Open Writing

After our lovely holiday in Madeira, we went for an English holiday in July to the Isle of Wight at Bembridge, staying at a Warners hotel. Here we were very lucky to have a very cheerful and attentive waiter named Antony who was often slipping us extra ice creams for dessert.

Back home in August Les went to Stanmore Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital for an M.R.I. scan and X ray on his shoulders, and was seen by a Mr. Simon Lambert said to be the finest replacement joint surgeon in the country. It turned out that he also had wood turning as his hobby like Les, and spent a few moments talking about that.

He talked about a shoulder replacement for Les, but as he said the recovery time was at least a year, Les did not agree to that.

In September I began a new group researching and writing about 18th century history, and some ten members of the U3A met regularly in our front room.

In October when we went to Glasgow with a party of the Harrow U3A, where we not only saw the furniture made by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Hill House, but also visited Holyrood House outside Edinburgh, and then Robert Owen’s 18th century Mill House and village at New Lanark, where his cotton-spinners lived. He made sure their children were educated.

One evening in Glasgow we went out to a restuarant dinner and tried haggis, which did not agree with me at all.

Val and family went over to spend that Christmas in Belgium with Anne Marie’s brother’s family and we went to Hitchin and stayed at our daughter Cathy’s house.

In the early part of 2005 I was still going to my Keep Fit class in Pinner. One of the other members was a former member of the A.T.A. (Air Transport Auxiliary) in the second world war, transporting planes from the aircraft factories to the airfields.
For some time I had been having Meniere’s attacks, feeling dizzy for two or three hours at a time, and on one occasion and without any warning found myself thrown backwards on to the bathroom floor. I had given up going to my Keep Fit class since collapsing on the floor on February 2nd, in the hall we used, and being taken by ambulance to Northwick Park hospital for the best part of a day before being allowed to go home.

In July 2005 we celebrated our Diamond Wedding with a lunch party for our family at a hotel in Stratford-on-Avon. We received a card from Her Majesty, and Anne Marie brought a lovely cake made by a friend of theirs, and a floral table decoration.

We went to the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre to see ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and followed on from that weekend by going to Holme Lacey in the Cotswolds. While there we spent days at Bourton-on-the-water, Ledbury, Lower Slaughter, Brockhampton and Stow-on-the-Wold where we saw the visiting Westminster Morris men dancing in the market square. Leaving Holme Lacey we went on to stay for three nights in an Oxfordshire hotel in Burford.

In late July a Harrow Times newspaper photographer came to our house to take pictures of us - the Diamond Wedding couple - which appeared in the paper.

During the month of August Cathy’s husband Graham was in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead fighting against leukemia. Sadly he died on September 4th just eighteen months after their wedding in Sri Lanka.

In September we took Cathy and her eldest daughter Liz with us to Littlecote House for a break after all the trauma.
In October Les had Mr.Burke, a private surgeon, perform an op on him for the removal of a benign growth in his chest.
I cancelled my 18th century history class in July, after only one year, because I could never be sure I would be alright from unannounced dizzy attacks.

That Christmas we happily spent with Cathy and family at Val and Anne Marie’s house in Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire.