Day 70

Level 2 Chi Kung sitting down. Microcosmic orbit.

Katie wanted to have a “summer party” – just for us – she hadn’t invited anyone this time, and decorated the kitchen with pictures of sunflowers, bluebells and honey bees. She was reasonably sanguine when it started raining and readily agreed that we would eat the food in the kitchen and then snuggle up and watch a movie instead of the swimming and trampolining she had originally planned. I heated a wheat-sack and the children fetched quilts and we all snuggled up on the sofa and watched Frozen (again). In the evening, Nick and I were lucky to have tickets to Great Britain – a play about phone hacking which was rehearsed in secret for six months to avoid contempt of court while they waited for the various legal actions to conclude. The play was very good, very sharp and fast, and laugh out loud funny. The only downside was that it turns out there is zero legroom in row B at the Lyttleton Theatre which put a bit of a strain on my injured knee. At interval I arranged with Nick that I would sit on his left for the second half, so that, if necessary, I could stick my right foot out into his leg space and he would understand why. After the performance, he mentioned that I didn’t seem to have taken advantage of this arrangement – I pointed out that I had in fact repeatedly attempted to gently nudge his foot out of the way but he had remained oblivious and I hadn’t liked to try whispering to him as we had already been getting dirty looks from a woman in the row in front, on account of him rustling a sweet packet!

Billie Piper played the Rebekah Brooks character, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when, queueing for the loo at interval, I turned around and discovered Matt Smith right behind me. Sorry to report that he is no more physically attractive in person than he is on screen – seems like a nice guy though and certainly responded politely when a fan approached him to discuss his performance in American Psycho.

Day 69

Level 2 Chi Kung sitting down. Microcosmic orbit.

After the fabulous weather we had in late spring and early summer, it would be churlish to complain that it is chilly today, even though we are still in the middle of bloody August, but hell, my knee is hurting so I’m going to go right ahead and be churlish. It’s a deeply unpleasant shock to come back from Italy and find London feeling distinctly autumnal. Over the spring and summer we had gradually gone from a 13.5 tog duvet to a 3.5 tog duvet and then finally to a thin patchwork quilt (bought at the Great Wall in 1997 and chosen partly for thinness so it would fit in the suitcase home). Arriving home in the early hours, neither of us had the energy to find the duvet, and, as a result, we froze all night. Nick is already talking about draining the pool but I am hoping (against logic) for a last burst of good weather.

Random musings

10:30 and we have successfully checked out. Sadly, due to a quirk of fate (a takeover I think), the hotel which administers our holiday apartment is not the nearest hotel, but one a few hundred metres down the road. Still, with the help of a pressure bandage (which has reduced the swelling) and the support of a strong husband, I made it down the stairs and along the street, and am now installed in the lounge area of the hotel foyer: in the shade, sitting on a comfortable sofa, with free WIFI and as close as possible to the ladies’ room. Nick has taken the children swimming to fill in some time. So far, so good.

One of the more interesting bits that came up on a John Grinder course I did a few years ago was his suggestion to pay attention to the songs that run unbidden through your head. After years of having ‘We’ve got to get out of this place/ if it’s the last thing we ever do’ and UB40’s ‘If it happens again I’m leaving / I’ll pack up my things and go’ on rapid rotation, it’s interesting to note that it is now more likely to be ‘Ajax’ shoulders moved boulders / Helen’s hips launched ships’ (by the wonderful Peggy Seeger) or ‘That’s my daughter in the water / everything she knows I taught her’. In fact Dash got a bit offended when I kept singing that last one and I had to come up with something that mentioned sons post haste. Sadly I couldn’t use the McGarrigle’s ‘First Born Son’ (which is fun to sing) because a) Jack’s the firstborn, and b) the person described in the song is a redneck arsehole. Fortunately another McGarriggle song fitted the bill, can’t remember the title but it goes: ‘It’s the sun, son, shining on the water…’.

Day 68

Attempted level 2 Chi Kung sitting down, with all elements requiring legs imagined. Had to be out of our holiday apartment by 10am and finally arrived home around 2am Italian time, 1am UK time. It’s frustrating that airports seem to be designed not for smooth passenger flow but to force travellers to pass through as many ‘duty free’ shops as possible. The irony being that of course they aren’t really duty free anymore if you are travelling within the EU – I guess that’s why they have to maximise the captive audience. Annoying when you are in pain, dragging several tired children, and just want to get on the damn plane. Knee pretty sore by the end, but home safe with no further damage done. Phew!

Sherlock very excited to see us.

Day 67

Attempted level 2 Chi Kung sitting down, with all elements requiring legs imagined! Still surprisingly strenuous. Microcosmic orbit.

A dull day trying to keep the injured knee elevated, then culminating this evening in trying to pack by remote control – though Kate and Dash are doing their best to be helpful and even Jack joined in, it is an incredibly frustrating process. Finished A Casual Vacancy – a good read with a sad ending.

Slightly dreading tomorrow as we haven’t been able to secure a late checkout, so we have to be out of the hotel by 10 am and we don’t fly until 9:10 pm, so a long day to fill in and I have yet to walk without using a chair as a zimmer frame – so not sure how I will negotiate the stairs to leave the hotel, let alone any of the other walking required.

Day 66

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Jade egg.

