Barcelona again, a 3rd anniversary, dinner at Irene’s, a family trip to La Rioja and remembering Aunty Masha

The 5 of us together at the Márques de Riscal winery in Elciego.
Hi again

Well here I am this Sunday afternoon writing from our room in the Parador in Calahorra in La Rioja region of Spain. The girls are in their room resting as is my Father in his. We are on the awaited family trip to La Rioja. Soon though we may get together to watch the “clasiquísimo” derby as Barcelona will be playing Real Madrid later on this evening. I will probably just about tolerate the match and continue writing my blog as there is a lot to tell this week.

This time last week, Suzy and I were on our way to Barcelona on the AVE as the high speed train is known here. It takes just over 2 hours and since it came into operation many people stopped taking the plane, one of them being me. It was Suzy’s first trip and here is a photo of her with the free sun glasses that came with the Cosmopolitan magazine.

My mission in Barcelona was to attend the CMT international conference and also to site inspect possible locations for a press conference in February. Suzy joined me and we stayed at one of my favourite hotels, 1898 right on the Ramblas and very near the Mercado de la Boquería which we visited twice to buy fruit for ourselves and some amazing chocolates for my Father.
Suzy by one of the fruit stalls at the famous Mercado de la Boquería on Las Ramblas.
There was plenty of time for pleasure so on Sunday night we had dinner, as I do every time I come to Barcelona, with Grainne and with Marcel her son. It was a great evening catching up on the past (well we did go to school together) and on the present.
Suzy and Grainne
There was also time for walking and Suzy and I made our way, of course, to the beach, to the Barceloneta area and along to the Hotel Arts. The temperature was most agreeable with the thermometer reaching the early 20ºs at midday. We went again when we visited Bestial, a great restaurant, which is practically on the beach and which was the location we finally chose for our event in February. Great place!
Suzy and I on the beach in Barcelona.
Barcelona was great, as always. The trip was just slightly dampened by the theft of Julia’s iPhone when we went for dinner on the second night. Julia is an Austrian friend of Susana’s from when they both worked on the Nokia N-Gage tour some years ago. We hardly noticed when a man came up to our table and placed a piece of paper on it. He was asked to leave but later we realised he had stolen Julia’s phone right under our noses and we hadn’t seen him do it. Hopefully the restaurant will be able to claim insurance.

You can see the full set of photos of our trip to Barcelona here on Facebook.

Soon we were home again. On the Thursday I had the Yoigo 3rd anniversary press conference with things to announce so Wednesday was spent working non-stop on last minute details. The conference went really well. We held it at Eco Bar Spa in Paseo Rosales in Madrid. As we were announcing a new tariff of 6 cents per minute, we had built a giant 6 with over 15,000 lego pieces which took 3 days to build. You can see me posing by it with my new red glasses (classy eh? Or not? – not sure yet really) and the rest of the photos here.
Me and the giant lego 6 at the Yoigo press conference on its 3rd anniversary this week.
And this week was also the week we had dinner at Irene’s. Irene is Irene González from the González-Gálvez family, the family I lived with as a student in Spain in the late 70’s and whom I have written about many times recently as we have re-established contact and now see each other for dinner quite often.
Dinner at Irene's, from left to right: me, Gerardo, Vicky, Irene, Tomás
We hadn’t been to Irene’s house before and it’s lovely and cosy and beautifully decorated. Thomas, her husband, did the cooking and got full marks for a great vichyssoise and cod with peppers. We also got to meet their older kids, Paula and Tomás. The small ones, beautiful Celia and Nacho were there too to greet us before going to bed. We were joined, of course, by Irene’s brother, Gerardo and his lovely wife Vicky. Here are some more photos of that great evening. Our next meeting will in February and we look forward to that.

That was on Friday and the next day, yesterday, we were to leave for Calahorra in La Rioja. The most difficult part was getting all of us in the car on time (09.30h) with the luggage. It was mission impossible and it was only achieved at 10.15 with very grumpy girls. Our first stop was just outside Burgos at the famous Hotel Landa Palace. It was too early for lunch so we made do with refreshments. We always stop there on our way to the north and back and love the place for the atmosphere and food.
Oli, Suzy and me at the Landa Palace near Burgos on our way to La Rioja.
A couple of hours later we finally arrived at Calahorra (the vegetable capital of Spain by the way) which is nearly 500km from Madrid. Yesterday’s programme was lunch at the Parador, exploring the town, a walk, a lovely long rest in our rooms and then dinner at La Rana del Moral, recommended to me by a friend at work, Pilar. It was a great recommendation.
The girls and I in Calahorra yesterday.
And today was dedicated to the Márques de Riscal winery in Elciego. I have been there many times but it was new for my Father and Olivia and, in fact, neither the girls nor my Father had ever visited a winery or bodega as they are known here.

The Márqués de Riscal winery is apparently the oldest in La Rioja but it is also famous for its hotel which was built by the Canadian architect, Frank O’Gehry. It is spectacular and very modern, in sharp contrast to its surroundings, which have probably not changed much since the last century.
Frank O'Gehry's Márques de Riscal hotel in Elciego
Elciego, the village where the City of Wine is located, is very pretty and typical of the area with its church and spire and cobbled streets.
The four of us in Elciego
After the visit to the winery and the village, we made our way to the hotel to the table we had reserved at the magnificent 1860 restaurant (1860 was the year the bodega was established). This was perhaps the most significant moment of the weekend’s programme.

You can see the full set of photos of our trip to La Rioja here.

Tomorrow we will be going back to Madrid and both Eladio and Oli will be in a bit of a rush as they have to work in the afternoon. I have a busy week ahead of me but not quite as stressful as last week, thank goodness.

I cannot finish this post without referring to my dear Aunty Masha. Last year today she passed away. She always seemed so eternal to me and was an important reference point in my life, as my Mother’s youngest sister and the maternal family member who was closest to me. She really was a character as you can read about her in my post from last year.

And on that note, I will end this week’s blog post.
Until next time, Masha.

My Father, Charles Courtenay Lloyd and his 90th birthday.

My Father, "Daddy" in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid visiting me in 1979.
Hi again,

On Friday, 1st May, Labour Day, there was something big to celebrate. It was my dear Father, Charles Courtenay Lloyd’s 90th birthday who left England to live with us in Spain some 5 years ago.

My Father is the epitome of the true English gentleman who remains English despite his love of most things "foreign". He is in himself a gentle person who would never hurt a fly.

He was born in Tamworth England in 1919 in a genteel society as the son of an English vicar, my grandfather, John Lloyd, of Welsh extraction and from the island of Anglesy and of course of my grandmother, Dorothy Gertrude Scull a beautiful young pianist from Shropshire.

In short he was born just after the Great War and witnessed in his youth the worst depression in modern history, the Wall Street Crash. When his Father heard of a post with the Imperial Tabacco Company in Bristol through one of his rich parishioners he did not hesitate to remove him from the prestigious Clifton College school jobs in those days were even scarcer than today.

In his spare time my Father went to evening classes to learn languages, his great passion and in his holidays always travelled abroad to places like Brussels or Geneva. Despite having left school early, thanks to his self learning, he gained a place at Cambridge University, at the Church of England patronised Selwyn College to study German and French.

However the war broke out and he had to curtail his studies to join the forces. He did however return later and finish them but adding Scandinavian languages due to his experience during the war and afterwards with Norway. His passion for both the languages and the countries has never ceased. Still today he speaks all 5 of his languages fluently, English, Russian, Norwegian, German, French and latterly Spanish.

He joined the Royal Navy and has still today a love of ships. Apparently it was his Father who urged him to join the Navy rather than the other forces as he thought his life would be somewhat less in danger. My mother always told us that on his first day, in his immaculate lieutenant uniform and in his very early 20’s, he remarked to an older plain sailor who was washing the decks: “the Navy makes a man of you” to which the sailor replied in his broad cockney accent “it makes a ******* monkey of you”. I’m not sure what the Navy during the Second World War made of my Father but it must have made him grow up before his time. To his merit I must add he got a medal from the King of Norway for his role in the liberation of Norway. The news was published in the newspaper at the time in England and I still have the clipping today.

I ought to add that before returning to Cambridge he spent some time in Germany with what was called the Control Commission in Schleswig-Holstein on the border of Denmark, the allied body that was supposed to catch Nazis on the run and help Germany back on its feet. I gather these were very exciting times for him.

After finishing his studies in Cambridge, he became a teacher of Russian under the famous Liza Hill*, or rather Dame Elizabeth Hill, the Professor of Russian at Cambridge University. She was “Aunty Liza” to me and also my brother’s God Mother. Liza had the task of setting up Russian language courses for the armed forces. This was the Cold War and it was obvious the courses were for teaching future spies. The story goes that Liza took him on even though he did not know Russian. She, a very eccentric character, urged him to use the same grammar book as his pupils but to be a few lessons ahead. He took the language learning very seriously and soon became absolutely fluent. At these courses he taught among the likes of Arthur Birse, Winston Churchill's former interpreter in Russia. Here my Father flourished professionally and personally and here he met my Mother, a penniless and homeless refugee princess of Russian origin.

They married very soon and my late brother George and I were born at 62 Milton Road in 1955 and 1957. Those were very happy days for my parents.
Cambridge 1961, the four of us.
Soon the courses finished and my Father found work, once again teaching Russian but this time at the prestigious RAF College in Cranwell, a little village in Lincolnshire. My parents bought a small bungalow on one acre of land in the nearby village of Ruskington and my Father would bicycle to work on the flat Lincolnshire roads. This was where I spent part of my happy childhood until the age of 7 when we moved to Bradford in West Yorkshire where my Father got a post as a language teacher at Bradford Grammar School. Here he taught until retirement.

My Father taught me to look on the bright side of life and to enjoy the small things in life. I remember going with him to Manchester, that dark industrial town in the north of England, to the dentist, Mr. Car, a friend of my parents. I pointed out how ugly a street was and my Father said that he always looked for the beautiful things and not the ugly ones and that very often there was something beautiful to be found in ugly things. I have practised his philosophy nearly always and it has held me in good stead.

My Father is also someone who has lost nearly everyone dear to him in life and yet he stoically goes on, reading the newspaper, ordering books, going for his walks, enjoying his food and all the good things in his life.

When he was young, he lost his brother Raymond who died of polio at the age of 15 before the times of penicillin. That must have been a terrible blow and I gather my Grand mother never got over it.

His dear and very jolly Father died of a stroke in his early 70’s and later his Mother, in her late 70’s. That same year he lost his wonderful sister Gloria, my favourite Aunt, who died in an air crash with her husband, Uncle Derek and their 3 small children, Jacqueline aged 12, Michael aged 9 and Anthony aged 7. This was perhaps one of the most terrible things that ever happened to him and us. My mother told me that when he put the receiver down after that terrible phone call, he said “I only have you (as in our family) left”.

Many years later on October 1st 1999, my dear Mother died aged 79 of cancer at the Bradford Royal Infirmary. I still do not know how he went on without her and I know he misses her to this day, yet still he goes on stoically enjoying life. Maybe the picture of a fawn above his bed when he was a small child with the caption “be a good beast, suffer in silence” has something to do with it.

The next blow was my dear brother George who died, of cancer too, not long afterwards on 15th May 2001 in London at a hospice called Eden Hall which is a terrible name for such an institution.

4 years later, finally, my Father came to live with us and left his native England for Spain, a country he was very familiar with from our “Callosa days” in the 70’s. He was then in his mid 80’s.

Last October we also lost Sanya, George’s late wife in unfortunate circumstances and then just one month later, my Mother’s youngest sister, Masha, our impossible and amazing Aunt and sister-in-law whose death represented the end of an era.

