Sunday posting

Karen's grandfather

It is Father's day, well I was brought up by my grandfather, my daughter Karen also lost out on a father figure due to death and here she is with her grandfather in Blonay, Switzerland.  She goes back this week for a holiday to see her two aunts.

As she grew up we went back to Blonay for Xmas and summer holidays, and along with her cousin Marc, she spent many a happy hour in the company of her grandfather.  

Annabel, Marc's mother, was like me a 'rescuee' from the dramas and tragedies of life.  The time in Switzerland a happy break.  It is a country that is well governed, tidy and on the whole wealthy.  Go up into the mountains and you will find the traditional wooden houses, dark and shutters, but also the bright geraniums in window boxes enlivening the dark wood.  The cows on the summer pastures, a bell dangling from the leader, and mountains that look so tall against the blue of the sky.

Lake Leman could be viewed from the bungalow, the paddle boats making their way to France across the lake.  We always had to carry our passports, even the dogs, because there are so many frontiers in Switzerland.
To remember him on this day, his poem, a longing for England maybe, from someone who spent most of his working life in Unesco.

The Tourist's Lament by C.J.Opper

A rainy evening in Vevey,

Fills me with intense dismay,

The faded splendours of Montreux

Leave me feeling rather blue;

And if we must stick to verity,

I don't go overboard on Territet.

And, I must say,

Whoever got hooked on La Tour de Peilz?

For Corsier, Blonay, Chebres and Corseaux,

I'm unequally unmoved or even more so;

If there's a place I'd rather not be on

Its the top of the tower of the Chateau de Chillon.

In Southend they would'nt have the cheek to serve,

That cupper tea we got at Villeneuve

We got fish and chips just beside the church

But you have to ask for fillet de perche.

So..... you just ask your mother why we're here,

When we might have been on Wigan Pier.

I shall photograph my old photographs, or perhaps even scan them, for they capture a way of life the ex-pats enjoyed around this place, and it is good to remember that Conrad was also a church warden at the English church at Territet.