Memories...

This is my most recent picture of my Mum and Dad taken on Christmas Eve.  82 and 86 respectively they still know how to have a bit of fun and join in with the spirit of the day.  We keep Sundays as a family day taking it in turns to cook a meal and occasionally going out.  As they get older and with cataract operations to contend with neither relish driving at night and particularly when the weather is bad so we have sort of agreed that when it is my turn to cook if the weather is awful we will pack up the meal and take it down to them rather than they drive up to us.  As John says, at this time of year the weather can change so quickly and we have low cloud and rolling mists which make driving conditions very unpleasant.  We would hate for them to get up here and then get stuck, not that we mind them staying over but we know they like to get home and make sure their cat is okay.

After the storms of last night I thought we were going to have to invoke this arrangement!  When mum text in the morning it was lashing it down here but gradually the weather improved so that by the time they did arrive it was actually quite pleasant and we knew their trip back later on would be fine.

Our meal today was slow cooked honey and mustard chicken thighs which I had more or less cooked yesterday, thankfully before the power cut, served with hot coleslaw and green beans and hasselback roast potatoes.

To follow was my rather unusual looking lemon egg custard tart with wayward pastry which ended up tasting a million times better than it looked!

As is our routine we play half our game of Noms before our meal, have our meal and resume the game then chill out for a while before Mum and Dad return home.

John had the woodburner lit to make sure it was nice and warm in the lounge and that, combined with the food and a glass or two of Ruby Cabernet left me feeling rather sleepy after they had gone which at least meant John got to watch the football in peace!

Having managed, this week, to get my Mum and Dad back in touch with a very dear friend in the UK our conversation whilst Dad snoozed was one of reminiscence and in particular about my childhood and the two occasions when we went to Austria with my Mum's brother Uncle Gordon and his Austrian wife Aunty Margaret.

Both times Dad and Gordon took it in turns to drive - a journey that was not without incident and singing - a lot of singing because one of our holidays coincided with the release of the film The Sound of Music, much of which was filmed in areas we passed through or visited.  This is still, to this day, probably my all time favourite film.

I remember eating Butter Osborne biscuits in the ferry from Dover and I remember a long tunnel somewhere near Antwerp and I remember being stuck on tram lines in one city with a tram coming towards us and I also remember we traversed the Brenner Pass and Mum looked back and said that she wouldn't want to go on that bit of road not realising that is exactly where we had been!

I remember that having driven all the way to our destination my Uncle managed to knock the exhaust off of our car as he entered the garden of the property where we were staying.

I remember my Dad having the hangover of all hangovers after some wine tasting!

I remember my Aunt's father had a homburg hat and handlebar moustache and a growth in his neck which frightened the living daylights out of me (I was only six at the time) and I remember my Aunt's mum always wore a headscarf, in fact all the women seemed to wear headscarves.

I remember the smell of fresh coffee and my introduction to duvets.  I remember going to a flat in Vienna to visit my Aunt's brother or sister and falling in love with a little doll in the display cabinet which was dressed in pink and white crocheted clothes which they gave me when I left.  I remember the families assembling so that I could sing and dance to them.  I remember having fun with children who didn't speak a work of my language nor me theirs.  I remember going to outside swimming pools and being the only ones there and I remember Dad teaching my sister to dive and inadvertently doing a triple somersault in the pike position and doing his back in.

There are a million other memories but most of all I remember they were the most fantastic holidays ever at a time when it was rare for people to venture abroad under their own steam - maybe it is because of this amazing pioneering spirit of adventure I ended up living abroad - who knows?  If you had told me when I was six that this was going to happen I would never have believed you - I would have been singing Edelweiss to the masses clutching my pink and white doll from the display cabinet!