Saturday, February 02, 2019

Montrondo in January, finally some snow, polar vortex in the USA, home again, stories and photos of my Father's life, and other tales.

Sunday 3rd February 2019

In Montrondo this week where it snowed but not as much as I had hoped.
Hello again friends and readers.

Gosh it's already February. How time flies but thankfully January is behind us. It's not my favourite month.

Last Sunday found us in Montrondo. We had come for a break and would stay until Thursday, Lucy's last day with us. We woke up to a thin coat of snow after a light snow fall the night before. We had expected much more  but it was not to be.
Snow on Sunday in Montrondo
It was cold and blustery outside and it carried on snowing but the snow flakes were tiny so it never settled. Thus we stayed indoors in the morning and had a very lazy day overall. Here is Eladio lying on the sofa after breakfast with the fire on and Pippa on his lap.
Eladio enjoying the comfort of our house in Montrondo while it was snowing outside last Sunday
We spent most of the morning watching our latest series, El Embarcadero on Movistar Plus on my iPad Pro. Our silly Ikea smart TV, an Uppleva which I regret buying, doesn't have this app so we had to make do with the iPad which was fine really. 

I only stopped to make lunch - roast chicken legs with jacket potatoes and a bit of the left over blue, purple or red cabbage hahaha. 

We had a lazy siesta when I read - another story of a female spy with the French resistance during WW2, "Nancy Wake, SOE's Greatest Heroine". It was quite a suitable story to read that day which was International Holocaust Remembrance Day - the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. That's not so long ago and we must never forget. There are people who don't believe it happened but it did and there is plenty of macabre evidence to prove it.

Later we wrapped up well - me with 4 layers - Pippa included, dared the elements and went on a long walk to Murias, to the end of the village and back. 
On our cold, snowy and blustery walk last Sunday
It snowed lightly as we walked but we were thankful for the bracing air after having been inside all day. I was delighted to see "my horses" again - the dappled ones, looking so beautiful in their field. I only wished I had brought some sugar cubes or bread to feed them.
Horses in the fields near Montrondo
I adore horses and always have although I never learned to ride. It was considered a very expensive sport when I was a child and I envied my friends who went riding.  I think horses are the most beautiful and  noble of all domestic animals. With the horses was one lone pony and a very friendly one at that. It came towards me and let me stroke it to my heart's content. It was so clean and beautiful I would have spent more time with it but Pippa was getting anxious and Eladio was getting cold. Here I am in my element with the friendly pony.
With "my little pony". Isn't it lovely?
We came home to watch the end of Season 1 of El Embarcadero. It ends on a cliff hanger which is very frustrating and we shall now have to wait for months and months until Season 2 comes out.

We had a luxurious dinner of giant prawns and salad and then watched the news and a political interview which was so boring I fell asleep in front of the fire. It was early to bed again that night at about 10.30.

Amazingly I woke up "late" for me on Monday morning at 7.15. It was cold again and all traces of snow had gone. We would have all the weathers on Monday and on Tuesday; snow, sun, wind, rain and sleet. I spent most of the day writing my Father's biography. I more or less finished it that day but would continue editing it during my stay here and am still adding more information to it as well as photos.  Once home I dug out photos to illustrate it which was very interesting if time consuming.  . His life story is really quite extraordinary although, being the modest man he is, I know he thinks it is quite ordinary but it is not. I have entitled it: "The unknown story of Charles Courtenay Lloyd, WW2 veteran who contributed to the Liberation of Norway, was an intelligence officer in the Allied Control Commission in Germany, a Selwyn College Cambridge graduate and teacher of spies in the Cold War who married a Russian princess and taught modern languages at Bradford Grammar School and who turns 100 on 1st May 2019".  I trust it will make interesting reading for his old school, University and hopefully the media.  This is the photo I have chosen to illustrate his biography. It sums up his positive attitude in life and how he enjoys the small things that give us pleasure, like drinking a glass of Rioja with his meals.  The photo was taken when his ex pupil Simon H, an art critic who lives in Geneva, came to visit him 2 years ago.
 
My Father enjoying life in Spain

I only stopped for lunch. Being away from home, I was not on a diet in Montrondo and that day we enjoyed a plate of fish and chips!

In the afternoon I went for a walk with Pippa. Eladio preferred to stay at home by the fire saying it was too cold outside. Actually it wasn't although it was pretty blustery. I did not see a soul on my walk. In fact until that afternoon I hadn't seen one of the villagers. My neighbour, Salo was away on holiday in Buenos Aires and it seemed the rest of the small group of villagers were indoors. I did see Manolita though that afternoon and it was nice to chat and catch up for a while.

