Catching up with lost time.

Monday March 9th to Sunday March 22nd

I am taking drastic action to try and catch up with my back log of entries needing to be written, never mind posted! It is now March 28th and I haven't even posted from March 9th onwards. This will help get me back on track - hopefully.

I've been so busy towards the end of term and having my new baby half-sister has really upskittled my equilibrium and work effort so much. I am surprised by the stupid emotional response I have had to Chloe's arrival. It has really made me sit and re-evaluate my life and my life style and my overall way of doing things. I know that sounds unbelievably foolish and irrational but her birth has had an impact on me out of all proportion to the event.

The fact of being asked to be Chloe's godmother was probably the trigger. I accepted and the Christening was on the last Sunday before Palm Sunday, where I stood in that church and actually took part in a Mass for the first time since Richard's funeral. I made promises and vows in that church which reminded me that Richard and I were all set to make promises and vows to each other in 2010, a year after his death. I guess that is one of the reasons I had tears streaming down my face when we were gathered round the font on the 22nd.

My emotional state really worried Laura and she thought I might be having thoughts about becoming a mother my self and giving her up so I could find a suitable man to be my children's father. This upset me too. That was the furthest from the truth she could have been. Once I told her that the whole thing had convinced me that entering marriage with her was probably going to be what I needed in my life reassured her and we almost announced our engagement at the post christening party. We decided it would have been selfish of us to steal Dad and Louisa's thunder so we are going to stick to our original plan of announcing it with a party after Loll graduates!

The Camerata Salzburg concert, with Nicloa Bendetti on the 14th of March was wonderful. I was really impressed by her playing and stage presence. [Again Laura told me I had a Lesbo Pash on her!] I had not heard the Bartok Divertimento before but it exceeded my expectations. I find he can be a chancy sort of listen, sometimes he is so lyrical and expressive in the old classical style and at others he slaps you in the face with his modernity.

The rest of the pieces I had heard: the Mozart Violin Concerto No 3 and his Symphony No 29. My favourite of the evening was the Bruckner Adagio for strings. I have recordings of all three pieces at home.

Mum was there again with her new beau Tony. I am still not convinced that he really, actually, does like classical music but the fact he is prepared to attend these things with Mum is an enormous plus point in his favour. I am a bit worried that her attachment to him may be a sort of reaction to the fact that Dad and his new wife (OK, wife of three years this summer) have just had a baby. Maybe I am over thinking these things but I have this nagging question in the back of my head wondering that her seemingly swift infatuation with the joiner from Totley has another agenda behind it.

I am just being stupid I know. The question I have asked myself over and over, since we first met Tony, is can I see him as a Step-Dad and I'm afraid the answer is, no. That he makes Mum seem happy is good but...

She was happy enough on the Saturday of the concert, even when I told her about how Jane, Laura and I had been out buying ourselves new outfits for the christening. She expressed a genuine interest in our purchases which was a reaction I hadn't expected. She was amused by the fact that Angela had wanted to buy a Princess Elsa type dress (Frozen) and how she became extremely annoyed when none of the shops we went into had anything that fitted the bill. The one place that had anything remotely like one was no good as all their dresses were too small for her!

The end of term drew on to its usual wimper of a closure. The campus seemed to just get emptier and emptier as the last two weeks went on. My two Thursday lectures rounded off that module of work quite nicely and both seemed well attended. Once again the Q & A was funny, especially as when I asked for any other questions, near the end, I was asked where I was going for the vacation. That made me laugh! They seemed surprised I wasn't doing anything "historical", I thought that was quite revealing about the way thy viewed me.

Feli waltzed off to Bordeaux early, once again. I am not sure how she manages to do this almost every semester. Is she sleeping with the Dean or something? We had a meal out together in the week before the she went and she thinks I am honoured to be a Godmother to my new sister. She said the meal was a way of wetting the baby's head in absentia. That is double absentia - Chloe wasn't there for the meal and Feli won't be there for the head wetting!

