A quiet week and a blog takeover

It's a quiet week here in the Nobby and Gail household. Having been entertaining visitors for much of the past month, we have a few days relaxing a home before heading south to England at the weekend.

As is her habit, Gail has been listening to the news too much, and reports of worsening conflict between Israel and the Palestinians prompted her to dig out an old letter from her Grandfather, written in July 1945. My predecessor Bouncing Bertie did once refer to the same letter on his blog, but Gail insists it is worth revisiting.

I'd better let her explain, as this is all a bit above my pay grade.

Gail here: At the end of WW2 my maternal grandfather was posted to Egypt as part of an RAF intelligence unit. My mother, age fourteen, was at boarding school in Yorkshire. When clearing out my parents' house, I uncovered a treasure trove of letters that my grandfather (who died when I was two) had written to my mother from Egypt.

In one letter he describes a visit to the 'Holy Land', and includes the following observations.

"It's a pity there's such ill feeling in that Holy Land and such distinctly opposite views on every subject. The Jews hate the Arabs and the Arabs hate the Jews and there can be no compromise satisfactory to both. If you please one, you fall out with the other, and you are lucky if you do not fall out with both, whatever you do."

What a tragedy that one reads these words nearly eighty years later and feels they could have been written yesterday.

I've included the letter, in three parts, below. If you enlarge the images the close-typed text should be legible. I realise that not all Nobby's fans will have the time or inclination to go through the whole letter, but to anyone with an interest that period, I think it makes for fascinating reading. As well as a telling my mother about a conversation with a Jewish girl, a refugee from what he terms the "Tyranny in Central Europe", he also has much to say about all the delicious food he was enjoying in Egypt! You should of course remember that everyone back in the UK was subject to severe rationing at the time, hence his priceless comment that "It really does worry us and we say imagine them at home with a bit of spam if they are lucky, but what can one do?"

How I wish my grandfather had lived long enough for me to get to know him. 

Nobby will resume normal service on Friday! 

Mothering thoughts in Torridon

Greetings from Torridon, where we're spending a few days, just Gail and I, all by ourselves, 

Sometimes, it's the role of us pups to cuddle up to our humans and patiently listen when they want to talk. 

So here I am, comfy on Gail's lap, watching a superior Ireland rugby team winning against England in Dublin on Saturday evening, and Gail tells me she's thinking about her mother. 

It seemed odd to me that a rugby game prompted these thoughts, but then I learned how Gail's dad took her mother to see Ireland play England at Lansdowne Road when they were on honeymoon in Dublin in 1956, and her mother always said of the occasion "I thought I'd married a quiet man until that day". 

Yesterday, Sunday, was Mother's Day in the UK. Gail took me for for a long and wild walk to the magnificent Coire Mhic Fhearchair.  

Gail's mother once told her that she met Gail's dad at a 'do' at the Nottingham Squash club. He asked her if she would like to join him for a walk in countryside the next day and she thought "what a nice man". And the rest is history. 

Tomorrow it will be five years since Gail's mother died. She says they had an at times 'complicated' relationship. She also says that she treasures a copy of 'Winnie the Pooh' inherited from her mother and inside the book is a label saying it was a prize for 'good conduct' at school.

Apparently Gail herself never won any awards for 'good conduct' and she doesn't suppose I ever will either.

OK, so time to own up. Here's a picture of the remains of a packet of cup-a-soup which I stole from a couple of hikers on Sunday. They were the only other people we met on the whole 8.75 mile walk and they were enjoying a picnic beside the loch pictured above. Gail says the fact they weren't cross about my behaviour does not count as mitigation...