Lonicera's World, Images & Stories

Tales from Argentina - Tormo the Cranky Donkey

2012-01-21T12:52:00.003Z

Until the age of thirteen I spent all my summer holidays on a farm in an idyllic setting, the hills of Córdoba, in Argentina. It was run by relatives who sought to supplement their modest income by having paying guests. The fees were ridiculously low, and it was customary to bring victuals with us from Buenos Aires to help with the meals – typically a side of beef or pork, a large container of honey or a truckle of cheese.

The location was remote; when you arrived at the nearest village, you enquired as to recent weather for the last part of the journey up to the farm, and whether the streams would be in full flood or the road muddy and impassable in anything less than a 4x4 vehicle.

It was all part of the excitement of feeling you were almost there. There were 14 streams to cross – or rather, there were some streams which you crossed several times. Either they had sandy bottoms and you prayed you wouldn’t get stuck if the water was high, or they were stony but the road ascended steeply the other side, and you fretted in case your little car wouldn’t manage to cough and splutter its way onward.

After an hour of painfully slow progress sloshing in and out of streams with everybody in the car counting them one by one, and noting whether the natural landmarks had changed – a tree burnt down, a large familiar rock submerged where last year it had risen, bare and dry out of the water –

we would finally glimpse our first view of the house and raise a cheer, late as it was and tired as we were.

After the polite and fond greetings had been exchanged with the uncles, aunts and cousins staying there, for the house was large and welcoming, I would race round the house saying hello to the dogs, then down to the stream and over the bridge,

where I would stop to throw a stick and watch it come out on the other side, then round the hill to the stables and corrals where the horses were. After a brief chat with Don Aparicio, who was employed to look after the area and lived in a little house there, we lost no time in stroking the horses’ velvet noses, patting their backs and taking in their horsey smell once again. It was pure bliss.

In the distance over in the field I could see Old Tormo, the bad-tempered donkey, staring balefully, totally disinclined to come over to see what was going on, but there would be no time to seek him out (warily), because Aunt Marion didn’t take kindly to people arriving late for dinner.

The dining-room

Things would settle down in the next few days. We would go off on rides in the hills, looking for waterfalls and natural pools in which to swim, hunting for fresh watercress in the stream shallows, and stones covered in glittering mica,

or eating the peaches that grew wild in the hillsides around the house.

Sometimes we came across rattlesnakes and tarantulas, and pretended we were very brave – which we weren’t. There were pumas in the area too, and we were constantly warned about the behaviour of a female with young. I only ever saw a puma once in the distance on that farm in the years I spent there on holidays, but as children we lived with the real fear that we would come across one which would be convinced we were after her cubs. It stopped me venturing very far away from the house on my own.

Back at the corrals we would unsaddle and put the heavy saddles and reins back tidily on the wooden horses and hooks on the walls in the saddle room because there were always adults around to tell us off is we didn’t. Then we would take our horse to the stream and using rusty tins left there for the purpose, wash the animals and rub them down, finally taking them to the field where they could graze. And there would be Old Tormo, standing stubbornly in a corner, unwilling or unable to come over and join in.

(internet pic)

I had read the Ladybird series of beautifully illustrated children’s books, and by far and away my favourite story was Ned the Lonely Donkey,

...about a donkey who spent the days by himself in a field with no friends. Lonely and sad (and the illustrations reflected this superbly), he wandered from one animal and bird to another asking them how he could make friends.

None of their suggestions worked until a friendly magpie led him to a beautiful house in a wood where he told him there was a boy called Timothy who lived there. His parents were always away and he was usually to be seen all by himself looking glum.

Eventually the two met and made friends, and both were happy. Subsequently Ned would sometimes meet up with the magpie in the woods for a chat, and would tell him all about his adventures with Timothy and how happy they now were. The end.

The way the story is told is somewhat sad, not to mention the pictures; invariably I would weep with pity every time I re-read it.

So here was Old Tormo, a lonely donkey with no friends, just waiting for someone like me to be a Timothy and keep him company. The borderlines between fantasy and reality would become blurred, and unable to resist his naturally sad face. year after year I would go quietly up to him, making reassuring noises and carrying a mouthful of straw. “Come, Tormo” I’d whisper “I’ll be your friend”. He would eye me suspiciously, and as soon as I got to within 5 metres of him he would toss his head and run off, braying crossly.

Then one year a much younger donkey appeared, and Old Tormo became more cantankerous than ever. He wasn’t merely put out by the competition, he was absolutely furious. He kept to the far end of the field, only venturing nearer the saddle room when he needed the water trough. Any attempts to approach him were met by his rear hooves kicking high up in the air. We were warned not to venture too close and to keep to the other side of the fence.

One afternoon when we were down at the corrals looking at the horses, one of my cousins called us over to watch a drama that was unfolding. Old Tormo had happened on the water trough a couple of minutes before the younger donkey had ambled up and started drinking quietly at one end.

As soon as Tormo became aware of his rival’s presence, he gave out a harsh squeal, leaned over and bit him on his rump. It must have been a vicious bite, because the younger animal emitted a shrill scream and instinctively attempted to bite him back. Don Aparicio had appeared by this time and shouted at them in order to distract and separate them, but made the mistake of leaving the gate to the field open in his haste to sort out the dispute.

Tormo veered off towards the gate and raced through it, scattering us all. From a safe distance I watched in amazement as he did what no one could possibly have expected him to do. Instead of racing up the slope to get away from us, he galloped into the saddle room, his hooves clacking noisily on the stone floor.

He stood in the middle of the room, snorting heavily, his head turning this way and that. Then with astonishing skill he proceeded to drag a saddle off the wooden horse with his strong teeth. Argentine saddles consist of the basic frame made from raw hide, with a series of layers of blankets, sheepskin covers and the sweat pad beneath; all in all a hefty unit.

(internet)

Old Tormo made quick work of one of them, dragged it into the centre of the room, stood on it, stamped on it repeatedly and urinated copiously upon it with his head pointing at the ceiling, braying raucously, deafeningly and triumphantly all the while. We looked on with grudging admiration. He had certainly made his point.

From that day onwards the younger donkey was moved to another field and Tormo was left in peace to enjoy what was left of his retirement as grumpily as he pleased.

As for myself, I was never able to look upon my favourite Ladybird book in quite the same way again.

(internet)

-oOo-

Photo Finish -
from Lonicera's non-digital archive

In Valencia and Chiva, Spain

Valencia from the sea

And lastly, two pictures not taken by me

of people I care about:

Verónica Minieri, a good friend who visited England in 2010

(her adventures are recorded in this blog under

'Vero's Visit', link in left margin).

She is now happily expecting her second child.

...and my train-mad great nephew, 2 and a half,

being taken on a train ride and experiencing one of the

greatest thrills of his life so far:

presenting his ticket to the guard.

Taken by his mother, my niece.

-oOo-

What sort of a morning have you had, Jenny?

2012-01-14T11:59:00.007Z

Jenny, an office colleague, wrote this recently, and I'm grateful she's letting me use it...

Woken up at 7 by small child climbing into bed and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Kept awake by small child singing Peter Rabbit, Old McDonald, Roly Poly, Alphabet song, and showing me his scarecrow.
Also repeatedly told me he'd seen doggies dancing yesterday.
Then after farting loudly he told me he'd done a poo.
So far, all normal....

Then small child puts fingers in mouth and says "yuk".

Runs round landing for a while, comes back in bedroom.

Keeps lifting foot up and poking it. Tells me nappy is wet.
So I put the light on...

Small child's nappy has collapsed under strain, and has left a trail of poo lumps everywhere he's walked. Many have footprints in.

Also has poo all over feet, over hands where he's tried to wipe it off, and face where he's tasted it...
Small child given bath. Floor cleaned.

So after taking him to nursery, and getting self organised, finally leave for work about an hour late.

See a hitchhiker at the side of the road, and feel kind...
Hitchhiker gets in car. I realise a couple of minutes later that he smells.
Tells me he can't drive because he's just had a brain op.

Tells me he's a lot better now cos the world doesn't look hazy and he doesn't feel so bad anymore.

Tells me he was delusional. Tells me that he was extremely violent.

Tells me it's OK cos the shiner on his eye (which I hadn't noticed) was actually from rugby.

We're on the motorway now, and I'm eying up the oddly elongated shaped bag he's carrying, wondering if it's a gun.

He shows me the scar on the back of his head from his op.

Then he holds his hands out in front of me, grins and says -

“Look at my handcuff scars!”

Apparently it’s from where they handcuffed him to get him to hospital two months ago......
Drop him off at next junction with great relief.

Open windows to ventilate car.

Listen to radio news in case of stories of escaped criminals.

Get to work and realise no one here actually believes this really happened.
So thought I’d write it down in case I’m dreaming.
.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archives
.

Fuerteventura, Canary Islands
.

-oOo-

Pollyanna says...

2012-01-06T23:07:00.008Z

I read enough blogs to know that many bloggers like to remind themselves regularly that they have reasons to be cheerful/ grateful/thankful, and the more I read the more I like this positive attitude.

I watched the film Pollyanna over the Christmas period (a fairly recent UK TV version) and found myself smiling through a lot of it, mainly because it’s the teasing name by which I refer to my oldest and closest friend, Michèle – about whom much has been written (and photographed) on this blog. She’s relentlessly cheerful and positive, even driving me to grumble occasionally that she can just leave me alone to be grumpy once in a while. And yet… right now she has a very big reason to be cheerful and thankful for the fact that she’s relentlessly cheerful and thankful, as I’ll tell you.

My reasons to be positive right now are:

1. My blog. I’m loving every minute I write in it, whether it’s a story or a chatty post. I’m grateful that it’s read from time to time, and apologise to those who find my posts too long or too full of unnecessary information. The object is not to improve the stats, but to acquire readers who like what I write, or who agree with what I say, or enjoy the pictures I upload. Even if it takes years.

The lovely honeysuckle painting in the header is being used with the permission of the artist, Ann Harrison-Ray, for which I thank her very much. (Do take some time to browse through the lovely pictures on her site.) I’m grateful that Joyful of Snap That and her brother in Canada have brought to life the image I had in my head about the blog’s new look. I’m delighted with what they did, and I thank them warmly for the time they spent on it. A thank you goes too to Rahim Shabbir here in Bristol for making it all appear on the screen. He works in IT here at the hospital, has enjoyed getting involved, and hopes to further his knowledge of working with blog design.

2. Blurb.com. I have for some time been involved in another project which has nothing to do with the blog – transcribing the letters of Aunt Winifred, a great aunt who travelled to Argentina in 1912 and stayed there till 1919. During that time she wrote weekly letters home to her family in Oxford, commenting about the events of World War I, her daughters, the books she read, the world around her, and her beautiful garden. She was also an instinctive and gifted sketch artist, so her letters abound with amusing little drawings.

Sadly, they had to return to England in 1919 when her husband was drowned in a river which was in flood after heavy rains, dragging rocks and uprooting trees in its wake. He had been hurrying back home to his wife and babies riding on horseback by night and did not realise the danger posed by the storm. The detritus killed his horse too.

One of her two daughters, now in her nineties, asked me to make the letters up into a book, and over the holidays I’ve had the most absorbing time uploading them onto Blurb.com, with Aunt Winifred’s scanned sketches, some photographs and notes from the web on the events to which she refers, and about the books she read over those years. It’s reached 220 pages, and I’m so looking forward to handing over to her daughter the finished product – who thinks I’m going to bind typed pages together, and has no idea that one can self-publish to quite a high standard. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s the best present you could give anybody. I’ll take pictures of it for the blog when it’s finished.

3. New camera. I’m a spoiled brat and no mistake. My partner John has given me a new digital camera for Christmas, a big step up from my current one. It has a video facility, and I can’t wait to start practising with it, and with the macro lens which is on its way. The camera is said to be particularly good for sports shots requiring very fast shutter speeds. I’ll see if I can make the cats streak across the lawn...

4. Great Nephew. He is now a two and a half year-old little boy who is train mad. His Gorgeousness jumps about with delight when he is taken to a railway station, and he nearly swooned recently when it was arranged that a train driver should wave at him from his cabin while the train was stationary. He was standing on his grandfather’s lap at the window of the car and said doting relative reports that he had to hang on to him tight or he would have fallen out in his excitement. It was wonderful to catch up with him just before Christmas, particularly as it was obviously his first Christmas of absorbing the magic. Look at this picture taken by my niece...

