Anne's Blog

  How does the song go: A life on the ocean wave… How I longed to have that life when I was a teenager looking for a career after high school. Assistant purser was what I had in mind, and most of my friends had no idea what that was or why on earth I was determined to be one. (Before I go any further, let’s have full disclosure: I never attained my dream due to discovering the most important skill needed to be an assistant purser was a high level of math. Talk about a downer for this dummy, who didn’t even pass her Maths O Level!) What I would have been good at was Social Director, but it wasn’t a thing back then. What, you may wonder, attracted me to a life aboard an ocean liner? From the first voyage I made with my parents when I was nearly three and we were on our way to Hamburg overnight from Harwich just after WWII so my father’s Army posting as Port Commandant could begin, I was hooked. There was something about falling asleep to the gentle hum of the ship’s engines, the fun of t

  I learned to drive in 1965 on my father’s 1952 pristine Bentley along the winding, one-and-a-half-wide lanes in the Surrey hills. As if the size of the car and the lack of rack-and-pinion steering wasn’t hard enough to handle, the ankle-high gear shift tucked between the front seats was often the stick that broke the camel’s back for me.  Invisible gear shift between seats My father, an erstwhile British army colonel, was not the most patient of teachers, and I was glad of his additional gift of six driving lessons at the local school, with a mild-mannered, retired schoolteacher in Leatherhead. Amazingly, I passed the test on my first try, much to my siblings’ amazement, who were convinced that at 21 I was not much use at anything except a good cry. (A slight exaggeration, but you get the picture of a slightly overwhelmed middle child.) It was not the norm in England in the 1960s for every member of a household to own a car. So, I had to beg my mother to loan me her much more versati

  Perkin Warbeck or Richard, due of York? E arlier this year, I encouraged you to watch The Lost King , a movie about finding Richard III's bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012. It certainly generated renewed interest in England's maligned (by Shakespeare et al) king.  At the end of November, another astonishing revelation about Richard emerged, spearheaded again by Philippa Langley, the discoverer of the location of Richard's bones. Not satisfied with that incredible success, Philippa then launched The Missing Princes Project, a research project attempting to solve the centuries-old mystery of what happened to the princes in the Tower, who disappeared in the summer of 1483, never to be seen again. You ask the majority of English people if they think they know what happened to them, and, up until November, I guarantee you 80 percent would have said, "Oh, Richard III murdered them." Even I, who is one of Richard's greatest champions, believe someone (but

  I confess we were a little worried about finding food in France to please our grandson, Leo. But then he put us at ease: "Just feed me croissants, pastries and fries, and I will be happy," he told us. Luckily strawberries were in season, so he got some of those with his daily croissant and pain au chocolat for breakfast. The other craving he had, and he wrote to his mum to get the name right, was for his favorite sauce: Béarnaise. We were puzzled all week as to why those places we found ourselves in didn't offer anything with Béarnaise. But he didn't complain. Over the week, he surprised us with his willingness to try things even if only to turn up his nose. Our first evening, we were so tired from the chaotic time getting from the plane to the apartment, we fell out onto our street and sat in the first cafe we found. Their offering that evening was lasagne, and Leo and I decided to try that. Don't order Italian in France, was our conclusion. It came with salad,

  My first time in Paris was in 1963, when my father organized for me to spend a year as a bi-lingual secretary at a shipping business on Avenue de l'Opera. It was a difficult year for an extremely self-conscious 19-year-old six-footer. I towered above everyone on the Metro and was stared at wherever I went. I even had a shoe salesman tell me to, "Allez chez les hommes, mademoiselle," because he had never seen such big feet on a woman.  But, the city's beauty was hard to ignore, and it was during my weekend sightseeing jaunts that I fell in love with the Sainte Chapelle. This trip to Paris with Grandson Leo marked my 22nd time of visiting it. Up until the 21st time, which would have been ten years ago on a "passing through" visit to the city, I was able to just wander through the Palais de Justice building to the inner courtyard, where this jewel hides, and be with a handful of others to marvel at its stunning stained-glass. In 2014, I had to stand in line a

  Leo turned into a teenager last week. Ah, you say, so into a kid who will now only answer in monosyllables when he's not giving you sass; get miffed if you tell him to turn off his phone/tablet/gamer; and generally behave as though you, his parent or grandparent, knows nothing at all about anything. But Leo is not that kind of kid; and for us as grandparents taking him on his first trip abroad to a non-English speaking country, we found this out on the very first day of his being in our care for the first time without his parents. (That's a lot of firsts.) We flew overnight on French Bee from Miami to Paris Orly and landed on June 6th--at the start of a one-day General Strike. Ack! Les Français et ses grèves. We had no idea what to expect, but that things were not as they usually are on a Tuesday in June became evident as we sat on the plane for an hour and a half waiting to disembark. Our jetway was not ready (not enough personnel willing to work) and so portable stairs had