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Farewell Alan

Christopher’s sister, Sophie, phoned last night to tell me that their father (and hence my father-in-law) Alan had died on Sunday. He’d been increasingly infirm for a number of years now, but mostly affecting his mobility and quality of life rather than anything terminal. However, Sophie believes that he went into a decline dating from Christopher’s death last year, and just gave up fighting. That sort of makes sense as I know he was deeply affected by Christopher’s illness.

Alan went into hospital while I was away on holiday, and had a heart attack which he didn’t recover from. But the thing that gave me quite a nasty shock is that a major contributory factor towards his death was oesophageal cancer – which of course is what Chris died of. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know whether that was sheer coincidence (and Alan did use to smoke years ago, which is a known risk factor) or whether there is a hereditary component involved. But nasty, either way. Oesophageal cancer is not a pleasant way to go. Apparently Alan lost three stone in weight over the last few months, and he was pretty skinny to start with.

He was a somewhat distant father, and a very distant father-in-law, but he was a link with Chris and it’s sad he’s gone.

30 08 2011 Gillian cancer Comments Off on Farewell Alan Permalink

Cruising the Dalmatian Coast

I thoroughly enjoyed my holiday – more than I had expected to in fact. I’d thought long and hard about what sort of holiday I wanted, and when to take it, and it all worked out very well.

I was badly in need of a break after the bid had been submitted, and before all the hard work starts on actually delivering the promised programme. Plus I knew that I’d find the anniversary of Christopher’s death very gruelling, so I wanted something booked for soon afterwards to give me an incentive to keep going. It was my local pharmacist though who spurred me into booking a break. We were chatting when I picked up a prescription several months ago, and he asked me if I had any holidays booked. When I confessed not, he said “That’s very unlike you! I’m sure it would do you good to have something booked to look forward to.”  What a pity I couldn’t get the holiday prescribed on the NHS, because he was absolutely right!

I chose a cruise because it offered a lot of structure, but also the opportunity to dip into and out of the organised activities depending on how I was feeling. I also liked the idea of unpacking only once, and having the boat take me on to somewhere new every day. The cruise operator was the same one that I went to Venice with over Christmas, and is French, so I knew the food would be good. The company I travelled with had a total of 12 British guests on the cruise, all of whom were very interesting people. We all ate together on board on one big table and had a lot of fun (with unlimited wine at both lunchtime and dinner which certainly added to the gaiety!). That worked very well, as one of the things I particularly dislike about holidaying on my own is having to eat by myself at dinner time.

La Belle de L'Adriatique moored at Vis

I only joined in on two organised excursions, both to rather beautiful national parks. All the other stops were at interesting walled cities and fortified towns, where it was very easy to pick up a town map from the lounge bar and wander around on my own with my guide book. I do object to being lectured at in 40 degree heat and no shade! I take the view that if I’m interested, I’ll have done my homework and researched the place (as I had with Split and Dubrovnik). I much preferred doing the sights at my own speed, and stopping for an icecream whenever it got too hot.  And when I felt particularly antisocial, I could always retire to my air conditioned cabin with a book and just enjoy the views from the windows.

I missed Christopher very much – particularly in the towns of  Split and Trogir which we had visited together. In fact, it gave me quite a shock when I was walking through the narrow streets of Trogir, and unexpectedly came across a restaurant where we’d stopped for lunch three years ago. But, on the whole, and excepting little difficulties like that, it was a very enjoyable holiday and I’m very glad I made the effort to go.

28 08 2011 Gillian Day out Comments (1) Permalink

Scattering the ashes – part 2 of n

Sorry for the break in transmission over the past week. I’ve just got back today from a week’s holiday in Croatia. I made an agreement with Christopher before he died that I would use his small pension to pay for one good holiday per year, and take some of his ashes with me to scatter during the holiday – either somewhere he had been and enjoyed, or somewhere we hadn’t managed to get to together but that I thought he would have liked.

