First Week Back

The first week back after my Yorkshire holiday was busy but not stressful. Many of my colleagues are on holiday right now, which means a lot less meetings than usual. That allowed me to wade through my piles of emails largely undisturbed; not that those piles were quite as high as expected. Mostly, after two weeks away from work, I find well over 200 emails waiting for me. This time, there were only 133.

Monday (11 August) started chilly at only 14C/57 F - perfect to let fresh air into the flat and maintain a pleasant room temperature throughout the day, while it became warmer outside with up to 29C/84F by mid-afternoon.

Of course apart from working at my desk, I did the usual return-from-holiday things such as washing and food shopping. Also, after finishing work, I had a chat with my downstairs neighbour who had been looking after my mail and my houseplants; I gave her a souvenir to say thank you, even though she had let my hydrangea die (which she apologised for).

As soon as she was gone, I put shoes on and was off on a walk to Benningen. Going for my standard walks is always part of the coming home process for me, and I enjoyed that first one very much.

It was my Mum's birthday on Tuesday (12 August), but because I was working and she was going for a meal with her former colleagues in the evening, I only saw her in the afternoon for an hour over coffee and a piece of delicious home-baked cake. My sister and I had collected several presents for her in Ripon and handed those over. I think she liked them all.

At 32C/89F, I didn't want a walk after work that day.

On Wednesday (13 August), I was back at the office for the first time since my return from Yorkshire. It was also the first day back for one of my colleagues, and so we had plenty of stories to exchange - and plenty to do, too.

Getting off the train in Ludwigsburg after work, I went to my sister's, and together we walked to the farm café/restaurant just outside town where we often have family celebrations and other meals. Our Mum had booked a table there for us and four of her closest friends, and in spite of sitting outside, we were unbothered by wasps (something I had really been afraid of). The meal, company and location all combined for a nice birthday celebration for Mum.

You wouldn't think this lady has just turned 81, would you?

Whereas this one has aged at least 5 years in the first half of this year.

Thursday (14 August) was another one or two degrees hotter at about 33-34C/91-93F, but it was well bearable at the office, since my room there faces north. Too hot to walk home from Zuffenhausen or Kornwestheim, though.

I waited until after the main news on TV before setting off on a short walk of about 45 minutes; stupidly, I had not thought to use mozzie repellant and got stung a few times when I had to stand still at a traffic light. For people in the cars passing by, it must have looked as if I was practicing the Schuhplattler.

Working from home on Friday (15 August) with no meetings, I was able to do my cleaning, changing of bed sheets, food shopping etc. in the morning before it got too hot, and work in the afternoon. My Third Room (study) is the coolest place in my flat, making it possible to focus without my brain completely melting.

Once again, I went out for a walk only at 8:30 pm, but this time I sprayed myself liberally with repellant before setting off, which made for a much more relaxed sunset walk.

O.K. arrived at around lunchtime on Saturday (16 August). We had a salad of watermelon, feta cheese and roasted pine nuts with some crispy baguette and then went into town for an errand. 

A rest followed before it was time to dress up a bit and walk back into town, where we attended the première of "Marie Antoinette" at an outdoor theatre. We'd been to their performances a few times before, and they are brilliant - a mix of hilariously funny, well done songs and some serious food for thought. It is amazing how much a small cast of only four actors (two of them playing several characters) can achieve!

Again, I had made good use of my bottle of repellant [note to self: stock up on that!] and was not stung or bitten in spite of there being quite a few flying nasties about.

After the performance, we sat in the adjacent beer garden for something to eat and drink before my sister took our Mum home in the car and O.K. and I walked home. (The tickets for the four of us had been a joined birthday present for Mum from my sister and me.)

Sunday (17 August) offered a very welcome respite of the week's intense heat; in fact the morning was so chilly that we shut the kitchen window while we were sitting there for breakfast.

We then set off on a walk that took in the lake (Monrepos), part of Asperg (not the castle on the hill this time) and a beer garden where we had a refreshing shandy (by this time, it had warmed up again and the sun was out in full force) and eventually ice creams in town, 14 km altogether.