Now my Father has only me left and I only have him left. They have all gone and we mourn them but we both have another wonderful family in Eladio, Susana and Olivia. Life goes on and thus we celebrated lovingly his 90th birthday on Friday as you can see in the photos I posted on Facebook.

The day started with a family breakfast in the dining room with the best finery we have. Here we gave him his presents, chocolates and a bonsai plant (the music centre is coming later!) and a special 90th birthday card I had asked my friend Amanda to bring specially from England.

My father enjoying his 90th birthday breakfast on Friday 1st May.
Lunch was to be much more important as we took him out for a birthday lunch to a new place we have discovered in Boadilla called De Brasero y Puchero with all his favourite things on the menu. The “piece de resistance” was the home made birthday cake we secretly gave to the waiter on arrival. A good time was had by all I think to judge by his comment at the end of Friday when he said “thank you for a lovely day”.

So happy 90’th birthday Daddy. Thank you for everything. May we all look and feel so young in heart, mind and body when we reach your age. I look forward to celebrating your 100th and have already had a look at the page at Buckingham Palace where you apply for a birthday message from the Queen!

Your loving daughter

Masha
* Liza Hill was a real character and I think had much influence over my parents, my Father specially. She was half English and half Russian and was born in Russia. She was the eternal spinster who finally took the plunge in her late 80's and married a Yugoslav she had known for many years. Amazingly and as a complete coincidence my Father bumped into them on their honeymoon at the bus station in Madrid!! I mean bussing your way round Spain in your late 80's as an Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University is extremely eccentric. Not long after, Liza divorced her husband as she probably could not tolerate sharing her life being so used to spinsterhood. More on Liza Hill in future posts.

The week I found my cousin in Canada, some long lost friends in the USA, the week that Christmas came and many other things.

Preparations for Christmas were early this year.
Hi again

This week, the week after Aunty Masha’s funeral, has had me thinking more about my family, my Mother’s family and just how few of us are left. Of the 6 brothers and sisters, there were only 4 off springs, possibly because only 4 had children as 2 of the sisters, Olga and Dorothea (Dara) were nuns. These were, Andre, son of Alexander (Sasha), Sophie (Zuka) daughter of Nicolas, Alexander (Sasha), son of Maria (Masha) and George and I, son and daughter of Helene (Lena) – my brother George died in 2001.

I have always been in contact with Sasha who now lives in Spain and also with Zuka who has lived most of her adult life in Yorkshire. However I only ever met Andre once when my Mother and I went to Montreal in 1978 (when I was 21) to meet her brother Alexander (Sasha) for the first time since they parted in Germany in 1945. That was some meeting. When my Uncle Sasha died in 1987, we lost touch with the family. I had googled Andre occasionally but got nowhere until this last week. I wrote and got an immediate reply about which I am very excited. Andre is the only child of the Lieven children to carry on that name. I wonder if he realises that.

This year has been about finding people from my past and so again, thanks to Internet, more concretely LinkedIn, I found Rosa and Angel, our friends from when we first lived in Madrid. Rosa worked with me at Defex, my first place of work and hers too. We were employed as bilingual secretaries and went through a very long process before being taken on. We were going through all the interviews but not once were we told what the company did. When Rosa and I arrived at the offices in the post Madrid business district to sign our contract we wondered what the line of business could be. Rosa wondered whether it was pornography! Amazingly enough it turned out to be the export of weapons, or “defence material” as it was described to us. I will never forget a Señor Ibañez telling us that it was just like selling cars. He asked us whether we had a problem with that. Our morals at the time were less important than finding a full time job, so we just meekly said “no”.

Rosa, of Cuban American origin, and I worked side by side for a few years and were also neighbours. Her husband Angel taught Maths at a Madrid University and got on well with Eladio. But Rosa missed her family in the United States and very soon they decided to return to New York. I only ever saw her once since they left but have never forgotten her. She organised the ceremony of our wedding and was an essential part of my life. We did see Angel again occasionally when he would visit his cousin in Madrid but the last time was over 15 years ago. As with Andre, I wrote to Angel and got an immediate reply with which I am thrilled. It is wonderful to find old friends.

This week has brought bad news again too. On Thursday my niece Marta (on Eladio’s side) rang to say her husband, Fernando, more commonly known as Ministro had lost his Father early that morning. It was not unexpected as that wretched illness cancer had slowly been consuming him for some time. I’m so sorry Minis. I know how you are feeling and my thoughts are with you and your family.

Then the following day, Friday, we got the dreaded phone call we were expecting from José Antonio to announce that Dolores’ Mother, Merche, had passed away that afternoon. She has been suffering for a long time and this was now to be the end of her suffering. However she leaves behind, 4 orphans, Mercedes, Dolores, Esther and Cristina. They already lost their Father some years ago and will be feeling very lost. My heart goes out to them.

The girls have been ill this week with pharyngitis and a nasty cold which actually means they have been a lot at home. Also as this is a bank holiday weekend, for the Spanish Constitution and the Immaculate Conception it has been very much a family weekend.
My ill girlies, Oli and Suzy (in pink)
As we have had a lot of time on our hands this bank holiday weekend, we decided that Christmas should come early this year. Also because Eladio and I will be off to India on Boxing Day, we wanted a bit more time to enjoy the decorations. So up went the tree, last years Ikea lights and lots of mobile musical trees and Father Christmases I couldn’t resist buying at the Christmas market in the Plaza Mayor. Of course, to this we added the lovely decorations we had bought in Stockholm recently.
The Christmas tree.
Talking about India, we are now a little wary or worried about our upcoming trip of a lifetime. So, should we go or shouldn’t we? Well, from a materialistic point of view, maybe we should as we have already forked out quite a bit. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of tension between Pakistan and India, so it’s anyone’s guess. I vote we go, but be cautious right up to the last minute.
I would hate to have to cancel as that would be a bit like the straw that broke the camel’s back in our spate of bad luck. I think we will go in the end but am conscious we are risking it a bit.

