trying to wrap up ….. but the words just keep coming

As everybody knows I live by the code of ‘why use a sentence when a paragraph will do’ and abbreviation is not a word i am overly friendly with, given those two basic facts it shouldn’t surprise me so much that i’ve stuck with the blog all the way, considering i was in two minds about it at first.  Nor how much I’ve enjoyed doing it, not once has it felt like a chore or an obligation, although getting the fotos uploaded did prove a challenge at times.  Nor has it really bothered me if people have read it or not, I am so used to wittering away to myself, (quietly.. obviously.). The fact that anybody may be ‘listening’ is almost incidental, in a way the blog became as much a part of the journey as the journey itself, and I use the word journey advisedly. I have never seen this trip as a holiday, although it could be said it was a holiday from real life, it was most definitely a journey, because there was never a final destination.

In the end there are many posts that didn’t make the final cut and I had to start getting ruthless about what I wrote about otherwise I would have spent even more time in cafes/drunk even more red wine (gets the creative juices flowing you know!!!) than I did, and I wouldn’t have actually got out and seen the scenery/met people.  As it is I have a roll call of over 70 people, that I can give you at least 3 basic facts about, that I’ve met over the past seven and a half weeks, I’ve slept in 19 different beds, spent more than 5 days solid on buses, blubbed on more inopportune occasions that I care to remember, eaten somewhere in the region of three whole cows (including bits I really don’t want to know about) and several kilos of pasta/pizza/alfajores, and I don’t even want to think about the quantity of wine I have drunk.

I remember saying at the beginning of this journey that the idea of doing a blog seemed self indulgent, but at the end of the day this whole adventure has been extremely self indulgent, how many of us get the chance at the age of 40 to run away and stare at mountains for a couple of months without a care in the world.  Ok I haven’t got a job, a man, nor do I have a clue about what my next move will be, and in the next month I will be technically homeless i.e. of no fixed abode, and yet I am feeling surprisingly upbeat about it.  It’s really very liberating when you have precious little else of the big stuff to lose. And you have nothing to define you, (wife, girlfriend, mother, salesperson, manager, volvo driver…). I have my health (more or less,  although my liver might disagree) and miraculously only a kilo more on each bum cheek, and materially I have a hell of a lot more than many of the people I met on my travels. I consider myself extremely blessed.  Blessed enough to be thinking about the next adventure….. ??

don’t cry for me Argentina

…. aaarrrggghhh..!! I made it all the way to the end before i crumbled and used this for a blog title…. but given that i spent the last couple of days of my trip sniffling at every given opportunity i just couldn’t resist… if North Face and Kleenex could get together and do some kind of marketing campaign for Argentina… I would be their woman… i cried quite a lot and in some very strange places, but on packing up my rucksack for the last time i howled my eyes out….

….before i set out on my adventure everyone said to me that the time i had would not be enough and that i would want to go back… how right they were and how right they were…. one month or five it will never be enough to fully explore such an amazing country, and i would hop on a plane back there tomorrow without a second thought or a backward glance… i would do the whole circuit again.. stopping off longer in some places .. and just calling to say ‘hi’ in others.. and i would go see the places i didn’t manage to get to… i really only scratched the surface in what was a whistle stop tour of a HUGE and extremely diverse country…. and when i look back at what i managed to cram into those seven and a half weeks it’s no wonder i’m feeling just a little bit tired… i honestly don’t know how some people manage to keep going on these year long backpacking adventures… my trip was small fry compared to many… but everyone i spoke to who was doing a ’round the world’ or a full south american adventure seemed to get a new lease of life when they hit Argentina and without exception they had it in their top 3 of countries visited…

but it isn’t just the scenery…… my perception of Argentina also changed quite dramatically the more i people i talked to and the more i saw of the country…. once you get out of the sugar coated, goretex wearer funded south and head further north … you really start to see the real Argentina, the day to day struggle to make a reasonable living… the fact that even for your average educated person with a reasonable job there is very little spare cash to go round, and many supplement their incomes with a second or third string to their bow just to be able to afford the things that i have certainly taken for granted…. There are lots of things wrong with Argentina, none of which i am informed enough to make an educated comment about… however you talk to any local about the current global economic crisis and most will shrug their shoulders and tell you that this kind of crisis happens pretty much every six or seven years in there, they are used to it and they know they will get through it just like the last time… and they tell you this with a big smile on their face whilst sharing their ‘mate’ drink with you on the bus.. or whilst taking you on a private tour round Buenos Aires just because you are a friend of a friend …. or whilst cooking you a mega asado having only just met you for the first time that morning…. and that’s what made this whole experience so so special…

I got Tangoed

…… not for the first time on this trip did something quite unexpectedly moved me to tears…