5. Food consumption over Christmas. I was so engrossed with my aunt’s letters that I hardly stuck my nose out the door for nearly two weeks, and I certainly couldn’t be bothered to brave the rainy, windy elements to go out in the car looking for chocolate. The distraction factor also played its part, and consequently I didn’t eat much over the period, except of course on Christmas Day. Strangely, the less I ate the more restricted I felt, and I had to go very carefully anyway. I’ve lost a few pounds – nothing dramatic, but I’m pleased to learn that when distracted by other issues my brain seems to stop nagging me for the pleasure foods I normally crave. I loved being at home, and I strongly feel that the day I retire I shall gradually lose weight naturally. With the help of the band of course.

I leave the most important – and the best - to the last:-

6. Selina. Michèle’s younger daughter Selina is 25, and last October she was involved in a very serious car accident near her home in Argentina, as she was on her way to college. It was a head-on collision, and by a miracle the driver of the other car walked away without a scratch. Selina however suffered multiple injuries and remained in a coma.

The reaction among those who knew and cared about her was dramatic. Her three brothers and sister rallied round, and with her parents almost set up camp in the canteen of the hospital in Buenos Aires to which she had been taken. For the first few days there were a couple of hundred people milling about the hospital, all waiting for news, as one painful life-saving operation after another was performed upon the young girl. Michèle and her older daughter Nicole (my god daughter) remained by her bedside.

I asked Michèle in a phonecall whether the crowds of visitors and well-wishers were unintentionally adding to the stress, and she replied that on the contrary, they were buoying her up and keeping her going throughout the nightmare. Only two people were allowed with the patient at any one time, so the canteen had to suffice. But they came and stayed for many hours, they prayed and showered affection and support on the family or just kept them company, while Nicole kept us all updated on FaceBook.

When Selina had undergone the surgical interventions required for her recovery, she was moved to a rehabilitation centre in early December, and since then the task has begun in earnest to bring her out of her coma. The signs of recovery are all there, and she is gradually responding more, particularly in the last few days.

Loyally supported by Nicole, Michèle has been everybody’s rock. The rehabilitation centre’s rules are that a family member lives with the patient 24 hours a day to aid with recovery, and she has being singing to Selina, reading her stories and taking her around the grounds in a wheelchair several times a day. The family made her birthday in November a special day with birthday cake and guitar singing, and in December they decorated her room with a Christmas tree.

Her eyes are open; they can tell that she perceives what is going on around her, and not for a minute has my wonderful friend doubted that the recovery is going to happen. Michèle is like an express train going at full speed hardly looking left or right, and yet she’s aware of the possible difficulties looming ahead. She’s keeping a journal of the extraordinary journey on which they all find themselves, and marvels at the qualities this event has brought out in herself and those around her. A true modern day Pollyanna.

God bless Michèle, Nicole – and specially Selina.

Selina in 2011, by photographer unknown

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Linicera's non-digital archive

Argentina

Andes foothills in Salta

La Boca, Buenos Aires

Entre Ríos

Salta

Tucumán

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina – The Old Vauxhall

2011-12-31T12:30:00.002Z

When you find yourself thinking back to childhood, doesn’t the tape in your head automatically rewind to the same topics - the house(s) you lived in… the food you ate… the cars your parents had?

I’ll tell you one day about one of the houses, and the less I say about the food I consumed the better, since I’ve covered it pretty comprehensively in this blog – alas. However there is a car I’d like to tell you about, our black 1946 Vauxhall 12.

1946 Vauxhall 12 (internet)

Dad bought it in 1954 when I was a year old and it was of British manufacture, though the steering wheel was on the left hand side so it must have been made for export. He was the third or fourth owner, and none had been of the ‘careful’ variety, so it had seen better days. Its maximum speed was 60 km per hour, and my sister remembers Dad with his foot to the floor doing 58, and Mum shouting querulously at him to slow down his 'breakneck speed'.

The problem with the Vauxhall was the difficulty in obtaining spare parts, which had to come from England. When he was involved in an accident at one point, the only second hand mudguard/wheel arch that my father could obtain was dark red in colour. No problem – he had the whole car resprayed dark red.

However there were parts you couldn’t get, particularly those responsible for keeping it going. Your only hope was to contact some Anglo-Argentine friend who worked at the Blue Star Line shipping company offices in town, and get him - through his contacts - to get one of the stewards on board a passenger ship to bring a part with him on his next trip, and then you waited for six months. In fact it was well known that the stewards supplemented their income by bringing Scotch whisky, British tobacco and chocolate over with them to sell to the people anxious for imported luxury goods who would be waiting at the quayside of the Buenos Aires docks.

The old Vauxhall’s engine was started by means of a button behind the steering wheel which was temperamental in the mild and damp winters and during the summer thunderstorms of Buenos Aires. When it refused to cooperate you had to hunt for the starting handle which fitted into a slot outside the car above the front bumper, and turn it energetically until it sparked into life. The muttering of oaths and curses throughout this procedure was essential.

My sister still remembers the embarrassment she felt as a six year old when they stopped at a set of traffic lights on Montes de Oca Avenue. When the lights turned to green the car stalled, and our mother had to brave angry drivers sitting on their horns while she climbed out of the car in her faux fur coat and high heels, hunted for the starting handle and yanked it round in fury until it coughed back to life, while my sister glanced around her fearfully in case she saw anyone they knew.

This was the car which, during my early days at boarding school when I was five, took us up and down the many hours of sticky, muddy track - otherwise known as the main road - on the first and last day of term, when we felt we were setting out into the unknown at the mercy of both the weather and drivers in other more powerful cars which would have to haul us out. On one occasion even a car transporter loaded with new farm vehicles stopped to help. We were hoisted onto the top level and while our parents shared the cabin with the driver, we travelled on the top in swaying, towering splendour, seeing the land from a very different perspective and feeling terribly important.

This was the car in which my parents were earnestly discussing their impecunious existence, unaware that little-pitchers-have-big-ears until my five-year old sister piped up tearfully offering the contents of her piggy bank.

This was also the car which developed a loud and very ominous rumbling sound underneath which defied all examinations by my father and a couple of skilled mechanics. It went on for some time and all my father could identify was that it was particularly bad when going round corners. The spectre loomed of yet more expenses to come out of a meagre budget, and as they agonised over what terrible thing was happening to their car, my mother reminded him that the spare mangle roller of our Hoover washing machine which she had asked him to take to be repaired still had not been returned.

Hoover washing machine, 1950's. Internet picture

He finally remembered that he’d forgotten to take it – and from there it was just a step to realising that it was on the floor of the back seat, rolling merrily from side to side as he drove. The story did the rounds at dinner parties for a while.

All this was in the mid 1950s, a time of great uncertainty politically in Argentina when it was not safe to venture out at night in the capital city to areas other than those known for entertainment and restaurants. One evening my mother had prepared dinner and my father was late. It overcooked and then got cold, and he still wasn’t home. There had been rumours that week of gangs assaulting unwary pedestrians in town, and knowing my father was apt to decide on the spur of the moment to pop into the cinema when he left work, she started to fret. She was a worrier anyway and by 11 p.m. she was beside herself, convinced he was lying bleeding somewhere, stripped of his wallet and small change.

She rang The Buenos Aires Herald, the English language newspaper where in his free time my father would go to submit his report on the latest cricket match under the pseudonym “Cover Point” – but he had not been in that evening. There was no point in ringing the police, since they were known to take bribes and could be relied upon to show little interest, and she did not feel she could contact any of his friends in view of the late hour.

By 1 a.m. the carpet was worn out and her frenzy had turned to fury, so when he walked through the door beaming all over his face half an hour later he was lucky she didn’t greet him with the meat cleaver.

“Look darling!” he exclaimed “Look what I’ve got. I’ve been so lucky. The Argentina Star is in port, Dougie rang to tell me today so I went down there after work, and guess what – the pistons for the Vauxhall have arrived! Isn’t it wonderful? So I stayed and had a drink or two with them and….”

His voice trailed off as she burst into tears as he stood there with packages in his arms and a nonplussed look on his face.

By his reckoning ‘a drink or two’ was the least he could do to thank them for their trouble, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about…

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Valencia and Chiva, Spain

Requena

Happy New Year!

-oOo-

Tales from Elsewhere - The Leg of Lamb

2011-12-24T14:23:00.003Z

At the recently built institute located within the hospital where I worked there is a very smart seminar room with state of the art conference facilities which is much in demand for meetings by people from all over the hospital.

The now retired professor of the institute particularly liked using it not only because of its modern and technological image, but one suspects also because it had been called after him in recognition of the worthy work carried out in his field as a consultant surgeon, and for all he had done to set up the institute. His name figures large and bold above the double doors and given his personality one almost expected him to turn as he reached the entrance, spread his arms and bow to his adoring public before entering. I always felt we were expected to speak to him with ‘ill-concealed’ respect and awe in our voices, and to say his manner was dignified was an understatement. We used to debate whether he said ‘excuse me’ when he asked patients to remove their clothing.

While he was some 6’2” in height, (1.90m), his wife was a feisty little lady of 4’10” (1.50m). She was very supportive, and could be counted upon to organise dinners and events to help his career along.

On this particular day he was chairing a surgeons’ meeting when the administration office took a call from another hospital in the area urgently needing to speak to him.

“Is it really an emergency?” the secretary asked. “He’s chairing a large meeting and I’m not supposed to interrupt him.”

“Up to you” said the impatient voice at the other end, and breaking the rule of confidentiality in these matters, he continued “his wife was shopping at Sainsburys this afternoon and was trying to get a leg of lamb out of the freezer box, but it was a bit out of her reach and she balanced wrongly on the edge of the box and fell in. Thing is, she had been struggling to get a grip on the lamb and it came free just at that moment, and somehow she managed to knock herself out at the same time. The staff didn’t dare move her while they called an ambulance, and as a result she had frostbite as well by the time they got her out and took her to the Infirmary. So she’s a bit poorly, and it’s up to her husband if he wants to come and see her.”

Asking the person to hold on, the secretary lost no time in hurrying to the seminar room and whispering in the professor’s ear that she had taken a call from the Infirmary advising that his wife had been brought in not feeling well, and could he come out and speak to them.

They went back to the office together, and the professor picked up the telephone, speaking very quietly and soberly, with his lips carefully pursed together.

“Hell-low? Yairs it is… oh… oh I see… aaah… yairs. Well thenk you for telling me, I’ll be theah as soon as possible, but it may take a while. Goodbye.”

The secretary meanwhile busied herself with her back to him, determined to keep a straight face and not reveal that she knew what was being said on the other end of the phone. It was a relief when the professor departed, walking in the opposite direction to the seminar room to the exit door, and she was able at last to give way to the most undignified, disrespectful and unkind mirth that was bubbling up within her.

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Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Miscellany

Gilbert & Sullivan's "Ruddigore",

Bristol G&S Operatic Soc, 2007 (digital)

Merry Christmas!

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The Opposite to a "Non-Scale Victory?"

2011-12-18T00:37:00.003Z

I'm afraid my sabbatical continues as usual, though I'm grateful that the band carries on working, keeping me under some form of control.

I have a new interpretation of the phrase bandits are fond of when they say "I eat or drink something small before I have my meal because you have to prime the band". It sounds good, a neat expression, but I've never really understood what it means. I now think it's lateral thinking: the problem with the first mouthful after no food for several hours is that it's very difficult to chew it properly because you're so anxious to get it down. And that's when you're at your greatest danger of PB-ing. So by tasting some food or drink a little earlier, what you're actually priming is not your band but your salivary glands. Get them used to something before the main meal comes along and your brain will calm down in time.

I've written another article for the Bariatric Surgery Source website (see it here) commenting that there aren't enough formal studies going on and papers written about the problems with the gastric band, it's just mostly anecdotal at the moment. There are lots of other inspiring stories on there too, worth taking a look.

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One day this will be an ‘after’ story, but not yet...

I travelled from Bristol to Portland on the south coast last weekend to visit my friend Gaby. I was on my own, as John had a concert to attend at which he was singing in the chorus.

The lighthouse at Portland

After a lunch at a café near the lighthouse and a good natter, I started to drive her home. On the way she asked me if we could stop at the local Tesco supermarket as she needed to get herself some food for dinner. She didn’t take long, but as soon as we were through the checkout she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to buy teabags. She asked me to hold on to the things she had purchased, and to wait for her there while she dashed back in looking for the correct shelf.

While I waited, I looked around for somewhere to sit down – I hate standing around unless there’s a good reason. At the end of one of the checkouts I spotted a flat metal surface at just the right height, and gingerly lowered myself down on it, in the knowledge that it was going to be cold. And it was, shiny, metallic and freezing. As my bottom was getting used to it a young lady in Tesco uniform came up to me and said in a loud voice -

“Madam, could I ask you please not to sit there. It’s a scale, and your weight is flashing up on the screen” – pointing to the large screen above my head which I had not noticed before.

Naturally I got up with not even a glance at the screen as if I was quite used to this sort of thing and was waaaay slim enough to be quite unconcerned by whatever rubbish was flashing on it. Sigh.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's digital archive

The first two flower pictures are taken in England,

the rest are of Northern Patagonia.