We drove up to Cumbria on the Friday afternoon of the last week and were delighted that the Saturday was glorious, weather-wise. We dragged Dad out on to the fells and had a long walk and chat in the Lorton Valley. He is really a very contented soul at the moment. It is hard to pin down why I have arrived at that conclusion but there is something about him, his manner or whatever, which seems changed.

When I mentioned this too him he agreed, he told me it was 'bloody fatigue'! He claims to be knackered out completely. After Chloe's arrival he tried to fit in driving to Lancaster every day for work and back again in the evening! This lasted a couple of days before he decided to take his paternity leave. 180 mile round trip each day is plain stupid.

They have decided that, when the new semester starts, they will spend the whole week living in the flat in Lancaster and just use Cumbria for the weekends. They'll drive down on Monday morning and back on Friday afternoon.  It is a small flat but is ideal for their immediate needs. Once the initial exhaustion of the new baby has worn off they will re-assess the situation. Dad didn't mention his impending retirement at all which makes me wonder if he hasn't had his contract extended again!

The Christening was really good. There were three babies being splashed with water so the church was packed out. Chloe was decked out in the family's Christening robe. It went from Magdeburg to Australia in the 1880s and came to the UK for our three christenings, then for Suze and Phil's three children each - the last one was baby Sophie's Christening last year. Being the eldest, Suze is now the official keeper of the robe. It will go back to Australia after this event. Given the ages of my siblings' children, it won't be needed again for quite a while - hopefully. Jill is the oldest grandchild, being 17, but she has her sights firmly set on going to University in WA and becoming a marine biologist. It doesn't look like children are on her horizon for a while yet. [Things do change with in the blink of an eye, of course!]

The post Christening party was quite a cheery affair, especially as nobody fell out with anyone else. OK, I mean Jane kept Phil under control - he can be a pillock at family gatherings. I thnk the fact that the actual family were in the minority at the bash may have been a factor too.

He even complimented me on my ivory tulip dress, this is quite unheard of and put me on alert for some request or favour coming my way. There wasn't one, which was unusual. He did ask if we were going away for the vacation and I told him we were spending nearly three weeks on Arran. If he was going to ask if he could have use of the van, over the Easter Holidays, he kept it really well hidden. There wasn't a glimmer on his face when I told him our plans. Perhaps I had better not play poker with him.

I explained we had booked on the 9.45 ferry the next day and that was why I wasn't knocking back the grog like I usually did. The cheeky bugger did say he had noticed I was on soft drinks and thought I might be on a diet. I told him it was a shame they didn't do diets for fat heads!

When I took Dad's three dogs and Callie for their last walk of the day, a tired but happy little Angela asked if she could come too. We strolled hand in hand slowly through the village and then on up the Tall Hill road. She asked me if I was going to have a baby. I laughed and said, "Not yet." She told me she had thought about it a lot since Sophie was born and seeing her Mum so tired for the first few months after she arrived has sort of scared her. I explained that babies were pretty scary things, worse than monsters or dragons. She asked why and I tried to jokingly tell her that it was scary that they were yours for life. How they would turn out as people was mainly because of your parents. I said I was a pretty silly, reckless, devil may care sort of person and I would be worried that I may end up with children who were just the same.

She told me she thought that was true, not the silly reckless stuff, but because I was so like Gramps and Nanan! I asked her what she meant and she explained that I looked like a young Nanan and I did things with my hands and arms and the way I bent down to talk to her and stuff like that which Nanan did, but when I talked I sounded like Gramps. (Out of the mouth of babes, eh?)

She also said that she though Sophie wasn't as pretty as Chloe. That made me laugh. She is going to have lots and lots of babies and they are all going to end up behaving like her and her Mum rather than her Dad because he gets sulky. I had to bite my tongue not to ask her what he gets sulky about.

At Dad's we turned in early, to prepare for our early start in the morning. Phil and Jane and the littlies had set off back to Leeds as soon as Angela and I had got back with the dogs. It only takes him two hours to drive down to Leeds if he leaves later in the evening.  To catch the ferry from Dad's, you have to leave at about 6.30am. If the M74 is busy it can take three hours to Ardrossan. If we were early we could have a cooked breakfast in the Asda by the ferry terminal.