But this week I got some post addressed to him which really irritated me. The story started just weeks after he was made redundant in 2009. He got cold-called by a financial adviser offering advice on investing his lump-sum redundancy payment, and agreed that they should send him some initial bumf on what they had to offer. I was unhappy though. We were, and indeed I still am, subscribed to the Telephone Preference Service, which is meant to stop all uk-based cold calls, with threats of heavy fines for transgressors. I firmly believe that reputable companies should abide by the TPS rules, and refuse to deal with anyone who doesn’t. And how did they know that Chris had a lump sum anyway? They claimed it was a complete coincidence, but I was suspicious. I did some searches on the Internet, and came up with pages and pages of people complaining about sharp practices from this particular firm. I strongly advised him to have nothing further to do with them. Anyway, his lump sum was far too small for us to need professional advice on how to deal with it.

Everything went quiet until this week, when he got a letter from a company I’d never heard of, Towry, inviting him to a seminar in Worcester on “Wealth Preservation in Taxing Times”. This included advice on inheritance tax planning, intestacy, wills, and powers of attorney. I did some digging, and it seems that Towry bought up the previous IFA company, and also have a load of people complaining about their sharp practices – including the Financial Services Authority who have fined them nearly half a million pounds for “providing incorrect information”. I saw red and scrawled over their invitation “It’s a bit bloody late for this. He’s DEAD. Remove his name from your mailing list forthwith”. I then took great delight in sending it back to them in their own reply-paid first class envelope. I sincerely hope that’s the last I hear from them.

I’m not too sure about the shade of green that he’s painted the woodwork. It’s definitely the colour I chose, and I deliberately went for a shade slightly brighter than the one that we had before, which I found a bit gloomy. But in large quantities it really is quite vibrant! However, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, eventually.

Suddenly, there was a commotion outside – shouts and raised voices. I thought that there was an argument going on, and decided to keep out of it. Then a terrified-looking man ran into the restaurant from the street and dashed off in the direction of Reception. One of the very few other guests in the dining room wandered outside to see what all the fuss was about, and returned immediately, his face ashen, shouting “Fire!”. The building next door to the hotel was on fire. It wasn’t just smouldering, it was well alight, and the fire was threatening to spread to the adjacent buildings, including the hotel.

At that point, the electricity in the hotel went off. Clearly, it was time to get out. One is so conditioned by fire drills to get out and stay out, and not to collect any personal belongings. But my room was right next to the front entrance to the hotel and I had to pass it as I evacuated the building. So I decided that it was safe enough to just dash into my room to grab essentials. The room was of course in pitch darkness. It had heavy wooden shutters on the windows, which were closed, and all the lights were out. I located and opened the mini-safe by feel and grabbed my passport and spare money. I also grabbed my hand-luggage and suitcase, and dashed back outside.

By now the hotel was being evacuated. There was no fire alarm as such – I think the hotel staff went round hammering on doors. Many people had clearly just got out of bed and some were in dressing gowns. We all moved to the office building next door to the hotel, on the other side of it from the fire. My driver met me there, and put my bags in the boot of his car. Then I sat on the step and watched the commotion while I waited for my guide.

A fire engine turned up about half an hour after the alarm had first been raised – far too late to save the building, but hopefully in time to stop the blaze spreading to the adjacent properties. Another ten minutes later, a second fire engine arrived, simultaneously with my guide. So at that point, I went off sightseeing, not knowing whether the hotel would still be there again when I got back…….. At least I had my passport, money and a change of clothes with me, and everything else was covered by insurance. All round the temples that day I kept thinking of things I’d left in my room, and wondering whether I would see them again…..

I got back mid afternoon, to find the hotel thankfully intact, and a huge puddle of water on the road. The building next door (accounts varied as to whether it was a private house or an office building) was completely burnt down and the ruins were already being demolished by a gang of workmen. From what I understood from the other guests, the fire brigade had concentrated on stopping the fire from spreading, and had basically allowed the fire to burn itself out. No one was hurt, thankfully, though certainly livelihoods would have been ruined as there is very little buildings insurance there, so the owner will have lost a great deal of money. It was almost certainly an electrical fault which started the blaze, and according to my guide the town gets around two such fires a week on average. Scary!

When I went to Reception to pick up the key, the staff handed me a very apologetic note from the General Manager, sincerely apologising for the “shock and inconvenience” caused by the fire, which was after all completely outside the hotel’s control. He further “recognised the disturbance and bother that the incident had caused to the quality of your holiday experience” and offered me a choice of either a complementary massage at the attached spa, or a free three-course meal at the hotel restaurant, to “contribute to lifting your spirits and calming your senses after these troublesome events”. I thought that was very good of the hotel, and certainly in excess of what one might have expected. After the massage the previous day, I was in absolutely no hurry to repeat that particular experience, but I was very happy to accept the offered dinner instead.