A late afternoon nap was in order, after which I prepared watermelon (again!) for our meal, this time with Serrano ham and toasted slices of baguette with a bruschetta mix on top.

O.K. left at 7:45 pm, while I went for a very beautiful sunset walk of just under 10 km. It was dark by the time I reached home, but it had been so pleasant out there that I just did not want to turn in just yet - I only wished O.K. was there with me instead of in a traffic hold-up on the motorway, which made his trip home at least half an hour longer than usual.

This mast was full of starlings on the three tiers near the top - I could hear them long before I saw them.

Click to enlarge and see the clouds of starlings whirring overhead! It was most impressive; I just wish I had make a video of that.

This picture is not tilted; the field really is sloping at that point.

Read in 2025 - 19

(This year's reads # 18 and 20 will be reviewed in a combined post.)

The Queen of the Tambourine

Jane Gardam

Not my picture, but it was the only one I found which showed the same edition that I bought.

During my sister and my holiday in Ripon, among several other things I bought three paperbacks, two in my favourite book shop and this one in a charity shop, one of many lining Ripon's streets (can't remember which one).

I liked the cover and the description on the back. Also, I read "Old Filth" by this author some years ago, and found it very good; you can find my 2017 review here.

This one was also a very good read, although I must admit it was not quite what I had expected.

The main character is Eliza Peabody, surrounded by a cast of neighbours, family and other people she meets in her capacity as a volunteer at a hospice. She is a keen observer, and the reader learns a lot about each of them.

The entire story is presented in the form of letters Eliza writes to her neighbour Joan. They start out as short notes, with (unwanted) advice about Joan's health and family life. No answers are ever written, but Eliza continues with her letters, which become longer and longer, revealing more and more of Eliza's own life.

But how much of what Eliza writes has actually happened, and how much of it is just in her mind? And why does Joan never answer? Why does Eliza always talk of having two dogs, when everybody else seems to be aware of only one? Has her husband really left her, and if so, why?

I don't want to tell you too much, but there are unexpected twists; it's not crime fiction, but still a mystery. I perfectly agree with one excerpts of a critic saying that she found the book "very moving when it is not being exceedingly funny".

The very end comes with one last twist. It left me with a slight feeling of disappoinment; I was expecting something more quirky, not such a neat explanation and conclusion. But see for yourselves, if you are interested.

Jane Gardam (who by the way was from Yorkshire) only died this year. She wrote many books; this was the 2nd by her that I have read. You can read about her here on wikipedia. "The Queen of the Tambourine" has its own wikipedia entry here.

Read in 2025 - 16, 17

Two more of Martha Grimes' Inspector Jury novels were this year's summer reading for me, but neither of them what was for most people constitutes a typical holiday read.

The Blue Last

On the building site in London where a pub stood until it was bombed in WWII, two skeletons are found from that time. To the family who used to own the pub (“The Blue Last”), it is clear that it can only be the daughter of the former owner and the nanny’s baby girl – she had taken out the daughter’s child for a walk when the bombing happened, sadly losing her own child in the process. 

Richard Jury’s old friend and fellow detective asks him to investigate what he believes could be an old case of identity swap.

 

For Jury, this means facing his own past; as a little boy, he lost his Mum in a bombing after he’d already lost his father in the war, and ended up in care homes – not a childhood memory he wants to revisit, but can’t avoid either.

As he starts talking to the family members of the former pub owner, he discovers that one of them is writing a book about “The Blue Last” and has been doing extensive research.

Not long afterwards, the man is found dead, and his computer as well as his notes are missing, while nothing else has been taken from his luxurious home.

What had he come across in his research that could have cost him his life?

 

While Jury keeps investigating and finding motives and suspects, a parallel storyline involes a 9-year-old girl who nobody in her family’s big house is much inclined to talk about and whose provenience is mysterious.

