A quiet week, my Mother’s birthday and her connection to the Yusupov family, a Mediterranean garden, time for reading and other stories.

My Mother aged 24 in Sofia Bulgaria in 1944, just before fleeing to Germany from the Russian invasion.  She never saw her father again.

Hello everyone,

I am writing quietly on my own this warm Sunday afternoon by the pool.  We haven’t actually used it yet as the weather has been pretty poor which is unusual for this time of year but who knows, maybe I will today after our walk.  Eladio is sleeping the siesta as is my Father.  The girls are at a party, so it was just the three of us today for a left over barbecue lunch.  The pets are sleeping too.  Joe is a little under the weather but taking him to the vet could be a traumatic experience fo so we shall have to wait and see.  Norah is under the weather too.  The other day we discovered we had been underfeeding her since she was a puppy, only giving her just over a 100 grammes of dog food in the mornings.  We decided to take a look at the packet and it appears she should be fed double that or more.  According to a dog encyclopedia Susana consulted, she should be getting 300.   Of course she always gets extra, by eating the cats’ food whenever she can or the odd bone.  For a beagle she is a little aggressive so I wondered whether that maybe due to her undernourishment.  I started feeding her double three days ago and today she couldn’t finish her bowl and is now looking definitely down, asleep on the mat outside the kitchen instead of here beside me. She was hardly interested in the lamb chop bone I gave her after lunch so we will be watching out to see how she progresses too.

Norah who we have been underfeeding unwittingly, is today a bit under the weather

I am not under the weather, just in need of a bit more action. There are no trips or lovely meals to recount this week I’m afraid.  In fact it’s been quiet, far too quiet.  The highlight in my life this week was my Mother’s birthday.  On 7^th June she would have been 91 and probably going quite strong if it hadn’t been for the cancer which struck her for the third and final time when she left us forever on 1^st October 1999.  What can I say that I haven’t said here before?  That we miss her of course and will never forget her.  She was, as many of you know larger than life, a most extraordinary woman and well loved by many.  Her life was marked forever by the Bolshevik Revolution of course, being born in the midst of it, when her aristocratic family fled to Rome.  I cannot be completely sure but I think she was born in what had been the Russian Embassy in Rome.  This fact could well have given her citizenship in Europe after the Second World War but she never thought to tell the authorities and thus started life as a refugee in England in the late 40’s.  Mummy, I love you and I miss you, especially on your birthday and on the1st October, two dates I will never ever forget.

My Mother in Cambridge in 1954, just after she married my Father

After writing that last sentence I looked for a photo to illustrate this part of the blog and went to my archive, a file and album I compiled about my Mother some years ago.  I flipped through it and came across the document I was looking for: “The Life of Mrs. Elena Lloyd, Princess Von Lieven, The key details”, written by Richard, Amanda’s first husband in 1993 when he interviewed my Mother in the hope of writing her story.  Unfortunately my Mother did not like the first three chapters and asked him politely not to continue, the reasons too long to go into right now. Here I was able to confirm that my Mother was indeed born in the former Russian Embassy in Rome, that she was christened in the Russian Church there and that her godmother was Princess Zenaida Yusupov, her maternal grandmother’s first cousin (and mother of Prince Felix Yusupov who killed Rasputin!). The Yusupovs were the richest noble family in the Russian court and I well remember visiting their family palace in St. Petersburg when I hosted a press trip whilst working for Nokia a few years ago.   It’s one of the top places to visit in that most Zarist of cities. I could not tell anyone what I thought as I walked through the “museum” or that my grandparents had probably been invited there on numerous occasions.  In my Mother’s family Princess Zenaida Yusupov was known as “Aunt Fairy” and they lived with her for a year in Rome before moving to Bulgaria.  As I looked at her portrait and walked through the palatial rooms the lump in my throat grew and I wondered what life was like for my ancestors and how the Bolshevik Revolution tore all their lives apart.  I was not just another tourist, I was one of them, albeit a poor ancestor, and the feeling was very intense.

