Playing at houses in Montrondo, Russian folk music, the oldest man in the world dies and how I remember the first landing on the moon.

Ludmila Zikina celebrating her 80th birthday just a few days ago on 10th July and being presented flowers by Svetlana Medvedeva, the Russian premiere's wife. Her death came as a shock to this music loving nation.
Hi again

As you will have read from my last entry, we spent some time again in Montrondo last week. I took my pc and with a slow connection was able to work from the kitchen in the old house whilst Eladio and his sister Pili and husband Andrés painted the staircase and ceiling and doors all in desperate need of a new coat of paint and thorough spring cleaning. We also went to receive some more furniture from Ikea, basically the two chests of drawers for our room and the room the girls sleep in. The rooms are looking great and now that our accommodation is so appealing we know we will be going back more often than before.
Eladio painting in Montrondo.
Pili and Andrés, the quarrelsome but loveable couple pausing from painting for this photo.
Montrondo was very quiet and only woke up while we were there when Ceferino and Livia celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They arrived at the church in an open top car decorated with flowers, something probably never seen in sleepy Montrondo. Afterwards they invited the whole village (some 50 people, half being there only for the summer) to drinks and food at their home which was also decorated for the occasion. Maybe if Eladio and I make it to our 50th we might consider doing the same.
Ceferino and Livia's 50th wedding celebrations last week in Montrondo.
I was chief cook as I’m no great painter and also because I had to be connected most of the time arranging for an important press release to be sent out and continue preparations for a big event I am planning for the beginning of September in Santander. In Montrondo we all tend to have huge appetites perhaps because of the mountain air and I mostly served them appetising cooked dishes typical of the area such as lentils with chorizo or “cocido” with chick peas. There are no shops in Montrondo or in any of the surrounding villages so once we had run out of supplies I had to shop at the van that comes twice a week and felt like a real villager.
Shopping in Montrondo is unique.
Lettuces, potatoes, eggs and bread are easily acquired though and I would walk down to Primo, my brother-in-law's place every day to pick a fresh lettuce from his vegetable patch for our salad. It tasted so good. I think we haven't left him very many and I hope he doesn't mind. I did see some new ones sprouting though.
Genaro, Primo's neighbour's vegetable patch in Montrondo.
Sometimes it felt like playing at houses and actually we all enjoyed our stay much more than when we are all there and the group grows to nearly 30 people and cooking becomes a nightmare Toño and Dolores were with us at the beginning and then Pili and Andrés took their place.
Eladio and Toño enjoying being together in Montrondo, outside Toño's newly built house.
We only went out once and that was to dinner in Senra with Pili and Andrés. There is not much choice so we went to practically the only restaurant within 50km, to Cumbres de Senra in the nearby village of the same name. You have to book for them to open the kitchen and we were the only diners! In the evenings we would work off all the delicious food with a brisk walk to Murias and back under a wonderful starlit sky. Throughout our stay we were accompanied too by Eladio’s mother who, is, of course, at her happiest in her beloved Montrondo.
I took the opportunity to take lots of photographs of the village with my new Canon Ixus 970 camera which is proving to be a treasure. Here you can see the whole collection.

Suzy stayed at home, studying and cooking for my Father who for once preferred not to come to Montrondo. Oli had moved to her new flat and when we came back we missed her again as she had gone off to the Music Festival in Benicassim with friends from work. We ourselves will be going away again next week on Wednesday for our much awaited trip down memory lane, with my Father to Yorkshire. Hopefully we will see her on Tuesday night at least.

