Recovered, Santa Pola, another trip down memory lane, the story of Frank and Julia, Gandía and home again.

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At the top of the Coll de Rates mountain pass with wonderful views.

Hello my friends,

Today is Sunday August 15^th, a bank holiday in Spain which will go unnoticed as it is a weekend and once again it is time to write my blog.  It is also Independence Day in India so happy Independence day to all Indians reading this entry and there are many of you, or so Google blog statistics tell me.

This week has been great.  On Monday Suzy was back from Montrondo and we had a nice dinner together.  However it wasn’t until the next day that we had a full house with both girls for lunch.

Dinner at home with Suzy last Sunday when she came back from Montrondo.

On Tuesday I went to the doctor with my huge bandage and a bit worried I would be prescribed more time with my foot up and immobile.  However I was in for a pleasant surprise.  My ankle was better and the doctor removed the bandage.  Ouch that hurt, as it was stuck to my skin and he did a sort of peeling exercise leaving nasty marks on my leg.  He prescribed an ankle support and told me I could walk but to take heed of how my foot felt.   The good news was that he said I could go to the beach and that the sand and sea would help me recover. Wow I was so happy to be up and about again. I hobbled for the next few days but now I am walking almost normally.
 

The first thing I did with my newly recovered mobility was to go out with Suzy for a cup of coffee; a normal thing to do for anyone who is mobile but something special for me after nearly 2 weeks stuck at home.  Eladio and I decided then to go off to Santa Pola the next day and be back after Olga left on Saturday so’s not to leave my Father on his own overnight.  The girls went away on Thursday, Suzy to Ibiza with her school friends to stay at Erika’s place there and Oli to cover the Sonorama music festival in Aranda de Duero in Burgos for her website http://www.rtve.es/

Suzy on the beach with Erika this week in Ibiza.

Once again we decided not to take any food or shop in Santa Pola and to eat out even for breakfast so’s to make a real holiday of our 4 day escapade to the coast.  We had all sorts of plans to meet up with friends in the area; thus our stay was filled with social activity.  Another upside was that there was little cleaning to do as we had been recently and left the apartment spick and span. 

On the way out we stopped for lunch at one of our favourite places, the Parador in Albacete where we were served a lovely cool gazpacho to offset the tremendous heat outside which was nearing 40ºc. 

Making a toast to my recovery and our short holiday at lunch   in the Parador of Albacete on our way to Santa Pola.

As soon as we had unpacked and set up my pc (and answered my mails, of course) we set off for the beach where we had our first swim of the season and boy was it nice.  The water was clean and the sea as calm as a lake.   We tried my ankle out for a short walk.  It didn’t feel too bad but not yet good enough for the full beach walk.

I had booked a table for dinner at María Picola in the evening, that lovely restaurant on the road from Santa Pola to Elche.  We were welcomed back and enjoyed what we always have there, a superb arroz a banda.

A happy dinner together at María Picola on the first night of our holiday.

The mornings during our stay were always the same, as we are true creatures of habit.  We would have an early breakfast at El Paripé, a bar across the way with superb views of the bay of Alicante.  We would then go for the papers and return to the flat.  Eladio would read them from front to back whilst I worked and facebooked of course.

The view of the bay of Alicante from our breakfast bar, El Paripé in Gran Alacant.  It's also one of the views from our flat.

On Wednesday we had arranged to go and see our long time friends, Benito and Loli who were our neighbours in Saconia in Madrid where we first “lived in sin” before we got married in the early 80s.  They have an apartment on the beach in El Verger near Denia.

Loli and Benito by their apartment block in El Verger near Denia

We went for lunch to a local place called Casa Ramón for a great “fideua” (sort of paella but made with pasta) washed down by what is called “tinto de verano”, similar to sangria.  The afternoon was spent almost entirely at an ice cream parlour called La Jijonenca overlooking the Denia beach.  Here we talked about our old days and caught up on each other’s news.  We have promised to repeat the experience and next time Benito and Loli will be visiting us in Santa Pola.

Lunch with Loli and Benito at Casa Ramón in Denia.

We had planned to return home via a real memory lane for both of us.  We were to take the mountain road from El Verger, via Orba and Parcent and climb up the Coll de Rates mountain pass to visit Tárbena, Bolulla and Callosa before heading back to Santa Pola via Polop, La Nucia, Benidorm and Alicante.

