The restaurant
To be parent is hopefully a long term affair, but children’s problems seem to be in a direct proportion to a child‘s weight. During the Christmas period, Will, my walking Buddy and I took our exercise on the mountain tarmac road of Cona Cura. As access to our normal climbs was water logged. From the hills, summit, there are splendid views of Fastnet rock, the Cow, the Calf, the Bull and Skellig Islands all from the same place, as well as a breath-taking sea scape of Allahies Ballydonnegan Bay. After a two hour climb our pace slowed, as a result of too many festivities.
As we took a suss as my friend called it, or what the rest of us calls a rest; he told me how it was part of his parental duty recently to collect his daughter from England. He had gone there with his wife, to watch her receive a Masters Degree from her University. For the parents, it was a proud occasion and no doubt, they both hoped an end to a serious financial outlay.
I wondered aloud if I was correct in thinking and said ‘I thought that a young girl of her undoubted intelligence was bound to want to go further in her chosen profession and very likely to take a full Doctorate’. Will nodded agreement a little crest fallen, and anyway, I said ‘I would be surprised if there was not there was not a serious boyfriend in the offing’. He nodded and set off at a cracking pace again.
We climbed steeply up past cliffs of grey sandstone stained by blue and brown copper deposits, as the area was surrounded by old mine shafts, beneath our feet. Overhead, the grey clouds were streaked by a strong South Westerly wind in which chuffs called to each other and flew in acrobatic manoeuvres. Will, a well-built man of medium height and extremely fit for his sixty years slowed the pace, to a slow climb up a turf road that was to lead us back to where we started about ten miles away. ‘Another suss’ he said. As we recovered from our climb, he told me a story of what had occurred to him while he was in England.
‘We visited my wife’s two Aunts and stayed with them over night in a small village. Next day we brought them out for lunch in one of the village restaurants, so that there were five of us sitting at a table. The Aunts were both retired, one a senior nurse and the other a former headmistress. The nurse was a small bird like creature, with a sharp long nose that never missed a point in any conversation. She was interested in everything, but in particular, her Church where she was an important member of the choir. Her name was Aunty Jane. Her sister Rose, although in her sixties still had the look of what must have been a stunning beauty in her time. Her hair was no longer pure blond and had more than a few streaks of grey, but her tall figure still had the look of a young woman rather than a pensioner. Rose participated in all the sports on offer to seniors from bowls to tennis, and she too was a member of the church choir. We had ordered our meal and were seated near a window that overlooked the street so that we could be seen, by people who passed up and down the busy footpath from the outside.
Suddenly Rose became quite animated and began to wave at the window. I turned to see who was there, and I saw a man dressed in Clerical garb. He quickly entered the Restaurant and made directly for our table and was invited by Rose to join us. He was William the Vicar of the parish. H e sat down and was invited to order something to eat.
We listened for an hour to William, Jane, and Rose discusses village life of rural England. This included the problem of keeping churches open, with dwindling attendances, and possible cures.
Then William stood up and looked at his watch and said that he must take his leave. Rose and Jane said in unison to William,' how much they enjoyed his company and how good he was'. William turned to us all and said 'remember I am paid to be good, but you are all good for nothing'.
El Torcal
El Torcal is the highest peak in the Malaga province of Spain. I have attempted to climb it with my friend Phil on three occasions and on the third succeeded. The first attempt was a wash out. The second attempt was stopped by snow, not just an incy weenie bit either. On the high top, there was enough snow to have drifted completely over the few scattered threes up to at least twelve feet high. On that occasion, a lot of the people from the local town of Ronda had climbed the one thousand feet plus from the car park beneath us to enjoy this rare occasion of snow festivities. Owing to the depth of snow, Phil and I had to abandon our walk and return to collect our ladies in Rhonda.
However, it is the third time that is the point of this story on 6/ 2/ 04. We drove in the usual way from signpost 134 on the Rhonda / Malaga road the nine kilometres into the car park on the non tarmac road. Then we followed the signs to cross the stepping stones of a small steam. Up through the forest that began with deciduas threes and then graduated to conifers and ending with little one foot holmoaks near a place called Porto de la Pines. The day was chilly with a bright blue sky and light wind and no other walkers.
We reached the service road for a radio mast at about three thousand feet and were walking in the direction of the peak when Phil asked me had I noticed the fox?