I came home to watch Olivia on TV with Eladio. That day she was in Zaragoza covering the news of the flooding of the River Ebro. Here she is reporting live. Even though she has been working for TV for about 10 years now, I still get a thrill from watching her. I suppose that is normal if you are a Mother.
Oli reporting from Zaragoza on Monday evening on the flooding of the River Ebro in Zaragoza
Spain has been hit by a storm called Gabriel and there has been lots of flooding and freak weather mostly in the north of Spain. They are calling it that fashionable term "explosive cyclogenesis" which I don't quite understand.  I suppose though, that is why we had such strange weather in Montrondo. Later Storm Helena would replace Gabriel. 

We had a quite dinner and watched the news - mostly about the taxi driver strike in Madrid and the situation in Venezuela. Again we went to bed early.

Tuesday came and it was raining and would do so all morning. It was a dark and gloomy day and a day to stay indoors.
It was a dark, wet and gloomy day in Montrondo on Tuesday.
In fact I did stay indoors most of the day, skipping my walk. The bad weather didn't seem to bother the cows I saw visiting the field behind our house. I saw them grazing in the sleet and wind and felt rather sorry for them.
Cows grazing in the sleet in the fields behind our house on Tuesday afternoon
In the afternoon Manolita invited me over for coffee. Josefa, another villager, was there and we had a great chinwag over coffee and delicious biscuits and chocolates for a good hour or two. It was lovely to catch up. This area of Spain is very rural and sparsely populated, yet Manolita who lives alone lives a very full life. She goes to gym classes once a week, walks nearly every day, takes part in a theater group and travels extensively in Spain at least once a year. She is definitely the heart and soul of the village.

I wasn't at all hungry for dinner but of course we ended up eating again - salad with something and then sprawled on the sofa to watch the news. Oli wasn't on TV that day as she given time off after travelling to and from Zaragoza where she covered the news of the flooding of the Ebro River.

That night we switched off the light quite late after watching a disturbing documentary about religious sects in the USA that are against medical care. Believers are covered by law and not obliged to take their children to a doctor when they are ill. Healing apparently can only come from prayer and through God. That sounds great but it isn't because many many children and adults have died because of this belief. This is taking freedom to unacceptable extremes. America is rather a strange country is all I can say after seeing the documentary.

Wednesday was our last full day in Montrondo and we would enjoy it immensely. Our there was quiet and relaxing. Above all I was finally able to write and nearly   the biography of my Father which was pretty impossible to do at home with so many interruptions. I shared it with my oldest friend from St. Josephs (my school) Amanda. I wanted her feedback and some corrections. I loved her reaction which was so positive. She told me it brought back so many memories of our childhood, after all she had lived through most of them from the time we met as children aged 11 at school. I do miss my oldest and best friend who I haven't seen for so long.

That morning we woke up to sunshine; amazing. I prepared our lunch, a Spanish warm winter dish called "fabada"  which is really a butter bean stew. It took over 2 hours to cook but was well worth the time as it was just delicious.
Bean stew, a sort of "fabada"
Once it was ready, we went off for our walk at about midday. It was very frosty and there was a sprinkling of snow on the ground but not much. We met no one on our walk, not even my horses and pony which were high up on the hills behind Murias de Paredes. The photo illustrating this week's post is of me  on the old path from Montrondo. I needed one for this blog and Eladio obliged. Of course I had to have Pippa with me. She was well wrapped up in her red jumper as you can see in the picture below.
Eladio and little Pippa on our walk on Wednesday morning
We came back feeling refreshed and also hungry and we ate the stew with gusto while we watched the lunch time news. Tension is rising in Venezuela and things are not looking good. In Madrid the taxi strike continued with no solution yet.

Just as we were finishing lunch, snow began to fall in Montrondo and Eladio who knows, said that it was a proper snow fall. It was and it continued snowing until about 9 pm. Joy of joys. You are probably wondering why I like snow so much. I think the answer resides in my childhood in Yorkshire where I lived with my family in Bradford from the age of 7 in 1964 until I left for University aged 18. We had lots of snow in the winter and it always meant either no school which was great or going sledging with my brother and friends. We used to get massive snow falls, so much so the buses couldn't run. Thankfully, or not thankfully, we lived near enough for me to walk to school. Once it snowed  a lot and I got to school hoping they would announce it was to close and send us home. But they didn't. Thus I took matters in my own hands  - I was a very naughty girl in those days - and spread the rumour we had been told to go home. Thus the girls began to leave walking up Cunliffe Road to Manningham Lane, me leading them, while our teachers Mrs. Russel Jones and Mrs Plunket Jones could be heard crying: "girls come back, girls come back" but it was too late we had all gone by the then and weren't coming back. I think they never found out that I was the instigator of the prank and all thanks to the snow hahaha.