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

25 08 2011 icyjumbo status Comments (2) Permalink

The garden: getting serious

The landscape gardener came around again this evening, to confirm the price and agree a start date of immediately after the August Bank Holiday. I have agreed to pay up-front for the materials – specifically the steel I-beams and 300 new oak sleepers. That is not going to be cheap – but with a small company cashflow is critical, and I don’t want them charging me extra for interest if they have to bear the cost when I have already budgeted for the expense.  So tomorrow I need to phone up the steel supplier and arrange to pay him, and I expect to have to buy the oak sleepers on Wednesday. Scary stuff! But it does at least mean that this is turning from a figment of my imagination into reality.

It’s such a shame Chris isn’t here to see it, as we’ve wanted to get the garden sorted out ever since we moved in. But then again, I’m using the last of his life insurance money to pay for it, so if he was still alive, we couldn’t have afforded it anyway……

15 08 2011 Gillian garden Comments (3) Permalink

…and relax

I’ve been pretty tense for the last few weeks. What with dealing with the anniversary of Christopher’s death, and working flat out on a major bid at work, things have been rather stressful at both home and work. Mind you, I don’t mean to complain about having to work hard – it’s been very good for me to have something tangible to concentrate on. But I’ve certainly felt the tension building in my neck and shoulders, culminating in a three-day migraine this week. Nasty.

So this afternoon after work I had a back, neck and head massage. My back was so studded with knots that it felt like corrugated cardboard, and my scalp felt like I was wearing a swimming-cap three sizes too small. But as the massage progressed, I could feel the tension easing out of my shoulders and I started to relax for the first time in several weeks. By the time the hour was up, my back felt better than it has for ages, and after all that stretching I swear I’m at least half an inch taller than I was! I hope the new relaxed me means I’ll sleep well tonight.

12 08 2011 icyjumbo status Comments Off on …and relax Permalink

Librivox tribute to Chris

Those nice people over at Librivox have included a tribute to Chris in their anniversary podcast, which is available at  http://librivox.org/2011/08/09/librivox-community-podcast-116/

There is a short piece about Chris right after the beginning. Note that it includes an extract of him reading William Wilberforce’s speech on abolishing slavery – so if you do listen to it, be prepared to hear Chris’s voice! I rather liked hearing him – though I’m feeling a bit damp-eyed now.

11 08 2011 Gillian librivox
status Comments Off on Librivox tribute to Chris Permalink

Amazon kindle – what a nightmare

My sister has a new Amazon kindle which she was showing me at the weekend. It looked really good, and reminded me that there is a kindle app on Christopher’s iPad, that even has some e-books loaded onto it. I thought it would be worth giving it a go and seeing what it was like to use – it would be lighter to take on holiday than my usual stack of paperbacks. But it is registered to him – attached to his email account and his (now very defunct) credit card. But trying to de-register it from his account and set it up on mine instead turned into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

First, I tried emailing kindle customer support. They mailed me back and said that they couldn’t do anything without speaking to me “for security reasons”. They told me to log on to amazon.com using his user name and password (thankfully stored as cookies on the iPad – otherwise I’d never have managed even that first step) and ask for customer support to phone me.

They did – a transatlantic phone call at their expense thankfully. They seemed completely flummoxed by my request. I got passed from one department to another – having to explain what I wanted each time. I got so fed up of saying “It’s my husband’s account AND HE IS NOW DEAD”. Finally, the third chap I spoke to seemed capable of grasping what I wanted to do – but said that while he could deregister Christopher’s account, I would need to speak to UK customer services to get my password updated so that I could re-register it to mine.  He was just giving me the number when we got cut off.

I’ve given up for the evening. I’m not feeling strong enough to explain yet again what I want to yet another set of service droids. Maybe I’ll try again later in the week if I have more energy. Why do they make these things so difficult? People die every day – so why does it always seem to come as a complete surprise to companies that their customers aren’t immortal?

10 08 2011 Gillian status Comments (2) Permalink

One Year On

It was a year ago today that Christopher died. Well, it was on 7th August, but that was a Saturday last year, so it was yesterday that really hurt the most.  Thank you all very much for your cards, thoughts, emails and blog comments – you probably don’t realise how much help you’re being.