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Tales from Argentina - The Story of Clorinda Sarracán (Part 3 of 3)

2011-12-10T12:44:00.006Z

Go to Part 1

Go to Part 2

(Double click to enlarge)

Part Three – Prequel and Sequel

Before the murder

Jacobo Fiorini

Jacobo Fiorini and his brother Vicente were born in Ferrara, Italy, and during the 1820’s they made plans to emigrate to Argentina. Joining them in this undertaking were 3 Descalzi brothers, one of whom, Gaetano, was a friend. They were both painters, but their country was at war with France, and they had been making their living as best they could with casual labour.

Cayetano Descalzi

One day they were carrying out repairs to a church together when they were told to flee because the enemy was approaching. The priest had been killed some days earlier so they wasted no time in abandoning the church, but not before they had on impulse stolen a small ancient altar tablet, a 15th century painting of the Madonna in which she was wearing a jade serpent on a ribbon around her neck, which they hurriedly wrapped in a cloth. They calculated that the French would destroy everything anyway and the priest was no longer around to miss it.

Thus it was that the two men and their brothers found themselves all bound for Buenos Aires in 1825. The friendship didn’t last, and when they reached Argentina they decided to go their separate ways, drawing straws to settle who should have the altar painting. Jacobo won.

At the time Jacobo was a handsome lad; he both painted and played the piano, which opened doors. He delighted the circles in which he moved with his delicately painted miniatures, though that work had to stop when he was unable to obtain ivory without extreme difficulties.

Some paintings by Jacobo Fiorini:

He turned to portraits instead, and it was not long before he was getting commissions, including from the most powerful and despotic man in the country at that time, the Governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manual de Rosas. A carriage would be sent to collect Jacobo and take him to Rosas’ home, and this work made him a household name for a while. It is not known whether Rosas liked his portrait, but it was rumoured that he was angered by the fact that Fiorini had signed the picture, taking it as an affront and a challenge to his authority. Fiorini was never paid.
.

Gaetano meanwhile had adopted the Spanish spelling of his name and was henceforward known as Cayetano Descalzi. He too made a name for himself as a gifted portrait painter, and on balance was in his time more successful than his compatriot. His portrait of Rosas is well known… and is unsigned. The two painters and former friends must have run into each other from time to time for they were both successful within the society of the well-to-do.

Juan Manuel de Rosas, by Cayetano Descalzi.

(I have unfortunately been unable to find Fiorini's version)

It was said that Cayetano always harboured resentment towards Jacobo for having kept the altar painting, which he felt he had been cheated out of when they had drawn straws.

They began to lose their powers at about the same time. After 1852 the commissions declined for Cayetano, who had been known as a supporter of the Rosas regime, and in addition his eyesight deteriorated and he eventually went blind and was unable to keep himself. It is known that he fell on hard times, but no further details exist in public records.

Jacobo’s hands started to stiffen and he found that he could not perform his usual miracles with the paintbrush – clients complained and demanded their money back, and pictures were abandoned incomplete. For a time he kept himself going by teaching painting and providing a daguerreotyping service to the wealthy of the city who wanted to be both painted and photographed, but as he too felt the effect of being on the wrong side after the disappearance of Rosas, he eventually decided to cut his losses and abandon Buenos Aires altogether, purchasing a smallholding in Santos Lugares, where he could keep pigs and chickens.
.

A daguerrotype of Gervasio Posadas

and his grandaughter by Fiorini

Clorinda Sarracán

Clorinda on the other hand had an extremely impoverished childhood where finding enough to eat was a daily struggle. Her father Carlos Sarracán was rarely if ever at home, and her mother scraped a meagre living by washing the clothes of the rich down by the river. One day when Clorinda was six her mother returned with good news – a wealthy portrait painter by the name of Fiorini had taken her on as a housekeeper of his home, and she, Clorinda and her brother would all be able to sleep together in a comfortable big bed.

The children used to play in the attic, and Fiorini was kind to them, though he didn’t allow them to leave the house. One night her mother told them Don Jacobo was not well and she had to look after him, and that they should go to bed without her. A pattern was gradually established and it soon came to pass that their mother never again returned to sleep with them.

When Clorinda was eight he took her by the hand one day and led her to his studio to show her his paintings, and shortly afterwards she was sent away to a nuns’ school to get an education. It was while she was there that she learned her mother had died. She was sent home, and found that her brother had been taken away to live with relatives, leaving her alone with Don Jacobo. She was moved downstairs and he began to get her to pose so he could paint her. Shortly after that she found herself in a church where papers were signed and she was told he was now her tutor and she must obey him in everything.

At just 15 Fiorini told her that she was now a woman and he would marry her. He took her to a couturier and dressed her up in corseted dresses which pinched at the waist and she hated, making her cry, and showed her off at the theatre. On their wedding day he allowed her to see her brother again.

What the girl was going through was unimaginable, and it was probably just as well from Fiorini’s point of view that he had kept the brother and sister apart, and that she therefore had no confidante.

There was no one with whom to share the desperate unhappiness of having to deal with her mother’s terrible legacy to her, for Clorinda had known for some time that she was not merely Fiorini’s ward, but also his natural biological daughter.

When her mother had moved in with him 10 years earlier it was because her own husband had abandoned her and she had persuaded Jacobo by appealing not to his responsibilities as a father, but to another side of his nature. In taking them in he would get two for the price of one with Clorinda: the little girl would be his ‘ward’, and he could marry her once she reached 15 if he wished to. The child owed him everything, and knew that she could not survive without him. If she felt helpless, trapped and burning with anger and disgust at her treatment she was able to conceal her feelings for many years.

Over the next ten years she gave him five children, and Jacobo’s personality started to change. It is possible that his exposure to the chemicals of his chosen career – solvents and the like – eventually ruined his health without anyone understanding it or perhaps even being aware. Several people, including the young servants, testified at the trial to his general bad temper and frequent towering rages when he would beat his wife, and other times when he would closet himself in the attic which was now his studio and where he continued obsessively to paint although his hands were so stiff that he was no longer good enough to sell his work.

Clorinda said that during this period he painted many pictures of her. During his ugly times she often had to run with her children to the neighbours for protection. It is likely that her misery reached a pitch that she snatched at happiness wherever she could find it.

As he told his brother Vicente, Fiorini knew he was not her only partner, and this in addition to his failing powers, intensified the cycle of temper and rejection. They probably ended up loathing each other. Clorinda sought to divorce him and started the process through the Catholic Church courts, as was the procedure in those days, but her request was refused.

In Clorinda’s statement (which she later retracted) she claimed that Jacobo had told her that the pedlar who was occasionally wandering about the farm was in fact the now very down at heel Cayetano Descalzi, who had been reduced to begging, but who had chosen a route that would take him past their house because he kept insisting to his former friend that they needed to draw straws again and the 15th century painting of the Madonna with the jade serpent around her neck was really his. Fiorini felt sorry for him and would give him some food and let him sleep in the dovecote in the garden. He disappeared after the murder. Crispín had indeed claimed to have purchased from a pedlar the pistol which was one of the weapons used to kill Fiorini, but as she had retracted her statement the information could not be used at the trial.

Her lawyer Carlos Tejedor used the information about her origins at the conclusion of the trial, when he faced the judge and said, indicating Clorinda with his hand –

“This woman killed her own father. Her father, not her husband, because at some point she had to put an end to the tragedy.”

He went on to tell the story about her being Fiorini’s daughter and spouse. Jacobo had had an affair with Clorinda’s mother in 1830, and the result was the accused they saw before them. Carlos Sarracán had given them his surname to save the honour of both the adulterous wife and the child.

-oOo-

Many years later

A writer by the name of Eduardo Gutiérrez was a popular novelist in the 1880s who tended towards sensationalist true stories which were serialised in the newspapers of the day.
.

One such story was published in 1883 called “The Murder of Fiorini” as part of a series entitled “Great Crimes”. However, after five instalments it was withdrawn suddenly and without explanation, and a new story put in its place. There was such an uproar amongst his reading public that he was forced to explain that he had had to pull the story because it had been brought to his attention that too many people would be hurt if further instalments were published. Three years later in 1889 he died very suddenly at the age of 36 as a result of imbibing a very cold drink on a very hot day.
.

Among his personal effects was an oil painting measuring 30x40cm of a dark haired woman with a jade serpent pendant on a ribbon around her neck, and on the back the inscription read “To Mr E Gutiérrez, with my eternal gratitude. C.S. 23 Sept 1883.” There was also a letter dated 22nd May 1883 from his brother Ricardo, a doctor, and near the end he says (my translation) –

“…The truth is that I didn’t know that you had started to tell the tale of the Fiorini crime, because what with so many sick patients and heavy workload at the hospital I haven’t time to read newspapers, not even my brother’s, if it had not been for my friend and colleague Dr Florencio Escardó, who came up to me the other day and related to me what I will summarise for you herewith.

On Agüero Street in Lower Palermo, a suburb which I came to know as an area inhabited by mazorqueros (Note: i.e. a rough neighbourhood) there lives a patient of Escardó’s called don Juan Soto, a fire-fighter. Some years ago, during the fire at the shop “A la Ciudad de Marsella”, this man suffered terrible burns and as a result his right leg had to be amputated at the knee. Escardó saved him from bleeding to death, and since then Soto reveres him. Recently Soto visited Escardó at his surgery, desperate to reveal to him a secret.

The reason I am now writing to you, and I know you will forgive the inconvenience this will cause you, is because Soto and his wife have felt very upset since they learned that you were planning to revive that buried story and thus destroy the happiness of two human beings. I can imagine your mischievous yet kind smile. I can imagine that you have guessed it all and that you will act accordingly.

Because the fire-fighter’s real name is not Juan Soto but Crispín Gutiérrez, and his wife’s name was not Elsa García de Soto but Clorinda Sarracán, and they have been happily married for 14 years.”

-oOo-

Acknowledgments:

I am grateful to the Argentine writer Álvaro Abós for much of the information in these posts and particularly the final one, and recommend his book as a wonderful read: El Crimen de Clorinda Sarracán, Editorial Sudamericana, 2003, ISBN 950-07-2205-4 (in Spanish). The images of Clorinda Sarracán, Crispín and Remigio Gutiérrez also come from his book, with many thanks. The remaining images come from the internet.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

More pictures of Argentina

Tucumán

Sierra Grande, Provincia de Córdoba

Taken at Estancia "El Chorro" - Sierras de Córdoba

...and a seasonal picture to finish.

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina - The Story of Clorinda Sarracán (Part 2 of 3)

2011-12-07T08:43:00.006Z

Go to Part 1

Part Two – The Trial

(Double click to enlarge)

On the day of the trial Claudia and Nicolasa wept and wailed through their evidence, and provided one of the few lighter moments. Claudia stated that when the mistress and Crispín slept in the same bed, in the mornings they were expected to bring them their first mate (tea) of the day. “And what did they say to you when you brought it?” asked the prosecutor. Claudia shrugged her shoulders and said “It’s hot”… To gasps of horror she revealed that they were usually in the nude.

By contrast Clorinda was described by all as enigmatic and cold, or fresh and serene, according to who was making the comment. Stoic might have been nearer the mark - she could hardly speak during the trial and fainted several times.

The prosecution asserted that Clorinda had bewitched Crispín, and got him to do her bidding. Fiorini’s brother Vicente testified that his brother’s relations with his wife were not good. On one occasion he met Jacobo on the road and said “So – I hear you’re going to be a father again”, to which he replied “It may well be my wife’s child, but it won’t be mine”. When Vicente had last visited them she was out, and Jacobo vowed she was no longer his wife.

She had planned the murder with her lover, they said, and on the day had been instrumental in persuading him to descend the stairs from behind the locked door of the attic. When she served him his dinner – a thin polenta made with water and oil – as soon as he had put the bayonet aside and was concentrating on his meal, she had gone to the door and given the pre-arranged signal to Crispín and Remigio, then removed herself to the garden with the maids and the children.

The men then entered and did the deed. Subsequently she brazenly slept in the marriage bed with Crispín while her husband’s corpse – hardly cold – lay behind the house, and then made the trip to Buenos Aires a few days later to cover her tracks by pretending to be concerned at his disappearance. She probably had not anticipated the interest Fiorini’s death had evoked, nor that policemen and a detective should have been sent from the capital to investigate, and found the body.

Clorinda listened to this impassively, her composed demeanour doing little to present her as a shocked, grieving widow. She even laughed when remarks were made about her relationship with Crispín, which produced indignant murmurs from the public gallery.

