Hi Everyone
This week was one of those special weeks in the year in that it was the Main Contractors ** birthday and also our ** wedding anniversary. Now I would not be so presumptuous (that's a nice word) by telling you the age of the Main Contractor but I thought that as I assume that, like me, you have got at least O level maths, I would set you a fairly simple mental arithmetic test. We were married in 1960 and it was the Main Contractors twenty first birthday three days before our wedding. Ok, I will give a few minutes to work that all out before explaining that this year the day of the Main Contractors birthday and the day of our wedding both fell on the same day, last Sunday. We were quite unusually married on a Sunday as there was no way that the Senior Partner could contemplate closing the Fruit, Vegetable,...............shop on a Saturday even though her only child was getting married. The three course meal at the wedding reception cost my great father in law £2 per guest and we went on our 5 day honeymoon to London in a steam train on a cold wet Sunday evening. We returned home with £91 in our bank account knowing that we had to pay our Solicitor for the house purchase. The invoice that greeted us in our letter box was for £82 so we started our lifelong adventure with just £9 and with empty food cupboards. Fast forward to last Sunday in warm, sunny Madeira when I surprised the Main Contractor with arfternoooon tea at the very posh ( I had to change from my shorts into a pair of long trousers) Reids Palace Hotel on the Tea Balcony overlooking Funchal and the Atlantic Ocean. The cost for the two of us was about the same as the solicitor's fee for the purchase of our house back in 1960. How times have changed.
A few years ago on a holiday in Italy, we found a lovely lakeside family owned cafe. We were having a coffee and sandwich when the owner came over with a pan of very small fish cooking in olive oil. He insisted that we tryed a free sample which proved to be delicious. Years later we were in the same area and eagerly anticipated a return visit. Sadly the family and cafe had been replaced with a new modern cafe probably charging twice the price for half the quality. On a previous visit to Madeira again we found a family owned cafe with outdoor tables and chairs on a cliff high about the sea where we enjoined an almost daily coffee and lovely Portuguese custard tart. Again we looked forward to the same experience but this time found the building converted into a trendy cafe/bar run by a group of young people. I accept that things have to move on but it is sad that old traditional businesses and the wonderful characters that owned them.
Talking how times have changed, when we first started to venture abroad to experience life outside our local area we were warned, "Don't drink the water", "the toilets leave much to be desired", "they don't understand English", " take tablets in case you get a tummy bug", and many other warnings about how much behind these foreigners were behind us. Now after a few days in Madeira, I realise that there are still many things that we have that they don't. They don't have empty shops, charity shops, food banks, shuttered shop windows, lack of public toilets, an almost non existant public transport system, litter, and perhaps most importantly, potholes.
Just a Thought:
I am stuck between the need to save and you only live once but at the end of the day but I would rather have great memories than a full bank account.
My friend used to work in a tea shop but he quit because he thought something was brewing.
Brian
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