.. one of the things i wanted to make sure i did before i left Argentina was to see a bit of tango .. and I had two options… go to the full blown ‘espectaculo’ and pay lots of pesos for the pleasure… or do it local style and take myself off to a ‘milonga’…

….. so on my last afternoon I found myself sitting at a table on the edge of the dancefloor in ‘Confiteria Ideal’ one of Buenos Aires oldest dancehalls watching the locals practice their steps … think Al Pacino in the film ‘Scent of a Woman’ …but a bit more warts and all… one of the ladies was wearing the most raucous pair of leopard print leggings i have seen in my life!!! and a young man  swept past in his converse allstars grasping the waist of a woman at least three times his age… the film was perhaps up until now about my only reference point for the tango.. but even without Al Pacino the dance doesn’t loose any of it’s enchantment…

.. the dance itself has to be one of the most sensual and intimate i have ever seen and as the couples move along cheek to cheek you can’t help being mesmerized by their moves as they glide across the floor deep in concentration as they try to find harmony and synchronize their steps.. and when they do get in sync it really is poetry in motion..

… So for some reason all of this is made the tears roll down my face… (not a good look in a public place) it wasn’t the red wine because I filled up before I even had a sip, maybe it was the melancholy music.. it transports you back to a bygone era when things were so much simpler and everything had it’s place.. or maybe it was because i was heading home and facing reality… i don’t know… all i know is i’m awfully glad i went…

… back in Bs As

…….my arrival in Buenos Aires this time was highlighted, like my departure seven weeks ago with a very entertaining taxi ride… I have heard it said several times over on my trip that the porteños ( people from buenos aires) are Italians who speak Spanish and think they are English… I don’t know how true this is but Claudio my taxi driver who picked me up from the airport…definitely wasn’t letting his Italian roots go… looking like a sidekick to Don Corleone he spent the entire journey giving me his life story, I must have been wearing my best ‘tell me everything’ face because in the space of 20 minutes I got his view on Argentine politics, Argentine women, love, life, the universe punctuated by a lot of bashing of the steering wheel and the occasional ‘what do you think Verity?? .. I am saying your name right aren’t I Verity?? if you don’t want to talk Verity just say so..Verity …or if you like we can talk about something else … I am saying your name right arent I Verity’… before launching into his next tirade…somewhere in all of this he managed to squeeze in the fact that, before he lost it all in 2001 (money, friends, hot chicks) he had the only Dodge Viper in Argentina ( it was red by the way)…

….having managed to utter about three words in the entire journey I parted company with Claudio telling me how much he had enjoyed my company   ‘… not all my passengers want to talk so much Verity… it’s been a pleasure for me too Verity .. I am. saying your name right aren’t I Verity… Verity, Verity ciao ciao enjoy Buenos Aires’

…. I was still chuckling to myself as a checked into The Art Factory hostel ( the place I stayed when I arrived)…. and my smile only got bigger when I discovered they had given me the funkiest room of them all….. I got the cow room!!!!

iguazu part 2

….another hostelling hazard that i haven’t yet mentioned is the tourist trip tout… most hostels are on commission to sell whatever trips and tours that are available  in the surrounding area… and in some cases if you have a short space of time and a lot of distance to cover these trips are a necessary evil… you have to make do with bus window photos and somebody elses idea as to when the bus should stop to take the best picture (it NEVER EVER coincides with my point if view… i am so not interested in having the same foto as the 4937 tourists who have passed by this spot in the last few weeks, i can buy the postcard if necessary.. but try convincing the tour guide that sometimes the best view is the one behind you….)

…. up until now i have more or less got it right but when i arrived at my hostel in iguazu i either had the word ‘sucker’ (invisible to me) tattooed across my forehead or i was so deleriously happy to rediscover the use of my limbs after a whole day on a bus i would have parted with pesos for pretty much anything…. so long as there was a hot shower and a bit of a sleep somewhere on the horizon….

… so somehow on my first day in Iguazu National Park i found myself on a 12 minute boat trip and ended up VERY VERY wet as the boat proceeded to pass underneath (not once .. but twice) one of the waterfalls … i foolishly thought i would get few additional Kodak moments by doing this trip … and even when i saw people disembarking the previous boat looking like drowned rats i wasn’t overly alarmed as i even more foolishly thought my trusty waterproofs would save me from the worst… how silly was that??  (i do love my unwavering optimism sometimes…!!)… underneath a waterfall, the water reaches places you didn’t even know you had places… and what i can’t understand is why people think this is FUN… you can’t see anything.. you get wet and then you spend the rest of the day squishing and squelching all over the place… throw in a bit of thigh chaffing and the whole experience is far from pleasant …and some people part with even more pesos to buy the DVD….. needless to say as soon as i climbed off the boat i quickly bypassed the man trying to sell me my commemorative photo/dvd/mug/ashtray/panpipes and went to find the nearest place i could to go and make a star shape and try and dry out as quickly as possible, impossible in this humidity…  so it was about six hours later when i finally got back from the park and managed to peel off my sticky sweaty clothes….

