Author Archives: Andy

Dino goes abroad

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Oh yes, we have photos. Lots of them.

99% of which are of Dino.

It was a Dino holiday. And his first time abroad. I’d taken his passport, just in case, but it wasn’t needed.

Sure we saw some nice buildings and museums – but only from the outside. The program for each day was – 9 – 10 a.m. – Take Dino for a walk. Maybe have coffee or lunch. Walk around. 3 – 6 p.m. – Return to the flat we had rented and rest. All of us. 8 – 9 p.m. – Leave Dino in the flat and go out.

Bless him, he was so exhausted.

We walked in parks; around buildings; up and down Vienna.

One time, we met up with an old friend/colleague of F’s, for lunch. The weather was spectacular and this particular day, very hot. We sat ourselves down at one of the tables outside.

I said, “I need to go to the bathroom but when the waitress comes, can you ask for some water for Dino, please?”

I came back and Dino had water. Apparently, the waitress had come to the table with a dog bowl full of water BEFORE she brought the menus! How good is that?

And he was loved even more than in Italy. Children wanted to stroke him; people stopped us and asked if he was a Bobtail (Old English Sheepdog). He was, in fact, the centre of attention nearly all the time.

I think he liked going abroad. Especially as he was with us nearly all the time. :-D

Holiday and illness

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“The first time we book a holiday and THIS happens”.

He was really upset, even if it’s not. It is neither the first time we’ve booked a holiday nor the first time he’s got ill when we’ve been going to do something.

But he is genuinely upset as it is an important holiday. For ’tis the trip to Vienna.

For him: the most wonderful city in the world and where he would like to live.

For me: Much further North than I care to be. Risk of severe cold and rain (although, thank goodness, not snow).

On the plus side – they do strudel – which is the only thing that, for me, Austria has going for it. I remember the last time in Austria – a holiday, in August. the day after we left, they had severe flooding in the valley we had been in because it had not stopped raining for two weeks – the very same two weeks we were there. OK, I exaggerate a bit (but only a bit – we did have one or two nice days). But, there was the strudel!

But back to this trip.

It is an important trip in many ways. He wants to ‘show me round’ and, quite possibly, for me to love it as he does; he wants to visit the mother of a close friend who committed suicide (not long after we met); his friend (who lives there) REALLY wants us to come. I guess that’s enough reasons.

And we’re taking Dino.

Except, of course, for this small hiccough.

“It says 37.4″, he tells me after he has taken his temperature.

But I am crap at all this sort of stuff.

“Is that bad?”, I ask, adding, “I don’t know what it’s supposed to be”. He tells me what it’s supposed to be. I have already forgotten but something like 36, I think. Let’s be honest, later, I felt his forehead and it was very hot. I don’t need a thermometer to tell me he has a fever.

But he has a determination about this. He really, really wants to go. Or, maybe, he really, really wants to take me. Or Dino. One of those things anyway.

So, in spite of the fact that he had the same temperature at 7 this morning, he has taken Dino to the hairdressers and, I suspect, we shall go anyway, taking plenty of Lemsips with us!

So I shan’t be posting for the next (almost) week whilst we are driving to and from and staying in, Vienna. I have no computer and no computer access. Bliss :-)

In any event, I love going on holiday with him and, to be honest, I don’t care where we go, as long as we’re together.

Although the strudel is sounding rather good :-)

Just like a film?

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Well, I can’t explain it at all. So this isn’t really going to be a post that makes sense.

Sometimes this happens and it happened this morning. Actually, more or less ALL morning so far.

I feel there’s something wrong. It’s almost as if I am watching a film of myself, as if I’m not really experiencing this. Make sense to you? No, probably not.

So there’s this feeling that something is wrong but there is no pointer as to what may be wrong. It’s more like when you walk into a room and something is out of place but you can’t see what is out of place but it makes the room look different and ‘not quite right’.

Or if you walk into a crowded room and everyone immediately stops talking and looks at you.

It’s just a feeling. There’s nothing of any substance that you can put your finger on. Everything appears to be normal but it’s not. I mean to say, it is normal but, behind it all, something is abnormal.

It doesn’t really cause any ‘pain’ but it’s a little uncomfortable. As If I should do something to stave off this impending wrongness by fixing something but since I don’t know what IS wrong, it’s difficult to fix.

This morning I felt like I was going to work after a few weeks off. How strange is that? Worse still, it felt like I hadn’t driven my car for weeks when, in fact, I had driven to the airport to collect F only yesterday!

It made me feel like I shouldn’t be going to work – or, at least, not this work in this place. That goes with a growing feeling that I should really get off my arse and do something about finding something a little more personally rewarding (as well as financially rewarding, I suppose) – but it doesn’t explain how wrong it all felt. How wrong it all feels.

So, there you go. There’s no point to this post other than to tell you how strange I feel.

The end of the affair

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Well, finally, I did it.

The relationship hadn’t been that good anyway.

