What seventy feels like for me...

Seventy!

My first challenge, an acronym for Seventy;

S – Skilled

E – Exciting

V – Vibrant

E – Energetic

N – Nurturing

T – Transforming

Y – Young

I can honestly say that I have not spent much time thinking about what I would feel like on my seventieth birthday!   This birthday, like all the others just showed up and aren’t I the lucky one.   Lucky, not just because I reached this milestone.  Lucky in so many ways on my journey to Seventy.    Lucky in Health and blessed with a loving partner for the last 21 years.

Alex makes each birthday memorable and I ensure that each birthday is remembered by recording the events of the day.   I actually got a birthday teaser on the 13^th, Saturday evening. 

Alex asked me, “how many flower vases do you have?”   My reply, “two large ones, two middle size ones and two tiny ones.”  “Well, I have birthday flowers in the car and it might be better to bring them in now so you can put them in water and save you doing it tomorrow.”

He brought in three big bouquets of flowers.   One of them sunflowers, with Gerber daisies and small long stem chrysanthemums, a second bouquet was 4 purple irises with six various coloured roses.   The third bouquet was purple chrysanthemums and white with delicate greenery.   I enjoyed arranging these beautiful and fragrant flowers in our vases and placed them in my office room for the night.

This morning we woke about six.  Not ready to get out of bed yet, I enjoyed my book until about 7 o’clock.   When I came down the stairs there was an envelope in the letter box of the front door and another one in the fridge. Two lovely cards from Alex.

Birthday messages from Huey and Angie and sisters and dozens of Face book birthday wishes from family and friends.   Alex asked what I would like to do.    “I always enjoy going to the seaside, and Great Yarmouth is the closest, just under an hour drive.”   Choice is limited with lots of places still closed.

I am sipping peppermint tea and Alex has coffee.   I had a thought, “what is the difference between peppermint and spearmint?” Alex says, “Ask google.”

Peppermint's flavour is similar to spearmint, but it contains the ingredient menthol, making its flavour stronger and more pronounced. Both spearmint and peppermint have menthol in them but peppermint contains a higher menthol content (40% versus. 05% in spearmint) So now I know and if you didn’t, you do to.   I have peppermint growing in the front garden and can have real mint flavoured hot water daily.

Alex had two toasts with butter and I had a banana, with yoghurt and tbs. of ground chia seed with flax seed and my mint tea. 

I prepared a couple of sandwiches for us two nectarines, and water, into a bag with two large towels and we had our two-fold out chairs in the car.

I went into my office to get my phone and there on my desk were five gifts!

A bottle of Gucci Guilty fragrance, a pkg. of three large emery boards, Finest quality gardening gloves that are thorn proof!   A magazine   and a new blouse, grey with silver leopard pattern on it, short sleeves.   I feel quite pampered!  

We decided to leave about nine o’clock to arrive early enough to get a free parking space and before the heat of the day, and the crowds.   After Covid-19   U.K is just beginning stage 2 coming out of lock down.   This is the first weekend the public toilets are open at the seaside as well as a few beach side coffee and ice cream vendors.

I wore my swim suit under my white sun dress with a long-sleeved white shirt over top.  Alex wore his green shorts and grey T-shirt.

We managed a parking space on the street right near the toilets and where there was the one and only boardwalk across the beach to the shore.  We enjoyed two hours of sitting, talking, people and dog watching and listening to the surf and the sea gulls.  I walked bare foot into the surf   but the water was not warm enough for me.   We did see one-person swimming.  There was a man flying kites.   One was black and huge shaped like a bat.  The other was yellow and a bit smaller.  Each time he had a kite in the air, the seagulls would go crazy with their panic bird noise.   They would all fly together in a large circle, and shriek around the kite.   Without looking, we knew when he had his kite in the air. 

As we were on our drive home, there were dozens of cars coming to the Beach.  The sun was now high in the sky.  As we walk through our front door, the house feels cool and fresh and welcoming.

As I sit here now making note of this special birthday, Alex has had a nap and is out mowing the front lawn.  He did the back lawn yesterday.  When he finishes that, we will have our dinner, food prepared yesterday, an easy cold meal of green salad, and potato salad and boiled egg.  Alex has a store-bought shrimp salad to.    We will finish our evening watching the last episode of ‘When Calls the heart’   and Goggle Box.