Iguazu

.. i can quite happily report that the Iguazu Falls haven’t dried up… nor is trickle a word that i would use to describe them…. i’ve spent the last couple of days looking at them from every angle from the various trails and walkways around the iguazu national park and they really do defy description.. the sheer magnitude and power of them is something to behold…once more I am overdrawn in the adjective bank and my photos fail to capture the scale…

… but the park is so much more than than just the falls…. while the thundering cascades give themselves a rapturous applause there is a whole load of nature going on on the trails… on the furry side you have everything from monkeys to coatis ( a kind of raccoon) with a couple of big cats thrown in if you are lucky enough to spot them …. oh and a weird rodent thing with a big fat arse and long hind legs ( yep I’ve forgotten the name of it and i’m not connected to wikipedia right now). … feathered friends include toucans and humming birds.. both of which i saw but wasn’t quick enough to capture with the camera…. and then there is a whole battery of bugs, spiders and the most amazing variety of butterflies i have seen in my life… rainbow coloured and in huge quantities… they dance in front of you, lining your path making you feel like you are in some kind of magical fairy tale.. they sit on your shoulder, your rucksack, your boob …your camera ( just to tease you) prodding and probing everything with their proboscii… (or is it their proboscises…?) i have discovered the macro function on my camera in the last couple of days and then proceeded to use and abuse it to the max….

on the home strait

… well after 26 hours on the bus, countless ham & cheese sandwiches, four awful films (almost as cheesy as the sandwiches) and .. NO WINE .. but yes there was bingo… i finally arrived in Puerto Iguazu, the very northeast tippety tip of Argentina which meets with Paraguay and Brazil where the rivers Parana and Iguazu converge…

.. my mobile phone has gone into a bit of a tailspin because you only have to move 5 yards here and it switches operator.. from one country to the other..

….i’m here (like every other tourist and his dog) to see the Iguazu Falls… although i have been warned it’s more of a trickle at the moment due to the complete lack of rainfall recently.. we shall see.. the one thing i have managed to do today is wander up to aforementioned tippety tip of the town to take the token tourist snap of each country!!

.. yet again the landscape has changed dramatically.. from the dust and aridness ( or is it aridity?) of the north west .. it’s all a bit lush and junglified here.. it’s hot and humid.. and the hostels have swimming pools!!!.. and this afternoon i skipped over to the sister hostel of the one i’m staying at for a massage… (all of a sudden i’m starting to like hostels) my body had pretty much taken on the permanent form of an Andesmar bus seat.. and i needed a bit of pampering…

… back to the bus journey… these long haulers really aren’t bad… especially if you go ‘coche cama’ class… you’ve got buckets of room (nothing like being on an aeroplane) and the seat almost fully reclines … i’ve worked out that seat number six is the optimum seat… it’s a single seat so there’s no one to climb over and no one climbing over you and you don’t have to crane your neck to watch the film… ive found the forced naval gazing is extremely therapeutic… you almost take on a bit of a zen like state usually just before you start dribbling and knocking your head on the window (unless of course you are armed with your inflatable neck pillow which allows you to avoid both embarrasments .. but you still look like a bit of a dork when using it)…i’ve met some really interesting people on these buses too so i’m actually a bit sad this was my last bus journey today.. i decided to fly back to buenos aires from iguazu because time is running out and i  just couldn’t afford another 17 hour bus trip…

… summarizing salta

salt flats - jujuy province

... jokes aside about the Pacha Mama and her party pants… the Salta leg of my trip has really blown my socks off… for the first time in the six weeks i have felt like a stranger in a strange land…

… as i said in the last blog this area is made up of a largely indigenous population and what’s more it is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the culture and tradition that has been preserved over the centuries.

Many of the villages in this area are so remote that the inhabitants live a subsistence existence and in some villages there is very little evidence that we are in the 21st century… i met countless children who thrust scraps of paper with their addresses on into my hands so that i could send them clothes, notebooks, anything…. my heart melted on several occasions because these kids were so pure, unaffected and happy… they recited local poetry, sang, played music for us … in return for so little … it was a very humbling experience…

The culture carries with it many rituals and traditions and also a local folk music as well as the typical pan pipe music of the Andes… ( of which i will never tire…  it lifts the soul even in the darkest moments)