“What fox” I said
“Look at it it’s still there”, he said pointing to a hillock of about twenty feet away.
I looked and then looked again more closely. I also increased my pace away from it, and encouraged Phil to do the same. We needed to walk another hundred yards and turn right onto a track that would lead us away from the fox and towards the peak. The fox anticipated our actions. It pretended to hide behind a bush half its own size to stop our progress. It must know we could see it clearly. We got the message and left it alone. We presumed that she was a lady with a family and did not do guests.
However, she was not satisfied with this position. She came very close to where we were, and defiantly blocked our progress down the wireless mast service road. She was now no more than twenty yards from us. She had the thickest and most luxuriant grey coat I have ever seen on any animal. She was lean and moved with precision and grace but also in our direction; strangely, she never made any noise. We picked up stones to hurl at our attacker and headed to where we saw bales of chain link fencing. This was where we planned to make our defence from her.
Phil as an ex Cork road bowler was extraordinary accurate with his missiles, which caused our foe to retreat. But not before I had got two good photos of an animal I never imaged I would meet in the wild in Europe namely a wolf. I had some knowledgeable friends later ,who examined the photos and confirmed my deduction.
We continued down the service road followed by the wolf fifty yards behind us. About a, half mile later she retired from the hunt. We rounded a bend and met a German mountain biker ascending the mountain. We explained to him the problem of our advisory. At this he became very animated and removed a camera from his knapsack and hung it around his neck and peddled furiously further up to the mountain. I am not sure if was ever heard of again.
But joking apart; we discovered that in Spain there were one thousand wild wolves and that each animal had its own minder/ negotiator who would deal with the deaths of any commercial livestock. Although we reported to the authorities what had occurred, they never even acknowledged wolves were even in the area never mind thanking us for our report. In retrospect, I suppose I understand. Now, when I think of the up and down reception to the reintroduction the golden eagles got in Ireland. The Spanish wild life system seems to go further to appease commercial farmers.
As a post script to this little story, I was travelling by car about two weeks later in Ojen Refugeea, the other side of the mountain to El Torkel. A large black / grey creature ran across the road. We later identified it as a mongoose. What a privilege to have seen two such magnificent creatures and so close to together. The Spanish authorities certainly seem to do things right when it comes to wild life.
Paddy & Tiny
The snow came suddenly on a Friday evening at about five o'clock in mid January 1982. Our tanker fleet had not returned with its cargo of milk, and was stranded in the country side somewhere. As a result Dublin was fast running out of milk. I couldn’t return home that evening and had to stay with an Aunt in Dublin. Next morning I was frantic to get our tankers back to base. There was no sign of the County council to clear the roads of snow. I took the decision to go and rescue our fleet with the just of a couple of JCB's. We dug our way for five miles along the main Slane road the following day until we came to a pub. Inside it there were over a hundred people trapped from the night before, and they were very pleased to see us. The same thing happened again at another pub, and we even released the village of Ashbourne too. So one by one, we eventually managed to retrieve our poor staff and their tankers. It was at this stage that it was decided to have two drivers work on each tanker for safety purposes. The emergency continued for about ten days. It was during this time that I meet Tiny, one of our tanker drivers crossing the garage yard. He looked agitated and when I spoke to him. He became even more agitated. I suggested that we go to the canteen for a coffee. I bought two coffees and carried them to a table chosen by Tiny. The table was well away from everyone else in the room. We sat in silence for quite some time, until he broke it himself and entered into a monologue.
