March 2011 London   (e-mailed to friends & family)

 

Thankfully the Christmas freezing travel misery was over and our journey was trouble-free.  Mirian our house-minder met us and we were soon at Humberto Primo 507.  The other residents were all there and greeted us very fondly.  I climbed the 3 flights of stairs up to the flat and discovered that the slow pace of ascent made it much less tiring than expected, if rather more boring.  The flat was just as we had left it, and as we remembered it, so we could fling open the balcony doors, sit back with a cup of tea, and cheer “We made it!”  Of course we did, no sweat.  But there were times when we had doubted whether we could do it.

The Darling Tenis Club (rhymes with Tennis) was started 100 years ago when the British ran most things, and is now marooned in a run-down part of town, about 15 minutes’ walk from us.  It is an unexpected oasis, and once there all is calm, pretty and civilised, and the British are long gone.   Amber joins by the month.  It works like this.  We walk down there first thing in the morning for Amber’s session with her coach.  One-to-one, she gets excellent value from it.  I wander about a bit, then go and sit by the pool.  I have yesterday’ s Spectator and a couple of books I’m reading on my Kindle, yesterday’s Economist on my I-phone, and last Friday’s News Quiz on my MP3 player.  I can sit under the sun-shade or in the dappled light under a tree.  Amber finishes tennis and comes to sit by me in her bikini.  She goes off to swim a couple of times.  After a couple of hours we wander over to the clubhouse and a waiter prepares a table for us under a tree, tablecloths, napkins folded in glasses, bread basket, toothpicks.  We order steak, chorizo, fried eggs, chips, salad, wine and fizzy water.  There are people wandering about (not too many).  “Buen dia, buen provecho” they may say as they pass by.  There are matches of various standards to watch being played on about a dozen red brick courts all around.  Two slim, well behaved cats arrive, and reckoning we are likely prospects settle down by our chairs to see what happens.   At about 3 we walk back to our place and have a siesta.  The cats got a bit of steak each.  

We keep the buggy down by the front door, with a bike lock to some railings.  It is 3 steps town to the pavement (and back up again) but Amber is strong any you get used to it.  90% of street corners have buggy ramps, and if you don’t find one you just get up and Amber hoiks the buggy over the edge, or else I go down the street until I find a garage ramp. You need to watch out for pavement irregularities – if I get stuck I need a good shove to get me going again.  People are very helpful.  Although you don’t see any electric wheelchairs about, people are quite normal about it and do not point and stare, unlike China.  If you go to a restaurant and need to park the buggy inside, people couldn’t be more helpful.  They seem used to dealing with it.  You see more old people with sticks and zimmers – they probably get out more because of the weather, and are not stuck at home or in homes.

And I’m working properly again!  There’s a long-term project for a new program that I have been working on by myself on-and-off for 20 years, and I had been doing a lot of work on it in the year before my stroke.  Since my stroke I hadn’t touched it, and I presumed it would die the death.  Then a couple of weeks before Christmas I started playing with it, and before I knew it I was fully engaged, doing say 4 hours a day whereas before I had been doing say 1 hour a week.  It is a nice surprise to me to find that I can still get some of the enthusiasm and energy as before.  Not only that, but the brain has been up to its old tricks.  It’s been working in the deep subconscious, and most of the old imponderables which had been preoccupying me for years have by magic fallen away, so that I can now see within my grasp the final program, fully self-consistent and logical.  Simples!   Slow keyboarding is obviously frustrating as hell, but strangely I can’t say that it is a significant factor.  I probably think more before keying something in. 

While I was sitting in the shade with a cool glass in my hand, with that vague northern suspicion that surely I should be feeling guilty, certain thoughts became clear.  We owe a duty to society, but it’s a bit late for that, and society seems to be charging off in brain-dead directions.  We owe a duty to our friends, and mainly to our children.  We can bring them maximum joy if we can organise life so that we are having maximum fun, without getting into debt.  That’s about it.  But I still have a niggly guilty feeling, as if Maggie Thatcher would approve.

Amber and I have each been trying to lose weight.  We had a nice surprise yesterday, because we bought some scales and we’ve both gone down over 3kg since we came to Argentina.  We only eating one meal a day, and after a while you get used to it.  However, I rather miss the bliss you can get from the satisfaction of gluttony and greed.  I used to enjoy stuffing myself, one cake good, two cakes better.  But now I have beautiful food, and I enjoy it, but enough is enough, and the pleasure of eating to excess has disappeared.   It is like smoking – though one has given up and is glad to have done so, it is usually perverse to pretend that it was devoid of merit.

Another odd thing about Argentina.  On the way to tennis we walk past an area where down-and-outs hang out.  They have got to recognise us, and call out “Buen dia, senor!  Buen dia, senora!” and give a friendly wave.  Compare and contrast, as they say, and go figure.

It’s now near the end of our stay, time which seemed endless fast disappearing like the last of the bath water down a plughole.  We are vaguely looking forward to being back in England, though I know full well that 3 days after getting back we’ll wonder why.