LOOKING FORWARD

 

With my dad's funeral behind us and most of the paperwork completed we're looking forward to getting back to France and picking up where we left off.

Because of the heatwave we have delayed our journey.  We could probably cope with the discomfort from the extreme heat ourselves but Daisy and Hugo might find it too much of a trial.  And if we get held up and have to stop anywhere for any length of time it could be very difficult for them.  At Eurotunnel, for example, cars are often lined up waiting to board the train for quite a long time where there is no shade at all.  So we have decided to travel when the heat has returned to normal.  Still hot but not bakingly, dangerously hot.

We're expecting our garden to have suffered a lot in the heat.  I wouldn't be surprised to find many of the plants, especially in the pots, in pretty bad shape, although friends have been watering for us.  These pictures were taken last year when we didn't get to France until early July and there was not much in the way of flowering plants left in the garden centres.  But last year we still managed to find something and this year we'll be just so pleased to be back that it hardly matters.

Only a couple more days and we'll be on our way.

FAREWELL TO MY DEAR DAD.

 

This is Dad when he came to stay with us in France in 2018.

And here in 2014.

Same cardigan, I think.

On his 90th birthday.

In Chinon in September 2012, at the tender age of 83.

My father passed away peacefully in his sleep last night.  He had been in hospital for three weeks after falling in his apartment, then he was transferred to a care home where he lived for just one more week.  He was 93, and in fact was just four months short of his 94th birthday.  

He had been an officer in the Royal Navy, was a gifted design engineer, an accomplished pianist, a writer and, of course, a caring husband, father and grandfather.  

R.I.P., my dear old dad.