I got back to the hotel mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve pretty shattered after visiting several of the Angkor temples and walking miles. I was pleased to see that the hotel had a small spa attached to it, offering massages at what I considered to be a bargain price of $15 for an hour. I have regular back, neck and shoulder massages at home, usually fortnightly, to keep the stress-induced knots in my back under control, but I’ve been so busy at work lately that I’ve not even had time for one. So I decided to take the opportunity. There was a choice between a standard aromatherapy massage, and a “traditional Khmer” massage, and (perhaps foolhardily) I went for the traditional option.

I was asked to change into effectively a pair of cotton pyjamas, and was massaged through them, which felt a bit odd. The woman doing it was tiny, no more than seven stone, but she had thumbs of steel and was absolutely ruthless on any knots she came across. The massage also made use of “deep pressure treatment” which turned out to mean her practically doing a handstand on me whenever she came across a particularly stubborn knot. She also made full use of her forearms, elbows, knees and feet! I was massaged from my toes to my eyebrows, and can’t say that it was particularly relaxing or enjoyable. In fact I had to ask her to tone it down a bit when it got too painful. It wasn’t just me either, there was a man having a massage in an adjoining booth at the same time and I could hear him whimpering too! But I have to say that afterwards I felt a great deal better.

That evening the hotel had arranged a traditional Khmer Gala Dinner for Christmas Eve. That was news to me, as according to my itinerary I had only paid for bed and breakfast. But when I checked in they were adamant that the dinner was included in the room rate, and I’m not one to turn down a free meal! It started with an open bar, which several of the guests were taking full advantage of. Then we had deep fried spring rolls, some sort of mildly spicy chicken casserole with rice and completely unrecognisable vegetables, a rather delicious dish of steamed fish in lime juice, served in a banana leaf, and stir-fried vegetables with lots of garlic and ginger. Finally, there was banana cooked in coconut milk with what looked like tapioca – unexpectedly tasty.

During the meal, entertainment was laid on. It started with a children’s choir from the local church singing Christmas carols, in English – including Joy to the World and Silent Night. Since Cambodia is over 95% Buddhist, I was rather impressed that the hotel had been able to rustle up any Christians at all. That was then followed by dancers, who performed a set of three traditional dances, in rather beautiful costumes. So I got my folkloric dance evening after all – without even having to pay extra for it!

Christopher and I had wanted to visit the splendid temples of Angkor Wat for many years, and in fact had it tentatively pencilled in for our twentieth wedding anniversary in 2013. Obviously, that’s never going to happen now. And it always seemed such a stupidly long way away. But it is never going to get any closer, and I decided that if I continued to think like that I’d never get there. So I determined to go away for a long weekend over Christmas. To Angkor Wat. In Cambodia. I flew out on the Thursday morning before Christmas, arrived the Friday afternoon, spent Christmas Eve to Boxing Day sightseeing, and flew back on Tuesday 27th arriving home in the late evening. It’s now the middle of the night and I’m jet lagged out of my tiny mind and blogging cos I can’t sleep!

The pretty much universal response among those people I told where I was going was “You must be mad!” followed swiftly by “You’re not going on your own are you?”. Well, I may well be slightly unhinged – bereavement does that to you – and yes of course I went on my own. That’s rather the issue, that I haven’t got anyone to go with. But I didn’t go to the other side of the world for three days completely unsupported. I booked with Explore Worldwide, a company who came highly recommended by several friends. I initially looked into one of their group tours, but decided that wouldn’t suit my current needs or mood. I didn’t want enforced jollity with a large group, nor did I want to have to do things at someone else’s pace. So I decided to pay a little bit more and go fully tailor-made. So I had a private car, driver and guide for just me for my entire time in Cambodia. They picked me up at the airport, took me to my hotel, and collected me each morning for a full day of sightseeing tailored to exactly what I wanted to do, at my pace.

I spent quite a lot of time organising the holiday up front, and negotiating with the agent about the itinerary. The original draft they sent me gave me a free afternoon to relax at the hotel, followed by a cultural evening of dancing and folklore. Well, I wasn’t having that! I told them to take out the folkloric evening and leave me in peace to sleep, but to cram in another few temples into the afternoon. It all worked extremely well. The guide soon got the measure of me, and marched me round temples at a pace at least twice as fast as Christopher would have considered the maximum acceptable, and about four times as fast as he would have considered optimal. But it suited me just fine. Photos and a more detailed account of the trip will follow in the next few days as I get over the jet lag and sort myself out.