Christmas is also creeping up on me at work where I have 3 events left to go out of 4. Last week I organised a press lunch for the key journalists on the occasion of Yoigo’s 2nd anniversary but as it was already December, there was a Christmas touch to the occasion too. We organised a proper “birthday” with gas filled balloons decorating the ceiling and we gave the journalists a bag of sweets as a good bye present. Next week will be the employee’s party and the following week the bloggers and then the children’s party. I also have to do all the gifts and the online Christmas card. So I am very busy on the work front.
The balloons at the company's 2nd birthday
The bag of "birthday" sweeties
Meanwhile I have to do a horrible test at the Montepríncipe Hospital on Tuesday afternoon called a colonoscopy. I won’t go into what it’s about as I’m sure most readers will know what it is. The worst part is the preparations, 3 days of protein only diet and then some awful liquid to be taken.

On the subject of hospitals, Eladio and I went to visit Zena, our Ukranian cleaning lady who has just been operated at the Hospital Clínico San Carlos. She has a tumour in her cheek and will now have to have chemotherapy treatment. That was a depressing thing to do this weekend. We hope she gets better soon.

Finally this has been the week when I have begun to think about writing a book. What book you might say? Well it has to be about my Mother and her family. I have had encouragement from my best friend Amanda who offers to be my editor. Thanks darling. So here you have me thinking the whole time how it should be. It will probably be the story of 4 generations in history, about my maternal Grandmother, my Mother, me and finally my girls, Suzy and Oli. The how and when is now the subject of my thoughts. Suzy made the obvious question by asking me who would buy it. She’s right of course, probably very few people, but then the object is not to write a bestseller, but to record the whole story for my children and for the generations to come.

And on that note of self questioning, I leave these pages again until next week,

Cheers
Masha

Aunty Masha laid to rest, a Russian funeral and the story of how Spain became a part of our lives and how I came to live here.

Bolulla, the village where Aunty Masha bought a house in 1973 and where it all started.
Hi again

I last left you with the news of Aunty Masha’s death. The funeral, as dictated in Spain has to take place almost immediately and it was to be on the Sunday. Luckily Sasha arranged it for 3 pm so we could drive up on time. It was to be held at the funeral parlour (Tanatorio) in Villajoyosa, a lovely little town in between Alicante and Benidorm.

The Spanish coast is usually a happy place in good weather and of course that area of Spain saw my beginnings in this country, of which I have happy memories. But it was the end of November and it drizzled all day and was dark and gloomy.

I reflected all through the day on how Aunty Masha brought us all here and how it was both fitting but sad that she should die here, so far from her family, all of whom are buried in different places; her Father in Sofia, her Mother in Ruskington (the small town in Lincolnshire where I lived as a child and near Cranwell, the famous Royal Air Force College where my Father taught Russian in the Cold War), her brother Alexander (Sasha) in Montreal, her sister Olga in Sofia, her sister Dorothea (Dara) in New York and her sister and my Mother (Helene or Elena) Lena in Bradford. As Sasha reflected at the funeral, this is what the Bolshevik Revolution did to the Lieven family.

Many times in my blog I have mentioned the fact that it is thanks to Aunty Masha that I came to live in Spain. So now I think is the time to tell that story.

In the early 70’s and towards of the end of the Franco dictatorship (he died in 1975), my Aunty, inspired by Tony, the boyfriend of a student of hers at the University of East Anglia came to Spain, with my Mother, Lena, and the two of them bought a house. Aunty Masha’s was in a delightful but very backward tiny village called Bolulla . It cost under 500 pounds which was an absolute song at the time. It was nearly a ruin and there was even a donkey living in the front room!! My Mother bought one for just a bit more in nearby Callosa de Ensarria , a slighty larger town. The idea being to be separate and independent from her sister and also on a bus route as my parents didn’t drive! I often used to hitchhike the 17km to Benidorm with my brother George and friends. Of course, you couldn’t do that today. This area was very rural and agricultural (oranges mostly) and in sharp contrast to the increasing tourism on the nearby coast. Yes, the Swedish and English tourists had come and wore bikinis and even tangas and package tourism was taking off but rural and sleepy Callosa and Bolulla remained untouched by this “contamination” as they still do today. They have not changed much in these 30 odd years. We of course, an odd Anglo Russian family were very much the subject of their conversations and the object of their eyes whenever they saw us around the village.

We spent summer after summer there from 1973 through to just after I got married in 1983. We enjoyed the Spanish culture, the climate and the gastronomy. We would make lovely meals of local tomatoes, local wine and ham and fresh bread. My parents began to learn the language. It was to be their 6th. My Father’s languages were English, Norwegian, German, French and Russian. My Mother’s languages were Russian, Bulgarian, German, French and English. Spanish was not entirely new to my Mother. As a teenager she had tried to learn what she thought was Spanish from a grammar book she picked up at home. When she recited a few sentences proudly to her Father, he laughed and said it was Italian. Apparently the front cover was missing!

It was not easy to learn Spanish in Callosa. My parents didn’t really realise at the beginning that the language of the village and area was not Castillian Spanish but Valenciano, a dialect of Catalán, totally different. My Mother found out the hard way when on the French border, returning with my Aunt to England by car (we always travelled by car to Spain and back because it was cheaper) that first summer they entered a bar for a coffee and a break in their journey. She asked the barman for an aspirin and explained that she had a headache and used the expression “mal de cap” which is in fact Valenciano. He looked at her and said “¿Quiere decir dolor de cabeza Señora?” / Do you mean you have a headache? That was when my Mother realised the difference and hurried to relearn. They both learned the language pretty well. So did my Aunt but with very bad grammar, right up until she died.