A 12-year-old boy is her best friend, but he has a big secret of his own to guard while at the same time juggling all sorts of odd jobs. His dog plays a role, too…

 

The cleverly constructed story reunites the reader with many of the familiar cast, introducing some new ones who may or may not make a reappearance in later books, as is Martha Grimes’ habit with the Inspector Jury series.

It ends with Jury solving the case (of course), nearly losing his life in the process and finding out things about his old friend he’d never thought possible.

 

 

The Grave Maurice

This time it’s all about horses, breeding and racing. Jury knows nothing about it really, but he is asked a personal favour by the doctor who’s been treating him in hospital after he nearly died at the end of the previous book:

Almost two years ago, the doctor's 15-year-old daughter disappeared from her grandfather’s stables, where she was spending the night to be near a sick horse, which also disappeared. No ransom was ever asked, and while the police treat it as a cold case and presume that the girl must be dead, her family have been paying a private investigator to find out what happened, and at least some of them seem to be certain that she’s still alive.

 

Out of hospital but still officially on sick leave, Jury takes on the case and finds things getting more and more curious.

His friend Melrose is roped in to pose as an expert on race horses (just as he had him pose as an expert gardener in “The Blue Last”) so that he can get up close and personal with some of the people possibly involved in the case.

 

As usual, most characters have more than one secret, some more, some less relevant to the missing girl.

Also as usual, in the end Jury manages to unravel the thicket of lies and motives, but although he solves the mystery of the missing girl and horse, it is a sad ending.

 

 

When I found these and the other Inspector Jury books at a second hand sale, I had to take what was there but was lucky to get these two in direct chronological order.

The two children playing important roles in “The Blue Last” reappear in “The Grave Maurice”, as do of course the entire cast of Long Piddleton (Melrose’s home village) as well as Richard Jury’s neighbours in Islington.

 

I really enjoyed both books, although The Grave Maurice left me sad. Jury almost dying at the end of “The Blue Last”, didn't have me worry; I knew he wasn’t dead, because the series continued. But when the book was first published, readers probably weren’t so sure more stories would follow.

Now I have finished all the Jury books I have bought at the sale, but I have one or two more by Martha Grimes on my shelf, plus three paperbacks I bought in Ripon.

Ripon 2025 - Day 12 and The Voyage Home

Our last day in Ripon was here. Saturday (9 August) was sunny again, and still windy as it had been all week.

After breakfast, we walked to the Leper Chapel once more, knowing this time we would find it open. You've seen pictures of it both inside and out several times on my blog, and nothing has changed really, but I still took another one, just as a cloud was blown away from the sun and the inside was filled with sunlight.

Almshouses in the foreground with the Leper Chapel in the background.

We then bought a few more things for our Mum's birthday (which was yesterday, 12 August) and went back to the cottage, where my sister made us lunch using up what we still had in the fridge. It was a very nice meal, starting with soup (bought ready-made) and then a plate with watercress salad, an omelette with zucchini/courgette in it, coleslaw, goats cheese and toasted olive bread. 

After a rest, we went to say good-bye to Mary. Of course you never know what happens to any of us even just the next day, but when someone is 91, "see you next year" carries more of a realistic possibility that there won't be a next year for this person. We hugged, and when the wind slammed her gate shut and I walked back towards the house with her to open it for her (the gate is rather heavy-going), she said "one more" and we hugged again - I found this rather touching and felt a bit tearful.

It would have been nice to sit on our bench in front of the cottage with our mugs of coffee and a flapjack each, but it was too windy to enjoy sitting out, so we sat inside. 

And soon, it was time to leave for our date with our former landlady at the Claro Lounge, a relatively new restaurant in Ripon. The building used to be a NatWest bank and is very spacious inside, nicely decorated. Service is friendly, and our food and drinks were good. Of course most of all we enjoyed seeing our friend once more.

My room, as it was before packing and stripping the bed

On Sunday (10 August), my sister-in-law picked us up at around 8:15. Our train in Harrogate was at 9:15, but we always plan generously - you just never know, and we ended up not having a very long wait at the station after all, what with tractors in front of us on the road between Ripon and Harrogate.