I escaped from the Big Chill and went to spend the weekend with my parents in Kent. My sister and her boyfriend were there too, and it was good to see them all.We had a “commemorative meal” on Saturday night, when we all raised a glass to the memory of Christopher.

Merton College, Christopher’s old Oxford College have been in touch, asking if I would help them write an obituary of him for their alumni magazine. I dug out the speaking notes I used at his funeral and sent them to Merton – which made me realise that I never posted them here. Today seems a particularly appropriate day to do so.

Christopher Booth 1964 – 2010

I first met Chris in 1989, when I started work at the same research labs as him. He avoided me at first, which seemed odd. It turned out that he had a history of girlfriends called Gill/Gillian, and when he heard that there was a new graduate called Gillian he hid in his office for months when I was around! He was right to fear that he’d finally met his match – though it was his secretary who made the push to get us together. She would sidle up to me and say “That Chris really fancies you”, then go to him and tell him “That Gillian thinks you’re a bit of alright”. And to begin with, it wasn’t even true! But we did get together, on May Day 1990 in Oxford where I was studying for my doctorate. There was an IRA bomb scare and we had to walk around Oxford for hours before the all clear was given and we were allowed back to my college.

What initially attracted me was his intelligence, his sense of humour (dreadful puns!), his kindness, inquisitiveness and (not least) his excellent cooking.

In 1993 we got married in Upstate New York in the courthouse at Fort Edward. We first had to convince the judge that we weren’t wanting to emigrate to the USA! We chose the location to be close to Christopher’s cousin and godmother. After his mother died she was like a surrogate mother to him. My family and our close friends came over to join us and it was a really happy day.

I want to tell you a bit about the Chris I knew. He has lots of interests and threw himself into them wholeheartedly.

  • archery – he shot for the university and made close friends for life
  • the guitar – he wanted to be able to play Bach’s lute suites on the guitar, and kept going until he could.
  • sign language – he was fascinated with the fact that it was a language in the same way as French and German, and went to evening classes to learn it to understand better first hand how a spatial language works
  • photography – when I first knew him he used to take dreadful photos. I gave him a digital camera for his 40th birthday` and regretted it ever since! It became an all-consuming hobby. But it did mean that he was always willing to go out for trips/away on holiday – so long as he could bring a camera with him.
  • Librivox – an online community who record books to put into the public domain. Chris threw himself into the Love Letters of Elisabeth and Robert Browning, and I think that maybe recording Robert brought out his romantic side.

In September 2009, Chris was made redundant from his job. He was as happy as I’ve ever seen him – full of plans for finding out what he wanted to do with the next stage of his career. He decided to use the redundancy money to support himself while he tried to find a way to make his hobbies pay. In the meantime he happily volunteered to be a “house husband” and support me in my career.

But in August 2009 he had already started having trouble swallowing. The doctors could find nothing wrong, and suggested it was acid reflux. We had a last foreign holiday that October in Malta (an island which he loved and wanted eventually to retire to), but his swallowing problems were becoming more and more severe.

He was finally diagnosed in December 2009 with inoperable oesophageal cancer – just two days before Christmas.

Chris started blogging about his diagnosis and treatment, initially to let people know what was going on – to save us from making 20 phone calls every night saying the same thing. But quickly it became a source of strength – initially to him and subsequently to me too.

Chris faced his diagnosis and prognosis with immense courage and openness. This was partly his scientific mind – always wanting to understand what was happening. He found the chemo very difficult, but was determined “not to be miserable for the rest of his life”. He kept on doing the things he enjoyed – the theatre, concerts, visiting castles/stately homes, meeting friends for coffee, having Saturday lunch at our favourite pub.

He had a good month in June 2010 when he was in partial remission. We had a lovely and very happy holiday in Wales. But things started to get worse in July, and in the end he went downhill very rapidly. He died on August 7th.

I will always remember Christopher as a thoroughly kind and decent man. He believed strongly in fairness and justice. He was open to new experiences, and keen to share them with others. He was extremely supportive of me, and we made a good team together.