Of note since I last wrote it was Bastille Day on 14th July so I hope the French enjoyed their “fête nationale francaise”. Of much more interest to me this week was the passing away of Ludmila Zikina, considered the people’s artist of the USSR as the most popular and loved singer of Russian folk songs in the last century. She was 80 and died of a heart attack and I know that the Russian people will miss her dearly. Amazingly she sang in public only recently and it was at the Eurovision Song contest in Moscow in the spring. Thankfully her songs will live on forever.
The "young" Zikina probably when she was at the height of her popularity. I think you could safely call her "the voice of Russia".
I didn’t remember her name until my father showed me her obituary in El Mundo. That got me interested and I was soon surfing the web for her songs, most of which have a place in my heart from my singing days and family music heritage which was brought to me by my Mother and dear Aunty Masha. I used to sing and very well, had a superb soprano voice which I ruined by smoking. But when I was in my teens I would sing for my Aunt’s choir and on stage solo at the Norwich Russian courses. So when I listed to Zikina sing Течет река Волга (the Volga flows as my father translated for me yesterday), those days come back to me. I for one have ordered some lovely Russian folk music from Amazon.com which will help me remember even more vividly my singing days and more importantly wake up the Russian blood in me.

Not long after Ludmila Zikina died in the country which represents half of my origin, in the UK, where the other half comes from, the world’s oldest man died at the age of 113. He wasn’t just any man, he was the First World War veteran Henry Allingham who became the world's oldest man in June 2009 following the death of the previous holder of the title in Japan, according to the Guinness World Records. Henry Allingham, who was one of only two surviving First World War veterans in the UK and the last surviving founder member of the RAF, had celebrated his 113th birthday on June 6.
Henry Allingham in 1916. Fancy having lived 113 years. I bet he never thought he would be famous when he posed for this picutre.
In his own words, he owed his longevity to: "cigarettes, whisky and women". This is him on his birthday in 2006. He may well have still been smoking and drinking but not much else judging by these photos.

Neither Henry Allingham nor Ludmila Zikina will live to witness the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing tomorrow but it will have marked their lives as it did mine. It happened on 20th July 1969 when I was 12. I remember my Mother staying up all night to watch it on the television. I was quite interested but too young to stay up. I certainly remember the moon walk by Armstrong and his famous words which I will never forget: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. I find it difficult to fathom that it might have been a hoax as some people aledge and prefer to think it wasn’t. It’s funny how I remember the first moon landing but none of the subsequent ones. What I do remember on that day were my preparations for the Girl Guide camp I was going to. I think it was to Baildon Moor.
The first moon landing on 20th July 1969. No one who witnessed that moment will ever forget it.
The world will be celebrating the anniversary tomorrow. One family will not and that is the Moroccan family who lost their wife and daughter Dalila who died recently in Madrid due to swine flu. She was pregnant and as she died, her tiny son Ryan lived which was the family’s saving grace. And then last week, little Ryan died too after an inexperienced 22 year old Spanish nurse fed him through the wrong tube. The family is devastated and most of Spain is in shock with the news.
Baby Ryan being buried by his bereaved family in Mqid, their native town in Morocco this week.
Swine flu has not gone away and I read today that it is most virulent with pregnant women and small babies, as was the case of Dalila. It's supposedly because their immune system is down so that their bodies don't reject the baby growing and then, of course, the babies catch it from their mothers. I'm sure doctors don't describe it that way but that is how I understand it.

I don’t want to end on a sad note, so I thought I ought to tell you that I made “salmorejo” yesterday. And what is that you non Spaniards may ask? Salmorejo is like thick gazpacho and comes from the Córdoba region. This is what mine looked like yesterday.
My salmorejo was delicious. It was the first time I made it but it won't be the last.
And here is the recipe: 1.5kg very ripe (pealed) tomatoes, 200gr of old bread soaked in water, a piece of garlic (optional) and loads of oil (some recipes say 250ml). Of course you must add salt and vinegar and the final taste depends often on the amount of these two ingredients. You just have to liquidise all the ingredients so the mixture is completely smooth and leave it to cool in the fridge. When you serve it, it is typical to add diced boiled egg and Spanish ham. This is a great summer starter, similar to gazpacho of course, but thicker.

And on that tasty note, I leave you until next week when I will be in my home country. More about that in my next entries.

Cheers
Masha

Swine flu, Spanish cuisine, a state visit from France, the Queen emails bloggers, visitors from abroad, a very big party and less social networking

No more kissing due to the swine flu outbreak this week in Mexico.
Hello again,

Today is Tuesday. I normally write on a Sunday but last week and especially the weekend, have been hectic as you will find out if you read on.