It was a pleasant train ride directly to London King's Cross through summerly countryside.

Arriving there with a 7 minute delay meant we had just under an hour to make the short walk to St. Pancras and then start the process of border controls (first the UK one and then the French one), luggage checks and waiting for boarding the Eurostar.

We reached Paris Gare du Nord mid-afternoon and had almost 1 1/2 hours before our TGV from Gare de l'Est to Stuttgart was due. Another uneventful train ride followed; even the re-introduced border control upon entering Germany was quick and smooth: Two very young, very fit looking chaps from German Border Police rushed through our train on long legs, not wanting to see anyone's ID or checking any bags. I wonder how effectively this really stops unwanted people from entering the country, but my boss says it's all about making them feel the risk of being discovered has increased and they rather not risk it. Still, I believe that someone with enough criminal energy will always find a way to avoid being found out.

In Stuttgart, we caught the next possible train to Ludwigsburg. We said good-bye at the station, and I was home at almost precisely 10:00 pm. Phew!

From 14C in Harrogate that morning to 34C in Paris that afternoon to still around 20C in Ludwigsburg at night, we covered three countries and as many climate zones within 13 hours (not 14, since we "jumped" one hour the moment we arrived in France).

My posts will now revert back to the usual weekly reports, plus I have a few book reviews waiting to be written.

My downstairs neighbour always takes care of my plants and mail when I'm away for more than a few days... This time, she managed to let my hydrangea die :-(

Ripon 2025 - Day 11

Friday (8 August) was mostly sunny and bright. It was still very windy, as it had been all week, but warm enough to wear short sleeves under my cardigan, and a rain coat was certainly not going to be necessary.

At 10:30 in the morning, my sister-in-law came to pick us up for the drive to York, where we arrived at the Park & Ride an hour later. It's clever NOT to drive into the city itself, with its many narrow old streets and lack of parking. The P&R is good and not overly expensive; you'll always find a space, and buses into the centre go frequently.

We first had a stroll in the Museums Gardens, which were beautiful. There were of course many people about, but it wasn't too crowded. 

Once we had arranged with my niece (who lives in York) where and when to meet, the three of us went for a drink at Baileys Café not far from the park, and then on to York Mansion House.

It is a beautiful Georgian house, formerly the home of York's Lord Mayor, and still in use for ceremonial aspects of the Mayor's role. Click here to learn more about it.

The Georgian Festival was in full swing, and we spotted several people dressed in Georgian costume - the person at the ticket counter was one of them, but there were others outside in the street as well.

We explored all the rooms open to the public, including the kitchen and larder in the basement, set up as if someone had just left the room, with kitchen tools and (not real) food about.

In one of the upstairs rooms, a rack with Georgian clothes for visitors to try on was set up. One lady had a lot of fun with those and didn't seem to want to leave anytime soon, with her husband and son having retreated to some chairs and just watching her :-D

I put on a wig (very briefly!!) and my arms through the sleeves of one of the dresses, without putting it on fully:

It was then time to meet my niece, and to have a (late and very welcome) lunch - actually, it was an all-day breakfast/brunch place we went to, called rise. They had some very nice dishes; I went for Turkish eggs and had a refreshing mint and lime iced tea.

"Turkish Eggs" were poached eggs on yoghurt with harissa and other spices and herbs as well as bread.

The four of us then walked to the Merchants Adventurers' Hall, a Medieval guild hall with tons of history oozing out of its ancient walls and impressive beams. Click here for more.

Eventually, my niece went home and we made our way back to the P&R. 

You can guess why I took a photo of this sign, don't you :-)

This is for Monica!

York Minster. They now want 20 quid just to get in, unless you live locally.

All went well on the drive back to Ripon until we reached our short stretch of motorway - an accident had happened just after our exit, which resulted in us ending up in a holdup, making the journey longer than expected and having to take a detour along narrow country lanes where there'd been another accident.

