2022 and all that

Dad, Richard, Sally, Andrew and I had another full day to kill on Mum’s farewell tour, so we decided to spend it revisiting old haunts.

Dad and I drove from Tal-y-Llyn to Tywyn, every place name on the way arousing old memories: Abergynolwyn, Bryncrug and Dolgoch Falls. We didn’t have time to go on the Talyllyn Railway (inspiration for Thomas the Tank), which runs through Tywyn. A mechanic at heart, Pop was really interested in the railway and we think he donated to it when the original narrow gauge mining railway was repurposed as a tourist attraction.

We drove down to the prom in Tywyn. It’s still as down-at-heel as ever, but a few people were out enjoying the hazy September sunshine.

We went on to Aberdyfi via Nana and Poppa’s old holiday house, Marconi Bungalow. It was half of an old radio station set up by Guglielmo Marconi in a bid to transmit the first messages across the Atlantic, but he eventually abandoned it in favour of a location in Ireland.

The bungalow had a massive attic full of dead bluebottles that we used to play in. It probably originally held the radio equipment. I couldn’t drive right up to the bungalow, which my parents sold in the 1980s, but we could see from the new dormers that the attic has now been coverted to a proper top floor.

Next stop, after passing the farm where I used to help out during school holidays, was the sand dunes where we used to swim.

We met up with the others in Aberdyfi and spent a pleasant afternoon doing nothing in the sunshine. ‘Aber’ means river mouth and Aberdyfi is an estuary town.

The place is still full of holidaying Midlanders. Brummy accents abound. My grandad was just such a midlander when he came to Wales from Solihull in the 1920s. His family owned a garage and, as owners of some of the first motor cars in town, they also drove wealthy families to the seaside.

One of their customers was Louis Wain, a popular cartoonist. I still have one of his books. It was given to Mum when she was 6.

Poppa met Nana when visiting Aberystwyth, probably working as a hired driver with his own car. He used to tell me that he spotted her on the beach playing with a dog and a strand of seaweed and vowed “that’s the girl I’m going to marry”.

Our last port of call was afternoon tea at the Trefeddian Hotel. I was all for staying for a G&T, in fact I would happily have moved in, but the wind got up and it suddenly got chilly so we went back to Tal-y-Llyn, swapping one gorgeous location for another.

Next day, Richard took Dad back to Derbyshire and I drove back straight through the middle of Wales to Cardiff. My route took me back through Llanidloes, Nana’s birthplace. Amazingly enough, I’d never been so I stopped off for lunch and wandered around for a couple of hours.

The trip prompted a lot of questions and half-remembered anecdotes: a great aunt who “died from sitting on a cold doorstep”, Uncle Bonkie (real name Bonsall) who was shell-shocked in World War I… and my great grandfather swinging a dead cat round his head at a political meeting. Chartists, Dad thought, when I spoke to him later.

I visited the churchyard to see the George family graves, but couldn’t go in with Lottie.

I think I might have found a new lockdown hobby – carrying on Mum’s work of researching her family tree. For starters, Nana was born Ellen Maglona George in 1896, one of eight brothers and sisters…

After a lovely drive through North Wales, Dad and I arrived at Tin-y-cornel hotel on Monday evening, just in time for a G&T on the lakeside. Our family used to stop for coffee at this hotel well over 50 years ago when my grandparents were still around, so it holds many memories.

We’ve whiled away a few happy hours at the lakeside since we arrived, watching the minnows jump and the wild swimmers heave themselves out of the water onto the bank in their wetsuits. Richard and I used to catch the minnows in little fishing nets and buckets off the jetty here when we were kids.

When we arrived, Richard, Sally and Andrew were already in residence in a converted chapel in Llwyngwril, a few miles away.

Jennifer, Ross and Michael arrived later, followed by Leon, who I met at Machynlleth station.

Sally and Richard climbed Cader (or Caeder) Idris to do a recce on Monday and couldn’t find the original rock pool of Mum’s memory. Richard and I remember it as a very deep pool full of icy water that was long enough to swim a few strokes in each direction. Things have probably changed a lot over the years. We all agreed that a spot on the same stream would be fine.

The day dawned bright and sunny with Pop’s typical luck, as Mum would no doubt have said (we called her father and our grandfather Poppa or Pop). The climb up Cader Idris was very steep to start with, in a beautiful setting.

Eventually the path met the stream and temporarily levelled at a spot marked by a scenic slate bridge. That’s where we decided to scatter the ashes, each taking a turn.

Afterwards we had lunch back at the hotel. Jeni & Ross and Leon all said their goodbyes as they had to get back for work on Wednesday.

Dad wrote this poem for Mum back in July. It voices a lot of the regret and helplessness we felt at the time about her death in hospital. I hope he’ll eventually write another one that celebrates her long and mostly happy life.

Post script: Dad just asked me to post this new poem.

First day since my mammoth trip that I’ve been able to get back to “normal“ and have a proper dog walk in the morning instead of a quick trot round Victoria Park. Enjoying the last of the September sunshine with a coffee in my favourite spot.