It carried on snowing and at around 5.30 Manolita sent me a whatsapp to tell me to meet at Josefa's house for coffee for another lovely natter with our neighbours here. Eladio preferred to stay behind reading his book about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. I wrapped up well and delightedly stepped outside into the snow and everything looked so beautiful, white and peaceful and I had to take lots of pictures. Here is a selfie for starters. Don't I look happy?
Happy that snow finally came 
The village looked lovely in the falling snow as you can see here.
The fields of Montrondo covered in snow with the church in the distance
I had to have one of the house too with the snow falling. Here it is. The one in the middle with the balcony is ours. The ones next to it belong to Eladio's siblings.
Our house when it was snowing on Wednesday
It's only a few metres to Josefa and her husband Jose Antonio's house but I arrived wet and covered in snow but  didn't mind at all. We sat in their big old kitchen, Montrondo style, with the heat coming from their "aga". Again we had a lovely chinwag and talked about the village in the past when it used to snow much more and the boys, including Eladio,  would ski to school on home made wooden skis.

As I stepped outside when we left, it was still snowing but already dark and it felt magical. I had to have more photos, including one of Manolita in the snow. Here she is.
Manolita in the snow in Montrondo on Wednesday afternoon
I came home to find Eladio still reading although he had stopped to move the car outside the front of our house so we would be able to leave in the morning. He needn't have bothered as later it rained in the night and all trace of snow had gone when we woke up on Thursday morning.

We were to leave quite early on Thursday to be home on time for lunch with my Father and also on time to see Lucy and say goodbye.  We left at about 10.15, stopped just once on the way for refreshments and were home by just before 3 pm, too late to have lunch with my Father.

Lucy was about to leave and said a very fond goodbye to my Father, she was crying in fact and telling him how much she loved him. With a heavy heart I drove her to the bus stop and we said goodbye. We will miss her a lot but I wish her great happiness now that she is returning to Paraguay. There on arrival she will see her granddaughter for the first time. She will also be going back to celebrate her daughter's wedding and I look forward to seeing the photos. The other Lucy who seems to be doing a good job will be filling in in the meantime.

We came home to find the central heating was not working properly. That meant the two top floors were freezing. However, I shouldn't complain about the cold or the weather here as it's much more extreme in other places. My cousins in New Zealand are suffering a heat wave but the biggest weather news came from the US, mostly from the Mid West including Chicago. Over there they were experiencing a "polar vortex" - cold winds coming from the North Pole. Chicago for example,  was suffering with temperatures nearing 40c below zero. That could be colder than even Siberia. I have a friend and ex Motorola colleague,  Carrie W who lives there. That day she posted a photo of herself all wrapped up and about to take her dogs for a walk, also suitably wrapped up. She said it took more time to wrap up than the actual walk. I don't know how they dared to go out. More than 20 people people have died from the bitter cold and the advice is not to leave one's house. I wouldn't. Here is Carrie all dressed up to go out. Imagine!
My friend Carrie in Chicago on Thursday!
We didn't go for a walk, but stayed at home and settled in. I had work to do as well. Also that afternoon, I dug out the photos I would be using for my Father's biography. Here for example is a photo of his parents on their wedding day on 15th Janary January 1918 in Uphill (Somerset) near Western-Super-Mere.  My Grandfather, John Collins Lloyd, is dressed in his WW1 uniform where he was a chaplain or "padre". I love the photo. Don't you?
My English grandparents on their wedding day, January 1918. 
I also dug out a photo of my Father when he was 13 about to turn 14 when he attended Clifton College Cambridge. He was so good looking. I added photos taken at the same time of his siblings, Raymond aged 10 and Gloria aged 6. Sadly Raymond died of polio aged 16 and Gloria died in an air crash with all her family in May 1971. RIP
My Father and his siblings, Bristol May 1933
Olivia meanwhile was in a small town in the nearby province of Avila, called Navarredonda. We once went to the lovely Parador there with my Father. It was at this Parador that Spain's Constitution was partly written and signed.  Her story that day was to explain how the village, which is in one of the coldest areas of Spain, prepares for the cold. Here she is preparing the report.
Olivia and her colleague editing their TV report on Thursday
Later we would see her report live on her programme España Directo. In the photo she is with a farmer and some stunning cows.  Well, at least I think they are stunning. Apparently they are very well fed and lots of the meat is sold to countries like Saudi Arabia!
Oli live on TVE from Navarredonda Avila on Thursday evening
After watching España Directo, it was time for dinner. We had some leftover soup which did wonders as it was so cold in the kitchen. Thankfully the boiler men or whatever they are called would come the next day to make the necessary reparations.

