457: Same old, but in two languages

Today, and yesterday, and the day before, I've been continuing with my training to walk the Camino de Santiago de Campostela at the end of March/beginning of April. With almost every step I'm coming closer to the realization that I might possibly (probably?) have to postpone my participation in it at this time. The coronavirus is not being beaten quickly enough. It's heartening to see that in my county (Huntingdonshire) the number of new cases is decreasing day by day but this needs to happen all over UK. In fact, all over the world. There is a race between virus and vaccination and I read today that in England they are currently delivering 140 jabs every minute! An astonishing factoid. Hope they're not all in the same arm. If I can get mine by early-to-mid-March, and travel is allowed again, then perhaps I can do the Camino after all? I'm still (slightly) optimistic. All I can do is wait and see. And carry on the training.

I'm varying my route as much as I can but Ramsey is only a small town (population of about 8,000 depending on who you ask and which census is being referred to). Yesterday I walked a mile or two along a road, thinking, erroneously, that there would be hardly any traffic as everybody is supposed to be at home. Wrong. Stocking Fen Road was like a race track. The Fens are full of places with quaint names like that. I took what I thought was an interesting picture on the way back into town, showing how much rain Ramsey has had recently. It is of the local cemetery and wondered if the deceased might have been better off with a burial at sea!  Luckily my Dad, who is interred there, was in the Navy.   

Quite a bit of my non-training time is taken up planning, and booking, grocery delivery slots. Now we are in the middle of another lock-down, delivery slots are like hen's teeth.  I have to keep scouring the big 5 to find a suitable slot. So far I've managed to avoid setting foot in a supermarket - the mountain comes to Mohammed. 

It occurred to me today that I could use that nice Mr Google to translate my blog into Spanish. I'm desperately trying to make the jump from basic level to intermediate so if I can read what kind of a fist Mr Google makes of it then perhaps I can inch slowly forward along the road to being a Spanish speaker. If any of my Spanish teachers and/or friends would like to comment on any inadequacies in Mr Google's Spanish I'd be more than happy to hear and learn from them. So... 

As an interpreter, albeit of Russian, I know how different automatic translation can be from what was intended. 

Hoy, y ayer, y anteayer, he seguido con mi formación para realizar el Camino de Santiago de Campostela a finales de marzo / principios de abril. Con casi cada paso, me acerco a darme cuenta de que posiblemente (¿probablemente?) Tenga que posponer mi participación en este momento. El coronavirus no está siendo vencido lo suficientemente rápido. Es alentador ver que en mi condado (Huntingdonshire) la cantidad de casos nuevos está disminuyendo día a día, pero esto debe suceder en todo el Reino Unido. De hecho, en todo el mundo. ¡Hay una carrera entre el virus y la vacunación y hoy leí que en Inglaterra están administrando 140 inyecciones por minuto! Un dato asombroso. Espero que no estén todos en el mismo brazo. Si puedo conseguir el mío a principios o mediados de marzo y se permite viajar de nuevo, ¿quizás pueda hacer el Camino después de todo? Todavía soy (un poco) optimista. Todo lo que puedo hacer es esperar y ver. Y continúa el entrenamiento.

Estoy variando mi ruta tanto como puedo, pero Ramsey es solo una ciudad pequeña (población de alrededor de 8,000 dependiendo de a quién le pregunte y a qué censo se hace referencia). Ayer caminé una milla o dos a lo largo de una carretera, pensando, erróneamente, que apenas habría tráfico ya que se supone que todos están en casa. Incorrecto. Stocking Fen Road era como una pista de carreras. Los pantanos están llenos de lugares con nombres pintorescos como ese. Tomé lo que pensé que era una foto interesante en el camino de regreso a la ciudad, mostrando cuánta lluvia ha tenido Ramsey recientemente. ¡Es del cementerio local y se preguntó si el difunto podría haber estado mejor con un entierro en el mar! Por suerte, mi papá, que está enterrado allí, estaba en la Marina.

Gran parte de mi tiempo no relacionado con la capacitación se dedica a planificar y reservar espacios de entrega de comestibles. Ahora estamos en medio de otro bloqueo, los espacios de entrega son como dientes de gallina. Tengo que seguir recorriendo los 5 grandes para encontrar una ranura adecuada. Hasta ahora he logrado evitar poner un pie en un supermercado: la montaña llega a Mohammed.