Miguel Navarro Viola, judge

Her lawyer did his best to defend her, but could see that the judge was in a hanging mood. In his summing up Tejedor revealed a surprising bit of information he had withheld thus far – that Clorinda was pregnant. This was pure sensationalism on his part, and untrue, but he hoped to garner sympathy from the public and the judge. It didn’t work, and it did not take Judge Navarro Viola long to hand down a sentence to all three of death by firing squad – the men at a location outside the city, but Clorinda at the then named Plaza Veinticinco de Mayo, in the centre of town, and all simultaneously on 12th December 1856 at 6 a.m. All would be strung up for a period afterwards, as a public warning. Clorinda fainted as this was read out, and had to be carried away.

However unimpressed the judge may have been, the revelation turned out to be a stunning manoeuvre on a completely different level: a wave of support among the society ladies of Buenos Aires was gathering strength outside the courts, for they were remembering Camila O’Gorman’s execution 8 years earlier, and she too had been pregnant…

-oOo-

I have told Camila’s story in full on this blog (under Tales from Argentina, The O’Gormans), but let me summarise it by saying that during the dictatorship in Argentina by Juan Manual de Rosas (1829-1852), a despot who ruthlessly crushed dissent, Camila was a young, wealthy society Argentine girl of Irish and French parentage who in the late 1840’s fell in love with a young Catholic priest. The feeling was mutual, but was too shocking for the time to be permitted, particularly as she had made friends with Rosas’ daughter and had been welcomed to government house on many occasions. The lovers went on the run to be together and for a brief time were able to lead normal lives as a couple, during which she got pregnant. However Rosas’ men eventually caught up with them, and they were returned to Buenos Aires in shackles. As an example to others and a show of government strength they were executed by firing squad in 1848 despite many representations by respected Argentines and foreign dignitaries for clemency, since they were not guilty of any specific crime and not two, but three people would be killed. Camila was 8 months pregnant at the time of her death.

This brutal act was one of the factors that lead to Rosas’ downfall in 1852.

-oOo-

There were some similarities with the Camila O’Gorman case. The very name of the village where the Fiorinis lived – Santos Lugares – would have made people shudder as they remembered that this was the location of the military detention centre to which Camila O’Gorman and her lover Ladislao Gutiérrez were taken to be executed in 1848. It was also the place where the battle of Caseros was fought, finally defeating the dictator Rosas in 1852.

Both were young, attractive and intelligent women who were facing execution while in a pregnant condition (although it was later revealed not to be true in Clorinda’s case) and who claimed to be innocent of any crime. They had upset contemporary mores of society and would be punished to set an example to others who might be contemplating similar behaviour.

There had been a public outcry after the deaths of Camila O’Gorman and the Catholic priest Ladislao Gutiérrez, particularly among the members of high society in Buenos Aires – and here they were, eight years on, with the tyrant vanquished and exiled, democracy restored, and yet history was about to repeat itself. To the society ladies of the Sociedad de Beneficencia (the Charitable Society) this was intolerable.

They were led by Mariquita de Mendeville, or to give her her full title, María Josefa Petrona de Todos los Santos Sánchez de Velazco y Trillo de Thompson y Mendeville. During the period of the struggle for independence (1810-1816) her salons had gathered all the leading personalities of the day. She was now an indomitable dowager of 70 known as “a storm in skirts”, who knew how to influence public opinion when necessary.

Mariquita in her heyday, early 19th century

The writer Domingo Sarmiento who later became president of the republic, when referring to the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the state, was known to quip that Mariquita was the fourth power in skirts. One of the lady’s favourite sayings was (loosely translated) “God spare me from prudish women. A woman with no passions is a bag of envy.” (“Líbreme Dios de las castas Susanas. Mujer sin pasiones es un saco de envidia.”).

Mariquita at 70 during this case

She visited Clorinda in jail and came away in tears, convinced that she was an abused wife and a good mother who deserved a second chance, and she was prepared to fight for the cause. By dint of hard work and the sheer force of her personality she and her helpers organised a petition, gathering 7,000 signatures opposing the death penalty for Clorinda Sarracán de Fiorini, driving home the point to all who would listen that Camila O’Gorman’s case should not be forgotten, and that she should be the last woman in Argentina to be executed. If Clorinda suffered the same fate, she declared, it was a bloody memory of the tyranny. The total number of inhabitants in Buenos Aires at that time was close on 95,000 souls, and 7,000 signatures was a tremendous feat.

The case was suspended. Clorinda, Crispín and Remigio were given jail sentences, although during the trial the men were part of a riot and jailbreak, and were never recaptured. Clorinda served 12 years in jail. In 1868 the Legislature of Buenos Aires approved a new law abolishing the category of premeditated crime and gave wider powers to the executive to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment. This enabled Clorinda to apply for a pardon, which she got the following year, on the condition that she lead a quiet and moral life.

She was never heard of again.

The consideration given her when the case was suspended and when she was finally pardoned was not only because of the sterling work by her lawyer Carlos Tejedor and the efforts of the Damas de Beneficencia. More became known about her and Fiorini’s earlier lives which had a bearing on the case. In order to explain the circumstances, it is necessary to go back in time and tell their individual stories.

To be continued…. Next time, Jacobo and Clorinda’s early stories, and a postscript.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

More pictures of Argentina, 1994

Statue by Lola Mora, Buenos Aires (detail)

in Palermo park

Jacaranda bloom

Cachi, Salta

Andes foothills, province of Salta

Go to Part 3

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina - The Story of Clorinda Sarracán (Part 1 of 3)

2011-12-04T23:18:00.011Z

The events I attempt to recount here took place almost 150 years ago in a village called Santos Lugares, outside Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. They concern the murder of Jacobo Fiorini, a portrait painter and farmer.

Despite my research it has been difficult to separate fact from fiction. The press got hold of the story and reported it exhaustively in the following months. In addition, these were the days when forensic science was limited and also before fingerprinting had been devised as a means of identification in building up evidence in a legal case. This system, known as dactyloscopy, was actually invented in Argentina in 1892 and the first country in the world to use it.

My sources are a combination of contemporary records as quoted on the internet – trial records, newspaper reports, hearsay from reporters and father confessors – and one very interesting book written by Álvaro Abós (El Crimen de Clorinda Sarracán, Editorial Sudamericana, 2003, ISBN 950-07-2205-4). My knowledge of the facts is consequently a mixture of truth and speculation by others, and I have found it impossible to distinguish between one and the other. I have therefore preferred to opt for the role of mere storyteller.

-oOo-

(Double click to enlarge)

Part One – The Murder

According to a Buenos Aires newspaper of the time, on 12th October 1856 Clorinda Sarracán de Fiorini, aged 26, may have colluded in the murder of her husband aged 56, or even assisted by delivering some of the multiple blows to the head which killed him.

Some days before the announcement was made, anonymous letters had been received by La Tribuna declaring that the formerly renowned portrait painter Jacobo Fiorini, who had retired to the country some years earlier to manage a smallholding, had disappeared and that foul play was suspected.

Clorinda Sarracán on the cover of Álvaro Abós' book

Policemen and a detective by the name of Inspector Arnaud were despatched to the village of Santos Lugares, the location of the small farm where Fiorini, his wife and five children aged between 1 and 10 years resided.

Their house was a relatively prosperous one for the area, and had been constructed according to Fiorini’s specific instructions. It had a tiled roof with two floors as living quarters and an attic, where Fiorini continued to paint when he could. There were seven rooms in all, with two simple columns on the veranda supporting a large beam. Curiously, there were few windows, the main bedroom having only a small one with iron bars across it, and the attic a very small opening for light. There was a strip of brick paving two metres wide surrounding the house to protect it from weeds; the grounds had a dovecote, fig trees, prickly pears and several varieties of weed which had been allowed to grow wild and high. On the path leading away from the house there were willows, poplars and chinaberries.

Pigs and chickens were bred on the farm and most of the work was done by foreman Crispín Gutiérrez and his younger brother Remigio. In the house Clorinda was assisted by two servants, Claudia Álvarez and Nicolasa Merlo aged 16 and 15 respectively, illiterate girls whom Clorinda had obtained from a local orphanage two years earlier. Jacobo Fiorini, who could no longer make a living from portrait painting because his hands were too stiff to paint, dealt with supplies and the general paperwork of the business, which took him to Buenos Aires on a regular basis.

It wasn’t long before the police discovered a fresh mound of earth under a rubber tree by the Fiorini property. The recent wind and rain had sharpened the unusual shape of the rubbish dump and exposed a macabre hand, and below was a twisted body with a grisly head. The autopsy later revealed that the victim had been wearing good quality clothes with splashes of paint down the front and there was a rope around his neck which had been used to drag him.

Many locals were willing to talk about what they knew of the couple. Inspector Arnaud was told of their thirty year age difference, that they argued a lot, that he beat her and that she was probably having an affair with the foreman, Crispín Gutiérrez. Clorinda’s mother had died many years earlier, and her father, Carlos Sarracán, had recently reappeared on the scene after having abandoned his family when Clorinda was little, and she had been seen having long and earnest conversations with him. Claudia and Nicolasa also had plenty to say.

A week later on 30th October a mallet was found some distance away measuring about half a yard in length, of the type used to hammer down fence posts. It had what looked like blood stains on it.

Inspector Arnaud didn’t hesitate. He arrested Clorinda, the two servant girls, the foreman Crispín (24), his brother Remigio (18) and Clorinda’s father, Carlos Sarracán, and took them back to the city.

A story gradually emerged from Crispín, Clorinda, Claudia and Nicolasa’s initial statements. There had been a fierce argument between Fiorini and his foreman Crispín, the latter claiming that he and his brother were owed back pay. Crispín confessed to having murdered his employer because of the money and because he was angered by Fiorini’s abuse of his wife. In addition he disliked the way the Italian-born Fiorini insulted Argentina.

They had argued violently on the stairs and eventually Fiorini tossed him down a $500 peso bill and went back to the attic where he had been painting. He must have been frightened by his employee’s demeanour however, because he had locked himself in and refused to emerge all day. In the evening Clorinda persuaded him to come down for dinner, which he eventually did, insisting that it be served in the lounge, rather than in the dining-room with the children.

Crispín returned accompanied by his brother, and at this point Clorinda thought it wise to withdraw the children and the servants to the garden. Presently they heard a shot, and after saying “What was that?” to the others, Clorinda made her way back to the house. According to Claudia, she seemed neither surprised nor in a hurry as she walked away. She further asserted that her mistress had been having an affair with Crispín for some time, and that whenever the master went to Buenos Aires on business, Crispín moved into his employer’s bed. However Nicolasa contradicted this statement and denied that they slept together.

For his part, Crispín confessed that he and his brother had returned to have it out with Fiorini. Their employer had been in the lounge eating his dinner, with a bayonet propped beside him. They re-started the argument and distracted him from the weapon at his side. Presently Crispín pulled a gun which he had purchased from a pedlar the day before. He was not however experienced with the firearm and missed, whereupon he tossed the pistol aside and grabbed the mallet used for pounding in fence posts which Remigio had brought with him, and while his brother picked up the gun and hit him with the butt, Crispín killed him with the mallet. They then tied a rope around his neck and dragged him out to the back, leaving him on the rubbish dump under the rubber tree and covering him with soil.

When Clorinda returned she found herself alone in the house, and as she was joined by the others she ordered her maids to clean up the blood in the lounge. Astonishingly, things went back to a sort of normal, while Clorinda told people that Fiorini had gone to the capital for a few days. When that time had passed she travelled to Buenos Aires and contacted his family there to say she was concerned that he had not returned. They searched the rented room where he always stayed but nothing had been touched. Her father Carlos Sarracán returned with her to Santos Lugares and came under suspicion because he had been asking questions about Fiorini’s financial affairs. He was under arrest for a while and was badly treated in jail, but was eventually released when he was able to prove that he had only been trying to collect Fiorini’s debts so that his widow could continue to feed and clothe her children, and had put the funds into an account for her use alone. What little there was had now been frozen by the courts.

Clorinda made a statement confessing her guilt, but retracted it later, claiming that it had been made under duress. She stoutly maintained she was innocent and said her husband had probably been murdered by a pedlar who had unfinished business with him, and she had thus not known he was lying dead in the grounds until he was found.

While she was in custody her children were being looked after by an aunt; she longed for their rare visits and yet these occasions were a torture to her. She was allowed to see her one-year old daughter twice a week and only for a few minutes, during which she wept uncontrollably. She had difficulty paying the rent on the property where her aunt cared for the children and she had no one to whom she could turn - her father had been badly affected by the time he had spent in jail and could not help. Funds were short and her living conditions were difficult. She shared her space with twenty or so other female criminals, and in addition to the total lack of privacy the guards constantly made advances.