Friday come and it would be a busy day. I never stopped. In between writing my Father's biography, or rather adding more information and  photos, I had a long conference call with one of my customers and now have sudden and urgent work to do. There was not much time for anything else although I did accompany Eladio in the morning to pick up his Volvo after some very costly repairs. Poor Eladio had to deal with the central heating and later in the afternoon with the repairing of the water filter in the kitchen.

In the afternoon I spent a few hours with my Father asking him all sorts of questions about his life, specific dates, etc and he knew every one of them. This was for the biography so I had to get all my facts right. I also found out about the ships he served on in the War, HMS Wells and HMS Mansfield.
My Father Charles Courtenay Lloyd just after signing up with the Royal Navy. Photo taken Bristol 1940
My Father in 1941 just after he became an officer. 
Scotland 1941 by his first ship, the HMS Wells
He was a liaison officer with the latter which was loaned to the exiled Norwegian Navy where he was on board. He even remembered the name of the captain, Ulstrup as well as some of the officers on board: Holst, Haug and Fjellheim. Here my Father would participate in the Liberation of Norway until the Nazis finally surrendered in 1945 and gradually left the country.

The greatest achievement of the HMS Mansfield was the  raid of  a  German run fish oil factory in Norway Oksfjord near Hammerfest. He told me the"O" had a line down it while he spelled out the  names. He remembers too the view of the snow capped mountains above the fjord when they landed. He also told me the locals gave out post cards to the ship crew saying "Takk for besoket" (thank you for the visit!):

When I asked him where his Father was born in Anglesy, he told me it was in Holyhead and gave me the exact address: 19 Alderley Terrace. I looked it up on Google and found it is still there and is on sale. While going through his things, including his sister Gloria's WRAC (Women's Royal Army Corps) Army book we found ration coupons and many letters he and his sister had written to each other during the War and even a diary written by Raymond. 

My Father's sister Gloria's army book when she was with the WRACs in WW2 what a ind. 

I must read them. Later that night, out of interest, I looked up the Vicarage in Henbury on Station Road belonging to St. Mary's Parish (Bristol) where he had lived as a child because that afternoon we had seen photos of the family there. Very very sadly I read it had been burnt down this last summer after various arson attacks. When I read that, I burst into tears, tears of sadness and frustration. It was so sad to see a picture of the destroyed vicarage where my Father and his sister and brother played happily on the lawn. They are all gone now, apart from him, even the Vicarage where they were so happy. It felt like a curse. I think writing the whole biography has made me very sad about so many deaths; his brother Raymond, his parents too early in life, his sister Gloria and all her family who I miss to this day, and of course my brother George, my dearest Mother and Aunty Masha. They are all gone and only my Father and I are here today. But we remember. We shall never forget because they live on in our hearts.

After a long time with my Father, I had to rush out with Eladio to do the shopping which felt so mundane after delving into his past but it had to be done.  We didn't go on our walk that day as the weather was foul. I was gutted to see that there was a very heavy snowfall in Montrondo that day. It's Murphy's law. I wanted snow and the heavy snow fall came after we left. Bah, not fair.
This weekend's real snowfall in Montrondo - the one we missed. 
Oli missed appearing on TV with her live report on Friday as the cameraman went to the wrong town! Poor girl. We would see her on Saturday, for our French lesson and then she would join us for lunch.

We had a later dinner and then watched a film which was right up my street as it was about WW2. Called The Zookeeper's wife, it tells the true story of how she and her husband, the owner of the zoo in Warsaw, hid and saved hundreds of Jews during the war. It was very sad but a beautiful story.

I fell asleep late and feeling sad.

Saturday came. I had to do my French homework all about indirect and direct speech. Funnily enough our French teacher had lost her voice so the lesson was a bit difficult for her. Homework for next week is on the subjunctive. Remember "puisse", "sois", etc. Pity I never listened back at St. Joseph's College.

We had a healthy lunch where I gleaned more information from my Father. If only I could tape him but it's difficult. In the afternoon, I carried on reading, had a cup of tea and then went for a walk with Eladio. It was freezing and was actually quite unpleasant because of the wind.

I came back to spend more time with my Father sorting out his old letters and photos. Amazingly I found quite a few from my brother George to me from our University years. They will be lovely to read if a little sad.

Today is Sunday and I have work to do for my customer for a press release and press breakfast next week which seems as though it will fall on my birthday, Friday 8th Feb. It's funny but for the last 2 years I had a press event on my birthday and it looks like there will be another one this year.

Anyway friends and readers, I must sign off now, print a copy for my Father and leave you until next week.

Cheers all
Masha


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