"You know that you put Paddy with me on our last trip. We were in the Dundhaughlin area. The roads were very dangerous at the time, with snow piled on either side of the route up to ten feet. It was so high at that point you couldn’t see into the fields. Suddenly, with no reason that I could see Paddy become very animated. His face had a strange glow about it. His eyes dilated and his little body trembled. He could hardly speak, and managed to shout stop. He said that he had seen people trapped in the ditch we had just passed by. I remonstrated with him that he couldn’t see anything, and I was not inclined to stop. He reached over and caught me by the throat and started to squeeze. I didn’t want to hurt the little fellow, when you're six ft six tall you have to be careful you don’t hurt people you know. For a quiet life, I stooped the tanker and reversed it about fifty yards until told to stop. I still could see nothing. However, I drove the tanker as close as possible to the ditch anyway. Paddy climbed out on to the top of the snow bank. He waved at me and called me urgently to follow him to the top of the bank. There Beneath us was a car jammed in the ditch, its rear window pointing up in the air. We were not sure if anyone was in the car. Paddy bent down tapped on the window, which was completely iced up. We heard no tap in return, and waited a couple of minutes and were about to leave when there was a faint return noise on from inside the car, like a moan. We went back to the tanker and removed the jack lifting bar from its rack and used it to smash the rear window. Inside was a family of four, almost dead from hypothermia. It took a further half hour for us to get the family out. The children, a girl and a boy were cradled by the body heat of the mother and father. However, they were close to expiring, and we had great difficulty extracting them. We managed to get them all into the heat of the lorry and drove as fast as we could to our next farm stop and help. We had to leave them in the care of the farmer and his family, later we heard when they had fully recovered. That the family had driven into the ditch before the blizzard came so that the doors could not open as they were pinned by the sides of the ditch. They couldn’t break the back window to escape as they had nothing available in the car to do the job, only to try to kick the window out, which did not work. But the more I think of the situation the more certain I am that Paddy could not have under any circumstances have seen that car. No defiantly he could see only snow. I was sure of that."
The awful sequel to this story was about two or three weeks later Paddy was again trapped by the snow over night. He was a diabetic and had not brought his insulin with him. He went into a diabetic shock and died. I still often wonder. Was there a connection between the two events? Sometimes I think that one life was offered for the four that were saved. Anyway, how Tiny described Paddy was more like how Moses was portrayed when he came down from the mountain with the instructions on how we were all meant to behave.
911 words 17/6/11
A sense of samsa
I was exercising my dog the other day, and as we passed by my local delicatessen shop. The smell of samsa cheese wafted across the pavement in my direction and brought my mind straight back to a rather odd incident that occurred while I was working in Denmark. It is more than fifty years ago now when I was a student dairy technologist, working in the small village of Durup, which is near to the beautiful holiday destination of the Limfjord in the north of Jutland.
We had been busy turning samsa cheeses in the dairy maturing room; they must weigh about four kilos and be close to a metre wide and fifteen centimetres deep and look like the Suisse Emmentaler, this is very hard work I can assure you. We had washed them in salt and water and then turned them over through one hundred and eighty degrees and then washed the other side of them. At the end of the day we were tired and went for a coffee break in the bunk house where we lived. We were glad to be finished work for the day. My immediate boss Walter Jansen Hansen Hanor was not happy when he discovered that we had run out of coffee. He immediately dispatched me to a specialist coffee store for his favourite coffee brand. The shop was on the other end of the village. I had not changed from my uniform, which consisted of a white jacket and trousers and clogs. I was walking through the picturesque little village which I loved, with its unique quirky architecture and ultra clean streets. I noticed a crowd had gathered quite near to my destination and curiosity made me cross the street to investigate what was going on. Even if I say so myself I spoke Danish quite well for a foreigner, learnt, mostly with a lot help from my girl friends. Anyway, I enquired from a guy standing beside me, “why was everyone looking into an empty trench”. He explained that in the pipe laying a trench in front of us a man was trapped. He added the sides of the trench had fallen in on top of him, and he was now covered completely to a depth of two metres in clay.
Nobody was doing anything to rescue the victim. They only looked into the trench, even though men had shovels in their hands no one thought about using them to dig the poor man out. It was if they had all had been mesmerised in some way. I had heard before how trauma can precipitate and stop an obvious rescue attempt. However, it was the first but not the last time, I witnessed this phenomenon in action. I pushed my way through the crowd and jumped onto the loose earth in the trench and ordered the men with shovels into the pit and told them to start digging. We dug and dug until I saw a finger appear from under the clay. More carefully now; we dug around the pipe layer who we found lying on his back still clutching his shovel. I quickly cleaned the loose clay from his eyes and nose with my handkerchief, and then we cautiously removed the remaining clay from around his body, so that he was free.
All of sudden the prostrate man; leaned heavily on his shovel grunted and stood up for about a minute or so and started furiously shovel the clay in front of him. Then he collapsed back onto the ground again with a big sigh. An ambulance crew had arrived and brought him away to the local hospital, and I ran across the road to get the coffee.
