Bob ventures out for the first time in a year

'Went out on my scooter', I wrote in my diary today: Tuesday 30 March. Mundane? No, historic. One of the most memorable days in my long life; the day I drove out from Sunrise into Cyncoed Road and into a new world. 

It was the first time I had driven anywhere except in the Sunrise garden for over a year. Yesterday I had tentatively asked Sara, the Sunrise head, when I could drive out and was surprised when she said, tomorrow. I charged up the scooter overnight and at 10am on this lovely sunny morning I set off on my historic ride to Roath Park, less than half a mile away. 

Our old home. Bigger than in our day!

There was one stop I had to make en-route, in Winnipeg Drive. I drew up outside number nine, looked at our old home and sat, thinking of our life there over almost three decades. So many memories, from the first day, in 1971, when I came to our new home after travelling around the world for three months.  I sat on my scooter in the warm sunshine seeing in my mind's eye Robert growing up, Beverley, off on her wedding day, and later driving Robert to university at Leicester. Family celebrations, garden parties and barbecues. Rosemary, always a marvellous host at special events and welcoming our friends from Germany and the USA. 

I remembered the happy band of neighbours, Lou and Rita, Jean and Roy, Jennie and Harry, Darrell and Gizelle, from Germany.

Roath Park Lake

Just a few minutes of reflection, the inevitable sadness relieved by the love and happiness of my life with Rosemary and the family, Mum living just down the road with Dorothy and George. Then down to lovely Roath Park where little has changed over the years. The old fashioned tea house has been demolished, replaced by a restaurant beside the lake, still waiting for permission to reopen, the wooden public shelters around the lake, once lovers' delights, long gone. There are more swans than ever, hundreds of them. 

Enjoying the spring sunshine

The big surprise was the crowds of people, more than I imagined possible on a weekday morning; sitting, basking in the now warm sunshine or queueing, safely spaced, for ice creams, feeding the swans. 

The gardens are a blaze of spring colour. A festive, holiday mood. On my homeward journey I passed the Discovery Public House, still two weeks away from opening after months of lockdown. it was a pleasant surprise to see the parade of shops flourishing again. A year ago it was a sorry sight with just three businesses still going, the rest boarded up. Now there are new enterprises, including a garden shop, an arts and crafts store, even a craft beer mini brewery and a takeaway. 

I resisted the temptation to go into Tesco to buy a celebratory mini bottle of sparkling wine but was bold enough to extract some money from their 'hole in the wall' machine. 

Back to my new home, Sunrise, for lunch. and now to try to describe adequately my feelings on this amazing, wonderful day. How can I be so fortunate to have such a store of happy memories and still have time, I hope, for many more.

Bob's travel talks

Bob in a meeting in Japan, 1971

After completing a year of my daily coronavirus diary which Robert and I are editing as a book, I have time for other writing and new ideas.

These include giving talks to the residents, suggested by Diane, a Sunrise activities organiser. I gave the first ‘Bob’s Travel Talks’ last week.

Quite a change from the television audience, a dozen or so residents, spaced out in the activity room. 

The title was ‘Around the world in 80 days’, about my Churchill Travelling Fellowship fifty years ago this year.

I spoke for 20 minutes - short enough to avoid anyone going to sleep - about the flight out with stops at India, Hong Kong, and on to Japan for two months. It was followed by five minutes of photographs shown on screen by Diane. 

Everyone seemed interested and in my talk next month I will describe the month I spent in North America before flying home.

I am enjoying preparing more talks which will cover visits to other countries for work and pleasure.

At least it adds to the range of activities in Sunrise.

A barbecue summer?

Bob and the barbecue he built

The prospect of being allowed out after months of restrictions has led to a boom in the sale of barbecues.We can’t wait to refresh our skills, burning steaks, hot dogs and beef burgers.

I am a barbecue enthusiast and can look back on some magnificent meals, and some embarrassing failures, as an outdoor chef.

Most of them have been family affairs with our Winnipeg Drive, Cardiff garden providing many memorable evenings. There was plenty of space - we had as many as twenty people sometimes - and I built a brick barbecue in one corner. 

I am no brickie and it showed, but I was proud of it - it even had a shelf - and although it leaned it lasted many years, and may even still be there.

Steaks were my favourite although we had mixed menus, including fish.

There were sumptuous barbecues with David, my daughter's father in law, as head cook in their Cardiff garden and for many years Braydon Manor was a perfect setting. The speciality there was mostly Spanish style meat from a local farmer. Steak and red wine, what a treat!

Barbecues are a favourite in many countries as I discovered. In America, home of the hot dog and beef burger, it is an art form.

Rosemary and I had wonderful times in Jim and Betty’s lovely garden in Des Moines and his alfresco meals were among the best ever.

He had a very large barbecue, big enough for a family roasts. Sitting there in the evening, fireflies flashing, was magical.

More down to earth even though it was on a hillside was an amazing mass barbecue in Phoenix, Arizona.

I was attending a convention of American company chief executives, promoting the UK for conferences.  A big affair with 6,000 delegates.The highlight for me was the night time barbecue above the city. 

At dusk, a fleet of 100 Greyound coaches took us into the hills.

We then walked up to the site being offered gin and tonics or whisky from dozens of stalls set up on the roadside.

The site had hundreds of benches in three different coloured sections and we were  given red, green or yellow scarves. 

Then the feast began; massive steaks, beef burgers and hot dogs with unlimited beer. Quite an evening.

Holiday memories include traditional ones in the Australian outback in Alice Springs, and on the riverside terrace of our hotel in Bangkok.