I took some time to learn the language. I had no need to as I was always accompanied by my student friends from England; Issy, Janet, Amanda, Andy, Sophie, Jan, Diana, …. But in 1975 I suddenly had a need too. I met a young Spaniard I soon fell in love with. He was a medical student and an only son from an even more backward village, Tárbena, some miles further up the road from Bolulla. At the beginning we spoke French which neither of us was very good at. I returned to England at the end of that summer determined to learn Spanish. By December I was completely fluent. The relationship grew and I became enamoured with Spain, so much so that when I started university, after the very first term I changed subjects; from Theology to Hispanic Studies. That was the beginning.

The relationship did not last. I was not popular with the very influential and bossy mother, whose wish it was for her son to be the doctor of their village. She went all out to break the union, intercepting our letters from the local post man and even locking up her son for a whole summer in his room.

I came out of the relationship scathed but I had learned a whole new language, Spanish, that marvellous language of Cervantes. Part of my degree at Nottingham University was a year in Madrid as a teacher at a Secondary School in Moratalaz, Instituto Rey Pastor. There I met Dolores who is now my sister-in-law. She was a young English teacher at the time who had quite recently married José Antonio (Eladio’s beloved brother). Dolores took me under her wing and mothered me during my year in Spain. Thanks to her I went to live with Pili Gálvez and Gerardo González where I was supposed to give English lessons to their children in return for my keep. As you will read in this entry, we went on to be friends for life.

The González Galvez family in Galapagar, summer 1979

After my year in Spain I returned to do my finals. My plans for the future were vague. I knew I didn’t want to go straight to London to find an office job as most graduates would do. I wanted to explore the world. Portuguese was part of my studies in the last year and I took it really seriously. Finally I decided I wanted to go to Brasil. There I would teach English to make a living. Río, of course was my destination.

However, I never went to Brasil. The summer after finals, 1981, I met Eladio who is now my husband and to whom I have been married now for 25 years. Eladio was Dolores’ oldest brother-in-law. He was a priest and at the time 35 whilst I was 23. We actually met in their flat in Madrid very briefly. He then returned to his home in León and I went on to spend the holiday in Callosa, yes Callosa, with Dolores, José Antonio and their 2 small children, Miguel and Sara. We had asked Eladio to join us but more out of politeness than anything else.

Dolores, José Antonio with Miguel and Sara, July 1980, just before Eladio appeared on the scene.

So when Eladio turned up in Callosa a few days later, the wind was taken out of our sails. The children fell ill and so we took to going to the beach alone and would spend hours and hours talking about education, the differences between Spain and England and many other topics I can’t remember now. That was at the Vimi bar on the Playa de Poniente in Benidorm where Aunty Masha eventually bought a flat and where she has lived in recent years right up until her death last week. We went back there in 2006 with Aunty Masha as you can read here

The first photo of Eladio and I ever taken - Guadalest in July 1980, the summer we fell in love

I think it took a week to fall in love. All thoughts of going to Brasil went out of my head. After an amazing summer together where we visited Portugal, the south of Spain and Morocco in his little white Renault 5, we parted in September for our last year of singledome. The following summer, after almost daily correspondence, I went to Spain to live. We went to live “in sin”, as it was known in those days, to a little pad in Saconia, once again found by my sister-in-law Dolores. This would have been a complete scandal in Spain in those days so we kept the fact a secret. Eladio left the Church, took state exams to become a state teacher and in 1983 we were married. Susana was born one year later to the day of conception and Olivia the following year in 1985.

So, yes, it is thanks to Aunty Masha that I came to Spain and also thanks to her that I met Eladio. It’s funny too that we fell in love in Callosa, the town where my Mother bought her house in 1973.

During the funeral in nearby Villajoyosa, I reflected on how we first came to Spain and how my life had developed since then. Aunty Masha used to take us to the fiestas in Villajoyosa. I never imagined her funeral being there.

The funeral took place in the non denominational chapel of the funeral parlour. Eladio, my Father and I arrived just a few moments before it began. Here we greeted Sasha, my cousin and Aunty Masha’s only son, his wife, Svetlana, Pepe the banker from Callosa and his wife Reme, Zhana, Aunty Masha’s Bulgarian nurse who looked after her for 10 months until she died, Edmund, a young Kosovar neighbour who looked after them both and then a sprinkling of Russian and Ukrainian people Aunty Masha had befriended when they started coming to the Costa Blanca in search of a better life. These included the 95 year old Baroness Irina of Baltic origin, quite a character.

The shock came when we walked into the chapel, candle in hand as Russian tradition dictates. The coffin was open, as it was, of course, to be a Russian Orthodox funeral, as befitted the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. There lay my dear thin and wrinkled Aunt, white and covered in a special sheet and head band with Church Slavonic lettering on it. All I could do was cry. My Father was next to me as was Eladio. But at that moment the person I needed most was Sasha. We stood together next to her coffin hugging tightly and crying openly. We were saying goodbye to his Mother, to my favourite Aunt and to the last of the 6 brothers and sisters and felt like orphans. It was the end of an era and we were the only family witnesses.

After the funeral officiated by a bearded priest, as the religion dictates, we headed off in a cavalcade of cars to the cemetery in Alfaz del Pi, a pretty little town just off the road from Benidorm to Callosa. There we laid my Aunt to rest. The niche is number 11.I can’t forget it.

From Alfaz del Pi we all drove to a bar in Calpe, funnily enough called “The German Bar”. This was where the send off was to take place in true Russian tradition. Here we found a table groaning with zakuski (Russian hors d’oeuvres which my Father said were probably more German than Russian). At a funeral send off, it is supposed that the deceased is with us and in fact there was a big photo of my Aunty throughout. We sat round a huge table and I counted the nationalities; Russian, Ukrainian, German, Baltic, Spanish, English, Kosovar and Bulgarian. Sasha made a wonderful speech about his Mother’s life, including her escape from Bulgaria in the late 50’s. As we ate we found out that at a funeral send off there can be no meat and no dessert. Zhana whispered to me that my Aunt hated fish and loved cakes so would not have exactly enjoyed the meal. The funeral had been sad and the send off was a sort of relief. I felt humbled sitting next to Zhana, my Aunt’s nurse, for all she had done for my Aunt and for what I had not done.