The case had taken Buenos Aires by storm. Newspaper reporters had a field day dwelling on the grislier aspects of the murder, the abuse by Fiorini of his wife, her devotion to her children yet her probable wanton behaviour with Crispín and her reactions immediately following his death – all this counted very much against her. The brilliant lawyer Carlos Tejedor was appointed to defend her, with Judge Miguel Navarro Viola presiding at the trial.

Carlos Tejedor, defending counsel

To be continued… next time, the trial.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

More pictures taken around Palermo,

Buenos Aires, argentina, 1994

"Living statue"

Go to Part 2

-oOo-

The Two Old Geezers

2011-11-20T19:11:00.007Z

Nothing much to report about myself, other than the 'discovery' of the iPod Nano which I purchased recently to help get me through some of the repetitive work I do during my working day. It's been wonderful to find that I can actually do more while I listen to stories, live radio and podcasts on the dear little square of black glass created by Apple.

An oldie-but-goodie to keep you entertained until I finish my next story... (I originally put The Two Old Geezers in my other blog, Eavesdroppings and Stories, last May, and though re-told by me, is not of course my story). It makes me smile to reflect that if my father had been alive today he would have been holding his sides - just his sort of story.

The Two Old Geezers

Scene

Butch and Sid were in their 80s and reckoned they were close to their last days of going out on the town, so they decided to have a final fling. After quite a few drinks, Sid suggested they carry on to the local brothel.

The madam took one look at the two old geezers and whispered to her manager -

"Go up to the first two bedrooms and put an inflated doll in each bed. These two are so old and drunk, I'm not wasting two my girls on them. They won't know the difference."

The manager did as he was told and the two old men went upstairs and took care of business.

As they were walking home some time later...

Butch: You know Sid, I think my girl was dead.

Sid: Dead? What makes you say that?

Butch: Well she never moved or made a sound all the time I was lovin' her...

Sid: Could be worse, Butch - reckon mine was a witch.

Butch: Hell, what did she do??

Sid: I was makin' love to her, and kissin' her and such, and I gave her a little bite, and then she farted and flew out the window. Dang it, she took my teeth with her too...

-oOo-

Photo Finish
from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Buenos Aires 1994
- a walk in Palermo park and its environs on a spring day

The glorious jacaranda in full bloom

The blooms of the cockspur coral tree - Erytrina crista galli

known as the ceibo in Argentina, where it is the national flower.

There are canals through the park where you can hire

boats to drift round on lazy Sunday afternoons

under the shade of the ceibos...

Some living statues nearby hoping you'll drop a

coin in the hat, watched avidly by children waiting

for a fly to land on their noses...

The Japanese Garden section

Students idly chatting...

Having a snooze...

This picture was taken at Plaza San Martín,

but I wanted to include it because it made me smile.

The sign says "This park is cared for by the Fortabat Foundation

.... and You."

I don't think that couple was paying attention...

-oOo-

Remembrance

2011-11-11T23:59:00.007Z

I remember a great uncle and an uncle of mine, both with the same name, who died in the First and Second World wars respectively. They joined up because they wanted to fight for freedom, but sadly did not survive long enough to see action.

I remember my grandmother’s desperate sadness and the large silver-framed portrait of the handsome young man in the RAF uniform, ever present on her dressing table for the thirty-eight years between her third son’s death and her own.

I remember my mother telling me about a generation of young men, her friends she had known since teenage years, who left one day in 1940 to join the army, laughing as they waved goodbye at the station, yet disappeared out of her life forever, and about whom until the end of her life she could not speak without weeping.

I will never forget all the BBC’s reports from Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, a town not far from where I live, where for many years the RAF repatriated the British soldiers killed in action and where every single time the populace would spontaneously line the roads to pay their last respects as the soldiers who had perished were driven by, and which would reduce me to tears every time. Although the location for this repatriation has now been changed, the Royal Family have recognised the loyalty of the town and re-named it Royal Wootton Bassett.

I will never forget that it is thanks to them and people like them that we continue to live in a free world, and I will always be grateful.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

-oOo-

Night Owl

2011-11-05T17:34:00.001Z

Although writing is virtually the most important thing in the world to me these days, and I have stories queuing up waiting to be told, I’ve slowed down a bit. The next story in the pipeline is the unusual tale of Clorinda Sarracán, an Argentine woman who may or may not have murdered her husband in 1856. But it’s taking me longer than it used to some months back, as did the research and writing up of “A Foreign Field”, the World War I story I told you a couple of weeks ago.

The reason is because I’m not getting enough sleep. These days when I get home I don’t always have the energy to spread my books about me and select the lined notebook, fountain pen and ink colour of my liking (the planning stage) or sit at the computer and tap out the story and hunt for pictures (the final stage). Recently I have been known to get home at 6 p.m. and sleep for 2 hours, then cook dinner, or sit with John watching something on TV and fall asleep in the chair. I’ve only got to see an advertisement for beds or a scene in a film with someone’s plush bedroom with plumped up pillows and bedclothes folded back, and I’m fantasizing about being there, inside the telly… and zonk, I’ve nodded off.

Fridays are happy happy evenings because I’m going to have 2 days when I can let rip and sleep for as long as I want. On Fridays and Saturdays I’ve been known to sleep for 9-11 hours, and even have siestas in between. Invitations or suggestions which involve rising before 11 a.m. on weekends make me feel murderous, likewise weekday evenings which mean I go to bed later than usual – not because I’m home late (if you’re British and middle-aged you’re home by 10.30…), but because after the adrenalin rush of being out with friends I need time to wind down and get sleepy.

Part of the reason is that there are times when I’m less in control of my diabetes than I should be. If for example I’ve had more sugary or oily foods than usual over a couple of days, the normal insulin doses aren’t sufficient, and I’m always scared of giving myself too much insulin, so I wait a bit. If I overdo the insulin I could lower my glucose levels too much and bring on a hypoglycaemic event, when I feel I’m under water and can’t move without a great effort of will, which scares the hell out of me. It takes a few days to catch up because I increase the insulin gradually and bring the glucose back down again – the process of several days. In the meantime, high levels of glucose in the blood make me feel very tired and sleepy.

The second reason is that I have to rise at 6.30 a.m. for work. I’m 58, and throughout my working life have never had to rise before 7.15. This agony has been going on for about 18 months now, because the hospital where I work is being re-built around us (see my irritable report on "How I earn my Crust", Part 2, here) and the parking areas have gradually taken on the characteristics of an African waterhole, which gradually dries up in the summer and the animals fight each other for the right to drink. (Not a fair comparison, but you know what I mean).

A multi-storey car park has been built, but employees are only permitted to park on two floors out of 5, consequently unless you’re actually parked by 8 a.m. (or earlier if possible) you won’t get in. People do come in later, because they’re more relaxed about cruising around for 20 minutes looking at all the mini car parks around to see if there are any spaces left, and if they can’t find any then they don’t mind driving slowly up and down the main road looking for a space, then walking for half an hour to get to their desks. But I get anxious and force myself to be in the car park by 8 (and still worry about it). In these 18 months I’ve changed departments, from urology to orthopaedics, and people in both places have been as understanding and supportive as they can be – no pressure there at all as to my starting time. But I still need to park, since I’m not near enough to cycle to work.

I suppose the main reason my tiredness levels have accumulated over the months is that I’m a night owl. I’ve never worried about working late, staying up late, and I don’t consider myself to be lazy (except, ahem, where exercise is concerned). I may be half asleep during the day, but from 7 p.m. onwards I’m on fire, inspired to write, full of curiosity and Google-searching, impatient when John understandably wants dinner and to go to bed at a reasonable hour, keen to reply to e-mails from people I haven’t written to for a while, read blogs, leave comments, in between playing the odd computer card game… Suddenly it’s 11 p.m. and I’m nowhere near finished, but I know I need a proper night’s sleep.

In addition the ritual of putting the cats to bed can take an age, because we like them to be indoors after dark (mainly because of foxes and a bully tomcat which patrols at night) and we alarm the front of the house. There are evenings when they’re feeling mischievous and lead me a merry dance down our road, as I call out in babycat language to entice them in, and wonder what the neighbours think as they hear me.

We’ve tried to bring the whole process forward but it’s so difficult. We’ve only managed to gain half an hour…

But I must try. When I’m writing I’m way up in the air cruising on a thermal, detached from everything below, loving the breeze in my hair, my fingers flying across the keys as I live and breathe what I’m writing about. I’m up on high, somewhere else. So I must control the diabetes properly, get enough sleep and put aside being a night owl for the day I retire.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

St Ives, Cornwall

and Bonfire Night

Look carefully - I only noticed it when I uploaded the picture -

that's John in the shadows front left holding the sparkler...

-oOo-

Tales from Elsewhere – The Multi-Storey

2011-10-30T13:47:00.003Z

“Well, I don’t know…” said my father doubtfully.

“It’s getting late” said my mother, we’re in a city we don’t know, we need a hotel for the night and we’ve already tried two and they’re full. I don’t think it matters this time if it’s not too smart – why don’t you try that one across the street and see if there are any vacancies?”

“Well I suppose so”, he said reluctantly as he slowed down to look for a parking space. “It does look a bit run down though…”

I was just thinking about the steak and chips I was going to have for dinner; we had covered a great distance that day, mostly on crudely asphalted roads with often only one lane for both directions of traffic which necessitated playing dare with every oncoming vehicle to see who was going to drive past with two wheels off the road. Now we were crawling along a very busy avenue with crowds of pedestrians milling around.

We were in Curitiba, Brazil, some 1,300 km/800 miles from Buenos Aires, from whence we had departed some days earlier. This was early 1967, and I was travelling with my parents several hundred miles further into mid Brazil to visit my uncle and his family for a holiday.

The journey had up to now been a great adventure. My other ventures abroad thus far had been to Uruguay and Chile, both Spanish speaking, and it was exciting to be in a country so tropical and different from my own, and where another language was spoken. My father’s attempts to communicate in Portuguese were supposed to be amusing to the Brazilians subjected to it, but to an awkward and insecure thirteen year old they were a pure and embarrassing agony.

But it was fun because the parts of Brazil through which we travelled – very far from the coast - were clearly not accustomed to foreigners, and the number plate on our car attracted a lot of attention. Strangers would come up to us to ask us where we were from, what we thought of Brazil, and so on. If they were a little over-curious, they were also invariably friendly and kind, and anxious to show us how beautiful their land was. My mother was particularly impressed by gigantic government signs we passed regularly, which said simply “Aqui se trabalha!” (Here, we work!)

I remember most of all the enormous variety of strange fruit I tasted which I had never heard of before, and haven’t since, and the fabulously delicate and strongly fragrant flowers that seemed to grow in profusion everywhere.

Dad uncurled himself stiffly from the driver’s seat and shuffled across the avenue, with creased white shirt tails flapping, while Mum and I sat and waited. We were idly looking out of the window at where he was going, and I remarked that there seemed to be quite a queue outside the hotel entrance. “Precisely why we must find somewhere quickly” Mum remarked “there must be some festival or other going on and the hotels are full”.

Dad was struggling to get past the queue and he seemed to be having altercations with people. Suddenly I said “Mum, look at the queue. There are no ladies in it. Why’s that?”

“I don’t know” she said tiredly, “let’s just wait for him to come back”.

Then we saw him making his way back across the avenue, dodging the traffic, and strangely, he was smiling broadly. We heard his laughter before he even opened the door to get back into the car.

“Well? Have they any rooms?”

He laughed again despite the irritated sound to her voice.

“I’ll say they do” he said “you hire them by the hour, though. It’s a ….”

“Pas devant les enfants” said Mum sternly. "Just drive on". That old chestnut, as if I didn’t understand elementary French. My sister had briefed me long ago on what these pearls of wisdom of hers actually meant, the others being “Laisse-moi faire” (let me deal with this) and something that sounded like “Laisse leur” (supposed to be “leave it alone, no need to say anything further”).

However I thought it strange that one should stay in a hotel and have to state for how many hours you required it. I was about to learn more about the ways of the world.

“Stop treating her like a child”, said my father, and turning to me he said “it’s a brothel”.

I felt proud that he had included me in on the joke, and was glad I already knew what a brothel was…

We eventually found somewhere to stay, and while we installed ourselves in our shared bedroom Dad went to park the car in the multi-storey car park nearby. He took such a long time to return that Mum started pacing up and down the room, calling reception and asking in halting Portuguese how far away the car park actually was, not appreciating that making yourself understood in a foreign language was one thing, and understanding what was said back to you was quite another.

About an hour later Dad appeared at the door of the hotel bedroom, looking pale and shaken. “I need a drink” he said, and sat down on the bed.

“I’ve been so worried. What happened?”