Many of these rituals are dedicated to worshipping mother nature … but others are designed solely for courting purposes… we will ignore the one where the guy gets a trial period with a girl to see if she will make a good wife… my favourite is one that was told to us by a local guide (Oscar) of the village of Humahuaca.. basically if a guy is interested in a girl he sends a messge using a mirror and if she is interested she sends one back and a meeting is organized… this is all well and good … so long as the right sister replies… Oscar has recently discovered that SMS is much more reliable than mirrors!!! … i’m sure he made it all up… but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good story …!!

pumamarca

...tomorrow i head off to Iguazu on my longest bus journey yet…. 26 hours of contemplating my navel….!!!

with the children in san antonio de los cobres

La Pacha Mama

Quebrada de Cafayate

…..La Pacha Mama (mother earth) figures heavily in the culture of the indigenous people of salta and jujuy provinces (which accounts for about 90% of the population) .. and la pacha mama was having a field day when she got here… after creating the breathtaking beauty of the south of Argentina and the soul soothing serenity of the lakes, mother nature put on her party pants and went and painted the town red, and orange, and yellow, and green… the marble cake mountains around Mendoza and Aconcagua were just preliminary sketches for the masterpiece that tops off the north west corner of Argentina.

There was a whole lot more ‘o’ level physical geography going on when all of this scenery was thrown up over the last 250 million years… And I’ve spent the last three days running the length and breadth of the two provinces that curl around one another and tuck themselves in next to Bolivia and Chile getting to see it all up close and personal, surreal rock formations, natural amphitheaters, salt flats and the most vivid colours you can possibly imagine.

… And it’s not just the scenery… la pacha mama was clearly onto her

llama

third gin and tonic of the night when she created the llama … these animals are quite mad, even the wild ones pose for the camera. They have ridiculously long eyelashes which they flutter continuously and a natural underbite which makes them look as if they are always smiling and saying ‘hey there….i’m a llama, i’ve got a cute face but i am completely unaware of how woolly and ungainly the rest of my body is…. and i taste nice!!!!’

…… hostel highs and lows … part 2

…. i have finally stopped giving myself a hard time about not fully embracing the whole hostel thing… my name is Verity and I am hostel hostile…. i’ve been lucky… i’ve stayed in some really nice ones, but i have walked straight out of almost as many because the urge to scratch has been almost overpowering…. and i discovered my scratchometer is fairly accurate when talking to Mel the manic german (she made me look laid back folks…. and that’s saying something) in Cordoba.  She had stayed at the one i’d walked out of when i first arrived in the city…. And she’d had the dubious pleasure of having to fumigate and deflea the entire contents of her rucksack… and this is a hostel that lonely planet describes as spotlessly clean!! …. but saying that… a cockroach has just strolled past me as write this having just tucked into my dinner in one of the better restaurants recommended by lonely planet in Salta…. upps make that two cockroaches…. ah well so long as it’s not dengue carrying mozzies i suppose it’s ok…

…. so back to the hostels,  however you go about booking your fleapit for the night.. be it via the guidebooks, other peoples recommendations or the various hostel booking websites… every opinion is totally subjective.. and its tricky to get it right … if a hostel is rated with a 98% fun factor then you are pretty much guaranteed a game of naked twister at 2 in the morning if thats what floats your boat (for the record…. no i didnt) … but usually these places are located centrally and close to restaurants should you (shock horror) want escape the perpetual party and dine alone… which when you are a little girl travelling on your own puts you between a rock and a hard place….

….i’ve pretty much found a happy medium staying in private rooms in lively (but not too big) hostels which means if i want to meet other travellers i can without getting too closely acquainted with their bathroom habits.. and I can still escape to the sanctuary of my own space if I need to….

….. but in Salta i decided to treat myself in and booked myself into a delightful little boutique hotel…. and it’s the same price as ive been paying for a private room in a hostel… and it’s just been renovated and everything is modern and new and it’s got a lovely quilt that has no nylon content whatsoever on the bed and big fluffy towels….. and a tv and, and, and its bliiiiissss!!!

Groundhog Day

Well 16 months have passed since I wrote that last post, and at least four of my seven followers, (nine at peak times), have asked me why I suddenly stopped. I have to say that it was this simple; it just became too much. Taking care of two dotty parents, writing about it and photographing it at the same time, meant I just didn’t switch off, and given the lack of easy communication with the outside world, I decided that the blog would be put on the back burner to be picked up at a later date.  (I didn’t expect it would be quite so much later). Continuing with the photographic project was easier in the sense that I was still able to dedicate plenty of time to Mum and Dad, although they might have found staring down the lens of my camera a little tiresome after a while.

I’d also got to the point where I was running out of chirpy anecdotes about life on board.  I have no idea if that was because my brain was gradually reducing itself to something resembling fudge after nine days of the same conversation, and one day started to resemble the next. I did start to wonder if there is such a thing as cerebral repetitive stress injury?