The "send off" in Calpe, the table full of Russian zakuski.

Zhana, Aunty Masha's Bulgarian friend and nurse who cared for her up until her death.

It was too late to return to Madrid, so my Father, Eladio and I drove to our flat in Santa Pola to spend the night where it was bitterly cold. The next day we could not get away faster and left for Madrid as soon as we woke up.

So, yes, this trip, was one trip down memory lane.

Goodbye again Aunty Masha and thank you for buying that house in Bolulla the Summer of 1973.

Masha

Goodbye Aunty Masha! The Lieven story, the end of an era. My obituary.

Masha Lieven, Paris 1959 just after defecting from communist Bulgaria

Her Serene Highness Princess Maria von Lieven, more commonly known as “Aunty Masha” was born in Sofia on 21st September 1927. She was the beloved sister of my Mother, Elena and the youngest of 6 brothers and sisters; Alexander (Sasha), Olga, Dorothea (Dara), Helene (Lena), Nicolai (Kolya) and Maria (Masha). She was vivacious, extremely beautiful, glamorous, a total adventurer, somewhat bohemian, a great saver of people in distress, a lover of life but also a very unlucky woman. She was the Mother of Sasha, her only son but also of a daughter who died one week after birth in Germany many years ago and whom, of course, she never forgot. I just wish now I could remember her name. I think it was Sophie, after her Mother.

Aunty Masha died yesterday, 28th November 2008 at a hospital in Villjoyosa in Alicante in her beloved Spain at 06.05 am of acute anaemia and probably of a lack of will to live as she suffered from that dreadful disease Alzheimer. I was given the news by a distraught Sasha on the phone when I was in the middle of a conference in Stockholm and I have not been able to get her out of my head since. Needless to say there has been little joy in my trip with Eladio to Sweden this week.

Maria Lieven (Masha is the diminutive of Maria in Russian) was born in Sofia into a Russian aristocratic family which became poor when they fled Russia at the end of the Revolution. Her Father, my Grand Father, Prince Andrei Lieven, became a priest and the upbringing of the 6 Lieven children was very strict and very religious. My Mother, Lena, had the misfortune of being the black sheep in the family because of her rebellious nature and was sent off to France at the age of 6 to study. The next time she saw her parents was at the age of 11 when she returned. I always remember her saying that the day she did she found her last letter to them crumpled in the waste paper basket.

Aunty Masha, on the other hand, was the darling of the family and the only one who was spoiled. My grandmother, Sophie Stachovich, simply did not know how to run a house hold and bring up children as these things had always been done by servants back in Mother Russia. But probably when Masha was born she had either softened or her patience had run out.

Elena and Masha became thick friends upon Lena’s return from France and this friendship and closeness remained all their lives. So close were they that Lena became her surrogate Mother as their Mother on her deathbed asked Lena to “look after” Masha when she was gone. Lena fulfilled this promise until the day she died.

They were very close and adored each other but I must admit they had their bad moments too and could sometimes fight like cat and dog. I remember Aunty Masha always winning. She had a much stronger character than my Mother.

Masha was strong and brave and nothing frightened her. World circumstances marked her life though. The Lieven family fled Russia to escape the communists. They went to Bulgaria and life was difficult but peaceful until the Second world war broke out and the Russians came and Bulgaria became communist. Elena, Sasha and Nicolas got out and became refugees in Germany. Dara had already gone to London to become a nurse. After the war each of them went a different way; my Mother to London, Dara to Canada from where she eventually moved to the USA, Sasha to Canada and Nicolas to Paris.

My Mother said goodbye to her parents at their house in Sofia in 1944 at the age of 24 and never again saw her adored Father Andrei. The war and communism tore the family apart forever.

Masha stayed at home in Bulgaria as she was only 15 as did Olga who by then had become a nun. Olga remained in Bulgaria all her life and died just a few years ago as the Mother Superior of the Russian Orthodox Convent in Sofia. I never met her. The sisters, however, did meet once in 1990 as old women who had last met when they were in their teens and 20’s.
The 4 sisters reunited as published in the Telegraph and Argus in 1991 from left to right, Masha, Olga, Lena and Dara who also became a nun
But this story is about Aunty Masha. When the war broke out, my brave Aunt, at the age of 15, left home in secret and went to Yugoslavia to fight for Tito! My Mother always said she did that on high heels (because of her beauty). She soon returned to Sofia and after the war was the only one of the 6 to remain at home. She took a degree in engineering, as a surveyor (is that really possible?) at Sofia University, but never used this knowledge. Unsurprisingly she became an actress and actually she was very good at it. She married another actor, Boris Manov, a Bulgarian with whom she bore a son, Sasha. Sasha was born at the wrong time and place. This was communist Bulgaria in the 50’s.

Meanwhile, my Mother, was doing her “refugee apprenticeship” in London to get residency and this consisted in working as a cleaner for 2 years before she could be allowed to have a “proper” job. Apparently the hospital she worked at was full of other Eastern European poverty stricken princesses too. My Mother sent nearly everything she earned to her parents and sister in poor and lacking communist Bulgaria. She always told me she knew London very well as, in order to save money, she went everywhere on foot.

Masha’s other brothers and sisters were all “safe” in the west and she wanted to be there too. But it was nearly impossible to leave a communist country in those days. Masha’s marriage went sour as Boris began to drink. Eventually she found a way of sending Sasha to the west. He was sent to Paris. She soon followed illegally by defecting and risked her life to be reunited with Sasha in Paris in 1959. It was very difficult for her to settle down and they lived like nomads, eventually ending up in Germany.

Another wrong partnership, this time to “Zvonka”, the wrong type of Yugoslav, sent her looking for escape and I well remember Aunty Masha and Sasha arriving homeless and penniless at our house in Bradford in 1968 with just two suitcases. Between them they knew quite a few languages (Russian, German, French, Serbian and Bulgarian) but not English.