“The multi-storey they sent me to is one of these circular ones, where you drive up in a spiral, and decide which floor you want – they all looked very full, so I carried on going up, counting the floors as I went, because there were no numbers anywhere. At the eighth floor I found a space, but just as I was getting out of the car all the building lights went out – I’ve no idea why. “

He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and carried on.

“I was stuck there in the dark, and I admit to you I got quite nervous. Then my eyes got used to the dark a bit, and I saw a series of doors. But the signs were all in Portuguese, I didn’t understand what they meant. I went down a dingy corridor and then I saw some little lights indicating a lift. Such a relief! It was obviously a goods lift though, because it was just a very small wooden platform, but what the hell I thought – it’ll do. I just about saw a row of buttons and I pressed the lowest one, and again, such a relief when it started to go down, even though I had to hang on to a bar above me. It was one of those lifts with no sides, so you could see the spiral driveway going up as I went down. I counted the floors, and after four it stopped!”

He dabbed at his face again.

“I stood there wondering what to do next, I shouted, and somebody did answer me, but it echoed so badly and I didn’t understand anyway. I was still in the dark, and eventually I realised that I was going to have to climb down the rest of the way because it wasn’t going to go any further. By my calculations I still had four floors to go. I sat down on the floor and edged my way to the black hole beyond, and after a while I thought what the hell, I’ve got to get out of here. I’m just going to jump.”

Mum gasped, her hand in front of her mouth.

“So I jumped. And you know what? I fell about thirty centimetres – I had been on the ground floor when it stopped!”

“But you had counted eight” I protested.

“Ah, but I didn’t realise as I was driving up that I had been counting half floors” he said, “if you’re going round in a circle it’s easy to get confused, I now know…” He lay back on the bed holding the hanky to his forehead.

We didn’t even have dinner that night, we were all too overwhelmed by the evening’s adventures.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Fuerteventura and flower/fruit taken in England and Spain

-oOo-

Tales from Wartime – A Foreign Field (Part II of II)

2011-10-22T14:09:00.004+01:00

Link to Part I

Part II of II - Lost and found …and lost.

Claire Dessenne’s news that she would be having a baby the following autumn stunned them all into silence. Marie Coulette saw the expression on her daughter-in-law’s face, and with rare tact ushered everybody out of the kitchen. Claire suddenly found herself alone with her mother.

The fear and tension Eugénie had been feeling reached an intolerable pitch, for now an innocent baby was to be thrust into the maelstrom their lives had become. Not only would Claire’s situation become infinitely more vulnerable with regard to the occupying forces, but her position in the village would create scorn, disapproval and petty jealousies, for she knew that with the extreme shortage of eligible men, Robert had become a focus for many of the young women. She could see nothing but trouble ahead, but Claire was blind to all but the wonder of the feelings between her and Robert, and the miracle that was about to enter her life. She was quite convinced that the village would rejoice with her.

The reality was somewhat different. As the war had intensified, privations grew and lives were increasingly at risk from a Kommandant who as a former small town magistrate before the war had been presented with the unique opportunity to indulge his obsession with petty bureaucracy and apply his power over others with relish. The villagers’ lives became more confined, their initial kind heartedness towards the British soldiers gradually altered by their growing awareness of the danger they courted daily. The diminishing stores of food were a constant reminder that if nothing else, these strong and healthy men represented extra mouths to feed. In fact, a group of Villeret villagers consisting of the older women, the children and men who could not fight – the ‘useless mouths’ as they called them – were being taken away to a place of safety, because the food was running out.

The church in Villeret, before

the First World War

It was in this atmosphere that Claire’s baby was born one late autumn day in 1915, and the little girl was named Hélène, after Robert’s mother Ellen. He was fiercely proud of his little daughter, and soon took to walking round the village with her in his arms to show her off to anyone who would stop and look.

He would sing her a little lullaby...

My little cockatoo

With the bright blue eye!

My pretty little chou,

My cabbage butterfly.

I'll love you in the morning

I'll love you late at night,

When the new day's dawning

You'll still be my delight.

My little cockatoo

With the bright blue eye!

My pretty little chou

My cabbage butterfly.
- Elizabeth Major

"...my cabbage butterfly..."

Of course the people of Villeret couldn’t resist the miracle of a new life, this tiny morsel of happiness in a world gone mad, and were charmed by her father’s devoted care. For a time there was a truce towards the British men. But the bad feelings returned.

Eugénie, ever the Cassandra of the community, was quick to point out that the British soldiers were not as welcome as they once had been, and that it was merely a matter of time before someone betrayed them to the German authorities. She claimed they all felt that they should have made greater efforts to find a way through enemy lines by now, although Claire protested vigorously that Robert was preparing the necessary paperwork and they had not tried any harder because it was still too dangerous.

And that was another point, added Eugénie – it was pretty obvious that Robert had too many compelling reasons to stay.

Some weeks later David Martin returned from the fields with grave news. The Kommandant had put up new posters in the villages under his control stating that he – Major Evers – was well aware that the villagers were hiding guns and food, and that there were British spies in the locality. All British soldiers being sheltered were to surrender by 30th April 1916, when they would be held as prisoners of war. Any found after that date would be shot and their French hosts fined and imprisoned.

In the discussion that followed, Claire was urged to go with the ‘useless mouths’ being evacuated, taking her baby with her, but she refused to even countenance being parted from Robert. Stress levels rose further when Marie Coulette returned from the village, furious because she had learned that Tom O’Sullivan had been talking to the German guards in his terrible French/patois, cheekily asking one to light his cigarette for him, and even teasing him a little. No bright young guard would have been fooled by this, and he had just been lucky this time. Tom was unrepentant. He had just been having a little bit of fun, and he was determined to go his own way.

L to R: Robert Digby, David Martin, Tom O'Sullivan, Charlotte Lelong

But it could only have been a gesture of defiance. Evers’ latest pronouncement meant that the likelihood of betrayal was even greater, and they would have to leave.

The British men departed that night. Robert and Claire bade farewell in love and sorrow, trying not to dwell on the fact that they were being torn apart, and dreamed of meeting again in a better place.

Eugénie had barely had time to calm down a little when on the following evening the men returned, looking dishevelled and desperate. They hadn’t been able to get anywhere near the German front line, let alone cross it. Robert commented that he thought they had been sighted by German troops, and were only just able to get away. Marie Coulette hastily took them into the barn for the night, but they would have to decide the following morning what to do.

Time had run out for the young British men, and this time they would be lost forever. A few days later in the night, German soldiers burst into the barn, and only Robert Digby was quick enough to jump out of the window and disappear into the woods. Martin and O’Sullivan were captured and put in jail.

Thus was the random cruelty of war. Robert Digby was once more wrenched from the home he loved, and was never to see his daughter or Claire again.

Other houses in the village were raided and among others, the mayor Parfait Marié was taken into custody.

His father Emile Marié (a man of generous girth, known as ‘Le Gros’) took over as temporary mayor of Villeret, and he proceeded to devote all his energies to getting his son freed while still obeying Evers’ orders and doing his best for the village.

Meanwhile Robert Digby hid in the woods, surviving as best he could on the spring berries left behind from the bombardments, but he realised he could not do this indefinitely and the front line was still too near. Emile Marié knew where he was, and would bring him food and news from time to time, until one day he came to meet him in the forest and told him that Major Evers had declared that if Digby were still in the area and were to give himself up, he would be sent back to his regiment without being punished.

While Robert remained in the Villeret area, Claire and little Hélène would be in danger of being held as hostages by Major Evers, and he did not wish Marie Coulette and Eugénie to come to any harm on his account. He was resolute. The following time he saw Emile Marié he quietly told him he would give himself up, and a day later he walked back to Villeret and handed himself in to Emile Marié, from where he was taken to Le Câtelet and to Major Evers.

The German Kommandant never had any intention of letting Robert Digby return to his regiment, and the British soldier knew this. He was locked in a cell within the same jail as his two other comrades, and one morning he heard their distress as they learned that they were to be shot that day. Later on he heard the sound of their execution, and knew he was to follow shortly.

On Tuesday 16th May 1916 he wrote letters to Eugénie asking her to look after her daughter and granddaughter for him, to his mother telling her about what had occurred and asking her to recognise Claire and Hélène as part of the Digby family, and finally to Claire:

“My darling Claire,

This is the last letter of my life. I am condemned to die by firing squad at five past ten tonight. Farewell, and never forget Robert, who dies happy and satisfied for France and for my own country. I kiss you. Embrace my baby girl and later, when she is grown, tell her the truth about her father, who has died content. Send the letter I have already written for my mother. I have given another letter for my family to the pastor, because the Germans have intercepted the letters of my comrades.

Farewell.

Your loving Robert”

-oOo-

Ben Macintyre came to the story in the nineties, when he met Hélène as an old lady, and she told him her story. Thus it is Hélène who tells the story in the opera.

Hélène

-oOo-

Epilogue

They had been betrayed.

The Dessenne hayloft had been discreet and remote enough to conceal the British soldiers for almost two years, and there had been no interest by the Germans in the property. If Major Evers had ever suspected Marie Coulette of harbouring British spies he would have seen to the consequences personally.

There were various people in Villeret who had reason to want the British soldiers gone, and not least was the frightened Eugénie. Then there were various women – Charlotte Lelong among them – who had a crush on Robert Digby, the most handsome of the three, and resented that Claire should have him. There were various men – the postman among them – who secretly loved Claire and wanted her lover gone. Emile Marié understood the danger in which these men had placed them, and there were many others who no longer wished to share their meagre supplies of food. The truth was not to be revealed for a further ninety years.

Contrary to his wishes that he be buried in Villeret, Major Evers dictated that Private Robert Digby’s grave should be dug in a remote corner of Le Câtelet cemetery and only one modest bouquet of flowers would be allowed. Villeret villagers disobeyed however, and the grave had a huge tower of flowers deposited upon it, to the Kommandant’s annoyance.

This is a cross erected near Villeret for another

British soldier, who died in 1918.

(http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=128161)

A few short weeks later their world went mad and the land exploded for four vicious months between July and November of 1916 while the Battle of the Somme roared around them. It seemed at times that the struggle to stay alive was all that kept them alive, and yet for the people of Villeret there was worse to come.

In February of 1917 the order was issued that all should assemble in the village square. From here they were forced to march into exile to the Ardennes, and Villeret was razed to the ground. It was flattened completely, as was Le Câtelet.

The Dessennes were among the families which returned to their village after the end of the war two years later, and with struggle and great penury rebuilt their homes. The Lelongs did not return other than briefly to view with dismay what was left of their property.

-oOo-

And finally…

Robert had a brother, Thomas, who coincidentally fought his war very close by to the fugitive and never knew it. When their mother Ellen died during the twenties, Thomas found among her things the letter Robert had written to her, asking her to recognise his daughter. From this yellowing scrap of paper he learned about Hélène for the first time, and that his mother had never wished to reveal it. So in 1930 Thomas Digby visited Villeret and found Hélène, now aged 15, and drew up an official document at the mayor’s office in Villeret, recognising her as a Digby.

Hélene and Claire in about 1923

Hélène (left)

& Claire (right)

in later life

There is one thing left to say, which I have learned from an article written by Ben Macintyre for The Times in April 2009.

He had recently been contacted by a Belgian historian who had learned from a forgotten archive in Brussels some facts about espionage during the First World War. The historian had read Macintyre’s book, and thought he ought to know who had been responsible for betraying Robert Digby.

One of the documents says “…Robert was denounced by the mayor of Villeret and taken by him to the Kommandant at Le Câtelet, where he was shot with three of his companions.”

So Emile Marié – Le Gros – was probably corpulent at a time of great food privation because he had been receiving preferential treatment from the Germans, and he probably betrayed the soldiers to protect himself and get his son released from jail. Macintyre remembered one of the villagers stating that Claire had hated Emile and wanted him dead. Perhaps she knew.

-oOo-

The opera was very successful, playing to full houses every night, and received excellent write-ups. (See here, here and here) and the Wetherells hope one day to be able to stage it again. Elizabeth Major, the opera’s librettist, could not have used Ben Macintyre’s story in its entirety, as there were numerous families in the village of Villeret who played an important part in the narrative, representing too many characters to portray on a stage. So what I have told you is the bare bones of the story, which I hope will prompt you to buy the book and be fascinated, as I was, by the background and what happened after the war.

To encourage you in this endeavour, I have purchased two second-hand copies of the book, which I shall be delighted to post to the first two people who leave a comment and tell me they would like to have a copy, even if a little dog-eared (and give me their e-mail address so I can contact them).

Should you wish to purchase the book yourself, these are the details:

UK: A Foreign Field, Harper Collins, ISBN 0-00-653171-7.