We had a very happy twenty years together, and I miss him so much.

07 08 2011 Gillian status Comments (4) Permalink

The Big Chill

The Big Chill Festival is on again in the grounds of Eastnor Castle, just down the road from me. Last year, the disruption it caused to us locals was massive. On the Thursday night, I had needed to get home from the hospice, and the friend who gave me a lift got caught in the huge tail-back of traffic past my house. In the end, he dropped me off about a mile away from home, and I walked the rest of the way. I’ve since heard of people who were caught in that traffic jam for three hours!

So this year I decided to plan ahead to avoid getting caught in the worst of the traffic. The festival organisers have been out since Monday, putting up temporary speed-limit signs (which block my view as I try to pull out of my drive, making things more dangerous, not less), hundreds of cones, and signs warning of expected queues ahead. Last year, the Thursday afternoon had the heaviest traffic, as thousands of festival-goers turned up to start their weekend. So I decided that I would leave my car at work on Thursday, and ask a colleague to give me a lift to the bottom of the hill, or the end of the traffic jam, whichever came first. Then I could walk the rest of the way home, and still get there much quicker than if I’d sat fuming in the traffic.

As it turned out, there was no traffic jam at all! In fact, there seemed to be hardly anyone heading for the festival. The traffic was no heavier than on any ordinary day. My colleague dropped me off at the carpark at the top of the hill, and I walked the last ten minutes home, past lines of cones and bored-looking stewards in hi-vis jackets, but virtually no cars at all. I felt such a fraud! When I got home I found that the AA had, very unhelpfully in my view, coned off my drive. So it was just as well I hadn’t tried to drive home, as would have needed to stop on the road to move them before I could get onto the drive.

I got a taxi back into Malvern on Friday morning, since of course my car was still in work. The taxi driver commented that it was quieter than on a Sunday afternoon! There really was hardly any traffic. He had been expecting to be extremely busy taking festival goers from the station to Eastnor, as last year every taxi in Malvern had been working flat-out all day. Instead, it was quieter then a normal day, as many of the locals had gone away to avoid the disruption, and the expected festival traffic hadn’t materialised. He was very disappointed.

06 08 2011 icyjumbo status Comments (7) Permalink

The garden: quote accepted

In the end I got two different builders to quote for doing the landscaping work on my garden. They came in within 10% of each other which I thought was pretty remarkable, and gives me reasonable confidence that is indeed the “price for the job”.

The main difference between the quotes was that one proposed to use reclaimed railway sleepers, and the other said he could get me a good discount on new oak beams, since I would be needing around 300 of them. I’ve been doing some research, and I was getting more and more uncomfortable at the thought of reclaimed sleepers. They are not necessarily as “green” as they sound. Almost all the old British Rail sleepers were used up a few years ago during the foot and mouth crisis, to build pyres for animal carcases. So the reclaimed sleepers which are available now are, on the whole, imported from Eastern Europe, where they may have previously been treated with God-knows-what chemicals – creosote being the least of the concerns. As a result, I’m informed, they can stink to high heaven in the heat, which would not be pleasant directly outside my kitchen window. Furthermore, the chemicals have an unfortunate tendency to leach out into the surrounding soil, poisoning any plants in the vicinity, which wouldn’t help with my plans to grow climbers up the retaining walls, let alone be any good for my herb garden!

So I’ve chosen the marginally more expensive quote, with the new oak sleepers. I’m told that they should last a good 50+ years once installed, which should see me out. The builder came round again yesterday to double-check his measurements, and for us to make sure we both fully understand what it is he’s going to do, and I have accepted his quote. He hopes to be able to start at the beginning of September, for about 5 weeks.

Yikes! It’s suddenly seeming very real! I’m not looking forward to them actually doing the work – I’ve lived through building work before when we had the extension done, and it’s not pleasant. But I’m really looking forward to it being completed, especially since they seem confident of finishing it well before winter sets in. I’ll keep you posted – this one will run and run…..

03 08 2011 Gillian garden Comments Off on The garden: quote accepted Permalink