Moles in their Holes

Good Day to YOU.

Hop-diggedy-dawg, I think it is cold enough to freeze ... Oooops, I was jurst about to quote one of Hugo' favourite sayings but SHE gave ME 'that' look, YOU know the one, it says "I FORBID YOU TO SAY THAT", so I will jurst say that the saying features things that Jugglers juggle with, a certain metal and what happens to water when it gets below zero.. there, YOU should be able to work it out.

SHE received an email this morning from Mark, a friend who had 'disappeared', do YOU have friends that do this? SHE finds it upsetting because of what went on in HER childhood when SHE disappeared but the world is a very different place now with pocket sized gadgets that enable friends / people to keep in touch.

Anyway, it transpires that Mark is now in or on Hawaii. ( Perhaps someone will let US know which is the correct word to use). He is a chef and they met many years ago when Mark was 'chefing' for a family in Kensington and SHE was working for them organising teams of clock and furniture restorers. SHE is going to ask him how he got to Hawaii, for the last thing SHE knew there was a plan to open a restaurant somewhere in California.

Suzan is an old American friend of HERS that had very bad and sad stuff happen five years ago and spent a lot of time underground. SO SHE was mighty relieved to hear from her recently. But even before the bad/sad stuff happened, Suzan was always bad at keeping in touch, so much so that way back in the 90's SHE nicknamed her Moley, for Susan would go down into her hole and stay down there for months and then, in true Moley fashion, she would come up and out into daylight and say "Hello, is there anyone there?".

All WE can hope for is that she keeps her face towards the light and stays in contact with US. She has sons that WE hope are making sure their mother is 'ok', she has good friends whom WE hope are being kind and supportive and WE know she will have some Canine folk with her.

Now I am going to write about a circumstance that caused HER to 'disappear'.

When SHE was young there was a financial crisis caused by Hugo being very, very ill. It meant that a lot of very significant changes occured.

Hugo collected HER and the school trunk from Euston Station at the end of term and started to drive in a different direction to the one they normally took to go home, SHE asked him where they were going and Hugo said "Hasn't Mummy told you? We had to sell Bishopsdale and we have been lent a cottage near Littlebourne by Jimmy Hale" and he told HER what else had had to happen, including the fact that he would no longer afford to pay HER school fees.

SHE had left school without knowing it.

The family went to live in this tiny cottage on the other side of Kent from Tenterden. SHE now lived where SHE knew no-one apart from her parents and a brother, he was two and a half years older and still at boarding school but he spent no time with the family in the school holidays, he spent all of his holidays with a friend in Suffolk where there was lots to do and he had a happy time.

SHE did not have a happy time, for another of the significant changes that occurred was that all HER animals had been given away. That caused HER to be very sad. She also lost contact with most of the people SHE had known at school and home.

WE all forget, Dear Reader, what it was like before, telephone calls were expensive, there weren't computers in people's homes, mobile phones didn't exist and besides, there was no money to send HER on train jaunts to stay with friends who lived far away.

Circumstances got better and the family moved to a lovely home in Sandwich that SHE saw advertised one Saturday in the paper that Constance had been reading. SHE met a new group of people and made some friends but the whole experience had scarred HER.

For SHE felt as if SHE had literally disappeared from sight.. recently (within the last eight years) SHE put HER name up with the names of the three schools that SHE went to.. one day SHE received an email from a Frances ... a name that SHE didn't recognise at all, SHE responded saying as such, only to receive a immediate response saying "whoops, of course you wouldn't know that name but you WOULD know me as Fanny .... wouldn't you?".

And there, Dear Reader, after a gap of over FORTY years, was a very dear childhood friend.

Fanny came to stay and brought HER a gift, in a long cardboard tube, what could it be? Do YOU know what it was Dear Reader? No.. well, clever, clever Fanny had found out the name of the firm of Photographers who took the Penderel School photos and there, was the school photo circa 1959 of Fanny, HER and all of their friends.

That has made me 'wet-eyed' and I write this stuff...

SHE has also met up with Caroline, another lost friend, SHE and Caroline met about three years ago, also through Friends Reunited and talked and talked, they took it in turns to talk about what happened to them both, the last time they had seen each other was in 1964, so there was a LOT to talk about. Caroline is married to Gustavo, they have two grown-up children, certainly ONE grandchild and live in Calabria in Southern Italy, Fanny is retired and lives with her new Canine friend in Paguera on the Island of Mallorca.

But there are a lot of friends who have disappeared over the years, most of them disappeared before the explosive invention of email and mobile phones and Blackberry's with their instant messaging system or Skype. In Australia there is a woman called Pamela Sweeting, SHE last saw Pam when they were both in New York City in 1981, Pam moved to Los Angeles and then wrote to HER saying that she was going to move back to Australia, Pam's family come from Perth but SHE believes that PAM headed off to Sydney.

So if any one of OUR Australian Readers knows Pam Sweeting, please would you ask her to contact HER via MY Blog, We would like to know that she is happy and having a good life. That's all WE want for OUR family and friends, isn't it. To know that they are happy and healthy.

And on THAT happy note.. I know that there is a bag of Beetyrooties and Potatoes and lots of Onions and Garlic and Bulgar Wheat.. perhaps SHE could be cajoled into making 'Ingrid's Soup' for although it is a fine soup which means that I only get to eat the dumplings, it puts HER into a remarkably good mood when SHE has it!

We're off to the Kitchen.. hurray.

Thank you for reading MY Blog Dear Reader, I hope YOU are happy and healthy wherever YOU are?

GeeGee Parrot.
February 5th, 2012.