Some respite was to be had on day 10 when we docked in Barcelona prior to the long “silent” slog back up to Southampton.  My good friend Erica discovered the true meaning of the term verbal diarrhoea when we met for lunch and I quite literally decompressed over a couple of very large glasses of wine.  I think those two hours were what gave me enough strength to face the next three days at sea.

I am pleased to say though that I did discover a way of disconnecting temporarily from all that was going on around me.  I’m not sure I would ever have picked up ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ had my situation not required extreme measures, but it proved to be the perfect antidote as I finally slumped into a free sun lounger on Day 11, wrapping myself up in three hoodies in the process as the ship rolled through a force six and up towards the Bay of Biscay and onto the home straight.

Days 6 & 7 .. preconceived ideas part 2

OK, I am happy (kinda) to say that my preconceived ideas were not too far off the mark, and the cruise is everything I feared it would be, and more!! I don’t mean the mum & dad bit, I mean the actual cruise bit. Apart from feeling like I have a walk on part in a 2012 mega grand scale remake of ‘Cocoon’, I just can’t get my head round any of it, it’s so bad it’s almost good.

Take today’s activities for example. If we didn’t want to take the tender ashore and part with our well earned holiday cash in Cannes, we could stay on board and take a course in how to play the slot machines better (thus parting with our well earned holiday cash in the casino), or perhaps take in an interesting talk on the sparkling properties of Tanzanite (funny, they have a special anniversary collection of Tanzanite for sale in the on ship boutique). Maybe we would like to go line dancing with the lovely Linda (who doesn’t appear to have seen an up to date hair magazine since 1987), or join the daily (well, on port days anyway) ‘sail away’ party around the pool with DJ Keith… and then get constantly reminded of what fun we are having.

I would like to think that not everyone is voluntarily taking part in DJ Keith’s poolside capers, rather they have just been rendered incapable of moving from their sun loungers due to the fact that they are wedged together like sardines (and have been ever since they bagged the spot at sunrise), and nobody can actually get out of the sun-bed squash until the fat bloke and his Kindle, and the little old lady doing still doing battle with the Sudoku from last weeks Sunday Express, who are sat closest to the edge, finally release the bottleneck and let the others go free.

Meanwhile down on the prom deck the tumble(sea)weed is moving around quite freely.

I am still blindingly optimistic that at some point Cap’n Phil will come over the tannoy and tell us to look out over the horizon to see what a pretty pink the sky has turned as the sun goes down, and how the evening light catches the bridges of the other ships way out yonder making them look like sea stars, or indeed how many different colours of blue there are in the wash generated by the mega big propellers, or how awesomely soothing the roar of the water is when you stand aft at full throttle (day or night, and only on the prom deck, any higher up it doesn’t count), and that really, it’s a damn sight better than listening to some has been that never was of a club singer belting out a particularly painful rendition of Phil Collins – Su-su-sudio (yo-hoh-woah-oah) down in the ‘understated elegance’, (think eighties neon meets eighties neon and has a baby), of the Manhattan bar.

Blindingly optimistic indeed…

Days 4 & 5 Ship to Shore

This whole writing to a deadline thing I’m not sure I’m awfully good at, but given that I am governed by internet availability I don’t have many alternatives, although I failed miserably with the last opportunity to upload anything, two days in Spanish waters, and the words were flowing like tar.. (unlike the wine!!).

Docking days present their own set of challenges. Like what to do with two elderly parents who have no clue where they are and absolutely no desire to explore the wherever it is they are. I spent the whole of Wednesday explaining that we weren’t in Dubrovnik (or Guildford for that matter), but, in fact, Gibraltar. The Dubrovnik slip is understandable, it’s a syllable thing.. but Guildford??, search me!!.

They seem quite happy to sit in a bar and watch the world go by, which is fine by me, but not for eight hours! Unlike on board where I can leave them for a while as the possibilities of losing them are actually fairly limited, once ashore it’s a bit like herding cats, and anyway I have discovered that if I disappear for more than five minutes Dad is on the phone.

Throw into the mix the fact that Dad seems to think that Great British Pounds are fine anywhere, the following conversation is fairly typical.

‘no Dad, you need Euros’
‘oh well I’ll get them on the ship’
‘no Dad, you need to go to a bank and get Euros now if you want to spend any money here, or in Italy, or in France’
‘oh OK, where’s the bank’

arrive at cashpoint..

‘what are we doing here?’
‘getting Euros’
‘what for??.. we can get them on the ship’
‘yes but you need them now’
‘no.. they’ll take pounds here I’m sure, stop trying to bloody organise me I’ll get the bloody Euros on the ship!!’

I backed off, knowing full well that I will have the same conversation (but in reverse) once we are back on board.

The ‘fuckoffometer’ is hitting new records on a daily basis… wears a bit thin after a while!!