But by 6:30 pm, we were at our cottage, and a few minutes later joined our landlord and -lady for cheese & crackers and drinks in their beautiful kitchen next door as a good-bye meal for us, since we were to leave the day after next.

Another great day out, with a combination of places new (to us) and old, spending time with family and friends, good food and drink.

Ripon 2025 - Days 9 & 10

I have no photos for you for Wednesday (6 August) and only a few for Thursday (7 August).

On Wednesday, our friends N & F (N is an old school friend of my late husband, and F is his wife) who had to cancel their originally visit with us last Thursday, arrived just before 10:00 in the morning. We had tea and biscuits in our cottage and caught up with each other for about an hour before walking into town.

At the Cathedral, we wanted to show them the exhibition "Threads through the Cross" which I have mentioned here, but sadly found it had ended the day before - we'd been sure that it was going to go on for quite a while, and that N & F would have really liked it. We wandered round the Cathredral nonetheless and then spent some time at its shop before leisurely making our way to Oliver's Pantry for a spot of lunch.

They left at 2:00 pm, and we each retreated to our rooms for a rest.

Friends S & N who live in Ripon, their garden backing the Ripon Canal, were expecting us at 3:30 pm. We had tea (the others) and homemade elderflower water (me) and biscuits in their garden, with their friend R (whom we had not met before) joining us. It was a nice afternoon, and later S went inside and prepared a lovely salad of watercress and other ingredients, topped with flowers from her garden, a bowl of tomato-mozzarella salad, fresh crisp baguette and olives. For dessert, her husband brought out creamy icecream with fresh raspberries - all very summerly and nice. 

We agreed to go for a walk together afterwards, and along the way N - who is extremely knowledgeable about Ripon's industrial history - pointed out many interesting details to us, mainly to do with the mills and how the water from the river Skell was put to use in the past.

At the One-Eyed Rat, we had beers (the others) and rhubarb G&T (S and myself), and the conversation was free-flowing and covering many different subjects, from serious to silly and back again. However, it was extremely noisy in the pub, and by 10:00 pm I had reached a point where I felt all chatted out and unable to listen any longer. 

My sister and I went home, and so did S, N and R.

Much as I love our friends and really enjoyed spending time with them, it had been a very intense day, and therefore my sister and I decided to make Thursday a quiet one to recover.

It was Market Day, and as last Thursday, we browsed both the stalls as well as some of the shops we had not yet been in. 

For lunch, we went to "Realitea", a small Indian restaurant we'd discovered for ourselves only last year. The food is excellent and the service friendly. The lady who owns it comes out to the tables and asks everyone how they've liked their meal. You can see Sarita's beautiful smile and learn a bit more about this place here.

A rest at the cottage followed, then coffee and a piece of Millionaire's Shortbread before we went for a walk by the river Ure. Part of the path we knew already, part we didn't.

On a pasture with cows, we saw one cow laying on her side well away from the other, even her head on the ground, which is not what cows usually do when they are resting/sleeping/ruminating. We were somewhat concerned but then saw a man approaching the cow (he kept outside the fence) and talking to her. To our relief, we saw the cow lifting her head, so we knew she wasn't dead. We walked a bit further on but saw that the path would take us too far out (and it was already evening by now), so we decided to go back. Maybe ten minutes had passed since we'd first been past the cow, and now as we returned, she was up on her feet, busily licking a tiny calf that had only just been born!!! She'd done it all on her own, with no vet or farmer present, and the little one was trying to get up already, as it should.

A man with two dogs came from the other side of the field. When he passed us, he said "I hear we have another calf!", and he turned out to be a farm hand who'd been checking on the cow about to give birth only an hour or so earlier. He said he was actually not working with the cows but with the machinery, but since his boss was away, he was on "calf duty" that day. 

It was really touching to witness the mother cow with her newborn baby, and I just wish all cows had the chance to be with their little ones as long as possible.

For our evening meal, I heated the two pies we'd bought on the market that morning and made a salad to go with it.