Took Kate and Dash swimming in the pool. On the way back, I called out to Katie to take care and hold the hand rail coming up the slippery marble stairs with wet feet, failing to notice that the path I was on was slick with water where they had watered the flowerpots. I went down awkwardly, partially dislocating my knee. Kate was brilliant: finding the key where it had gone flying and unlocking the apartment, bringing me a towel (I was suddenly very cold) and then a kitchen chair to lever myself up on and use as a kind of makeshift zimmer frame. Ibuprofen, elevation and an ice pack (Popsicles the children rejected earlier in the week!) got the pain under control but the knee is swollen and I can’t put weight on it. Not sure if I am more gutted that I won’t get a final swim in the sea before we go home on Tuesday, or that I won’t be able to do Chi Kung. Feeling very cross with myself.

Day 64

Level 2 Chi Kung (with hands on floor). Microcosmic orbit (with good energy in all the right colours.). Jade egg.

A perfect day. I took the children to the pool in the morning and Nick took them in the afternoon. Katie went from tentatively putting her head under to swimming underwater and touching the bottom. Just before sunset I took them swimming in the sea and the water was warm and the swell was just the perfect size for Katie’s favourite buoy game. My turn to take Kate and Dash out for dinner. Even the wait for food was relaxed, due partly to the restaurant’s generous provision of bread and grissini and partly to a hilarious conversation. I casually mentioned that even Dash (who is very fair) is going brown, whereas I continue to look like a total lobster. Dash, who is very literal and, for reasons I won’t go into, has an American accent, said ‘No Mom, you don’t look like a lobster at all. You don’t have those weird legs, you’re not crusty, you don’t have a shell…’ and warming to his theme I said ‘and I don’t have those pincer things and that’s good because I don’t think my children would like it if I came up to them [SFX mummy clacking hands like lobster claws] and saying “Hey, I need a cuddle”. Fortunately we are in child-friendly Italy, so the staff and other diners looked benevolently on the ensuing hilarity.

Ordered the smoked fish platter – two types of smoked fish and (pescatorians beware!) a generous helping of bresaola! All yummy. Takeaway gelato on the way home tasted extra good eaten looking out to sea.

When not in the water I carried on reading JK Rowling’s ‘A Casual Vacancy’ (I have temporarily given up on ‘The Burning Answer’ on the grounds that quantum physics just isn’t suitable holiday reading). I’m now up to page 140 and there are still only two sympathetic characters and one of them is the guy who died in the first 5 pages! She really is an acute (if pessimistic) observer of her fellow human beings though. I was particularly taken with this description of a woman who has married a violent and abusive man: “part of what she had loved about him, from the beginning, was that this rough and wild boy, who was contemptuous, rude and aggressive to nearly everyone, had taken the trouble to attract her; that he, who was so difficult to please, had selected her, alone, as worthy”. Wow, it’s really not at all difficult to think of women who have married, and stayed with, arseholes, on exactly this basis. Many of whom seem to actively enjoy their husband’s rude treatment of their friends and family as a kind of weird vindication of their own value.

Makes me feel grateful to Cee Payne, who, years ago, advised me to stop looking for a partner who shared my politics and look for someone domestically compatible, a man, in her words, ‘who patchouli oils his own floors’. I have yet to meet a guy who even knows what patchouli oil is, let alone puts it on the floor – but I took the spirit of the advice to heart, and it has served me well.

Day 64

Did Level 2 Chi Kung and microcosmic orbit and took the children swimming in the pool while Nick walked up to the Sanctuary of the Avvocata, a small religious building on a ridge 1000m above the village. To be clear, he was in it for the challenging exercise rather than the spiritual experience! But he is now so fit that he didn’t find it challenging other than the plagues of biting insects. Dash and I having woken up very red and tender, I had decided that we had better seek the shade today, so we both swam in long-sleeved shirts and tried to stick to the shady side of the pool. This was a bit frustrating for Katie, as she seems to have inherited her Gran’s olive skin and is going a lovely golden colour with no sign of burning, so she herself had no need to stay in the shade, but is of course too young to go swimming unless Nick or I accompany her. I couldn’t think of any way I could take her swimming in the sea without getting more burned, and she begged, pleaded and nagged Nick all afternoon but, sadly for her, he is very adept at ignoring her.

Fortunately, we had the fireworks to look forward to. Nick went out for dinner with Kate and Dash while I minded Jack, and had difficulty getting a table – the village was seething. We had been told by the staff at our hotel that the fireworks would start at 10:30, so we went out about 10:15 and found what we hoped would be a good vantage point. 10:30 came and went and we wondered if we were in for a long wait, but, promptly at 11, it was suddenly all on. It was over in 20 minutes – which in my books makes it about 2 hours short of a proper fireworks display, but it was nice while it lasted.

20140815 Fireworks at Maiori

Day 63

Took the children swimming in the hotel pool. Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Took the children for a ‘quick’ swim in the sea except it was so perfect we stayed in for 2 and 1/2 hours. Until today the sea has been like a mill pond but today there was quite a big swell. I wasn’t sure how they would cope with it but they loved it and we had a great time – though Dash and I are now rather singed. Katie seems to be going brown whereas sadly Dash and I are honouring our Viking ancestors by rocking the boiled lobster look. Hey ho. Back to the room and into clothes for a trip to Villa Crimbone – not to eat at the eye-wateringly spendy restaurant but to visit the attached gardens. The drive to Ravello was interesting in a life- threatening kind of way. But Ravello was beautiful and the gardens were lovely. It is so lovely now that Kate and Dash can enjoy this sort of visit – just wished that Ann Eade
could have been there with us, as she would have loved it – though not the drive to get there! Home to takeaway pizza and now looking forward to an early-ish night. Ferragusto tomorrow, so we will be sticking close to home, and staying well away from motorised transport.