So on Saturday evening I decided to cook myself pomegranate lamb, from a Moroccan recipe. It’s basically a casserole of lamb, onions, garlic, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, all cooked slowly in pomegranate juice, then finished with Greek yoghurt to make a creamy sauce, and topped with fresh pomegranate seeds. It was absolutely delicious. But the difficult bit was the pomegranate. I couldn’t find any straight pomegranate juice in the supermarket, it was all adulterated with something else. So I picked a really heavy pomegranate fruit and decided to make it from fresh. Well, it was exceptionally difficult! When I squeezed it, the juice went absolutely everywhere! All over the worktop, onto the splash-back tiles on the wall (very well named in this case), over the floor (thank goodness we replaced the carpet tiles with wipe-clean vinyl) and even all over the toaster! And the juice is bright red, so it looked like there was blood everywhere. I thought I’d done a good job cleaning it up while the casserole was cooking, but kept finding more splashes even at breakfast the next day…….

There were four of us travelling together, and we arrived at the hotel on Tuesday evening tired and hungry after a two hour drive. But the hotel restaurant couldn’t even give us a table for at least half an hour, let alone feed us in that time, as they had a number of large parties in. Who would have thought that so many people would want to go to a service station for their Christmas party? We weren’t prepared to wait, so walked to the other side of the large petrol station to the Harvester that was also part of the same services area. They were also quite busy, but were able to seat us all straight away.

The food was what you would expect from a Harvester grill. Nothing special, but mostly acceptable – though I did have to send my chicken back as it was under-cooked. But what really shocked us all was that every single item on the menu had its calorie count printed next to it. My potato skins starter was 300 calories. The main courses ranged from 290 calories for the grilled chicken up to a whopping 1280 calories for the rack of ribs. Plus you had to choose a type of potato (chips, mashed, or boiled, each with their calorie count labelled) and help yourself to a bowl of salad. Typical calorific values of a salad bowl were given, together with the contribution from each of the dressings. They even gave the calorie count of the drinks,though I deliberately didn’t look to see whether my glass of wine was more or less sinful than my colleague’s beer.

I’m sure that this approach has been taken by the Harvester to try to give the customers information to make healthy choices. But it seriously back-fired on all of us. We were out for a meal at the end of a long day and before a particularly challenging meeting the next day. We wanted to relax. None of us was on a diet, nor needed to be,and we were not interested in the calorie count of our meals. We asked for a dessert menu, and I think that at least three of us would probably have had a dessert. Except that each of them was labelled with their calorie count, ranging from 290 for a skewer of fruit, up to 720 or more for a sundae. And it was extremely off- putting! I went so far as to ask the waitress for a menu that didn’t have the calories on it, but she didn’t have one. So all four of us turned down a dessert, as we felt we couldn’t justify 720 empty calories! I think that if I was a shareholder in the Harvester chain I would demand a rethink on this policy, as it is clearly eroding profits…….

On Wednesday morning Tony turned up with the right part – at the third time of asking – and fixed the leaking hot water tank. Thankfully, it no longer seems to be dripping onto an electrical junction box, and the salad crisper has been stood down from drip-catching duties. But it turns out that this leak was merely masking another problem. The pressure overflow system is still dripping gently into the overflow pipe, which is the symptom I had noticed in the first place. That requires a new bladder, which inevitably Tony didn’t have available. So he has taken the installation instructions away with him so that he can order (hopefully!) the correct part first time. The heating and hot water is safe to use in the meantime, but I expect him back next week to fix the second leak.

I was challenged in a comment on a previous post to manage ten workman-free days between now and Christmas. Somehow, I don’t think I’ve got off to a good start……

Three years ago we went on an archaeological study tour to Split in Croatia, and absolutely loved it. Split started life as a retirement home for the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and a mediaeval city subsequently grew up within its walls. So there is a huge amount of history there which we both found fascinating. But we only went to Split and its immediate environs, not more widely in Croatia. So I decided to go on a cruise between Dubrovnik and Split, stopping off at several interesting Dalmatian islands and fortified cities on the way. I scattered his ashes into the sea off the coast of Split, within sight of the Roman town walls. That was a bit tough, but I am sure he would have approved.

I’m pretty tired now, as it’s been a long day travelling home from Dubrovnik, so I won’t post any photos tonight. I’ll describe the holiday more fully when I’ve had a chance to unpack…….

UPDATE: Here is a picture taken soon after I scattered the ashes. The boat is arriving into the harbour at Split, and this was the view from the sundeck.

Approaching Split harbour