THREE HAPPENINGS AND A FUNERAL

Zvernec Monastery, Vlora, Albania

It's been something of a four weddings and a funeral week, though without the weddings exactly.  We assisted at a funeral though, and sent Ann Patterson Daniels - aka Aged Mother - off to the strains of Nimrod and Abide With Me.  By the agency of some ethereal intervention, Aged Mother parted the clouds and the sun shone all day.  She still seems not so far away,  I feel her presence, watching and waving; just itching to tell the story again of her grandfather, the Mayor of Harrogate.

Still one out, one in, as they say, though the timing was unfortunate.  Aged Mother missed the arrival of Butterbean by just a few days. Had one lived longer, or the other arrived sooner, they might have overlapped and said 'hello' to each other.  To explain, Butterbean is my Younger Daughter's second child, born last week, and both have just escaped from the clutches of the hospital.  Clazza is tired and still in some pain - like having barbed wire in your girdle - but she is mending.  'That's the trouble with childbirth, admitted the daughter of a friend once, 'it doesn't half smart!'

Tiny as ever, Butterbean still has no proper name, though as everyone seems to like Butterbean calling her something else seems now quite redundant.  All sorts of exotic appellations have been canvassed but the last I heard was that the hot money was now behind Isla or Alice.  Isla might reflect her Scottish roots and sit nicely alongside that of her second cousin, Iona.  If they call her Alice we shall just have to pretend that she is English and be on the look out for rabbit holes.  Should you enjoy punting on outsiders, though, you could still place a bet on Xanthe or Amethyst, dark horses indeed, but still under starter's orders.

And then suddenly it was my own birthday, which I am ashamed to say I rather let pass without even so much as taking a chilled bottle of Sancerre out of the fridge to the bottom of the garden and drinking a toast to myself for having lived so long.  Mind you the weather would have rendered the bottom of the garden experience distinctly soggy and it wouldn't have been only the wine that was cold.  My reading matter would have been limp and the wine no longer dry.   Besides, we were expecting a delivery of an order for 83 kilograms of DVD boxes which we still sell from time to time.

So instead in the evening we motored over to Marks and Spencer, dined at the Deli counter on Peking Duck and I bought a new linen jacket to replace an old friend that had started to look even older than me.  Friends though were very kind with cards, calls and messages of support.

If these were the major events of the week then there were some minor upturns too, including a telephone call on Sunday morning to say that I had won first prize in the Cowbridge Book Festival's Creative Writing Competition.  Wow!  The first time ever I had won something and the first practical indication that I may not totally be wasting my time if I try, as our little labels business winds down, to earn a few supplementary coppers from the keyboard.   So far I have entered four story and one novel competitions this year and the score so far is one success, one failure, and three to be determined.  Still, even one out of five can't be too bad, can it?  I am encouraged and cheered.

In closing I must mention an email from my marine biologist friend whose 75th birthday this week it also was.  (Not that I am 75 I hasten to add). The missive came from an internet café somewhere in northern Albania where he has been backpacking by himself in search of medieval monasteries.  Having worked all his life for international organisations he seems never to be content unless he is travelling and regularly takes himself off to distant corners of the world simply to be on the move.  He walks and stays in bed and breakfasts.  I have noticed the same thing in other people:  travel is like a drug, they have to keep moving, and while I greatly admire the spirit I know that I am a very different person and prefer to read about countries without maps rather than experiencing them first hand.Above all I need to feel a connection.

So I prefer to go to places that are familiar and to this end we are off at the end of the month again to the Mill where Jim and Rosie have kindly once again invited us.  I shall have to arrange a birthday celebration there.  The Sancerre is cheaper and there is shade under the walnut trees.

The picture (without which no blog is ever complete) is of an Albanian Monastery.  I cannot guarantee that this is one that my friend has seen and I am rather hoping that you haven't seen it (or any other Albanian Monastery) either.  I certainly hadn't seen any before and now that I have I am not sure that they are markedly different from other such medieval institutions, but of course you (and my friend) may disagree.