Christmas Newsletter: We're Only Passing Through

Many thanks to all my friends who've sent a newsletter letting me know how they fared in 2019.  I'm afraid in comparison mine is very dull - no holidays to exotic locations, and only two trips abroad, both to the UK. One in March to my audiologist, the other to pick up my grandson, Quinn, in August.
   Some good news: in October, in collaboration with his Danish partner, Nana, my younger son, James,  presented me with a new grandson, William. I now have five grandchildren ranging in age from 34 (Matthew's son, Josh) to 2 month old William.

And speaking of Josh, and continuing the good news, he and his father came over to Montefalcone in July to help with an English course we ex-pats were running for the village children.  The course was centred on a play I'd written, based on a nineteenth century historical novel, Rinaldo da Monteverde,   I'd translated a couple of years previously. Matt and Josh made the props staying up late every night to do so - on one occasion until 5 o'clock the following morning. The play was filmed on location around the village and screened in the village theatre at the end of the week. If you're unable to wait until next year's Venice Film Festival, you can view the film here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zypu7ud3hqpcole/Rinaldo%20Da%20Monteverde%20%28V.2%29.mp4?dl=0

If you do view it, you may notice that a couple of the children seem rather mature! Two of them dropped out after the first day so Josh took over the part of Rinaldo and an ex-pat, Ian, the part of Friar Bartolomeo. He appears in the brief snippet below.

  In early August Quinn came over to stay. In 2017 he'd started secondary school in Downham Market. Both our daughters had attended the school in the eighties and nineties and had received a decent education. Since then the school has opted out of local authority control, becoming an academy and receiving abysmal ratings from Ofsted. Quinn was unhappy there, the school claiming he was unintelligent and predicting he would end uo with few if any GCSE passes. Like the rest of us, Quinn has his faults; but  after spending forty years teaching  I've developed a nose for spotting whether someone has academic potential. And Quinn has -  even if, like his grandfather, he's a bit of an idle chap. His mother arranged for him to sit the entrance exam to a state grammar school in Spalding  in the next county After a week's preparation, he took the exam and passed.
  At the end of August his mother, Candy, and her friend David joined us for a few days. There's a video of our time together on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4nOl_3PlE8&t=115s

And now to the bad news.
  First, our older dog, Eva, who will be fifteen on Christmas Eve has become a momento  mori. Just as the skull on a mediaeval scholar's desk was a continual reminder  of the transience of life, so Eva's decline and fall over the last twelve months is like watching a speeded up version of the fate awaiting me in my remaining decade(s). She was always extremely elegant, fastidious about her appearance, very intelligent, and scrupulous about her personal hygiene. Now she is almost blind, has dementia, and is frequently incontinent. Rather than taking her for long walks in the woods I take her about a 100 metres up the street very slowly three times a day, gathering her excrement with a poop scoop. Her younger half-sister, Meg still has all her marbles, her eyesight and bowel-control. However, since she reached 13, the woods are a step too far. She has one walk off the lead down the mediaeval pathway and two much shorter walks to wasteland to relieve herself.
   Second, in late September Pat was hit by a drunken motorcyclist while taking Meg for a walk fracturing her right knee and ankle. After a week in Fermo Hospital she came home but was wheelchair bound until last week when she was able to graduate to crutches. Here she is acting as the model for Whistler's Mother:

Understandably she is rather fed up with life.
   Third, we learned today that our elder daughter, Sophy, and her husband have separated after ten years of marriage.
   But our misfortunes pale into insignificance when compared to the life-threatening illnesses which have affected several of our friends this year, Vivid reminders that, in  Dick Blakeslee's words, we're only Passing Through.