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My life's journey ..... at least, up to now

 

I feel I've come to all this very late in life.  I mean, I was born way back at the end of the Second World War - to herald peace as it were - so you'll realise that I've seen a lot more things than technology, and coming to grips with technology for  my generation has its ups and downs.  For a start, I learnt to type on an old Olivetti that made a terrible noise with its stiff metal keys that required strong fingers, carbon paper for copies, a  thick white liquid called Tippex for blotting out errors ... but life is easier (or is it?) for would-be writers now with screens and a thousand options at our fingertips.

I was born in the UK beside the sea in Southampton but brought up from a very early age in a house and garden fifteen miles outside London.  Those tender family years with a brother and sister seven years my senior, with a dog and caring parents - all ingredients for happiness...  Happiness can be elusive, can't it?  It comes and goes at will, but I believe that we have to pursue it constantly.  I think it was Aristotle who first said that the search for happiness is one of man's duties.

I had just turned eleven when the family embarked on the "Himalaya" for our month-long journey to Sydney, a journey that is as vivid today as it was then to the impressionable mind of a young girl.  And I loved visiting exciting lands and I loved being out at sea, aware even then of how important it is to respect all that water.  My mother in particular was thrilled to be returning to live in the land of her birth.  Life in Sydney was bright and warm in comparison to the greyer memories I had of London.  My schooling finished there, I did a business course and found a job in the Programmes Department of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.  They were three fascinating years when, in between work commitments, I studied dance drama and acting, participating in amateur plays at the Independent Theatre, North Sydney.  Happy as I was, I had a passion for travel and felt the pull to return to my roots.

So as not to bore you with too much detail, I found myself back in London where I did studies in Philosophy and worked in a variety of companies.  But much as I recognised that my roots were there, I began to pull away from them.  I went to Paris for two years, worked in the Australian Delegation at UNESCO and there I met the Spaniard who was to become my husband (we've managed to stick it out for 46 years so far - a miracle in this day and age!).  Eusebio is a journalist and has published several novels and he managed to lure me down to the dry crust of earth that is Madrid - brittle cold winds off the nearby mountains in winter, searing rays from the summer sun.  If you don't know it, I promise you that it's worth a visit.  It is a vibrant city, manageable in size.

And here we have lived on and off all these years.  We have two wonderful children - Eloísa, a psycho-analyst (http://www.psicologaeloisacano.es) and an accomplished pianist, and Jaime, a guitarrist, both married respectively to Juan Carlos from the Dominican Republic with a PhD in Architecture (www.arbiotes.com), and Lisa from Hong Kong, and so our little grandson Enzo is half Chinese, half Spanish, with an Italian name.  No-one can accuse us of being insular!

I have worked in the British Embassy, in the Commercial Department of some of the best hotels in Madrid and, to cut a long story short, I spent my final twenty years pre-retirement teaching English and translating. 

This was meant to be a nutshell, but it's turning into a coconut shell.  So I'll leave it here and there'll be more to come.

Acer  Osakazuki

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I'd like to introduce you to my new acquisition.  This beautiful, delicate tree with soft, frondy leaves is a delight in my garden.  I talk to it each day.  It comes originally from Japan, a Japanese Maple.  

My big question:  will it brave the dry Madrid summer?  There are others in my district here, so I like to think I shall be lucky with it.

Nature is more and more important to me as the years pass.  It is calming and enriching and so, so essential that we care for our planet, both the plants and the animals.

But springtime can be frustrating.  It isn't only the hot days followed by the cold days.  It is that the juicy new buds on bushes and trees are tempting to black fly, green fly, red fly.  These pests are so hard to get rid of.  I have tried all sorts of home-made remedies, from vinegar, alcohol, fairy liquid, old-fashioned soap bars all mixed with water.  I prefer any of these things to the chemical, evil-smelling stuff they sell us in abrasive sprays.  They make you feel you're intoxicating yourself!

As to technology, I have come to gardening late in life.  Up to recent years I have never taken a great deal of interest in it, but now I enjoy it and I enjoy going to my local nursery where they sell pretty well all the plants imaginable.  Even the Japanese Maple.

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Surrounded by the Spanish               springtime
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You can see that I consider myself lucky, lucky to be surrounded by so much beauty before the sizzling summer sun burns all these blooms to a frazzle.  Whereas before I used to see flowers as objective beauty, now I regard them, each one of them, as my friends.  Something to do with the passing of the years?  It may well be.  So I think I can say that this attitude is a privilege of age.  One has to find benefits in growing older.

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2010 - present

2010 - present

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