagues from North Sea Ferries and put up old pictures on the facebook event page I set up.  This started out others going through their photographs and even looking up stuff on the internet and I really enjoyed seeing new facebook friendships grow and everybody connecting again and I really felt good about this.  Many of you probably saw some of the going ons on fb.  After my last post here I kept going.  At first I was a bit worried that it would not be a succesful reunion because  it took some people a long time to confirm their attendance,  But 2 weeks before the event some 70 had confirmed, some couldn't make it on the day, so we were 63, and 46 of us actual ex NSF.  On the day of the reunion, I was very nervous.  But there was no need for that.  My sons and their friends did a splendid job serving the food and drinks and it was such fun to see everybody in a great mood at renewing friendships and catching up on what everyone had been up tosince 2003 and how their children were doing and if they had grandchildren.  It was great and there was not nearly enough time to talk to all of them.  They all brought so much Potluck, I still have some chips and nuts left, even after I gave away half of it and used some myself on my birthday and at Christmas.  One of my dutch friends, and it was great that so many of them drove all that way to join us, had prepared a wonderful power point presentation with lots of pictures and videos from 'the good old days'.  It is amazing that even after such a long stretch of time, you immediately feel at ease again with old friends.  Afterwards I realised how I had missed this familiarity, and it is maybe a bit sad but on the other hand : it was great back then and I have all these funny and happy and some sad shared memories.  After the reunion I did still spend time posting pictures and mailing pictures to the ones that are not on fb.  A lot of time spent on my computer but rewarding.  After that, I was looking forward to the arrival of our American friends.  They arrived on the 20th December and I collected them from the airport. It was great to see them again.  On my birthday, 21st December, the supposed Maya end of the world, I took them and son Niels and friends that helped out at the North Sea Feast with POtluck out for dinner to thank them for helping me out.  We had a wonderful evening with them.  I had some offtime from work and Christmas dinner to prepare.  I did a lot of cooking, and eating I might add, over the past 2 weeks, but enjoyed having all the family here even though we had to move some furniture around and 3 champagne glasses were sacrificed. On New Year's eve we went to my brother and had a great dinner and evening there.  Wednesday our American friends had to go back home.  And now well : I am teary eyed and snotty nosed, not from crying but from a cold I seem to have caught.  The New year comes with new challenges, losing some kilo's I seem to have gathered over the last month or so (that is not really a new challenge), selling our parental house (that may not prove to be the biggest challenge - emptying it of all it's contents will prove far more difficult I'm sure) and last but not least : planning a holiday that is a bit out of the ordinary, but I guess nobody woul call that a challenge but rather a wonderful propect.

Nostalgia

I haven't been writing here for a long time.  I have been thinking about the past quite often recently.  I finally took action and I am organising a get together with my co-workers, friends I should say, from  North Sea Ferries.  So I went through old photographs, to try and spot faces and try and put names to the faces and try to find their address, email, phone number whatever, to get in touch with them.  I found it really surprising that some people seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.  You would expect that with all the social media, we have all lost our privacy.  Some people clearly have not. Before everybody had a cell phone, most people had a phone in their home and if you had their name and knew the name of the town they lived in, you could find their phone number and home address.  Nowadays, most mobile numbers are not listed.  I find it even annoying at work that a lot of persons emailing omit their contact info from the mail and you have to mail them back, even if a phone call of 1 minute would be enough to explain, or ask something.  I guess I am kind of "old school" in that I find writing mails or even texting more cumbersome.  I started out with a list of about 50 contacts and it grew to 150.  And still frequently a name or face pops up that I had not thought of before. Some are very enthusiastic and others don't even acknowledge they have received the mail.  For some it is difficult to join in, especially for our friends from the other side of the Channel, but even the dutch colleagues have to travel a long way.  Still some of them think it is worth the effort and I really look forward to seeing them again.  No doubt a lot of funny, some sad and more than 1 embarassing story will be told that night. In the same time frame I went to my parent's house.  We already spend a day clearing out part of the attic.  I can assure that there was and still is a lot of stuff in that attic.  I found clothes I didn't know my mother had kept.  A suede jacket that I bought when I was 16.  Dresses, coats  and trousers from the same decade so from 40 years ago.  We found sunlight soap and 'union match' match boxes.  Vim powder, used for cleaning, anybody under 40 probably doesn't know what i'm talking about.  My school books were still there, and my brother's.  There was a diary my dad wrote during the war. I haven't read it yet, but I will.  So if I do feel a bit nostalgic, I have good reason to be.  Still, I am looking forward to seeing my old friends again.  Nostalgia does not mean I am only looking at the past with regret, I am remebering the good times and trust there are a lot more good times ahead.