US: The Englishman’s Daughter, Random House, ISBN 978-0-385-33679-6

Ben Macintyre

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's digital archive

The cast of "A Foreign Field" - second half

Niall Hoskin (Major Evers)

Ron Moncrieff & Peter Naish (German soldiers)

Ian Arnold (David Martin)

Paul Arden-Griffith (Tom O'Sullivan)

Geraldine Aylmer-Kelly (Hélène Digby)

Eric Wetherell, Composer and Musical Director

-oOo-

Tales from Wartime – A Foreign Field (Part I of II)

2011-10-19T23:19:00.005+01:00

This true story dates from the First World War and happened in the French village of Villeret. It was researched and told by writer and “The Times” journalist Ben Macintyre in his book A Foreign Field (Harper Collins 2001), published in the US as The Englishman’s Daughter. Nine years later composer Eric Wetherell wrote an opera based on the book, with the libretto by his wife Elizabeth Major. I came to this story via the opera, from which my narrative is taken, as the Wetherells are friends of mine. I was privileged to be asked to take the pictures at rehearsals and at the final dress rehearsal, and have included some below, outlined in red. The historical pictures come from the book, or the internet.

The opera programme

The UK & US versions of the books

(for more details see end of Part II)

-oOo-

Part I of II – Lost and Found…

Villeret is a small village situated a few short miles from the river Somme in Picardy, Northern France. As part of the Western Front, it was occupied by German forces throughout most of the First World War, and had to withstand direct bombardment on many occasions. During the Battle of the Somme the constant sound of bombs exploding around it lasted four months. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of wounded, starving and exhausted German soldiers would flood regularly through Villeret requiring food and rest, which its inhabitants were expected to provide.

The village had been occupied by the German army since 1914, with Major Karl Evers seconded to the nearby village of Le Câtelet as Etappen-Kommandant of the surrounding villages. His brief was to “ensure that the civilian population did not impede the German war effort, to flush out spies, to provide adequate billets in the scattered villages for the thousands of troops heading back and forth to the front, and to extract from the land and its people whatever could be of use, value or pleasure”. (Ben Macintyre, A Foreign Field).

A tough and brutal man, particularly when drunk, Major Evers enjoyed issuing daily edicts which restricted the lives of the inhabitants: all livestock, milk and eggs had to be accounted for and were primarily for German military use; all homes were to be searched and items requisitioned as the soldiers saw fit. This included furniture as well as contents of larders and cellars. Heavy fines were imposed for minor or imagined misdemeanours, and any French citizen who was considered a spy or who was seen to be assisting or harbouring a spy was summarily shot.

It was into this uncertain world that British soldier Private Robert Digby of the Royal Hampshire Regiment stumbled one August evening in 1914. He had been wounded in the arm and with the front line shifting constantly, separated from his regiment which had retreated south, and he had linked up with two other soldiers who were as lost as he was.

The set

The three Dessenne women were in the kitchen of their little cottage of Rue d’en Bas in Villeret, discussing the war. Marie Coulette was the feisty and garrulous grandmother...

...a matriarch and leader of the family even before the men folk had gone to war;

her daughter-in-law Eugénie, nervous and fearful,and the latter’s nineteen year-old daughter Claire Dessenne, the acknowledged beauty of the village with her grandmother’s spirited personality and view of life.

Marie Coulette Dessenne Eugénie Dessenne (in later life)

Above 2 images are from http://jean.dessenne.pagesperso-orange.fr/anglvil01gb.htm

Robert Digby and Claire Dessenne

The urgent knock at the door revealed the wounded Robert Digby, who asked the women if he could have some food for him and the two fellow soldiers who were hiding in the woods with him. While Claire dressed his wound, Marie Coulette ordered the reluctant Eugénie to wrap up some food for him.

Thanking them, Digby disappeared into the night, leaving them arguing about whether it had been the right thing to do. Eugénie wanted no part in helping any soldiers, whether friend or foe, and the other two stoutly inveighed against her uncharitable attitude.

Another knock on the door made them jump, but this time it was a neighbour, Charlotte Lelong.

Her father was the village baker, and there was little love lost between the Lelongs and the Dessennes. The Lelongs fancied themselves a cut above the Dessennes, and Marie treated their snobbery with open contempt. However Charlotte had come to warn them that the bread supply was running low because of German requisitions.

The Lelong family, with Charlotte back right.

The air of menace in the room was broken by the pounding on the door once again and the frightened Eugénie stifled a scream. This time it was the three bedraggled stragglers who were ushered into the warm kitchen. Digby apologised for this new intrusion, introducing them to his comrades David Martin and Tom O’Sullivan, and explained that having been on the run for several weeks, they were exhausted and asked if they could lodge in the barn for the night.

To Eugénie’s manifest disapproval Marie Coulette welcomed them in. Claire explained the situation to the surprised Charlotte, and her grandmother told her that the strangers must be cared for until they could rejoin their regiments. Her father would need to provide the bread rations with which to feed them. All must pull together, she declared.

For their part, the grateful men assured them that while they waited they would assist with any heavy work required in the fields and the house. Marie pushed her reluctant daughter-in-law to go and fetch extra blankets, while she took Martin and O’Sullivan to the barn.

Left alone, Claire and Robert Digby soon found there was an obvious magnetism between them. She saw a fair, handsome soldier who spoke passable French; beneath the exhaustion and the stress and despite the broken arm which was clearly causing him pain, there was an intelligent and gentle man who hated the war as much as she did. He saw an extremely pretty girl with large, brown eyes and dark, wavy hair, a vivacious expression and a personality full of passion. She told him of her hatred of the locally billeted German soldiers whose eyes seemed to follow the young women everywhere as they worked in the fields.

Robert found himself telling her about his family in England, and his life before the war. He had a brother, Thomas, who was also fighting somewhere in France, he knew not where. Robert had lived in Paris for a wile, working in a café on the Seine – it was all so different now. His sadness was palpable and she wanted to reach out to him to tell him the good times would return one day, but felt suddenly shy.

The Digby family

As the weeks went by with no prospect of the men returning to their regiments despite various attempts to find them, the villagers of Villeret got used to having them around, still believing that they would not be staying for long. But the German army had settled in five miles south of Villeret and the first trenches had been dug. Digby, Martin and O’Sullivan were on the wrong side of the front line, and surrounded by the enemy army.

Villeret before the war
.

Villeret is today set back from the main road that crosses the region, just as it was then. To the villagers outsiders were foreigners, whether they came from Belgium or Le Câtelet several miles away. Seasonal farming and working the looms kept them mostly self-sufficient and they kept to themselves, thus they were perceived locally as being antisocial and somewhat surly. This was in part due to a local industry, a phosphate mine. Its dust had left many miners with damaged lungs, which they were fond of washing down with blanche, a white liqueur similar to absinthe. While it may have dulled the pain, it also destroyed the mind, and at that time there were at least forty men with brain damage resulting from their addiction to blanche, which must have done little to enhance its reputation.

To outsiders Villeret was rustic and frozen in time, and so must it have seemed to Robert Digby, for he fell in love with the village and its beautiful countryside before falling in love with its most enchanting inhabitant, Claire Dessenne.

The British men settled into the life of the village. With German soldiers swarming around and Major Evers and his men poking into every nook and cranny, it was never going to be possible for them to hide. They chose instead to work in the fields and learn the local patois, even going so far as to speak to the German guards in the language, which they did not understand.

While Robert Digby’s language skills were good, the efforts of the other two were frankly pitiful. O’Sullivan was Irish by birth, and his high spirits often made him stand out, which was a cause of great worry to the others. The Villeret people observed him on occasion chatting to the German guards and naturally feared that he could give them away. They could only imagine what cruelties would be forthcoming from the Kommandant if he discovered that he had foreigners living under his nose.

The mayor Parfait Marié worried the most. He worried about the harvest because so many of the able bodied men had joined up, he worried that the villagers would eventually starve because of the quantities of food being requisitioned by Major Evers and he worried about the number of enemy soldiers crowding into every home and taking the best of every space and crumb of food for themselves. He was forced to trudge daily to the Kommandant’s office in Le Câtelet – as were all the mayors of the villages under his command – to listen to him demand more livestock and more food, impose more fines and rant about spies. Most of all he worried that the presence of the British soldiers would be discovered and their village would be razed to the ground.

And amidst all the noise, the exhaustion, the misery and the death, life was shiny new and just beginning for Robert and Claire. The young man had come into her life as a lost soul, and now they had found love together.

People around them pretended they didn’t know why they disappeared into the hayloft or went for long walks in the twilight, but were careful to ensure that they were left alone. It was as if with happiness being so scarce, the village was living through the young couple and was happy for them.

One evening Eugénie and Claire were preparing the evening meal and talking to Charlotte Lelong, who had dropped by obviously hoping to see the men when they returned from the fields. There were relaxed when they arrived, and Tom O’Sullivan started to hum a jaunty tune and dance a jig, inviting Claire to join him.

She quickly learned the steps...

... and in the merriment that followed Claire suggested Charlotte should try it for herself and ask Robert to dance with her. If anyone had been observing her closely they would have noticed her eyes flashing with anger at this suggestion, for she had witnessed the growing closeness between Claire and Robert, and was trying to conceal the fact that she had fallen for him too.

A peremptory knock on the door brought the entertainment to an abrupt end however, for as Eugénie opened it there standing before her were Major Evers, Sergeant Scholl and a German private. While Marie Coulette greeted them in surly manner, the British soldiers discreetly withdrew to a back room to play cards in dim light and ensure they made frequent appropriate exclamations in patois.

Major Evers had heard the singing and laughter, and as he demanded to be given some of the local gin for which he knew Eugénie’s husband was famous, he claimed to be on a courtesy call.

He then proceeded to remind them of the rules he was putting in place in the village, until his eye was caught by the handsome clock on the mantelpiece. In reply to his enquiry Marie Coulette told him it was a family heirloom but that it did not keep good time. She made no pretence at hiding her contempt, and was not surprised when Evers told Scholl to bring it to him because he fancied it would look rather smart in his office. He seemed to accept it as normal that locals were playing cards in the back room and did not remark upon it, as if his purpose on that occasion had been solely to terrorise the women. After making a few more veiled threats he and his men departed.

As the card players drifted back into the kitchen, all tried to shake off the gloom caused by Evers’ visit. While Charlotte tried to make the point that not all Germans were bad and their soldiers were suffering in equal measure, Marie Coulette angrily countered that she would neither pity them nor ever give in. But it was clear that nothing could dampen Claire’s happiness. As long as the sun shone and they had enough to eat, she said, all would be well, and there would soon be another mouth to feed….

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's digital archive

The cast of "A Foreign Field"

(in two parts - second half follows with second post)

Liz & Eric Wetherell

(Librettist and Composer/Conductor respectively)

John Telfer

(Director)

Pam Rudge (Marie Coulette)

Pauline Wetherell (Eugénie Dessenne)

Rosie Clifford (Claire Dessenne)

Simon Woodhead (Robert Digby)

Gemma Dunster (Charlotte Lelong)

-oOo-

Concludes in the next post, and I have a special giveaway offer for you, so don't miss it...

Link to Part II

-oOo-

Recently published paper: A new theory on how to eat less

2011-10-08T10:46:00.000+01:00

(Plus short story from my other blog and pics at the end)

It was reported on UK national radio this week that a psychologist by the name of David Neal has presented a paper with the University of Southern California, published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

It’s entitled “The Pull of the Past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives?”, (also with colleagues Wendy Wood, Mengiu Wu and David Kurlander.) I think it’s of interest to anyone aspiring to lose weight, so I wanted to tell you about it.

By means of two field experiments he tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit and noted what happened when two aspects of this habit were changed, removing the participants from their comfort zone.

Apparently people associate the cinema with eating popcorn to such a degree, that when they were presented either with very stale popcorn or fresh, they ate the same quantity, even if they were not hungry. If on the other hand they were asked to eat (fresh) popcorn with their non-dominant hand, their consumption went right down – it took them much longer and they stopped eating sooner, presumably because their brains had caught up with their stomachs and told them they were full.

So there you have it folks –

1. Break the cycle of eating always in certain situations (watching TV… sitting comfortably?) Try eating only at the table, and – say – on a stool.

2. Eat only with your fork or spoon in your other hand.

David Neal claims that we eat significantly less in these situations. I’m fascinated by the second one, and would be very interested to know what you think. I intend to try it. (At Chinese restaurants I’ve often thought that if I was forced to eat with chopsticks I’d not only eat less, I’d starve…)

-oOo-

Bariatric Surgery Source website - I've written another article ,in case you're interested.

-oOo-

From my Eavesdroppings Blog. 204. Garden Party at Buckingham Palace

Background

Hilda and George have been faithful members of the Scout movement in Bristol for many years, rendering countless services to the association they so heartily believe in. In recognition of their marvellous efforts they have been rewarded with an invitation from Her Majesty herself to attend one of her famous garden parties at Buckingham Palace. There is great excitement, and new clothes are purchased for the great day. They immediately reject the plan to take the car, in view of parking problems and the expense. The train will be cheaper and less stressful anyway.