The mountain road which means so much to me and which leads to Coll de Rates, Tárbena, Bolulla and Callosa

Tárbena, Bolulla and Callosa (Callosa de Ensarriá or D’en Sarrià in Valenciano) were the 3 main villages of my “Callosa days”, the time when I first came to Spain with my parents and which, if you don’t know the story,  you can read about here. The drive was like a venture into the past and the views from the roads as heavenly and magical as always.  I love the view of the little village of Parcent driving up to the Coll de Rates mountain pass which is some 700m high.  That doesn’t sound very much but then sea level in Spain is  measured from Alicante nearby so it is of course extremely high up.  The views from Coll de Rates are breathtaking and never cease to amaze me.  I had been here many times before but probably not in the last 20 or 30 years so it was very special to be there again.

Eladio at the top of the Coll de Rates mountain pass with breathtaking views on both sides.

Our next stop was Tárbena, a tiny little medieval village that nestles in these dry and rocky mountains and by almond trees which grow on terraced land and which are or used to be the main stipend for the village.  I hadn’t been back to Tárbena since the late 70’s and this visit was my real trip down memory lane because it was here I fell in love when I was 18 with a local boy who was studying to be a doctor and the reason I learned  Spanish. I had to visit the place, at least one more time in my life ,and didn’t feel good about taking Eladio with me but I think he understood.  The village was in fiestas and the main square felt much smaller to me than I had remembered it.  We walked through it and towards the house where the boy lived, in Plaza Santa Ana.  It looked closed up.  I didn’t want to meet anyone, just to see where it all began and remember my youth.

The little village of Tárbena which brings back so many memories of my youth.

From there we drove to Bolulla, the tiny village further down the valley where my famous Aunty Masha had bought a ruined house for a song in the early 70’s.  I love Bolulla and understand why so many English people have bought houses there (thanks to my Aunt of course).  We walked into the only bar that was open and came across a group of them who immediately wanted to know who we were.  Everywhere we went I told people I was La Señora María’s niece.  They all knew of course who she was and some of them remembered me.  I have so many memories of Bolulla from our many summers spent there and in Callosa in the 70’s and 80’s and in a way consider it to be my village.

Bolulla, my village in Spain.  I carry this image in my heart.

We walked down one of the prettiest streets there and spoke to 3 old ladies (Rosario, Jimena and non Castillian Spanish speaking Vicenta) for some time, remembering the past and talking about the people I knew; Esperanza, la Señora Elvira, Molina, Pepe the taxi driver and of course my beloved Sra. Julia and Frank (Francisco) Vácquer. 

With 3 old ladies in Bolulla talking about the past.  Vicenta in black, Jimena in blue and Rosario the hairdresser in orange.

Frank was the mayor of Bolulla when we first went there and I remember spending the first nights at his house  as Aunty Masha’s place was in no condition to sleep in (there was even a donkey in the main room when she bought it!).  Frank had lived in Brooklyn and had a wonderful New York accent with limited vocabulary.  But he was our ambassador and we loved him.  He was married to Serafina who spoke French and was what was called a “pied noir” for having lived and worked in  Algeria.  Serafina was always ill and had to be looked after by Frank.  Funnily enough she outlived him.  There is a saying in Spanish:  “mujer enferma, mujer eterna” which means “an ill woman lives forever”.  Señora Julia, a sweet old lady with white hair who must have been a beauty in her youth, lived opposite my Aunt and was our other reference in the village.  We learned later, with great secrecy, that Frank and Julia had been sweethearts when they were young but their love had not been allowed to prosper. I never knew why but suspect they were still in love when I met them.  Frank would speak with reverence whenever he mentioned Julia.  In the late 80’s something terrible happened.  Julia was in a car with her daughter and her grandson, a boy I had given English classes to.  He was driving and the car had an accident and skidded off one of those treacherous mountain roads I love so much.  They fell to their death, 3 generations in one go.  It was a tragedy for the village and I suspect especially for dear Frank Vácquer.  Frank died a few years ago, but there will always be a place for him in my heart and in my memories.

Dear Frank (Francisco) Vacquer's house at the main entrance of Bolulla. 

From Bolulla we drove to Callosa, the village where my Mother bought our house, but it was too late and dark to visit this time.  Soon we were back in our flat in Gran Alacant in Santa Pola and the trip down memory lane was now just another memory.
 

Thursday we spent at Gran Alacant and went to the local market there to buy Eladio some more summer shorts.  He seems to ruin all of them with bleach or paint stains so was in need of some new ones.  He was a bit of an unwilling customer but I managed to cajole him into buying 3 pairs.

Buying shorts for Eladio at the local market in Gran Alacant.  The unwilling customer!