So I say, bring out those barbecues. I hope to enjoy a few.

if you are thinking of holding one I would not mind an invitation.

Free Wales!

Tenby: open for tourism again

It’s always been good to live in Wales but the pleasure is much greater today with the news that we have suddenly become the ‘freest’ nation in the UK.

First Minister Mark Drakeford has announced the lifting tomorrow of a whole raft of restrictions imposed months ago. 

The miserable winter is over. Spring is here.There is something for most of us, with the most welcome move, the scrapping of stay home. We can now roam, take holidays in hotels or campsites, anywhere in Wales. 

We are the first country to open up our borders and very soon we will welcome a rush of holiday makers from around the UK when they follow our lead. Robert and family have booked a week in Tenby in July. No doubt they will call in to see me as they pass Cardiff.

Other new freedoms allow six people from two households to meet outdoors, sports for under 18s outdoors, reopening libraries - that reminds me, I have three books to return to Penylan library as soon as I can scooter out -  some historic attractions and gardens.

We will have to wait a little longer to go to a pub and shop other than at supermarkets but the mood is more optimistic than for months. The number of cases is down drastically and the First Minister said the health position made ‘headroom for changes’.

He did not agree to setting dates, he said, as they could not be guaranteed and it was safer to play it stage by stage, depending on progress made.

I am delighted with the news as it means that Robert will be able to come to Sunrise - actually into Sunrise - to chat in my room for the first time for months.

Well done Mr Drakeford. Well done, Wales.

The sad saga of Penarth's Pier Pavilion

Happier days: the reopened Pavilion, April 2014

The news that Penarth Pier Pavilion is again in trouble comes as no surprise. The charity that was running it since it reopened in 2013 after a £4 million Lottery Fund grant was incompetent from the start. They had ambitious plans that could have worked but there was poor management and muddle. 

Among the attractions of the magnificently refurbished building were a boutique 70-seat cinema and a small high class restaurant on the first floor and, on the ground floor,  a main auditorium for art exhibitions, concerts and a range of events, a cafe and a shop. It sounded perfect. 

To  achieve its aim, the exciting project needed a team of volunteers which it soon achieved but they became confused and frustrated by those in charge, and many gave up.

Troubles escalated. The restaurant never opened, the shop closed and the cafe ownership changed frequently.

With losses mounting, the management was changed but the cinema, a big success, closed when the company running it complained of not being paid.

To try to save money, pavilion management changed but it did not stop the decline and closure was inevitable.

The charity has given up its lease on the building - the Vale of Glamorgan Council are the ground landlords.

A sad story for a project that seemed perfect for an attractive town with a population with wide artistic and entertainment interests and home for some international artists.

My involvement in the pavilion goes back almost 80 years when, as the Penarth Times reporter, I covered plays and other events there. 

Rosemary knew it even better and she thought it had the best floor for dancing, which she loved.

I knew Bob Blundell, who managed the Marina in prewar years. I met him when, as Captain Blundell, he was a patient with me in a military hospital. In his day the Marina, as it was then called, flourished, alive with many activities

In recent years I was involved in Penarth Arts and Craft. a charity company expertly run by Maggie Smith who was based in the Washington building, where she staged many artistic events.

Open day at the Pavilion, July 2013

I voluntarily helped her plan the new pavilion project. Rosemary and I were in charge of a long running pavilion exhibition in a converted shop on the Esplanade next to our home.

Maggie would have been the perfect leader for the new project but she returned to Australia when her husband took up an academic appointment there.

Her departure was a huge loss to the town and I am sure she is dismayed at the failure.

The pavilion has now been taken over by the Vale of Glamorgan Council which plans to make it ‘community facility’ - a typical dull local government term.

They are calling on public support and ideas. I hope they succeed but I am not too optimistic. 

They have been involved for years with a director on the board but the charity kept the public in the dark about plans, finance and management. This must change.

Penarth Pier Pavilion should be a huge asset for the town. It must not be wasted.

Coronavirus diary reflections, Friday 19 March 2021

Yesterday was my last coronavirus year diary blogpost. Robert and I are now editing the year's diary entries to make it into a book which we hope will be published.

It has been a very enjoyable experience and I think it will make an interesting story.

I am carrying on with my blog but not concentrating on the pandemic although I will keep up to date, probably weekly. It will mainly be my personal thoughts and memories.

I am now able to get on with other interests including giving short talks to residents here - Bob’s Travel Talks.

I have given a lot of talks over the years to different audiences but this will be a different. Most of the residents are in their eighties or nineties - like me - and their attention span is probably very short. The first talk, next week, will be in the afternoon so I expect most of them will fall asleep!

‘Around the world in eighty days’ will about my Churchill Fellowship trip 50 years ago in 1971 to Japan and America.

It will include pictures of the countries I stopped over at en route which Diane, one of the activity team, will put on screen.

We will see how it goes.

It would be great, now I have more time, if I could get out and about on my scooter and that might come sooner than I think.

Coronavirus diary, Friday 19 March

A year ago when I started this diary I had no idea what lay ahead. No-one did, but throughout the days and months I have always felt confident that it would all ‘come right’.

And on this anniversary day that confidence was strengthened, if not finally confirmed, by happy coincidence: my second coronavirus vaccination.

I am used to injections - over 700 this year for my diabetes and scores more to keep me going - but this one was was special.

It took just a few seconds and as I sat resting in the Sunrise lounge with the other residents I reflected on how my life has changed.

Despite all the turbulence and upheaval it has been a positive and reassuring experience, It has made me appreciate the courage, unselfishness and kindness of so many that has made my life calm and contented.

I cannot believe how fortunate I am.