Days 2 & 3, all at sea!!

So 24 hours at sea and almost 72 hours of uninterrupted transmission of stereo dementia fm (well for me anyway), I finally managed to go ‘off air’ and find my quiet corner. It’s in the wine bar!! No surprises there, but at six in the evening it would appear to be the least populated area of the ship (marvellous!!). I was beginning to doubt it existed (my quiet corner), and I started to stress out about finding hoards of bodies at every turn, but find it I did. I’ve more or less got my bearings, which is more than can be said for Dad or Mum. This bearing getting has involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between our respective cabins (at opposite ends of the ship). Just on the Harrison cabin to cabin shuttle I’m clocking up about two kilometres a day, and despite my earlier resistance to running indoors, I have made my peace with the treadmill for the time being.. bobbing around the obstacle course of bodies on the prom deck is not the best option. I will be the first person in history to come back from a cruise weighing less than when I left.

I’ve only managed to loose Mum & Dad a couple of times (at current time of writing, they have been temporarily mislaid), trying to find two old people in a sea of old people is decidedly hard. It would appear that all the little old ladies have been to the same hairdresser and all the little old men wear only navy blue. (I am thinking of buying matching fluorescent pink t-shirts for them to wear). I just work on the basis that they can’t go too far, they will almost certainly be close to a bar, and if I don’t find them Dad will at some point remember to look in one of the three pockets where I have put a slip of paper with their room details on it in, and I’ll see them there.

Worst case scenario I get a message over the tannoy asking me to come and retrieve them.. that’s provided they both remember I’m here!!

Day 1

So far so good, with the first leg of the trip getting under way without much of a hitch!

I could just be being a little optimistic, but this might not be as trying as I expected! The night at home and the seven hours in the car on the way to Souhampton were really not too much trouble at all. Granted I had to repeat everything every five or ten minutes, and listen to the same conversation over and over again, Mum telling me what a good driver I was every time I overtook someone. This was usually shortly before proceeding to tell me to ‘fuck off’ about something else (her Tourettes is coming along nicely!) and then telling me how much she loved me in the next breath. She only had one real paddy at Luton services when she decided that she would rather be at home and was heading back. When asked how she intended to get there her quick retort was ‘I don’t know but I’ll do it on my back if I have to’. I chose not to conjure up that image.

The funny thing now is that on some occasions, Mum is the one who is reminding Dad of the short term stuff and not the other way round as it has been for so long. He struggles more with the day to day stuff and every now and again it’s Mum who has to remind him. Although as soon as we reached Southampton, Dad knew exactly where we were going, and guided us straight to the hotel on the quayside, and then to the oldest pub in Southampton for dinner.

I can see one of the Azura’s sister ships moored up at the dock from my bedroom window as I write this. We set sail this afternoon, and I have to say I’m starting to feel mildly excited about the whole thing.

Not entirely sure how easy it is going to be to post once aboard, as communications are limited (or expensive). But will keep plugging away!!

Reality Check

So far my way of preparing for this trip has been to take the ‘ostrich strategy’ approach, treat it all like one big adventure, write about it, take pictures of it, and use humour as a coping mechanism. It’s the way we were brought up, to laugh in the face of adversity, and make sure that any tears we shed were the ones that celebrated the good times (preferably aided by a glass or two of something containing alcohol). When Skipper (spot the nautical reference) the family dog died, we floated him out on a haze of Bucks Fizz, as Dad decided that he was a dog worthy of a more ‘sophisticated’ tipple than the cider and black we were prone to drinking in those days. Five days after mum knocked herself into a coma and onto a life support machine, when we still didn’t know whether we were going to have to make the God-awful, on/off button decision, we all went out as a family, (Dad, three sisters and respective husbands of the time) to let off steam. Such was the raucousness of our table the owner came over to enquire exactly what we were celebrating. It’s stuff like that that has got us through.

But life has a way of coming up and knocking the wind out of your sails when you least expect it, and sometimes the tears can’t be joyful. A phone call from Dad today (the fifth in two days), all of a sudden brought into very sharp focus the reality of what is going on. It also brought home what little sis, the one who lives close by, is having to deal with on a daily basis (but ten-fold). It’s not that I didn’t already know how things are, but distance makes it easier to keep things parked in a little corner of the mind to be dealt with when necessary. But today, after explaining (again) the basic logistics of the travel arrangements to a man who, for all his life has kept everything together so effortlesly, it hit me square between the eyes, it bit me on the bottom, it blindsided me.