They settled in England and Sasha who was 14 at the time soon learned English and studied well and ended up with a degree at Edinburgh University in various languages. He speaks them all perfectly, unlike his Mother who spoke them all pretty badly except Russian and Bulgarian. She did, however, have an amazing knack of making herself understood to anyone of any nationality.

Through my parents, Aunty Masha got a job as a teacher of Russian, first at my school, St. Joseph’s College and latterly at the University of East Anglia. This was probably the happiest period of her life. Here she met another wrong partner, Denton Burkinshaw, an apparently decent enough Englishman but just not the person for her. He liked her exoticism but also expected her to behave like an English housewife, which, of course, was never possible.

Those were the Norwich days. Here Masha came into her own and flourished. At the UEA there was a very famous international Russian course every year where my parents and Aunt taught every summer. I would go along for the ride and in fact I was probably there every year from the age of 11 until my late 20s when Susana and Olivia were born. I loved going. We used to stay at the residences on the campus and made so many friends. I remember Issy, Andy, Sophie, Janet, Pasquale, the course Director, Tony Cross, the course secretary, Beryl and a host of other people.

At these 3 week courses Masha would run and put on the course concert on the last night every year. She single-handedly created a first class Russian choir out of 100 unknown people not one of who was a professional singer. She would put on superb sketches and the actress in her would bloom and she looked magical and beautiful on the stage as the audience applauded wildly.

Those were also the days of Callosa and Bolulla and our Spanish summers. In 1973 Masha bought a ruin of a house for a few hundred pounds in Bolulla, a small village in the mountains of Alicante. My mother bought a slighter bigger place in nearby Callosa. We would spend every summer there and take all our friends. Those were very happy times. We all learned Spanish and fell in love with Spain. It is because of Aunty Masha I live here now. But that’s another story.

Just around the time Aunty Masha was going to retire, Denton announced, right out of the blue, that he wanted a divorce. This destroyed my Aunt. She really loved him I think, in her own way and certainly could not envisage retirement on her own. She retired in Spain and lived alone in a small flat overlooking the sea in Benidorm. I think she couldn’t take the loneliness and slowly went to seed.

She had one moment of joy at this time when she visited Russia in 2003, for the first time in her life even though she was a native Russian. She went to an event together with my Father, organised to celebrate the life of the Lieven family, called “The Lieven Readings”. My Aunty Valya, Nicolas’ wife, also attended. There she was wined and dined as a true Russian aristocrat and visited some of the mansions which had once belonged to the family.
Aunty Masha (in blue) at the Lieven readings in Moscow 2003, my Father is on the far right
She became a little unbalanced but that’s not surprising after the life she had led. She would stay with us at Christmas sometimes. We would visit her too in Benidorm every now and again when we would revisit Callosa and Bolulla together and have lunch at Algar.
In Callosa in 2006 on one of our visits to see Aunty Masha, with my Father and I.
But slowly that dreadful disease Alzheimer crept up on her and last Christmas she wanted to return home just after arriving. We saw her again in August and she was in a bad way. However the twinkle in her eye was still there and she knew immediately who we were and switched seemlessly between Russian, Bulgarian, English and Spanish! As she walked with us to the lift she told me not to forget her. That tore my heart. In September I sent her some flowers for her birthday and the nurse, Zhania, a wonderful Bulgarian lady who looked after her night and day right up until her death, God bless her, rang and Aunty Masha thanked me for the flowers in a very confused state.

I have been living with the threat of Sasha’s phone call and it came on Thursday lunchtime. She had been taken into hospital with acute anaemia. I agreed with Sasha we would go this Sunday to see her for one last time. However that was not to be as he rang yesterday morning, to say she had taken her final breath just after 6 am. Now we will be going, but to the funeral.

It is very sad as her death, to quote my cousin Zuka, Nicolas’ daughter, pointed out yesterday, symbolises the last of the family, the end of an era. Now they are all gone and all we can do is mourn.

Goodbye darling Aunty Masha. I loved you, you know that. You were a difficult woman but you were my beautiful young Aunt from abroad who had been an actress and spoke broken English. You took us in your old cars all over Europe and life was an adventure. I just wish your life had been a happier adventure. However you lived it to the full and the Aunty Masha I will remember is the one on the stage at Norwich in her high heels and evening dress, the centre of my world.

Baby Masha

A trip to Stockholm, India’s 9/11 and another death in the family.

The Christmas market in Gamla Stan where I bought some Cloudberry jam for my Father (later confiscated at the airport:-()
Hello again

This week was supposed to be fun.

It started off with lunch with Roberto at La Txitxarreria on Monday where we gossiped about our days at Nokia and caught up with each other’s lives.

On Wednesday 27th November Eladio and I set off for Stockholm to attend the annual communications conference which was to be all day Thursday and Friday morning. Eladio meanwhile would be preparing his Uned (Open Universty) tutorials or exploring the town and we would have some free time together before returning on Saturday afternoon.

We had both been to Stockholm before so there was no rush to see the tourist sights. As we arrived it was snowing which was great and it was not too cold, just above zero.
Snow on arrival at Arlanda airport.
We were staying at a conference hotel called the Quality Globe Hotel outside town. It is part of the Globen City complex, the “Globe” being Stockholm’s biggest building for sports and other events. While we were there it was hosting the International Horse Show. The building is quite unique and is actually the biggest round building in the world.
The famous Globe
As soon as we had unpacked we took a taxi and hit the town to explore the lovely streets of Gamla Stam that we already knew.
Here we walked up and down the old streets and into the squares and eventually found a little place for dinner.