Really, I don’t know why I didn’t do it before but, to be honest, the daily emails (usually more than 4) about who had viewed my profile or winked at me or sent me an email when, because I wouldn’t pay (didn’t need) a subscription, I couldn’t even respond or see who they were – was all getting a bit much.

Even if I WAS looking now, I wouldn’t under any circumstances, use Meetic. Bloody lying useless site.

I remember only 2 people from that time ago, when I DID subscribe for a few months. One was the guy who said he was 44 but his wrinkly elbows said about 55 – and instead of going into Venice we went to his house and did nothing (except he did make a pass which I politely but firmly rejected). The other was someone that was only a number of emails. He never seemed to want to meet. I cancelled my subscription after the minimum, ‘special rate’ period and would never bother with them again.

So, one hopes, good riddance.

Probably except the odd email to implore me to ‘come back’.

Stuff them.

Memories – not always what you think, maybe?

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I had a bad night, the night before last. Maybe it’s because F is away in Germany? In any event, there seemed to be many troubled dreams and thoughts.

And some of these things weren’t troubling at the start, only when I started questioning my memory.

Was my hair really so long when I was 19?

I always say it was down my back, putting my hand on my lower back. But, the night before last, I questioned that. Sure, washing it (and subsequently drying it) seemed to take a whole night. and although I remember THAT, I can’t actually remember seeing my hair so long. And so, that led me to question if it really was ever that long.

And the holiday in Egypt. Sure I can remember certain things (the jewellery shop; the Coptic church we were taken to; sitting in that church; handing out pens to the children afterwards; being surprised that the Pyramids were not in the desert after all but, rather, in the middle of housing estates; a walk we took from the cruise boat with a minder following us to ensure we would be safe BUT there are so many things that I don’t remember. I don’t remember the Pyramids themselves, the tombs we visited, the cruise ship on which we spent a week.

And I wonder, did I make my whole life up?

And that made me think about my time with V – and the fact that I seem to be forgetting it all. It’s almost as if it had never been.

And my childhood. I remember one night the caravan awning got ripped off the caravan in the high winds. Except I remember it more as a newspaper headline and not the event or the aftermath itself.

I remember that Gilly Gaskell and I promised ourselves to each other at the end of her garden – and I can picture the garden surrounded by roads and the corner as if I were in an aircraft, looking down – but I can’t actually picture me there or her there. OK, so I was about 5 at the time and that is now a very long time ago – but that’s not really the point.

The point is that it’s more like a film. You remember bits of the film and, if you saw it again you would say ‘Yes, that’s how it happened’ but otherwise you remember some detail and forget others and, all the time, you’re watching it, not participating.

Maybe it’s my age? Or maybe it’s just me?

Or, maybe, it all never really happened.

Hotel Castelbarco; Bergamo – Città Alta; Crespi d’Adda – a night away

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Sorry. Been busy. Still am.

But taking a break for a moment.

Saturday night we spent in a hotel not far from Milan, the Hotel Castelbarco, near Vaprio d’Adda.

Vaprio is a small town just outside Milan, on the river Adda, hence its name.

It was a Groupon voucher thing that I got about 6 months ago and, so, as normal, we were running out of time!

It was for one night’s B&B.

The hotel was formerly the stables, etc. of a rather grand house, now used for functions (such as weddings). The grounds are spread along the river Adda. To the left of the great house are the stables and so on (now the hotel) and to the right are some other buildings (maybe new) that are now a restaurant, bar and night club complex (more on that later).

To be honest, I wouldn’t say the hotel was WOW! but it was quite nice and very, very clean. The breakfast was ample. As normal with Italian hotels that have been converted, the walls are paper thin and the woman with her stilettos that she continued to wear as (it seemed) she danced for an hour round the room next door, didn’t help. But, that aside, it was fine.

We arrived at something like 3 p.m. on the Saturday afternoon. It had been raining on and off. Fine rain or drizzle, not the normal Italian downpour, thank goodness.

We got in our room and dumped everything and left for Bergamo.

I’ve always wanted to visit Bergamo, more famed by the British for it’s airport that receives Ryanair jets from the UK. But there are two Bergamos – Bassa and Alta – and I had heard that Bergamo Alta was really quite a lovely city – being the original city built long before flying started and, as normal in Italy, on a hill.

And, pretty it was. A small medieval town with cobbled, narrow streets opening out, from time to time, on small squares or, in one case, the Piazza Vecchio (Old Square).

The cathedral (although it might just be a church) was wonderful, if not a little strange. There seemed to be a great mix of styles from Medieval to baroque – but it was lovely. We were both hungry so stopped for some lunch at Al Donizetti.

Although there was some very fine rain, it didn’t seem so cold and there was, waht seemed like, an old ‘market place’ under which they had tables. People were there eating without coats and so we chose to eat ‘outside’. that was possibly a mistake as it started to rain heavily and we ended up not taking our coats off at all!

It was also very touristy. But, then, the whole of Bergamo was very touristy – full of restaurants and bars, particularly those advertising their beers.