Sometime later I returned with our coffee to Walter Jansen Hansen Hanor, who complained to me at the length of time it took me to accomplish my mission. So I had to give an account of what happed in the intervening time. Later, that evening when he was watching the local television station; He called me to watch the news with him. A reporter was explaining how a pipe layer had stood up and shovelled after he had been covered with clay for half an hour, especially as he was found to have two broken legs. Later when he was examined in the hospital he was found to have no further repercussions. The reporter went on to say,” that there was no doubt that his life had been saved by the fast action of a young passing foreign doctor. However, when he checked at the local hospital and clinic, no foreign doctor was in residence and so the rescuer and become a bit of a mystery man.
The continental holiday
(Based on a true story of my neighbour)
John and Edith Chapman were married late in life and had no children. Edith was an only child and they lived with her widowed mother Jean Sherman. Jean owned her well maintained Georgian mansion full of valuable artefacts and set on ten acres, with stables containing some fine hunting horses. It had garages for three cars, although they only had one nowadays. John is sixty years of age, over six feet tall, blond haired and regarded as handsome with an engaging personality but not keen on spending his money. He is a school teacher by profession, with serious pretences of grandeur and a liking for hunting, shooting and salmon fishing all of which is expensive on a teacher’s salary. He is lucky that Jean is very happy to fund his lifestyle from the fortune of her late surgeon husband. Jane is spritely for her age, a former beauty queen, and a recognised member of the local cocktail party circuit. Her estate is administered by Edith’s second cousin Bob Sherman- Green; he once made romantic advances to Edith before she met John, and as a result he is their nemesis and tries to influence Jane from sharing her fortune with her daughter.
Ethel and John first met in the school where they taught. Edith is short, not very pretty, and made little or no attempt to help her appearance. However, her face is her fortune, with clear blue eyes, unblemished skin, and wavy nut brown hair. She cooked for the family and indulged them in expensive junk food and fine wines bought in lavish shops of Brighton, England where they live. The family jointly bought in equal shares a brand new Maroon coloured Rolls-Royce silver cloud; it is valued at more than £150,000. It was the first time that John had contributed to any outgoings of the household in past ten years. It was said, he did so only because, he would be able to drive it to school with Edith each day, to show and blow their wealth.
Jean at 85 years had not lost her sense of adventure and insisted that they all take a long holiday in France during the lengthy school holidays. They duly arrived by ferry in France in their large and wonderful car and travelled all over the country staying in the best hotels the country had to offer. After a month, they got bored and decided to return home to England. It would be fair to say notwithstanding the luxury that they had enjoyed that the visit was not a great success. As each of them wanted to do the opposite to the other and only gave way with bad grace. They were within four hours drive to the ferry terminal, when Jean decided she needed some refreshment. John argued they should push on to the port. Edith thought the same until no one was talking to each other and the journey continued in silence. Eventually, John stopped the car at a convenient wayside restaurant. John got out of the car as did Edith, but Jane did not move.
“Leave the sulking old bitch in the car” he said to Edith
“Why you rude thing “she replied
Edith opened the rear door and gently tried to waken her mother from her dose. Jane did not move and Edith became more assertive and shook her quite violently and still got no reaction. She looked more carefully at her mother and suddenly realised she was dead.
“You’ve killed my mother”
“I have what” said John
John quickly ran to where his mother-in-law lay and immediacy administered mouth to mouth and chest massage. He worked like a demon possessed, but after an hour, with no response, he stopped his attempt to revive Jean with tears in his eyes and his face as white as any ghost.
“I am sorry John. I missed judged you completely. “Edith said
“I loved and respected your mother. She was so good to us both,
Let’s go into the restaurant and decide what to do.” He said
Thoughtfully, John went to back of the car. He removed the rug he had covered Jane to keep her warm. Now he spread it out so that it covered the back seat hiding Jane’s body. As he left the locked Rolls- Royce, he noticed a battered Lada car with a smoking exhaust and Latvian registration with two passengers, park in the vacant slot beside their vehicle.
John and Edith supported each other as they walked into the restaurant; John ordered two cognacs and two coffees. They sat down at a table and talked face to face.
“What will we do now” He asked Edith
“I suggest we drive to ferry port and go to the hospital and report the death of mother to them. Otherwise we will have to deal with the French authorities, and we all know what they're like. At least cousin Bob won’t be able to stop probate. Do you realise that we will be very wealthy, more than fourteen million pounds? “She said
“Yes, that’s true, and we can chuck our crummy jobs and go travelling”
“How about cruising?”