Ferry Good

The summer, or should I call it that, has almost come to pass.  I don't think the past months will become one of the finest summers this decade let alone this century. I have been very busy getting in touch with old friends and colleagues and family, but also had some difficult times when my sister was in hopital and I had to take care of her and took on all her household tasks. Last weekend I met up with a former colleague I hadn't seen for 9 years as she lives in France, and we had a great day in Bruges talking about the good old days and our lives since 2003.  Meanwhile I still enjoy spending time with my grandchildren.  Our granddaughter Ophelia is such a cute and very actve child and when she comes round I always dance around with her.  She is always dancing and jumping and skipping around, it's a lovely sight and she always wants me to join in.  So all in all I am Ferry Good.  'Ferry good' was actually de baseline to North Sea Ferries when I started to work there in 1978. During my first years there, the small ferries, Norwind and Norwave, that sailed to Hull from Zeebrugge, often arrived late due to stormy weather.  On one of those occasions, the ferry arrived in the evening about 10 hours delayed.  The crossing was overnight, the ships leaving at 6 pm and arriving around 9 am.  Not only did the ferry arrive late, she was supposed to depart again the same evening, but we already knew she would stay in Zeebrugge for 2 days because  some of the cargo had been damaged,  All pasengers and freight that were booked on the cancelled sailing had to be contacted and offered alternative ways to travel : catch the ferry from Rotterdam, a 3 hrs drive away, get a refund and travel via Dover, or stay the night and go on the ferry the following day.  Most of the time there weren't too many passengers so we had no problem getting things sorted.  Our office and the berth were located on a dock seperated from the tides by a lock.  When the ship was in the lock, we could see her but only standing on a a chair, or the window sill.  My boss was an impatient man and the first time I saw him getting up on the window sill to check wether the ship had already gone into the lock, I almost burst out laughing.  After that first time, I found it quite normal for him to be on the look out.  Whenever anything went wrong and we had to deal with delayed or cancelled sailings, he would always be around to see how things were going, and offering us his assistance.  But he was such a nervous person that nobody would ever ask him to help out, a fact he knew and often he would sense that his presence was not required and quickly say "I'm gone already" and hurry away, back to his office.  One of the things that I will  never forget is the blockade of the french ports of Calais and Boulogne in August 1980.  It was the heigth of the summer season and lots of British passengers were returning from their holiday on the continent.  All of a sudden our small terminal that was only meant to accomodate 249 passengers at the most was swarmed by 5 times that number.  On the first day of the blockade, 10 full coach loads of passengers turned up out of the blue on a Sunday.  The Normandy Ferries ships, with names that seemed a bit strange to us (Leopard, Lion, Panther) that were not stuck in the blocked ports in France came to Zeebrugge but that was not nearly enough for the large number of passengers and cars or the number of trucks hoping to get accross the channel.  We did part of the handling but some of the french staff came to Zeebrugge. But somehow they were more relaxed than we were, and even managed to disappear for a 2 hr lunch break, much to our dismay as we worked almost round the clock.  The people waiting to get on the ferries were lined up on the road into Zeebrugge and food and water distributed by the authorities.  The passengers at our terminal used our facilities for washing and even doing dishes.  People were almost prepared to fight to get a place on one of the ferries.  The whole thing lasted 2 weeks and although it was a very exciting time, we were all happy to have our small terminal back to ourselves when it finished. And the blockade ended with another anecdote : a  Spanish truckdriver, poor man, had driven to Zeebrugge on the day the blockade had been lifted, only to find that the Normandy Ferry ships no longer departed from there and he had to return to Boulogne.