We actually had a lot of bad luck with restaurants throughout our stay as most of them were always fully booked or the service was extremely slow. In fact on our last night, after 5 attempts at finding a free table at a restaurant we eventually got one at F12 where I had been with journalists on a trip with Nokia a few years ago for some music phone. Mónica and Anne will certainly remember. Here we asked for the “tasting menu” but only when we were on miniature course 4 did we find out that the whole procedure was going to last 3.5 hours! We kept complaining about the slowness until, too tired to fight any more, and halfway through the dinner, we asked for the bill. The management reacted amazingly and had us feeling a bit bad as they refused to charge us. It was quite an experience.

The joy of our stay in Stockholm was soon cut short when we learned about the Mumbai massacre which unfolded in front of our eyes as we turned on CNN on Wednesday night. The massacre is still going on. In what is turning out to be India’s 9/11, it seems two dozen gunmen, possibly linked to Pakistan, have attacked and brought to a standstill, India’s financial capital, a city of 18 million inhabitants and also home to the famous Bollywood. They have attacked some 9 locations including two 5 star hotels, a famous tourist café and a Jewish centre. As I am writing 155 are reported dead and over 327 injured. The Taj Mahal Hotel, one of India’s most famous and a landmark in Bombay is at the heart of the attacks. These attacks are shocking the world as is their intention. Terrorism continues and becomes more sophisticated and difficult to beat.
The Taj Mahal at the heart of the attack
We are going to India in December for our 25th anniversary and now we are a little scared. Scared is what I imagine the whole world is right now. How and when is it going to end?

The conference on Thursday began really well. In fact it was one of the best corporate conferences I have every attended. Maybe it’s because the Swede’s are good at organising.

However at lunch time, as I tell in my next post, I got a call from Sasha to say my poor Aunty Masha had been taken into hospital with acute anaemia and was not expected to live. I agreed with him we would visit her on Sunday after our return. The news was not good.

I carried on as best I could and continued with the conference. In the evening there was a dinner which I was hoping to skip but when I saw I was sitting on the table of the Global Head of Communications I decided otherwise. She turned out to be lovely and the evening was great, as was the show.

The next day, however, I got the phone call from Sasha to say dear Aunty Masha had already died. I felt so sad and so far away. I tried to contact my Father, I contacted my second cousin Masha in Paris and of course, my first cousin, Zuka. And, as usual in these circumstances, I rang Amanda, my best friend in England who I knew would want to know as Aunty Masha was part of her childhood also. But that story is in my next post.

I could no longer concentrate on the conference and just made a quick appearance at the end to say goodbye and give my excuses.

Then there was the rest of the day to get through. So we spent the afternoon in down town Stockholm trying to enjoy ourselves, buying Scandinavian Christmas objects, but Aunty Masha was forever in my mind.

So this morning we went straight to the airport from the hotel and waited there for this flight, the flight I am writing this post on, the flight that would take us home to Madrid.

It just seems that life is bringing a spate of bad luck recently. I do so hope it will end soon. Tomorrow we will leave home early in the morning to go to Altea for the funeral at 3 pm and so say our good byes to my Aunt.

Goodbye Stockholm, I wish it had been better. I just wish there had been no Mumbai massacre and that there had been no fatal call from Sasha.

I wish, I wish.

Masha
PS here is the full set of photos of our trip to Stockholm posted on Facebook

So many things going on. Santa Pola, Aunty Masha, a trip down memory lane, lunch with Carmen Cafarel, bitten by mosquitoes, just 4 days to go,

Hello again.

Sorry I haven’t written since the anniversary weekend in León but I have been so busy and, as predicted, there will be no internet until we move to the new house. Once again I am writing from Fátima’s house.

So much has been going on. After León, Eladio, my Father and I went to Santa Pola to our beach flat for a short holiday before the removal. We had a very relaxing time, apart from Eladio, who suddenly decided to paint the flat. It was hard work but the result is very pleasing.

We took the time to look up my “famous” Aunty Masha who lives nearby in Benidorm and whom we hadn’t seen for about 3 years. Aunty Masha is my Mother’s beloved younger sister who was once an actress (she is still beautiful with her whitish blonde curls and plastic hip at 79) and ran away from here home in Bulgaria to fight for Tito in Yugoslavia at the age of 15. She also escaped the communists and made her way to France in the late 50's. She is living history but a bit too large for life. It is thanks to my Aunt that I am now living in Spain but that story will have to be told another day. The short version is that she bought a small house in a village in the mountains of the costa blanca around 30 odd years ago and that from then on I spent all my youth years holidaying in that area where I fell in love several times and of course learned the language.

The 4 of us went on a trip down memory lane and visited Callosa the town or pueblo where my Mother bought a house in Calle de las Flores (see picture of my Father and me). We wandered down the winding streets (see picture of my Aunt, my Father and me) which haven’t changed since we first went. Then we went to have lunch at Algar, a beautiful and very special place – a sort of oasis in a valley of orange and lemon orchards famous for its waterfall. On the way back we went to have a coffee at the very bar Eladio and I started our romance which has lead to a happy life together of
more than 20 years now.


Have just realised that this half of this post has been deleted. Strange things are happening with blogger, one being that I can no longer publish photos - very frustrating.

So what has been deleted from this post are the bits on the lunch with Carmen Cafarel (head of Spanish TVE), virulent mosquitoes biting me and that there were only a few days to go till removal day, 5th June.

To summarise, I was invited by the Chairwoman (Pilar Gómez Acebo) to a lunch organised by the Spanish Federation of Business Women (FEDEPE)where the guest speaker was Carmen Cafarel. Carmen, a University professor was appointed by the Spanish PM, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and in her speech she described her astonishment at being appointed and how she was finding the job.

Thankfully now the itching and pain caused by the ****** mosquitoes on our daily walk are now over, but they gave me hell at night for more than a week, so much so I had to go to hospital.

That's all for the moments folks

LOL/Mashad
PS Photos are of the 3 of us walking in Callosa (me, Aunty Masha and my Father), Daddy and I in our old street, Calle de las Flores and me outside the Vimi bar where our relationship was forged.