“You mean to buy a boat? “
“No, I mean to go to have a long luxurious trip for six months, or so “
“O yes that would be fun”
The conversation went on and on, and they eventually left the premises and walked back to their car to take the sad journey home. They reached the exact spot where the car was parked, but there was no sign of it. It was gone! They now had no choice but report the loss of the car and Jane to the French police.
The end of the tale was that neither the car nor Jane was ever found. It was suspected that the two Latvians that parked beside them stole the car and drove it to Latvia. They then had the car shipped to the Middle East where there was a ready market for Rolls-Royce cars and God alone knows whatever happened to Jane. Their nemesis Bob Sherman- Green took pleasure in refusing them probate, and it was not to be granted for between fifteen and twenty years. Even with repeated appeal journeys to court. It was judged the only monies that Edith could have from her mother’s estate were for associated maintenance and the running costs. All Johns and Edith’s dreams were to go on hold until they reached eighty years of age. The problem for them was would they live that long?
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Kismet
The Dairy show was on in London and my two bosses decided that they attend it. They also wanted to check out a milk form fill and seal machine that was based in Salzburg, Austria. I was given the task of organizing the itinerary for the journey and was to accompany them and write up the report on the visit.
The Itinerary
Monday Oct 1st 1971: Leave Dublin 9AM via Aer Lingus for London & the dairy show
Tuesday Oct 2nd: Check in 8.00 AM, At Heathrow BEA for Saltsburg / inspect the machine, stay overnight.
Wednesday Oct 3rd: Visit another packaging facility/ stay a further night.
Thursday Oct 4th: Return home to Dublin via Heathrow.
My wife left me early in Dublin airport well ahead of the time I expected to meet my two bosses; so that I would have all the paper work complete and all they had to do was board the plane. We arrived in London and went to the dairy show. We stayed there until the last possible moment and retired to our hotel. We were to be entertained later by the manufacturer of the machine we were to visit in Austria. They gave us a beautiful meal in an upmarket restaurant, and afterwards we were invited to go clubbing. To my amazement, my much older colleagues agreed to the arrangement. At 3 AM, I spoke to our host, that my two charges would be no state to be in the airport at 8.00 AM next morning. “Change the flight to 10.00 AM” he said “and I will arrange for you to be picked up at the airport at the new time”, which is what I did. I did not need to mention to them what I had done, as I held the tickets and the departure times.
My two very unhappy colleagues boarded the flight for Saltsburg and they both slept most of the journey. When we passed through the airport arrival area, there was an unusually large number of people waiting in what I thought was a distressed state. Never mind, we found our machine representative, and he took us off on the business visit. There is no need for me to go into any details sufficient to say, the visit went satisfactorily. We were again well entertained, in the town of Mozart, with its beautiful baroque architecture backdrop.
Next day returning home, at the airport I bought an English newspaper to read on the journey. The first page headlines stunned me. The flight that we had been booked on from Heathrow to Saltsburg had crashed in Aarsele in Belgium. British European Airways Flight 706 had gone down with the loss of all its 63 passengers and crew. I hurriedly turned over to the sports section and hid the newspaper from my fellow travellers. I never spoke about the incident to my travelling companions or anyone else, for that matter, until now.
When we reached Dublin airport, I gave my wife and daughters an extra strong hug, especially as the BEA Vanguard flight 706 had crashed on the date of our wedding anniversary.
It was some time later when I read the air accident report which confirmed that at that time; this incident of a Vickers Vanguard 951 series aircraft was the largest loss of life ever for a British airline. The plane had spiralled out of control from 33000 ft and nosed dived into the ground. The actual cause of the accident was its rear bulkhead; a leaking toilet had corroded the interior of the aircraft fuselage, which decompressed the planes' working pressure, it opened a nineteen foot hole in its side. Under further investigation, most of the other Vanguards in service had similar faults, which were all satisfactorily repaired.
An incident like this does make one think about ones name being on the bullet; plus the consequences had my two seniors behaved to my stereotype of them as prudes. At one stage in the night club in the early morning, each of them had a gorgeous blond hostess sitting on their knee. It was at that point; I sought out the phone in the club to change our departure flight time to 10 AM next day to Austria.