Hoy se me ocurrió que podría utilizar ese agradable Sr. Google para traducir mi blog al español. Estoy tratando desesperadamente de dar el salto del nivel básico al intermedio, así que si puedo leer qué clase de puño hace el Sr. Google, entonces tal vez pueda avanzar lentamente en el camino hacia ser un hablante de español. Si alguno de mis profesores y / o amigos de español quisiera comentar sobre alguna deficiencia en el español del Sr. Google, estaría más que feliz de escuchar y aprender de ellos. Entonces...
Como intérprete, aunque de ruso, sé lo diferente que puede ser la traducción automática de lo que se pretendía.

456: How lucky I am

This morning I have been overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude. How lucky I am to be a (relatively healthy) pensioner in these troubled times. It is easy for me to step back from face-to-face interaction with the human race and simply wait out the global pandemic that is causing everybody so much grief and heartache. I don't even have to go shopping as careful planning brings the shopping to my door. My pension, earned over 50+ years of work, gets sent to my bank account every 4 weeks without my lifting a finger. The hardest part of the day is deciding what shape to make on Strava during my daily exercise. Almost a fir tree?

A bit of a glitch with the home shopping yesterday. I had arranged a delivery with Morrison's when, out of the blue, they cancelled it. I went onto the websites of the big 5 grocers to look for an alternative delivery slot but they were all fully booked until Friday evening. I booked the Friday evening slot with Waitrose and wondered if I would have to exist on fresh air until then. A slight exaggeration I must confess. Looking again this morning I saw a cancellation on Tesco's website for Wednesday evening and grabbed it. I cancelled my Waitrose Friday evening slot so somebody else could have it. Out of interest I ordered the same items on Tescos as I had on Waitrose. The Waitrose shop came to £43.02 and the Tescos to £37.12. Proof, if proof were needed, that Waitrose is more expensive than Tesco. Morrisons have earned themselves a black mark for leaving me in the lurch like that. They have redeemed themselves a little bit by giving me a £10 voucher, but I would sooner have had the food at the time I had planned to need it. 

Of course, I am more than aware of how difficult life is for the working population, who have no choice but to get out and mingle. How easy it currently is to catch the virus from other people, and especially from other people who are not adhering to the measures advocated by government. Our NHS is, apparently, on the verge of collapsing. Hospitals are concentrating on treating coronavirus infected patients at the expense of other seriously ill folk. That is so sad. I'm pleased I'm not a doctor having to decide who to treat and who to let die. (Although I think there may have been an element of that in my mum's case when the consultant decided to move her out of the ICU bed she was occupying when she didn't seem to be responding to treatment. I hold no grudge).

In my last blog I wrote about my forthcoming 'exped' to the Camino. My participation in this epic adventure is by no means certain because of the potent destructive force of the COVID virus. Much as I would like to march triumphantly into Santiago de Campostela on my 70th birthday, common sense must prevail. I shall review the situation at the end of the current lockdown in England on 15th February and decide yay or nay at that time.  

Doesn't Kylie look young!

455: 1st day of training!

Happy New Year to all my friends and students, past and present. Here I go again, another big project. 

Alisdair and I are planning to walk the Camino de Santiago de Campostela in late March/early April, coronavirus permitting. Pilgrims have been converging on the city for hundreds of years to pay homage to Santiago (aka St James). There is a choice of routes in and we have chosen what's known as 'the English way'. It's the shortest route but is still some 120 km from start to finish. We plan on walking 17.4 km, 13.3 km, 20.2, REST day, 27.8, 24.0, and 16.7, ending up triumphantly (?) entering Santiago de Campostela on Friday 2nd April, my 70th birthday. This year 2nd April also happens to be Good Friday. 

A project of this magnitude needs a goodly amount of preparation, including training the legs to walk a longish distance on consecutive days. So, 6 miles today and another 6 planned for tomorrow. Building up through January and February and tapering off during March. 

 

the sun was shining but it was cold and slippery

I plan to come, cap in hand, and ask every Tom, Dick and Harry, if they would consider sponsoring us for a penny or two in order to give us some extra motivation. But I have to confess the Just Giving page is not ready yet. Best to wait a few weeks just to make sure that COVID-19 is on the way out! Always the optimist! 