Chrissie gave me a cute card and garden ornaments.   Two ceramic mushrooms that sit on a ceramic stick stuck into the ground.   They are really cute and I placed them on the tiny white stones of the cats’ grave with my purple flowers.  One of the mushrooms is pink and the other purple.

Alex has shared with me twenty birthdays, each of them special and each one recorded in a word document on my computer.   If I ever have trouble remembering, I can just open my file and read about it.  In fact, I now have a good idea to go through all my documents and put the birthday memories in one file in chronological order.     Twenty birthday celebrations, twenty Anniversary celebrations and twenty of Alex’s birthdays!     Life is to be celebrated and I am blessed to have so many occasions to celebrate with the one I Love and feel Loved by.

Mini break in Wales

July 2019     

Trip to Wales near Aberdyfi        and Snowdonia National Forest

We are on our way to Wales, courtesy of the Tonfanau Road Racing Club.  They have four races throughout the summer and Alex is their ‘special guest’.  

Our drive west was straight-forward with our Satellite Navigation.  According to our technology we would arrive about 12:30 after driving 270 miles.   We managed a consistent speed for most of the trip and stopped twice for short comfort breaks.

Once we arrived at the border to Wales we slowed down due to the twisty narrow roads.  Although in better condition on the surface, the terrain meant Alex erred on the side of caution and slowed down a lot.   The closer we got to our end destination, Tonfanau, the road then became single track.  Welsh countryside reminded me a lot of Guernsey Island.

This race circuit was originally Tonfanau Camp, where British territorial units were stationed along with an American unit before the Normandy invasion.  The camp was one of the designated sites for ‘Plan Python’ which means; the plan for continuity of government in the event of nuclear war.  The camp was officially closed in 1971 but reopened   for six months in 1972 for 29,000 Uganda refugees that came to Britain.   Only 1,500 were housed at the camp.  Since 1993 the property has been used part time by the Racing Club and the rest of the time used by sheep.

The buildings are dilapidated but the main one is secure to the elements.  Concrete walls and steel roof, electricity and water and two toilets.   The club has a front office area, a kitchen area with a big dining table as well as a third room with a big table.    A few days before the race event, the farmer gets his sheep dog and his quad bike and herds all the sheep to another pasture where they stay during the race.     Next the have a street cleaner/sweeper that spends a few hours going around the tarmac track cleaning up all the sheep dung.  Another crew strings up rope and hammers posts into the ground to secure a spectator area along one side of the track.   On the last day, another dozen helpers’ drive around with tractor and wagon and place plastic covered straw bales strategically to safe guard against injury should a rider lose control and fly toward the fences.   They had a rented public address system two stories high where the commentator sat during the races and where Alex spent some time in interviews.   There were also a dozen porta-toilets placed on either side of the camp grounds.

We arrived about one o’clock and the cooks were preparing a communal meal for the working members and us.  She had potatoes boiling on the stove and eggs to make egg salad.  Everything was laid onto the long table.  Big bowl of new potatoes, bowl of egg salad, plate of sliced chicken, bowl of lettuce salad, stack of buttered, sliced bread to make your own sandwich.   Also; lots of store-bought food like, sausage rolls, beet salad, cous cous salad, quiche, pizza and home-made pasta with spaghetti sauce.   Two kettles sat on the work surface of the cupboards and everyone helped themselves to tea or coffee, whatever your preference.    We joined them in preparing a plate each and then went outside to eat.  We brought out own chairs in the car and set them up along the front porch.

They had hired an ambulance and crew for the race day as is the law.

We mingled and visited until about four o’clock and then drove to our accommodation for the weekend.   The Britannia Inn in Aberdyfi is 7 miles from Tonfanau.

This is a painting of the original Inn from 18^th

how it is today.   The bottom front windows are the pub/bar and the second-floor windows are where the restaurant is and there is a small balcony in the front where patrons can eat or drink.   Top window, one of the 5 guest rooms.   We had Room # three our first night, and room #2 for Sunday night. 

