Long Overdue

And I'm sorry. For not posting in so long, I mean. Honestly, things have moved so quickly since my last post.
 
The end of July saw us preparing for our first visitors from Canada, who were arriving around the beginning of August. Their arrival date was a bit uncertain, but thankfully, it didn't occur during the Olympics!!! Which were brilliant, by the way. What an amazing summer to live in England.

The Friday before our guests arrived, I caught a bad cold. Still, you know how it is. You keep going, because the house has to be cleaned and people are coming a long way to see you. And I got sicker. But, Monday saw us driving happily down the M1 to Luton Airport to pick up Gabi. Gabi sold us our first gym membership together back in 2005 and fast became a friend whom we cherish. She was visiting family and friends in Europe and made a special trip from Amsterdam just to see us. A friend of hers, who'd been backpacking through Europe and Asia for three months happened to be in London, so we picked her up at Leicester Station on Monday night and she stayed with us, too.

We had a lovely visit, actually. Took them up to Sherwood Forest, where the Robin Hood Festival was on and we all had a try at the longbow. We were going to go to Nottingham Castle, but it's in downtown Nottingham and we've learned to avoid driving there during rush hour, which it was, so we took them to Wollaton Manor instead. If you've seen the latest Batman movie, Wollaton was Wayne Manor. What an amazing property!!!

The next day saw the dog in the kennel and all of us in the car, driving down to a hotel in London. Yes, I know. I swore never to drive in London again, but we thought, "How bad could it be? The Olympics are over and surely the place is calm." HAH!! We got an amazing deal on a hotel at Marble Arch, which is a great location. Gabi has never been to London, so we had a fun afternoon showing her the sights, including an amazingly empty Mall in front of Buckingham Palace because all traffic had been stopped so that the Olympic venues could be removed. We went to the theatre that night, "The Woman in Black", which was ... well ... fabulous. Dear god I love watching actors who use their craft!!!

Gabi and Lisa at dinner in London

The next day, Gabi's friend took the train to Paris, and we decided that since we'd already paid the congestion charge for having a car in downtown, we were going to drive downtown. The traffic was unbearably heavy and just as we were turning onto Pall Mall by Trafalgar Square, the oddest thing happened. All the electrical in the car went kerflooey. The cell phones, the car, and most disastrously, since we were running out of petrol, the sat nav!! Don't ever drive in downtown London, especially without sat nav. Dear god, what were we thinking. We think that we were hit by an electromagnetic pulse, an anti-terrorism tool. It's the only thing we can think of. Luckily, we found a cabby out near the other side of Hyde Park who helped us find a petrol station and from there, we found a route to the M25 and we were able to get Gabi back to the airport so she could resume her trip. And the sat nav only needed to be connected to the computer to reboot itself.

By this time, Brian was sick and I was sicker. But, Brian's son, Michael, had leave from the military coming up and he was coming over to visit. We had about ten days to get better. Several weeks of antibiotics helped. He arrived the day after Brian's birthday and we drove down to Heathrow to get him. We're getting really good at that drive, by the way, except that the Paralympics were about to start and the M4 (the main road into Terminal 3) was jammed with cars, all heading into London. We had to bush crash, but we got there fairly quickly by driving in the wrong direction and following our noses (and the now working sat nav).

On the lower gun deck of HMS Victory

We had a wonderful visit with Michael, the highlight of which (other than watching Aleksandra see him for the first time in about a year) was the three of us driving down to Portsmouth, where we toured the HMS Victory (Admiral Nelson's ship that he beat Napolean in) and caught the ferry over to Normandy. Our first visit to France! I spent over a week before Michael arrived rehearsing my French in my head, trying to dredge my 'vocab' up from the pit of my memory.

It was an amazing trip. Michael's grandfather, Stan, landed at Juno Beach with the Canadians, as did two of Brian's uncles. This was a trip to honour them, and to honour my great uncle, who died at Vimy Ridge, which was the second part of this visit. I cannot fully express how this pilgrimage made all of us feel. It was sobering, eye-opening, moving in ways that none of us expected.

La Maison du Queen's Own Rifles

As the ferry arrived at Oustreham, near Caen, we stood on the bow, where we could see most of the D-Day beaches before us. Storm, Juno and Gold for sure (the two American beaches, Omaha and Utah, were closer to Cherbourg). The drive up the coast, toward Courseulles-sur-Mer where the Juno Beach memorial is, was a revelation. There are nine memorials along the five beaches, at important spots to D-Day. They all recognize the efforts of the allies in liberating France and the flags of all the allies fly above them. Every so often, Brian would vaguely recognize something, from when his dad was stationed in France in the fifties. But this one time, we had to stop. "I know that house," he said. One of the nine memorials was beside the house, which was in Berniere-sur-Mer. The wall alongside the house had photos of the Canadians landing at this point in the beach. The house figured prominently in them. But I was completely unprepared for what greeted us at the front of the house.

A Canadian flag is permanently attached to it, and there is a small memorial in front. It has been named La Maison du Queen's Own Rifles, in honour of the Canadian regiment that landed on that spot. This was the first house, the first building, liberated from the Germans. One hundred men, at least, died in the effort, and the memorial and house have been maintained for decades. Just down the beach from there, you can see one of the German pillboxes on the beach. Those were the cement hidey holes the Germans placed along the beaches to defend them against invasion. The tide was out and you could see for miles. Families walked along and children flew a kite by the pillbox.