Nancy Sinatra then with "these boots are made for walking"

454: Rugged Ross-shire

 Ross-shire is a historic county in the Scottish Highlands. The county borders Sutherland to the north and Inverness-shire to the south, as well as having a complex border with Cromartyshire – a county consisting of numerous enclaves or exclaves scattered throughout Ross-shire's territory.

I went walking in Portmahomack (click on their site for some stunning pics) yesterday, with my friend Alisdair and found the coastline quite spectacular. We walked from the village to the lighthouse and back again, getting rained upon several times in the process. It was cold too - the Scottish winter  is upon us. I was reminded of the quote by the well-known coast-to-coast walker Alfred Wainwright: 'there's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing'. Luckily, I remembered that quote before I left home!

There are many lighthouses around the coast of the British Isles . None of them are manned any more but they are still maintained and still guide mariners around our rocky shores. Those in England and Wales are run by an organisation called Trinity House, whilst those in Scotland, and, surprisingly, the Isle of Man, are looked after by the Northern Lighthouse Board, with Headquarters in Edinburgh.

Back in the village (of Portmahomack) we stumbled on an excellent cafe (Carnegie cafe) for lunch. A warming bowl of lentil soup and a haggis and cheese panini. They certainly hit the spot and revived us ready for the drive back to Golspie.  

		How true is this!!

Finally, as a harbinger of Christmas:

453: What a tenuous hold we have on life

From L to R as you're looking at the photo: Des, Brian, Bob, Andy.
Taken in Spring 1985 as we were all about to 'graduate' from the Defence School of Languages.
Somebody played Boney M's Rasputin. How could we not dance?

 

 Of the four of us in this picture, one died some days ago and another is sliding towards the exit door with an incurable disease. Who is going to be next Andy? You? or me? Life is like a flickering flame on a candle that can be blown out at any moment.

Bob is suffering from a disease that I've long since forgotten the name of but it has been described as a kind of Parkinson's + . He has had it for several years and I visited him, and his second wife, Larissa, in January 2018, in Krasnodar, in the South of Russia.  It was a bit of a risk going back to Russia as the FSB (previously known as KGB) had tried to recruit (subvert) me when I was working in Moscow as a teacher of English and I was a tadge concerned they might try and grab me when I landed back on Russian soil. Thankfully I got away with it - only a tiny tiny pawn in 'the Great Game'. I was in touch with Larissa yesterday on WhatsApp to pass on the news of Brian's demise. Bob is, of course, getting worse but is still hanging in there with the tenacity I know of old. 

Brian is the one who died, I'm not sure exactly when as the obituary says Monday 30th October and 30th October was not a Monday. Here is the obituary, which I found on a RAPC group page. What an incredible soldier, and officer. It was a great pleasure, and a privilege, to have known him. We studied Russian together, at Beaconsfield, and then worked at each end of the Berlin corridor, I was in Berlin and he was in Helmstedt. Rest in Peace Brian. 

"It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you all of the recent passing of Capt. Brian Dent. BEM. who lived in Alicante, Spain. BRIAN DENT BEM - 1PWO.

Brian was born in Rotherham. He married his wife Margaret on the 2nd of April 1960. He was in the Territorial Army with the rank of Corporal when at the age of 26 he decided to join the regular army, joining 1PWO in Colchester in 1967. As a Married, mature, intelligent, and capable soldier he was rapidly promoted to the rank of Sergeant whilst serving with the Mortar Platoon in Cyprus. It was at this time that he was seconded to the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces as an 81mm mortar advisor and instructor in Muscat for a number of months.

When the battalion was posted to Northern Ireland in 1972 he was chosen to be one of four SNCO’S tasked with promoting ‘ Community relations’ between the two communities of Northern Ireland. Their work led to them being awarded the ‘Wilkinson Sword of peace’ and Brian the BEM. It was in the first weeks of this new role and whilst undergoing hand over takeover training from the outgoing unit that he was captured by the IRA in West Belfast. He was disarmed, taken hooded to a house to be questioned before being taken in the early hours to an alleyway to be shot 5 times. In typical Brian fashion he survived and there followed a lengthy spell at Headley Court Rehabilitation centre. He then returned to the battalion and full service. Despite those serious injuries he went on to complete the Senior Brecon course, and many others, resulting in his selection as a C/Sgt instructor on the staff of the RMA Sandhurst 1977/78.