I did my Covid 19 test a couple of days ago. The process was surreal, with people yelling instructions through closed car windows. The test itself was self-administered, taking samples from the tonsils and backs of the nose. Makes you gag and is a bit eye-watering but no big deal. Then the last person took my sealed biohazard bag bag gingerly though a slightly lowered car window with a comedy pair of giant tongs and I was free. I got the all-clear by text and email less than 24 hours later.

Yesterday, I also visited the doctor’s surgery for the first time in months for a routine blood test. Everyone in there was acting as though they were under siege. Patients have to ring a door bell and hang around in the street until someone in full battle regalia comes and lets you in, glancing furtively round the street.

By contrast, the hairdressers – my next port of call- had somehow gone for a full anti-contagion chic look, with minimalist black and perspex face shields that looked as though they’d be absolutely useless at containing any properly determined biomatter splatters.

In Spain, Jack’s doing his first face-to-face classes for months, though most are still on line. His boss has turned the lockdown from a threat to an opportunity and is picking up students for online classes all over the world.

Everyone is posting “back to school” and “first day at school” photos on Facebook. But with coronavirus case numbers shooting up again, there’s an uneasy sense that we might have to batten down the hatches again soon.

I’m looking forward to doing just that after our family trip, starting tomorrow, to Yorkshire and then Cader Idris in North Wales to scatter Mum’s ashes at her favourite rock pool.

Got back to Cardiff on Friday after taking a slightly circuitous route from Capena to avoid having to quarantine. I checked the government advice and filled in an on-line self-declaration locator form you’re supposed to show at the UK border before re-entry.

Night 1 was in a pensione in Fontanellato, just north of Parma. Basically a castle and a huge moat!

Everything went really well until I got to the last service station in Italy before the Swiss border. I bought a coffee with my Monzo card and got back into my car. Two Carabinieri were lounging against the counter without masks and everyone else was PPE’d up to the hilt. Suddenly a sandy-haired man in his mid thirties with a young boy of about 9 started waving at me. Thinking I’d got something wrong with my car he wanted to tell me about, I rolled the window down.

Turned out he wanted to give me a sob story about having had everything stolen and asked me for money to get home. “I’ll transfer it to you when I get home to Ireland”. He did indeed have a strong southern Irish accent.

I said “sorry, can’t help” and thought “good try”. Then he went ballistic and called me a “fucking English whore”, paused, looked in the car at the dog and the camping gear, and screamed “fucking scruffy English whore”.

Then he cursed me and told me he hoped I’d die on the motorway and if he saw me on the motorway he’d “cut me up into little fucking bits”.

“Great”, I thought, now I’ve got to play out my very own version of Duel with a mad Irishman.

In the event I zipped through Switzerland without stopping, except for petrol. UK government advice says you can do this without having to quarantine even though Switzerland is on the list. There are quite precise rules for people arriving at the UK border under their own steam. Of course I used masks and hand sanitizer. Interestingly enough, the Swiss border guards were the only ones I saw not wearing masks.

Night 2 was in the Black Forest.

I got out my wallet to pay for a couple of extras at the hotel (breakfast and Lottie) only to have my Monzo card declined. Turned out the balance had been cleaned out, with everything being spent on online gambling sites. It’s hard to think it didn’t have something to do with the dodgy Irishman, but I’ll probably never know where and when the card details were taken…

I already had a good opinion of Monzo and they were fantastic. I reported the fraud with two clicks (no phone calls) and the money was back on my card the next day. A new card was waiting for me at home.

Day 3 on the road was the biggie, I had to get to Calais around 6 pm to get my slot on the shuttle. In the end, the 7 hour drive went smoothly. In the latter part, the French motorways were virtually empty. Hope I didn’t get caught speeding: I had a French speeding ticket waiting for me when I got back to Cardiff from my outward trip to Italy. Talk about efficiency!

My toll gadget really helped as I didn’t have to get out of the car to pay, just once for petrol and to stretch my legs. Found a couple of painted pebbles, which had obviously been left for a purpose.

Back in the UK (surprise, surprise, no one asked to see my locator form at the border), I gratefully crawled into a hotel in Folkestone and drove the last 4 hours back to Cardiff early next day.

This week is taken up with a big translation job and getting ready for my trip to Ingleton and Caeder Idris with Dad next week. We’re going to see my cousins and then scatter Mum’s ashes on the mountain, which is second highest on Wales.

Even though I have no Covid symptoms, I’ve decided to take a test to make sure I haven’t inadvertently brought any unwanted hitchhikers. You’re not supposed to take a test unless you have symptoms, but I thought the whole point was that people without symptoms are infecting others because they’re unaware they’re carrying the disease 🤔.

Common sense tells me that my cousins and my brother’s family will feel safer to share space with me if I have a negative test result. Leon and Lily took a test before they came to see me in Italy, and it meant we could be more relaxed together, though still taking care. Hopefully, testing at borders will soon be routine in the UK as it is in other countries (where they offer results in 30 minutes to boot). In the meantime I’m doing my own version of it…