Timings are carefully rehearsed to ensure they do not arrive late, which in fact results in them leaving for Bristol Temple Meads railway station very early. Despite their care they are both a little stressed, and unused to wearing such smart clothes in the morning. They settle into their carriage, and a couple of stations flash by. For want of anything better to do, Hilda gets the invitation out of her handbag…

Hilda (60): …er…George…

George (65): Oh what NOW.

Hilda: Well, it says here that showing the invitation isn’t enough. You have to show proof of identity, preferably passports. Have you brought anything?

George: …… you were hanging on to the invitation. Didn’t you read it?

Hilda: Not that bit…. What do we do?

With panic rising George thinks fast and rings his daughter back at home. They alight at the next station – Reading – and leaving Hilda on a bench, George crosses the line and takes the train back to Bristol. Their daughter is waiting for him on the platform with their passports, and he then races back across the line and takes the train back to Reading station. He collects Hilda from the bench and they take the next train to London.

Although they have allowed plenty of time, they hadn’t envisaged this sort of problem, and they realise that there will not be enough time to get across London to Buckingham Palace by public transport. Their stress levels overflowing, not to mention their tempers, they are therefore forced to go against their principles and take a taxi.

However they arrive in the nick of time, and all goes smoothly.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: (stopping to speak to them briefly as she proceeds across the garden) I see you’ve been members of the Scout Movement for many years. How wonderful. I imagine you’re terribly well organised.

George: Oh yes Mam.

(With thanks to Karen)

-oOo-

Photo Finish
from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Argentina

Foothills of the Andes in the province of Salta

Church Tower, City of Salta

Fountain in the Plaza - playing around with Photoshop

(I know, I've overcooked it!)

Woodpecker on a tipa tree, Province of Entre Ríos

Province of Tucumán. John took this one and I'm at the back,

photographing this lovely stream which reminded me powerfully

of my childhood holidays.

Another shot of Nancy's garden,

Loma Bola, Province of Córdoba

Continuing with my interest in dusty old shelves and window-sills,

this was in a shed which was about to be pulled down.

The old baking powder tin looked strikingly out of place

and was a nice splash of colour.

Like most people, I'm a sucker for sunset pictures

(I would also love sunrises, but I'm never up early enough

to see them...)

-oOo-

You might as well keep it all in the fridge...

2011-10-02T18:33:00.004+01:00

As my 49th birthday approached in 2002, friends felt it their duty to warn me that I could relax for a year, but when I turned fifty, they said, it’s as if someone up there trips a switch. You start to short-circuit all over the place. Rubbish, I said, why should it be fifty – why not forty-five… fifty-two? That’s just superstition. You wait and see, they said.

My forties were a peaceful decade, I didn’t see why it couldn’t carry on as it was. My fiftieth birthday came and went, and as the months did likewise I smiled to myself marvelling at how people like to believe in old wives’ tales.

Then one day I went into the bathroom and found the tap in the basin running at full blast. There was no one I could blame, I’d been alone all afternoon. “Must be something wrong with it”, I thought.

The joints in my hands ached a little, then I realised that the smallest ones had bumps on them. My big toes no longer allowed me to wear other than open ended shoes. I got rashes when I stepped into chlorinated water. My vocal cords were weaker and I was getting hoarse easily – goodbye to playing the Spanish guitar and singing unless it was do-re-mi-croak-la-ti-double croak.

My oily hair continued undeterred by the ageing going on underneath, except for a strip at either temple, which dried out and subsequently caused my hair there to stand at right angles to my head. Looking like a newborn chick is fine for humans of similar age, but not for fifty-two year olds. Year upon year, in cumulative fashion, the pains and aches multiplied as I performed the daily ritual of getting out of bed every morning, till now at 58 when I resemble a beetle on its back waving its legs and arms in the air as it tries to get upright.

Last month I had just finished copying out an address as I sat at the dining-room table, then got up and went to the fridge to get my usual bottle of iced water to take to bed with me and caught myself red-handed about to put the address book on the bottle rack. As if I had just woken up from a dream. Since then pens and a comb have occasionally been sighted in that particular location, but I’m blaming the cats.

A close friend consoled me telling me she had recently lost a bundle of clothes she had intended to put in the washing machine, and they turned up a few days later when she went to the freezer for some frozen peas and found a brittle ball of clothing when she opened the frozen veg drawer.

John is not known for his keen powers of observation (cleavages excepted), and in the last 8 years has let me climb into my car to go to work with hair as pristine as when it was towelled dry after a shower half an hour earlier, or with different shoes on, or a symphony in colour-blind black and navy clothes (bad eyesight where these two colours are concerned when seen under electric light). It was his fault utterly that my bemused office colleagues could not resist mentioning that I needed a comb or a third shoe, to my boundless mortification.

In August this year my lovely neighbours gave us a bag full of apples, which were much enjoyed cooked with pork chops, as apple pure with roast pork, in apple crumble puddings, and so on. In September I came home to find another bag on the kitchen worktop, and I trotted over to thank them once again. It was a strange conversation, and it was only when I was about to depart that we worked out that (a) they thought I was thanking them for the apples of a month earlier because I had forgotten to do so at the time; (b) the present bag contained pears, not apples – which I hadn’t noticed - and (c) they had nothing to do with it, suspecting it was the neighbours on the other side; (d) they wondered why they hadn’t been given a bag too.

So my brain is going as well.

When a much loved camera club member died suddenly five years ago, quite a few of us resolved to go to her funeral on the other side of Bristol. I got organised and asked to take the day off from work, and we even did a practice run to ensure we would know where we were going.

On the appointed day we arrived at the crematorium, and while John parked the car I made my way up to the chapel and was dismayed to find that the service was already in full swing. Realising I must have got the time wrong, with heart pounding I edged open the very large door and squeezed into an over-crowded room, feeling terribly self-conscious and embarrassed.

A stranger smiled at me in welcome, beckoning me to stand beside her at the front (no hope of a seat of course). She handed me the service sheet and I smiled gratefully at her, at the same time feeling sorry for John who would shortly be going through the same ordeal as I had. Hating the fact that I was now so visible and that my lateness would have been noted, I sang the next hymn without looking up.

But when I eventually did, several facts became blindingly apparent. I didn’t recognise anyone. I looked at the service sheet properly and it wasn’t our camera club friend’s name. I was in the wrong service. John would be arriving any minute.

With a prickly feeling under my collar and my face perspiring I edged my way out again with what sounded to me like deafeningly loud “excuse me’s”, trying to ignore the “but you’ve only just got here” looks, and made it through the large squeaking door just as John walked up to me apologising for having taken so long to park the car.

A quick check with the administration office confirmed that our friend’s funeral was seven days’ later, at the same time.

So I must face up to the forgetfulness of old age, use lists and diaries, and try to remember where I left my spectacles. You know, the fridge is not a bad place for putting such things – it is after all the cupboard you’re most likely to visit during the day, so why not keep it all handy?

Note to Santa: I want a bigger fridge.

-oOo-

PS: I’m preparing a story, which will start a new category – Tales from Wartime - but it’s taking a bit longer than it should. My concentration has been affected because I’m just starting a new job, and the apprehension involved has spilled over into my time at home which is usually sacred to writing. Normal service will be resumed …..etc etc

-oOo-

Photo Finish:

From Lonicera’s non-digital archive

Argentina: Flora
.

(with apologies for the fact that I don't know most of their names -
feel free to let me know if you recognise them!)

The venerable ombú, Phytolacca dioica, astonishingly not a tree but a giant evergreen herb. The branches can be cut with a knife, and reveal a spongy inside quite similar to a cigar. Native of the pampas in Argentina, regarded as symbol in both Argentina and Uruguay.

The humble and cheerful little wild verbena which appears in spring

The cactus of northwest Argentina, this one about 12 foot high, showing very rare flowers.

-oOo-

A Bariatric / Weight Loss Surgery website you should look at

2011-09-24T13:04:00.008+01:00

(Also a brief story and pictures at the end)

I occasionally write articles for Bariatric Surgery Source, and thus have been following the fortunes of this website for about a year now. It’s based in the United States and its location-related information encompasses Canada as well, but its base is an advantage to British, Australian and NZ readers. The US has by far the largest English-speaking market of overweight people reaching for a solution to their obesity, and comprehensive websites such as this one are there to provide it.

They certainly don’t pay me anything, so I’m free to say that I think it’s packed with essential information you need to know before, during and after weight loss surgery. In fact there is so much to see that if I was to pick fault with it I would say that the amount of information can at times be bewildering and it can take a few minutes to find your way round. It’s also not biased, because it will discuss very frankly the pros and cons of each procedure, with a lot of links to other websites.

People also write in with their problems, and Jeff Quinlan, who founded and runs the site, invites WLS contributors if they would like to comment. One of these is Beth (Who Hid the Donuts), and this week we had a fascinating to and fro about the differences between gastric band and gastric bypass surgery. Beth's forthright manner has ensured that a very lively discussion has resulted. I know that the lady in Florida asking the question will have a lot to think about after all the replies she got.

If any of you out there like the idea of writing the odd article (however long or short, it doesn’t matter), Jeff would love to hear from you. He also wants to hear from people who have read a WLS book and would be willing to review it.

His only request is that it can’t be copy and pasted from anywhere on the internet, i.e. your own blogs. The work has to be original to comply with the regulations to which he is subject, i.e., it mustn’t contain strings of words which when Googled bring up both your blog and his website. I would add that you have to submit it either by typing direct, or if you need to compose first, to do it in Notepad, because if you use Word you’ll find all your apostrophes etc fallen by the wayside.

These are the articles I’ve written so far:

1. If hunger is not the reason you eat then eating is not the solution.
(I’ve always liked this phrase, and I’ve discovered recently that I probably got it from the blog of LapBand Gal, and if it was hers, many apologies for 'borrowing' it inadvertently!)
.
2. Financing LapBand surgery & Follow-up Visits, in a lump sum.

3. My LapBand recovery.

4. Weight Loss Surgery Support Groups. Group therapy and how it can help you.

5. Getting stuck with the gastric band.

6. Keep your honey in the bathroom: The Gastric band and diabetes.

7. Weight loss surgery – plateaus, doldrums and being becalmed.

8. To Tell or not To Tell about your Weight Loss Surgery

All they want is to hear your story, how you got to where you are today and your thoughts about weight loss surgery, and the gastric band. There are all those readers out there who want to feel they aren’t alone, and you could help. If you're trying to gather your scattered thoughts, there's a long list of topics to inspire you.

Jeff has always been supportive and friendly - and there are pictures of himself and his team up on the site to add a personal dimension and make contributors feel that they know them.

Good luck with Bariatric Surgery Source, Jeff!
.

-oOo-

From my Eavesdroppings & Stories blog. 253: Soliloquy at the Petrol Station

Scene: I have filled my car with petrol and go in to pay. I hear the radio blaring as I make my way to the till, where the 20+ year old cashier has just finished serving a customer. As I step up to the till I hear the radio disc jockey mention that after the news he'll be playing the latest song of "the delectable Lady Gaga".

Cashier: Delectable? I tell you I'm sick and tired of hearing about her. Can't STAND her. She looks awful, dresses worse, dead artificial. People just talk about her, not about the music. She's supposed to be a singer...

Me: Mmm. Pump No. 14 please.

Cashier: Like that Madonna - all the rage in the 90's she was. Couldn't STAND her. Them pointy tits. Always had to be in the news about other stuff. She was supposed to be a singer...

Me: Mmm. Do I put my card in this way up?

Cashier: Yes love. I tell you, these women are there to sing, but all they want you to do is look at them, not listen to their voices. Can't STAND them.

Me: Mmm. Can I take my card out now?

Cashier: Yes love. I mean, look at footballers. We want to watch them play and all they want to do is screw around and appear in newspapers and demand a lot of money. Can't STAND that. I've read that they used to pay footballers £20 a week back in the fifties, and look at them now. Just for kicking a ball around...

Me: Mmm. I know, it's a scandal. Well, bye for now.

Cashier: Bye love. Nice talking to you.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -
from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Photo-stew...

A stream in the Blaise Castle grounds, Bristol

View of Bristol and Wills Memorial Building Tower,

the heart of the university

Rust can be beautiful too...

The windbreak: the only way to sunbathe on a British beach

Dirty and busy windowsills - one of my

favourite subjects

One of the first pictures I ever took in the early 90s with

my Pentax SLR camera - a view of Clifton, Bristol, from the

Suspension Bridge, evening.

Japanese garden, in Wales

-oOo-