Whilst in Bulford 1978/80 he became CSM D Company, which would prove to be his last appointment with the first battalion. Brian loved the challenge, so he began to look for alternatives for his career.

He then successfully applied for a two year long language course in Russian, which of course he successfully passed. This new skill allowed him to apply for the post of translator on the Berlin military train, a job that he loved. He was then promoted to WO1.He did not stop there!

He then successfully applied for a commission into the Royal Army Pay Corps and to become the Paymaster of the 1st Battalion the Black Watch.

He retired in the rank of Captain having served for a total of 33 years.

Following discharge Brian and his beloved wife Margaret moved to Spain where they have lived since 2002. Following a number of years fighting Alzheimers/Dementia sadly he passed away on Monday 30 October 2020. May he rest now in eternal peace."

 

For a video clip, I have selected Rachel Bostock playing Last Post on the violin.

452: And all for the sake of an egg banjo!

Got to keep the heart and lungs and muscles going as long as possible so another walk yesterday. The last time I was in Brora I enjoyed a fried egg roll in Linda's cafe so that's where we headed yesterday. After walking for 2.5 hours I felt I had enough calories 'in credit' that I could manage another egg banjo without developing a guilty conscience. Very nice it was too.

 A lovely walk with the North Sea on our right, or starboard, side all the way. A grassy, albeit muddy in places, path except where we met some grazing cattle when we decided that walking on the shingle on the sea shore would be the more prudent option. Scared of a couple of cows you may ask but in fact cows occasionally take umbrage at humans in 'their' field and have even been known to kill people. Some poor man lost his life a couple of months ago.  A few pics, in no particular order.

Dunrobin castle, looking rather splendid A few of the well-behaved cows	The sun reflecting off the sea A flock of seagulls, taking time out from flying about all day.
Peat-enriched water flowing down from the hills.	Lovely autumnal colours on this fern in the garden.

 And here is Inspector Clousseau come to check the fern!

451: Wot a Norf and Souf

 I'm sitting in my club in London, eating my 475 calories Boots meal deal, and reflecting that less than a week ago I was walking in the hills in the far North of Scotland. What a contrast. 

I love travelling. Why? Mostly because it often precipitates adventures and interesting experiences. Today was no exception.   

I went for lunch with my sister to a pub called "The Barrow Boy & Banker" - a few minutes walk from London Bridge railway station. I think it was allowed under current Covid regulations as although London is currently Tier 2 (High) my sister and I both live in Tier 1 (Medium) areas. They let us in and we registered through the NHS Covid app. I had a voucher from Fullers' breweries for a free bottle of wine with two main meals. They couldn't seem to match it up with any of their other offers but knocked £19.80 off the bill anyway, for the price of the bottle of wine. A result. I like it when people understand the benefits of building good cutomer relations. It's highly likely we'll go back there again now, whereas if they had disallowed my voucher they wouldn't have seen us for dust.

I was being crafty (who me?) and made sure the wine had a screw top. Hazel doesn't drink alcohol, what a star, and I knew I wouldn't drink a whole bottle in one sitting so I drank 'half' and took the other half with me to drink here in my room. 

The next interesting episode occurred when I went out for an evening 'meal'. I could have eaten in the dining room here but, frankly speaking, that's a 'special occasion' kind of meal. The kind you have to save up for. I went looking for the McDonalds that used to be at Marble Arch. There was no sign of it and rather than traipse halfway down Oxford Street looking for another one I went into Boots for a £3.99 meal deal (sandwiches, drink and chocolate bar). It almost turned into a £4.99 meal deal as the young Muslim girl tried to diddle me out of a £1. And there was me thinking they didn't do that kind of thing.  Luckily for me, and not her, I'm still of an age when I can quickly check the change to make sure it's right.

 I walked back along Park Lane, looking enviously in at the posh car showrooms and wondering when my Premium Bonds would come up. I'm sure it won't be long now.

Back to Ramsey tomorrow, after what I hope will be a superb Big Boy's breakfast in the dining room.