In the afternoon we went to the beach again for another bathe and walk, this time the long one.  Most people go  to the beach in the morning but we always like to go when the heat is over and when most of the people have gone.  We are funny aren't we?

On our beach at Santa Pola, it's actually the Arenales beach.

In the evening we went to Darby’s Chippy for some amazing fish and chips.  It’s a very tacky thing to do but when you have lived away from the UK for so long, fish and chips is something, I, at least crave for.  The owner, a character from Scotland, greeted us warmly and thanked me especially for the mention of his chip shop in my blog!  He must have read the entry about it.  I was bowled over!  The portions we got were enormous and I think it was in lieu of a thank you for my positive write up which you can read here if you are interested. I’m also reproducing the photo of the chip shop owner if you haven’t seen it before.

Darby's fish and chip shop in Gran Alacant, great little find and the only one in the vicinity

Friday was our last day at home as we were leaving on Saturday.  The weather took a turn for the worse as it always does in the middle of August, except that we never seem to remember.  I was going to spend the afternoon by the pool overlooking the sea but it began to rain.  The temperature dropped and of course we hadn’t brought any warm clothing, not even a jumper and certainly no umbrella.  That evening we were due at Jacky and John’s for dinner.  Jacky, a childhood friend and actually my best friend, Amanda’s neighbour in Bradford, now lives with her family in a small village in Murcia on the border of the province of Alicante, in a hamlet called Collado de los Gabrieles.  We drove through an enormous thunder storm with lightening and as we left the apartment I thought guns were being fired.  Thunder storms in this area are always terribly fierce.  Maybe that’s because of the proximity to the sea.

Dinner with Jacky and John and their son Rafi, was great.  It was nice to speak English all evening and John’s curry was superb.  We could have chatted all night but it was dark and we had a long journey home so we left at Cinderella time, at around midnight with promises of going out to dinner together the next time we came. 

Dinner at Jacky and John's was one of the highlights of our trip.

Soon it was our last day, not that our holiday was very long, just 5 days.  We were going to  Gandía to have lunch with Irene and Tomas and their family before making our way home to Madrid.  Irene who is now the proud mother of 4, is the daughter of the González-Gálvez family with whom I lived in 1978 during the year I spent in Madrid as a teacher as part of my 3^rd year studies at Nottingham University.  We have kept in contact every since but  more so since the Father, Gerardo, died.  Irene and her husband Tomas have been spending their summers in Gandia on the coast of Valencia since they were children and it was here they fell in love when they were teenagers.  This was the first time I was to see them here and I loved the flat and the location which is right on the beach front. 

With Irene González at their flat in Gandía. 

Tomas who is obviously a good chef, had prepared a great local rice dish called “arros a forn” which is rice cooked in the oven with many ingredients.  It tasted delicious, as good as it looked.

Great oven baked rice dish made by Tomas and called "arros a forn".

It was a delight to be with the whole family as on other occasions we had not been joined by their older kids, Paula and Tomás, just the little ones, Celia and Nacho and I was actually meeting Paula for the first time.   It was funny to see Irene with her 17 year old look a-like daughter Paula, as for me Irene is still the little girl I tried to teach English to, albeit unsuccessfully because of the terrible tricks she used to play on me. But time of course has passed, over 30 years.  

Lunch yesterday with Irene, Tomás and family in Gandía.

We left in the early evening as we had a 4 hour drive ahead of us and were anxious to get home as soon as possible because my Father was alone at home.  We were greeted by a very excited Norah who hates to be alone.  My Father was also happy to see us.  I had brought him a huge bag of all sorts of English chocolates which I had bought at Quicksave, the English shop across the way from our apartment which I am sure won’t last him very long.  I don't know if you know but even at 91 he is still a bit of a chocolate monster!  So it's quite obvious where I got my sweet tooth from then isn't it? 

And now we are home again with another trip for our memories.  You can see the full set of photos  here and a specfic album of our visit to Irene and Tomas in Gandía here.

But we are not home for long. This week we may be going to Peñacaballera to see friends.  At the end of August we will be going to Santander for a big telecoms conference and then in September we shall be off to Israel and Jordan.  October heralds more trips, one to Stockholm for a communications’ get together and a weekend in Barcelona.  Meanwhile we look forward to the visit of Katheryn and Phil who will be visiting us this Tuesday.  It will be nice to have some British visitors, especially for my Father.  Kathryn and I were at school together so her visit will be another trip down memory lane.

That’s it for this week.  Hope you have a good one.

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