For the first time this visit, we woke up to a cold bedroom. Even with the sheet and three thicknesses of blanket it was pretty chilly, and for once it was very pleasant to open the bedroom door and find that Molly's central heating was working away merrily and the rest of the house was like a sauna. I had a shower under the newly renovated shower head and it was very enjoyable.
We breakfasted on toast and Plumots (not together). I think I mentioned them earlier but totally misremembered their name - anyway, they are a mixture of plums and apricots and were very tasty and juicy, and had a nice pink colour inside. When I was in another of my co-op-inspired experimental moods, I also bought a packet of beef jerky. That was very tasty too, although it did look like strangely shiny red leather and smelt a bit odd.
It transpired during breakfast that Molly didn't know (= hadn't remembered) that we were leaving today, and was really taken by surprise. We have mentioned it a number of times, and according to her calendar (for some reason) we should already have left yesterday, but she is a bit forgetful now, and she was sad when we reminded her of it. I always wonder whether we'll see her again and hope she'll stay well, and so far obviously we always have, but she is 90.
We revisited Molly's thesis which is an old friend of ours. She wrote it during her year at art college in in Brighton in 1956, and it's a handwritten (in calligraphy) study into the local crafts and trades which were around in the South of England at that time, complete with hand-drawn illustrations and copies of her own photos. Many of the crafts have already completely died out our have been mechanised. A lot of the places and people she visited are within a stone's throw of mum's house. Anyway, we took the thesis home about 4 years ago. On a subsequent visit we had to bring it back so she could show Sister Margie and the book club. This week she asked us to take is back again, but today when we'd sat and had a little look through it together, she decided she was going to keep it for now.
She did decide she'd like to give me her mum's engagement ring, and found a ring which she says is the right one, but didn't doesn't match the description she gave mum of it (a ruby with a stone either side - this one is a ruby in the middle of a ring of clear stones) but she was convinced it was the right one. There was a receipt in the box from 1971, which of course might be from something else, but she thought Joe might have bought her a ring from about that time so who knows. It looks quite new, but apparently her mum never wore it so that could explain that. I'm not sure how to work out its origins for definite now as Molly is the only person who would be able to tell.
Molly had a lunch of pea soup. I managed to avoid that by cooking me and mum some of the sausages shirley brought round with some bacon and egg. She skinned them because apparently Molly finds it too chewy, and they did look quite funny without. We finished with a trusty raisin oatmeal cookie. I have to find a recipe for those, they are super tasty.
I took a few goodbye photos of our purple and mint green room and the mix and match cupboards on the landing, and then it was time to say our goodbyes, never a nice moment.
I took a shot if the mountains in the distance from end of drive and we set off. It was an uneventful drive back to Calgary, so boring that we were driven to making sentences out of numberplate letter combinations eg GFU = great friesian udders or NKA = no kittens allowed. It was funny at the time.
I was glad to get back to Pat and Earl's safe and sound and we arrived to find a nice stew dinner waiting for us. We missed Earl's birthday do while we were in Rocky and the stew was followed by one of his presents (from his niece) - sorbets in individual fruit shells. A slightly random gift but a tasty one.
We put the world to rights on the comfy chairs after that. One topic of conversation was the link between radon gas and cancer - apparently about 8 people in the street gave died of cancer, all on the other side of the road, and Earl wondered if they could be caused by radon. He wasn't sure what type of cancers they had, and radon only causes lung cancer, but he wrote down the Canadian Lung Association's phone number so he could query it. We then moved on to Earl's halloween pranks, which included putting an intercom in the boot of the car and groaning 'Help me! Let me out!' when trick-or-treaters were near, or dressing up as a hunchback, blacking his face and teeth, lurking in the garden and peering in at the windows, a prank which had a neighbour calling Pat to tell her there was a stalker in the garden and that she was just about to call the police.
We came down to our nice cool basement room (hopefully not full of radon) and found a weaky little note from Andy thanking us for a nice holiday. Just a couple of days to go for us now too.
We breakfasted on toast and Plumots (not together). I think I mentioned them earlier but totally misremembered their name - anyway, they are a mixture of plums and apricots and were very tasty and juicy, and had a nice pink colour inside. When I was in another of my co-op-inspired experimental moods, I also bought a packet of beef jerky. That was very tasty too, although it did look like strangely shiny red leather and smelt a bit odd.
It transpired during breakfast that Molly didn't know (= hadn't remembered) that we were leaving today, and was really taken by surprise. We have mentioned it a number of times, and according to her calendar (for some reason) we should already have left yesterday, but she is a bit forgetful now, and she was sad when we reminded her of it. I always wonder whether we'll see her again and hope she'll stay well, and so far obviously we always have, but she is 90.
We revisited Molly's thesis which is an old friend of ours. She wrote it during her year at art college in in Brighton in 1956, and it's a handwritten (in calligraphy) study into the local crafts and trades which were around in the South of England at that time, complete with hand-drawn illustrations and copies of her own photos. Many of the crafts have already completely died out our have been mechanised. A lot of the places and people she visited are within a stone's throw of mum's house. Anyway, we took the thesis home about 4 years ago. On a subsequent visit we had to bring it back so she could show Sister Margie and the book club. This week she asked us to take is back again, but today when we'd sat and had a little look through it together, she decided she was going to keep it for now.
She did decide she'd like to give me her mum's engagement ring, and found a ring which she says is the right one, but didn't doesn't match the description she gave mum of it (a ruby with a stone either side - this one is a ruby in the middle of a ring of clear stones) but she was convinced it was the right one. There was a receipt in the box from 1971, which of course might be from something else, but she thought Joe might have bought her a ring from about that time so who knows. It looks quite new, but apparently her mum never wore it so that could explain that. I'm not sure how to work out its origins for definite now as Molly is the only person who would be able to tell.
Molly had a lunch of pea soup. I managed to avoid that by cooking me and mum some of the sausages shirley brought round with some bacon and egg. She skinned them because apparently Molly finds it too chewy, and they did look quite funny without. We finished with a trusty raisin oatmeal cookie. I have to find a recipe for those, they are super tasty.
I took a few goodbye photos of our purple and mint green room and the mix and match cupboards on the landing, and then it was time to say our goodbyes, never a nice moment.
I took a shot if the mountains in the distance from end of drive and we set off. It was an uneventful drive back to Calgary, so boring that we were driven to making sentences out of numberplate letter combinations eg GFU = great friesian udders or NKA = no kittens allowed. It was funny at the time.
I was glad to get back to Pat and Earl's safe and sound and we arrived to find a nice stew dinner waiting for us. We missed Earl's birthday do while we were in Rocky and the stew was followed by one of his presents (from his niece) - sorbets in individual fruit shells. A slightly random gift but a tasty one.
We put the world to rights on the comfy chairs after that. One topic of conversation was the link between radon gas and cancer - apparently about 8 people in the street gave died of cancer, all on the other side of the road, and Earl wondered if they could be caused by radon. He wasn't sure what type of cancers they had, and radon only causes lung cancer, but he wrote down the Canadian Lung Association's phone number so he could query it. We then moved on to Earl's halloween pranks, which included putting an intercom in the boot of the car and groaning 'Help me! Let me out!' when trick-or-treaters were near, or dressing up as a hunchback, blacking his face and teeth, lurking in the garden and peering in at the windows, a prank which had a neighbour calling Pat to tell her there was a stalker in the garden and that she was just about to call the police.
We came down to our nice cool basement room (hopefully not full of radon) and found a weaky little note from Andy thanking us for a nice holiday. Just a couple of days to go for us now too.
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