But the food was good and the service pleasant and, had it been a little warmer, it would have been lovely. We shared a plate of cold meats including lardo and some rather fine boiled and cured hams and then F had some polenta with mushrooms in a sauce and I had tomasino (a flat round cheese) with speck (they said it would be ‘crispy’ but it wasn’t so I wondered if that got lost in translation) on a bed of raddicchio done in a red wine sauce. It was rather lovely. The wine was good.

The only thing that let it down, in my opinion, was the sweets. I’m sure they were home-made but the pear and chocolate tart that I had was neither chocolatey nor pearey enough for me. The ricotta cake that F had was, to me, just stodgy without real taste . However, overall it was good.

We walked around the town for a bit, in, what was now, drizzle and light rain or, occasionally, no rain at all!

It was all very nice.

We had decided that, rather than eat in Bergamo and then have to drive to the hotel afterwards, we would go back to the hotel and eat there.

And so we did.

To get to the restaurant from the hotel, one can walk but, given that it could rain at any time, we drove.

The car park was overflowing. It made us a bit worried that the restaurant would be full. We eventually found the entrance (for it was not well signposted) and it was, in fact, the entrance to the bar and nightclub. When we explained that we wanted to go to the restaurant, he took us through to it.

If I say that it was being in a restaurant of a fairly cheap, 90s hotel, I think you’ll get the idea. If it wasn’t that I really didn’t want to have to drive around (having already have had a little less than half a bottle of wine at lunchtime), I would have suggested going somewhere – anywhere – else.

But it was all too late now. We were in Cubeba, famed, according to its card, for food, drink and dance!

And the food was more like something one would receive at Little Chef! Don’t get me wrong, Little Chefs are great places for food – for a very reasonable price. This was overpriced and the musak far too loud (to drive out the sound of the bar music, I suppose). I mean, it was OK but nothing WOW!

However, next door, it seemed the whole of Vaprio and it’s surrounding villages had come for they were having a ‘Fashion Night’. We went out for a cigarette at one point but, because we had to go through (a little bit) the bar, we had to have our hand stamped to prove we were entitled to go back in without having to pay! Not really what I expect from any decent restaurant.

The waitress, who seemed new, tried her best and, so, for us, we left a good tip. For the food I would have taken some money away! For the ambience, we should have had the whole thing free.

However, F did notice that, on Friday nights, they had their ‘Beautiful People’ night. It made us both laugh.

The next day, after breakfast, I had planned to take F to Crespi d’Adda, where he had never been.

It is a ‘workers village’ built by the Crespi family to house the workers for the factory they built next to the village. They say he was inspired by the model villages he saw in the UK during a trip there and I guess they were right in that it does have quite an ‘English’ feel to it.

I had been worried because of the rain forecast but, in the end, we were lucky with sunshine and warmth and a lovely trip round the village. This time I had looked it up on the net (see link above) and so had a better idea of where to go and what to see. It was a shame we couldn’t really get to see the owner’s ‘castle’ but the rest of it was just as I remembered it. F really enjoyed it.

Then we came home as F had to get ready to go to Germany which is where he is now.

Overall I would give 3 or 4 stars to the hotel, 4 stars to the restaurant in Bergamo and 1 star (for the waitress) for Cubeba. Next time I’ll try and remember to find out about the hotel restaurant first, before we try it!

Is that I or we?

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Of course, one must be careful. Things get lost in translation. The difference between “I” and “we” is huge – to us, native speakers of English. To those to whom it is a second language, it’s not that clear cut.

However, “We can live together and save some money. Not now but soon.” and “Then we can retire here.” are quite significant. And I’m pretty sure a mistake wasn’t made.

We were (well, he was) talking about the house, here, by the sea. It needs some work to be made comfortable but could be lovely with a garden for the dogs too. He wants to do it up but a) it will cost money and b) his brother (who shares it with him) doesn’t have the money …… nor a job.

Even if I’m not as clean and tidy as he would like, I’m obviously not that bad.

It was a nice few days away, even if the weather wasn’t always that kind to us. There was the Golden Wedding Anniversary party for his parents – it was a meal in an agriturismo. There was a lot of food but I was careful not to each too much and said ‘no’ on more than one occasion (I know, I even amaze myself sometimes!). His parents knew that the children would be there but not that so many other friends and family would be there so it was (apparently because I was getting stuff out of the car at the time) a very nice surprise for them. There was a lot of emotion. F is not good with emotion, I’ve found. Still, it was a lovely party, even if the weather wasn’t so nice.

His family are lovely to me. His mum calling me ‘Wendy’ which has become ‘the joke’ with me. For some reason, she can’t say ‘Andy’. At one point she confused me with S, F’s ex. For me, it was something of a compliment. I don’t look anything like S but I am obviously thought of in much the same way – and they like him and still ask after him.

Even if we came back early because of the torrential rain on Monday, it was a lovely trip.