My headline starts off with swine flu which is the world hot topic of the moment. It seems it broke out in Mexico this weekend and panic waves have gone round the world as already 80 have died. The first case in Europe was here in Spain and that was big news yesterday. I’m not sure whether it’s a case of panic mongering as with bird flu. Only time will tell. Flu epidemics of different varieties seem to come to a peak every 20 odd years and I heard today on the radio that the famous “Spanish flu” which actually wasn’t Spanish at all, had killed 40 million people in 1918 and 1919.

Who probably won’t be cooking too much pork right now are the 4 Spanish chefs who have been included in the top 10 of the prestigious San Pellegrino 50 world’s best restaurants ranking for this year which was announced last week. Top spot went to Ferran Adriá for the third year running and his El Bulli restaurant. I just checked their website to include their link here and saw what I expected. It is fully booked for quite some time now, plus it only opens from June to December. I wonder if I will ever get to go? So well done for Spanish cuisine, in my view, the best in the world.
The amazing Ferran Adriá, the world's top chef.
Who will be enjoying Spanish cuisine this week will be the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy and his glamorous ex model and singer wife; a sort of modern day JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy who are here on a state visit. The French and Spanish, like the English and French or any neighbour countries have a love hate relationship and one of the countries always considers themselves superior and in this case it is France.

The glamorous French (or French and Italian as Carla Bruni is actually Italian) were received by the King and Queen of Spain.
France though has had to put up with Spain winning the Tour of France or the Roland Garros tennis championships for some time now and I imagine that beating them at cuisine with 4 Spaniards in the top ten versus only two of their countrymen must hurt somewhat.

Any way they are here and causing a lot of media impact. The emphasis so far has been on rather unimportant issues if you consider the crisis we are in. There was comment that Carla Bruni did not curtsy correctly to the Queen of Spain. However what really filled up the newspapers were images of Carla Bruni and Princess Letizia (the wife of the crown prince Felipe and ex TV news commentator) together. The Daily Telegraph coined the encounter as Carla Bruni meeting her fashion match in Spain’s Princess Letizia. They are nearly equally tall, equally thin and wore very similar outfits.
Carla Bruni and Letizia Ortiz, the fashion match!
And in England this week, the Queen, softening in her old age or keeping up with the times, bless her, has sent her first official email to young bloggers to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth. When I read things like this, I wonder if it’s because she’s got a great new PR officer or maybe is influenced by her young and technology savvy grandsons. I suspect it’s the latter as it has been said that she shares video clips with them on You Tube and actually texts them. I’m not sure whether I believe she does this unaided. But, however, she does it, she is definitely keeping up with the times.
The lovely Queen of England. I can hardly imagine her texting or writing e-mails but she does (although it will be done for her:-))
Workwise life was quite hectic last week, mostly because I had two very early mornings. One when I got up at 7 am to get to a 10 o’clock meeting but had to turn back home at around 9 as the traffic was horrendous. The other was for an 8 o’clock conference call with Stockholm. How I hate early mornings, unless they are getting back from a dinner party at the weekend – but more on that later.

I got a feather in my cap or rather good work mileage as I managed an interview with Yoigo on the national TV news of La Cuatro last week. It came out 3 times and the media value is astronomical, plus the fact that you could never buy that time. That actually made my week as it is not often a company, name and logo, are included in the news here. In fact most programmes avoid the mentioning as they consider it advertising. It was all about the price war and Yoigo’s mission since it arrived is to start off that war and continue fuelling it.

This week we launched a great new product, mobile data for pc useage with prepaid cards at a great price and capacity. The news here is that we also used Facebook for the first time as one of our media tools to communicate the new product.

Work this week was made even fun or eventful with a visit of a Finnish delegation who were interested in the Yoigo story. I always love meeting Finns and am very fond of the country as you know from my times with Nokia.

And very unusually we got a visit from some “Brits” from the UK, from Manchester, a place or area close to my heart because of my Yorkshire roots. They were here to do a piece for a corporate film and I thoroughly enjoyed their very British banter and wonderful sense of humour.