A flashing moment of ‘fuck, Dad, your head really has gone, I’m not ready for this, and I don’t mean the cruise, I mean, I’m really not ready for this other huge thing that is no longer looming on the horizon but right here with us, right now, the big ‘A’. I am so not ready for this, there are still so many times I want to sit on the kitchen back step with a glass of the awful wine you insist on buying and recite Kipling’s ‘If’ with you. I am so, so not ready for this. There are still so many more times I want to sit in the Small Crafts Club, or the Cricket Club* and reminisce with you and your friends, (fishermen or otherwise). Will somebody please come and make your head better because really, I am so, so, really, really, not ready for this!!’

A fleeting Kleenex moment followed, before I pulled myself up straight, (tears in the office has never been a look I’ve been particularly fond of – but thank you Susana for coming to the rescue). The floodgates opened again when I got home as the stark realization of what’s up ahead really, really started to bite.

* I must point out that Dad hates cricket, but it’s the closest bar to the house for a night time stroll. He is nothing if not practical!

Preconceived ideas.. part one.. I think there may be more

OK .. it has to be said that I’m going on this trip with a lot of preconceived ideas… all of which I am quite prepared to have smashed to pieces once I get on the ship. These preconceived ideas are not completely without foundation. Over the thirteen years I have lived in Madrid I have met up with Mum & Dad on various occasions when they have docked in Spain and Portugal. I’ve picked them up from the quayside as the masses queued up, seemingly endlessly (it takes a while for 3000 people to get off a ship in more or less single file), to then board buses to take them to the English Bars on the sea front. I’m not saying anything, but you know when a cruise ship is in town in Alicante just by the flora and fauna of Brits that populate the bars ‘en primera linea del mar’, they don’t blend in well with the Madrileños who have their second homes there.

I did spend a couple of hours idly assessing the on-board amenities (and trying not to have anxiety attacks at the same time). I went into the FAQ to find out the possibilities of jogging around the deck.. partly out of curiosity to see how many kilometres a full circuit would be and partly to see whether I will be able to run round fast enough to reach escape velocity and fly away from the confines of matching bar stools, programmed entertainment and glitzy spas for a while (90 f*****g quid for a facial!!.- I’m coming from poor Spainland and only have my 50 quid early booking voucher to redeem in the whole trip.. and I have to pay for my wine!!).

I really don’t buy into this ‘everything designed to make your stay the perfect experience’ thing .. as I really don’t like being told what ‘perfect’ is.. I’m sure my idea will not coincide with the other 2999 passengers, but ho hum.  It seems that jogging round the deck is actively discouraged as there is a wonderfully conditioned gym to do my physical jerks in, and it is suggested that perhaps the deck might be a little too narrow for jogging round, (these guys clearly haven’t run around the streets of your average Spanish pueblo)!!  But what if I want to suck up some sea air whilst exercising? I personally don’t want to be sweating in a hermetically sealed box looking out to sea when there is a possibility of a seagull shitting on my head as I clock up my kilometers.  Weird I know, but hey.. I’ve got a shower in my billy no mates bunker.

I’m sure it will be a weird sensation to be standing on the balcony and watching quayside gradually get smaller and smaller, just as I have stood and watched from the quayside as mum and dad turn slowly into little dots on many occasions. I’ve never quite got my head round just how big these ships are, and how small we look when up alongside them.  And I’m sure my worries about claustrophobia will be unfounded.. so long as I can find my quiet corner.

Ports of Call

So the logistics of this trip are as follows…

1. Friday – Catch plane from Madrid, Spain (home for me) to Liverpool
2. Drive hire car from Liverpool to other side of country – two and a half hours away
3. Sleep at home (as in Mum & Dad home, where I grew up home)
4. Saturday – Drive with parents for six hours (dementia in stereo) to Southampton, (little sis insists that it’s only five and a half cos her in laws just did it in that time, but, like half an hour is going to make a difference to my mental state at the end of it)
5. Dump hire car and sleep at hotel in Southampton making sure Dad doesn’t wander off to the boat show and making sure he remembers he’s there to go on a cruise..
6. Sunday – Board P&O Alzheimer .. sorry.. Azura, get my ‘all the food you can eat , but the wine is extra, and, by the way, hang your imagination up at the door’ pass
7. Spend three days at sea before docking at first port of call in, ahem… Spain

well … we dock in Gibraltar, which technically isn’t really Spain, but we won’t get into that debate right now… you get the picture…

Next port of call is Cartagena (so that really is Spain.. ), then we head off for Italy, (Rome and Florence), France (Cannes), before heading for home making the last stop in Barcelona on the way.

