fionaistravelling

This should carry on neatly from my first blog, posted a few days ago....  I arrived in Santander after the second night on the ferry and was met by my lovely friend Kate who I’ve known since we were in our 20s and who’s lived in Cantabria for many years.  (there's a very long story about how she ended up there,  which I was reminded the other day was down to a tenuous set of events which all started with me meeting Alfonso Garcia Oliva , a Spanish bagpipe player and musical instrument maker, at a traditional folk event in Geneva in 1986 - he was living with his Swiss then girlfriend Sylvie at the time . Kate met her Spanish former partner Marcos through this connection with Alfonso, and ended up living in Spain and having a long musical career there...)    On the way back to Kate's we  went for a walk on the most gorgeous beach at Liencres,  before arriving at her house. She’s actually sold her lovely house  where she's lived for years, and is...

I'll start by saying that I have just, at the age of 69 or whatever I am (and don't get me started on 'how did THAT happen')  started to understand time zones!  For your info .... the time in Tenerife in the Canaries, 300 km west of Morocco, where I am till this Saturday, is the same as the UK, ie an hour earlier than in Spain and the rest of Central Europe. (ie when it's 6 pm in Spain  it's 5 pm in the UK and Tenerife). I've always just known as facts that the west coast of the USA is 8 hours behind us, the east coast is 5 hours behind us, Brazil is 3 or 4 hours behind us... I can't quite ever remember which way Europe goes.... but I've never had a clear illustration in my mind of how this works before last Saturday.  Look away now if you don't even know what I'm talking about because this concept is so clear to you and you've never had a problem with it ... but for me I'm VERY happy!  I love understanding things rather than learning...

21/11/2023 21.08 I’m at the ferry port in Portsmouth waiting to get on the ferry and leave the country for 'A Year Away Trying Not to Leave the Ground'. (Brazil first stop, via Spain and Tenerife). I’ve just spent my last £3.18 of UK money on 3 memory banks – a crunchie, a cadbury’s dairy milk, and a wispa - for the 3 women I’ll be meeting in Santander all of whom have lived in England and two of whom grew up here. I feel I’m actually getting on my way now. I’ve had a wonderful last three weeks of visiting friends and saying goodbyes, which culminated in a completely fabulous fundraising dinner and cabaret, with musician friends performing (a baroque trio, a Klezmer trio, my neighbour’s daughters doing a duet, the Lancaster city community Klezmer band playing Klezmer dances that I called, and my friend’s band singing songs about historic revolutionary Lancastrians). And the food was spectacular – my niece has been running Sanctuary Cookalongs, a cookery project in Preston for a...

A couple of years ago i started thinking about going back to South America - 40 years after my first trip there in 1984. well the time has come ! i've been trying all year to find out about passenger travel on cargo ships but it seems that's not happening any more ... and what I did find was a 'digital nomad cruise' from Tenerife to Salvador! so I have booked on it , and worked out a no fly route to Tenerife ... and now I have just over ten weeks to pack myself up and get going ... and finish off all the things I'm doing here ... and learn Portuguese (!) and try and work out what I want to achieve when I'm away. I was originally going for six months but now my daughter has moved to LA I'll be going to north America and Canada too ... currently planning to be at KlezKanada festival in August '24 all being well, and to spend my birthday month sept '24 in Montreal .... but thats a long way off! and first i have to see what happens in Brazil, and...

Winter 2022, Halton, near Lancaster As the other letters come in, it reminds me how much I enjoy reading them – so here is mine (not an annual event but I hope it will help pass the time) 2022 started with a ‘writing retreat’ in the wild south west lake district village of Haverigg. I’ve been doing some memoir writing courses this year, and I was enjoying spending an unusually quiet time in the first half of the year researching my own life for this piece of writing, It included getting my diaries back from the British Museum-led Great Diary Project (!) and employing the services of a shorthand reading consultant for what turned out to be a very embarrassing piece of consultancy for both her and me. (I studied shorthand in 1972, I wrote the diaries we’re talking about in 1994, but by 2022 my shorthand reading skills had deteriorated somewhat....). There is of course a longer story behind all this, which I’ll be happy to tell you in person if/when we get to meet face to ...

Seasons Greetings from Fiona 2020  Hello! and hope you're having the best break you can despite everything.... The blog I wrote this time last year was mostly about my wonderful mum, who died at the age of 93 a year last October.  This year, too, has pretty much all been about my wonderful mum.  I’m kind of glad that she didn’t have to live through the pandemic, but of course my sister or I would have gone and lived with her from when it all kicked off, which would have been lovely.  She was unfailingly happy, kind, and generous. (Here she is at her 90th birthday teaparty). We held a Zoom Stonesetting for her in July, with lots of family, which was absolutely lovely, and with the help of a work colleague I made a  ‘ sound and photo collage ’  about her which included her friends reminding us of her happiness and warmth, AND a recording of her own grandmother singing a Yiddish song!    We then held a REAL stonesetting for her in October, where...

Happy New Year 2020... and an account of a seismic 2019 Dear friends Thanks to any of you who have sent me a Christmas card – I love getting them, but have great difficulty sending them  - so here’s my Christmas card equivalent; a Happy New Year letter. The main thing about 2019 is that our wonderful, kind, well organised, vibrant, buoyant, funny, and universally loved mum died in October, at the age of 93. I was in Poland when she died – which says a lot about her. We knew she was ill, but she was absolutely happy for us to travel and do whatever we wanted to do – as long as we facetimed her every day. (She LOVED her Ipad, was frantic once when I took her charger away by mistake, couldn’t wait till I could get the charger back to her the next day, so she went into town to buy a new one that same day…) So many people came to the funeral and the prayers in the week after the funeral – some, people we’d known as children, making the journey from London or Manche...