The visitors from abroad don’t only refer to the Finns and the Brits at work but also to my best friend Amanda and her husband Andy who came to stay on Wednesday. We all go back a long way, to my St. Joseph’s College school days in Bradford. Andy was my Father’s pupil at Bradford Grammar school. I think I have told their story on my blog before but in summary they were young lovers at sweet 16 who split up at University. They married other people and then only a few years ago found each other and now live happily ever after. That is the short version. The longer one is much more romantic.
Andy and Amanda, my dear English friends.
They were here on a mission, to find accommodation and sign up for a Spanish language course in August in the lovely University town of Salamanca. So we housed them for the beginning and end of their trip, the end coinciding with this weekend and Suzy’s 25th birthday party.

We had more visitors too last week who also stayed on for Suzy’s bash. The girls’ cousins, Marta, Laura and Paula and Verónica, Paula’s friend stopped off at our house on their way to and back from Liverpool. My English friends and me too, were quite astonished in the interest in Liverpool. For me it’s a rather depressing industrial town in the north of England. For them, however, it is the fascinating birth town of the Beatles and home to that Football Club, Liverpool United, which has become important to the Spaniards because of Rafa Benitez, the coach and players like Torres (or El niño as he is called).

So on Wednesday night we had an Anglo Spanish dinner for 10 which was great fun.
Dinner for 10 on Wednesday night.
Finally the weekend came and Suzy’s part surprise 25th birthday bash too. Here we were a team of Ana, Juli, Oli and I and we created a whole lot of surprises for Suzy’s Saturday birthday lunch barbecue to which about 50 of her friends came! She was just told to make sure people came and to make the cakes as she’s the specialist in that field. She was also told to keep out of the garage where all the surprises were kept.
Suzy, Oli,Eladio and the cousins during the party.
We surprised her with badges for everyone with their names, helium gas filled balloons, a specially designed t-shirt and even a candy floss machine.
People's badges made for the party.
Frankly a good time was had by all as you can see in these videos. The first one is of the helium gas filled balloon effect (when you take in the air and then talk your voice changes) and the second one is of the birthday cake moment.
A view of the birthday party
The party went on very late, but we adults, getting tired of people half our age, made our way to Madrid to meet Andy’s friend Alexander for dinner at Casa Paco in La Latina. It took us half an hour to drive there and then an hour to find somewhere to park. I won’t go into detail of the forbidden u-turns we had to do to park but suffice it to say, if we hadn’t we might well have started dinner at 11 at night.

Dinner there was great as usual, specially the beef which Alexander boasts is the best in Spain. I would say it’s one of the best. Afterwards he took us to a Flamenco bar on the Cava Baja street as Andy is a lover of Spanish guitar playing. We went into a den of smoke and listened to Flamenco from authentic gypsy men for what turned out to be at least 3 hours. Thus we didn’t get home until 4 in the morning, quite a record for us. I’m afraid I paid for the sin with a heavy headache the next morning.
The flamenco guitar player
Sunday was quiet and filled with lunch making for 9, as the cousins were still here too, as well as a walk with Norah. It was also the day I spent most time talking to my lovely English friends. Their visits are rare but very cherished.

The final note for this blog is about me rationing my social networking. I must admit I was getting heavily addicted to Facebook and Twitter. Sandra commented on Facebook last week “How does Masha find so much time to be on FB and Twitter? There has to be more to life than this!” which of course got me thinking. Then talking to Andy about it he was making fun of Twitter and the banal comments like “I’ve just sneezed” which also got me thinking. I actually posted this comment the day after: “wonders whether people would be interested to know that she has just sneezed. Is this what Twitter and FB are all about, just banal stuff? Since then I have decided to ration myself to one comment a day. So far, I’ve kept my own promise.

And that my friends, is it for this week, except to say, happy 25th birthday darling Suzy as it is actually today. Here is a picture of Suzy and her cake during the family lunch today.

Till next week
Cheers to you all.