All these nice ports of call aside, I’m still getting my head round the three days at sea thing.. (and I have to do it twice, on the way there and on the way back) Hell, I’ve done 26 hours on an Andesmar bus, rolling through the wilds of Patagonia with only my navel to contemplate, and a cockroach to pull faces at (I thought he was waving at me with his antenna things… I put it down to too much Malbec). I enjoyed every last second of those 26 hours, but this three days at sea thing is filling me with utter horror.. (I’m exaggerating of course.. for dramatic effect). I kinda like my navel sessions, so long as I can look out of a window and have the sensation that physically I’m getting somewhere, difficult on a big ship as nothing really seems to ‘whizz’ by. And on a bus (or plane for that matter, even though that too lacks the ‘whizz by’ factor), there are only two or three people at any given time who have the option to talk to me .. if they so choose. The thing is that on a plane or bus it is perfectly acceptable to let your head roll around and dribble a little bit to discourage people from speaking to you… on a boat with 3000 passengers and half as many crew, I’m not too sure I’m going to be able to carry that look off! Well certainly not for more than a couple of hours, when it could perhaps be put down to a little too much wine and overdoing it on the Karaoke.

So my autistic moments may well have to be relegated to my bunker below decks, no windows for poor singletons, (there will be more on that at a later date when I have fully been able to appreciate my fate..)

Or of course I could just do what I normally do.. find a corner in a bar, put on my best ‘do not disturb’ face (which unnervingly seems to get interpreted more often than not as ‘come here and tell me everything’).. and just get on with it!!

Stereo Dementia FM

.. is the name of this blog, and I do question to some degree the political correctness of that title, but given that for two whole weeks I will have my parents’ dementia, in stereo, at the same time kidding myself that someone, somewhere might be tuning in, it seemed like a fitting title!

So on the one hand you have Dad, a fairly straightforward case of Alzheimer’s and going downhill steadily. Other bits of his body are getting creakier but his mind is the creakiest of all.

On the other hand you have mum.. who is a magna cum laude when it comes to matters of the mind. My earliest memory was visiting her in a psychiatric hospital when I was four years old. She hopped and skipped from one side of manic depression to the other for many of my teenage years, until they rebranded the condition as bi-polarity so she took up alcoholism instead. There were times when the two things ran in parallel too, but the alcoholism prevailed until a bad fall down the stairs (alcohol fuelled of course) and a big bang on the head knocked her mind out of whack forever.

So yes .. the name of the blog is justified.. it is how it is, the cold bare facts.. I don’t claim to be an expert on any of the above.. and don’t ever intend to be, I’m not sure having more facts really makes it any easier to deal with on a day to day basis! and this is where this whole blog thing starts.. the first few posts are like warm up laps to get my mind into writing mode again after so much time (too much time .. but I haven’t been idle).. going in cold just wouldn’t work.

Countdown to the Cruise

OK, so I have no idea if I’m going to be able to pull this one off, but I’m going to give it a go! In less than three weeks time a mini adventure awaits, in the shape of a Mediterranean cruise with Mum & Dad.

Now anyone that knows me knows that for starters a cruise is about the last thing I would choose for a holiday. The idea of being shipped (literally) from one port to the next, regimental fashion, everything timetabled to the nth degree is sure to bring me out in a rash. The idea of sharing that experience with 3000 other people, who actually appear to relish the idea of all that time tabling, makes me feel positively queasy… and I haven’t even boarded the ship yet.

But this year it’s time to play my part as dutiful daughter as Dad starts his steady decline into dementia it is probably, realistically the last opportunity he and Mum will have to go on a cruise. Of all the people I would choose to go on a cruise with, Dad, the old seadog, is at the top of the list. I use the word old and it seems wrong, but indeed over the last twelve months, he just got old.. from someone who, for 76 years has been more or less invincible, indestructible, the decline has been dramatic. So whilst I have consciously been creating opportunities to share quality father/daughter moments over the last couple of years, they have been fleeting, squeezed into rushed trips home, which have heavily featured me watching both parents sleep soundly with the telly full blast, awaking only to venture to the kitchen for more scooby snacks. (them not me.. I hasten to add)… I only ventured out to top up the wine.. (never a good idea when Dad has bought the bottle….)

Somewhere in all of this blog I’ve gotta work out a way of featuring both parents, otherwise the title would lose it’s meaning really wouldn’t it?? but I haven’t even figured out which way it’s going to go just yet.. it could all be a stream of consciousness, verbal vomit type thing, or I could even try a bit if editing for once in my life… hmm … the jury may be out on that one……

And part of the story telling process is a self imposed photography project, an attempt to document the demise into dementia, with humour (I like to set the bar high after all) capturing the fundamental parts of the two human beings who are as much themselves as I am them.. it’s a project I started unconsciously two years ago well before Dad’s dementia was diagnosed, well before the first symptoms even appeared, at that time I was probably more interested in capturing Mum’s little puddle of mental pickle… given that she has been there for a much longer time. The excursions with Dad were more just like trips down memory lane, but somewhere along the line other dots started to join up… and a different story started to emerge…