Children play on the beach

Next, we drove on to Courseulles to see the Juno Beach Memorial, which was opened in 2003. Although the Minister of Canadian Heritage has declared this to be a site of national historic importance to Canada, the Canadian government had nothing to do with this memorial. As far as we know, it was put together and is maintained using private funds. Considering how truly important this beach is in Canadian history, and the fact that the Canadians were the only troupes to achieve their ultimate objective that day, this is a crying shame. The memorial museum is fascinating, if a tad low-key, and I learned a lot that nobody's ever told me. It's built opposite another of the German pillboxes that haunt the beaches of Normandy. The tears that had begun at La Maison du Queen's Own Rifles came to the surface at the Juno Beach Memorial. So many lives. We Canadians have a lot to be proud of. We are gritty and determined people when we need to be.

Our hotel was on the edge of Arromanche, which is where one of the British museums is. There, you can still see to this day the mulberries, the structures that were floated across the channel, then sunk to create breakwaters and harbours for the landing forces. They form a permanent part of the seascape here, along with the memorials. The memorials that include individual ones to various generals, or marines, graveyards with flowers on every grave. I cannot fully express how very grateful I feel to the French, the people of Normandy, for the care they have taken all these years to ensure that nobody ever forgets what happened on June 6, 1944. And how difficult it must have been to never be able to fully move on from this war, with the memorials and remnants of both the German and Allied invasions right there in front of them all the time.

At dinner in Arromanche

The people of Normandy are marvelous and it is a beautiful place. We had dinner that night in a little restaurant by the marina, our table on the patio by the street. At the next table were a couple of Irish bikers, who'd just come up from Spain. Our hostess was lovely and the food ... merveilleux. The wine was even better. And breakfast at the hotel the next day ... heavenly. Croissants, brie, ham, butter, baguettes and red current preserves, with very strong coffee. All of us just about melted from our joy in eating this breakfast. We will definitely stay there again the next time we go. And we will be going back to have a more thorough exploration of the area.

Next, we made a quick trip to Omaha Beach, but I put  my foot down about how long we were there. Vimy Ridge is a four hour drive from the D-Day beaches and I wanted to get there early enough that we could spend a little time.

The Vimy Ridge Memorial

Nothing could have prepared me for Vimy Ridge. Nothing. My eyes fill with tears just writing about it. When I was a very little girl I used to love looking at our family bible. In that bible was a bronze medallion, a photograph of a young soldier, a newspaper article saying that he had gone missing at war, and a memorium card from the king offering condolences to his family on his death. His name was Thomas Kerr Hall, and he was 17 years old when he died at Vimy Ridge. He has haunted me my whole life. I wondered about him, what he was like, how it must have been that he died so very young and alone, apart from his family. Dad would have been about 8 months old when his uncle died. As I grew up and learned more about the battle of Vimy Ridge during WWI, Thomas Kerr Hall stayed with me. I've wanted to find him for about 40 years.

Driving into the parking lot, past the remains of tunnels and trenches, past the forest that has retaken the ridge, one cannot help but be moved by the memorial. It was begun in 1923, with the sculpture being designed by a Canadian. The land was ceded to the Canadian government in honour of the men who gave their lives there. The memorial was completed, ironically, in 1936, when the world was watching Hitler make early steps toward WWII. That it survived WWII is amazing, frankly, given where it is, so close to Dunkerque, Lille and Arras. But it did survive, gloriously.

My emotions as I walked the memorial, watched families looking at it, children climbing on it, became overwhelming as I found his name on the wall. T K HALL. That's all it says. That's all it needs to say. I wept. Alone for a moment as Michael and Brian explored other areas. Michael found me and took a couple of pictures of me. Then I found Brian and brought him to see. To share this moment with me. I think I'm the only member of the family ever to visit there. He's been found and he isn't alone anymore.


We explored the trenches, with a young Ryerson student as our guide. She'd only been there a couple of weeks, so she was a bit uncertain trying to give us her information. Just her luck, she was presented with Brian and Michael, my two military historians. The trenches have been preserved in cement, the Canadian lines just 25 feet from the German lines at one point, massive craters in between. I showed her the bronze medallion, with the photo of Thomas Kerr Hall, the newspaper article announcing that he was missing and the card from the king. She was fascinated, and very touched to see them.

The Vimy Ridge site is one of the most hauntingly beautiful places I have ever seen. Nature has done what nature does, you see. Behind the barbed wire fences with warnings of unexploded munitions on the other side, in amongst the trenches, craters and tunnels, is grass, trees have grown up, and sheep eat the grass. They are light enough that they won't set off the unexploded mines. We found out that because it was a Sunday, most of the people at the memorial were French families, parents explaining to children why the memorial is so important. That's the day they usually visit. The rest of the week tends to be English or Canadians.


The next day, we drove to Calais and onto the Chunnel train to Dover. We visited Dover Castle for several hours (and could spend another day or so seeing it all), then home. We're going back to Normandy and the WWI sites one day. For now, no more road trips for a while. We are definitely road-tripped out.

We took Michael back to the airport last Friday, having had a wonderful visit, and anticipating him returning at Christmas. Then Brian took me to have a couple of moles removed - one from the top of my head, one from my back. I keep bumping my head. It hurts when I do that. A lot. I really must stop doing that.

And now, we are sort of caught up. I do apologize for the long silence. Our pharmacist actually kept tabs on me because of how long I was on antibiotics and our GP as well. But I am healthy again, as is Brian. Aleks keeps charming the hell out of everyone she sees. And I bought a cunning 1940s hat at a WWII re-enactment over the weekend. Trying to replace all the beautiful hats I gave up when I left Toronto.

Our kitchen

By the way, I've started a new blog - a travel photography blog. It won't replace the flick'r account, which I will continue updating, but is one that will have the best of my photos. It's an anonymous blog, one that focuses on what I have seen rather than who I am. I'm hoping it will become commercially viable. Part of the quest to earn money outside soul-draining office jobs.

I promise, I'll be better about keeping you updated.

Love to you all from both of us.