Saturday evening, we strolled along the street by the estuary in front of our hotel and found a lovely little café where we had our dinner of fish.

One of the new facts I discovered was that a bell can be under water and ring.  This is called the Time and Tide Bell.    The Bell under Aberdyfi’s warf wooden jetty, is one of twelve in the U.K.  this type of bell is a time piece or time marker and serves as a long-time marker of sea levels and indicates where the shore line is now.    The bell is rung by the movement of the sea at high tide each day.  The sound and pitch of the bell varies as the bell is submerged in the water.   The bell was an invention of Sculptor Marcus Vergette and the first bell was installed in 2009 at Appledore in Devon.    I was surprised that it is such a new item.   I include this information because it interested me and I thought, “does anyone else know this fact?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwvKR14ODhI   an interesting video that discusses the time and Tide Bell and the men who place them along the coast.

Our first afternoon at Tonfanau, I went off by myself to explore across the road where there was a railway station behind a gate.  The big gate was padlocked and I expect the farmer has the key.  The small gates to walk through were swinging gates on either side of the tracks.  Since there was a sign reading ‘public foot path’, I went for a walk back into the field of sheep and over the hill where I could see the Irish Sea.   There was a fence keeping the sheep from going into the sea.   The sheep were newly shorn and friendly.   There were other fences constructed of rocks of all sizes piled upon one another with no concrete. They are positioned so that the weight of the stone alone holds the wall in place.

Sunday at the race circuit was busy with me taking videos and photos and keeping up with Alex.  He rode in three parades.  The day was sunny and breezy but still a hot day to be wearing leathers.   After the second parade, Alex decided to leave his leathers on rather than go through the work of taking them off only to pull them on again.  He sat in a chair in the shade and people gravitated to him to talk and get photos taken.  The last race of the day was five o’clock and then it was relaxing until about 08:30 when we all ate.   One of the women went to everyone and each person had a choice of Indian or Chinese.  We placed our order from the pamphlet and she kept track of who ordered what.   At eight she went to the nearest town and collected it all, three big boxes!     Everyone had what they ordered and we sat up to the long communal table in the kitchen plus ten people in another room to eat.  The food was still hot and we were hungry by then!    Earlier, we were each given two vouchers; one for a burger and one for ice-cream. We gave our burger voucher to a racing team.  They are a father and son team who go to every race throughout the year and they have about six motorcycles to display and ride.

Jane one of the women who works in admin., was celebrating her 71^st birthday as well as wedding anniversary.  There was a cake for her and we all sang Happy Birthday.    Then she shared her cake with a tiny sliver each so everyone who wanted, got a taste.    Alex told stories until ten o’clock and then it was time to get to bed.    Most of the race club crew were in motor-homes or campers and were there until Monday.

Alex and I slept like babies and had scheduled breakfast for 08:30.   We could look out to sea from the dining room.   There was fresh fruit salad, juice, cereal and yoghurt on a table.   We could also order a full breakfast from the menu.  I had a soft-boiled egg and toast.  In the dining room was where I noticed the oil painting of the Inn, three centuries ago.

After our breakfast, we walked a few streets near our Inn and found a Fat Face shop.   They sell larger size clothes and regular size for men and women.    I got a lovely seer sucker fabric summer dress and Alex bought a pair of shorts.   We took a different route   home, which took us along the coastal road as well as through the mountains and the Snowdonia National Forest.    The landscape and scenery were spectacular as well as the buildings.    I used a program on my PC to make a slide show of photos taken on our drive.  Most of them taken out the car window.

We stopped for fill up of tank and tummy about 1 o’clock   £54 to fill the car tank and less than £7 for Alex and I at Cary’s café.  Alex had double burger, I had chicken burger and we shared chips.  I had drinks in the car.    We had a safe drive back arriving home about five o’clock.  I think Wales is amazing. So unlike England.    We had a lovely time and I enjoy meeting people and seeing new places.   Tuesday was a total veg out day, downloading photos from phone and camera and generally recovering from the long drive and all the extra stimulation.   Two more days and we are off again for another racing weekend.  Mallory park is only a couple of hours drive for us and this will be our fifth time there.  It is a yearly invitation.