Princess Zenaida Yusupov, my Mother's godmother.  They called her "Aunty Fairy"

When my Mother was born in Rome, by then the family had lost everything and were preparing a new life which would take them to Bulgaria.  Years later my Mother asked her Mother what it felt like to be rich.  She replied, “when I was rich I didn’t notice it and when I was poor there was too much to do to notice it”!  And thereby lies a very long story which one day I will write in a biographical manner not as a novel which is what Richard tried to do.  I owe it to my Mother, I owe it to myself and I owe it to my daughters.

My Mother would have loved our Mediterranean garden.  I love it too but this week even more as it is at its best at this time of year, I looked at it more closely than I usually do. 

Our mediterranean garden is at its best at this time of year

We have two peach trees which always seem a luxury to me who was brought up in the cold climate of Great Britain.  They are growing in our Mediterranean garden and soon we will pick them, although quite a few will be lost to the birds.  Meanwhile this is what the peaches look like.

It's so exotic to have peaches growing in your garden.

Eladio planted more hydrangeas last year and now they are in bloom.  They are one of my favourite flowers after roses of course.  Here you can see what they look like in another photo I took of our garden this week.

Eladio's hydrangeas are in full bloom

Being a quiet week, there has been time for reading.  This week I started and finished one of John Grisham’s latest books, TheConfession, which I picked up at Stockholm Arlanda Airport on my last trip.  I loved his first books but began to tire of the American legal jargon but the Confession is riveting and I read most evenings until the end which disappointed me.  I wanted the innocent man to be exonerated before being executed brutally and unfairly at the terrible Texan prison. 

Suzy joined us in our reading by the pool and I like this photograph of her here with Norah sitting on the wicker sofa. She probably won't like it as she's wearing a nightie but she looks so relaxed and Norah does too.

Suzy reading with us and Norah relaxing.

The book I started afterwards is by Isabel Allende, the Chilean novelist and niece of Salvador Allende.  I do not generally read in Spanish, the idea being to read in English to keep my English up.  You may not understand that if you are a native English speaker but as I left England 30 years ago, it is very easy to lose the fluency and hesitate about spelling when you have been away so long. That is partly why I write this blog in English and not in Spanish. I have always loved the film The House of the Spirits, based on her book (the inspiration for Clara came from her mystical grandmother) and the other day I listened to an interview with her on the radio.  That, together with the fact that Olivia was a fan of hers, spurred me on.  I was particularly interested in reading her only biographical book called Paula.  Paula was her daughter who had porphyria and died because of an alleged medical blunder.  Isabel Allende wrote the book whilst at her daughter’s bedside in a hospital in Madrid and in her home in California between 1991 and 1992.  In the book she tells Paula about her family, her origins whilst talking to her, in the hope that she will wake up from the coma.  She never did and I can only imagine that Paula is her most heart rendering book.  As a Mother myself I cannot imagine what she went through.  Probably her writing has saved her from literally going mad.  I think I would go mad if anything like this ever happened to me.

I am reading my first book by Isabel Allende this week: Paula

So yes I read a lot this week.  I don’t have much more to tell you.  Oh yes, I received yet another parcel from Emma Bridgewater, the crockery/pottery we use for breakfast and that Olga keeps breaking.  I bought a new pattern, Hellebore, to add to my collection and this is what it looks like.  Eladio has begged me to order no more so I won’t for another year at least.

Yet another parcel came from Emma Bridgewater this week.  I promise it will be the last at least for a year.

More importantly I went to the dentist for one more final session in the process and treatment that started some 6 months ago.  Since Thursday I can now eat on both sides of my mouth as at last as Dr. Garralda, with a little help from his lawyer daughter Paloma who will be reading this blog, finally put in a new bridge on one side and the crown of the new implant on the other.  My mouth feels strange but now I can smile without being wary of what I look like.  Thank you Dr. Garralda for the great job!

On the news front, you will be following the E-coli outbreak in Germany which was first thought to have been caused by Spanish cucumbers.  Last week the incompetent German authorities confirmed that was not the case and finally they say the deadly infection comes from sprouts or rather bean sprouts, the type you may want to add to salads or eat at Chinese restaurants.  Meanwhile Spanish producers of vegetables have lost hundreds of millions of euros and have had to throw tons away.  I wonder how the German government would have reacted if the outbreak had been in Spain and the Spanish authorities blamed the infection on produce coming from Germany.  A few centuries ago, countries would have gone to war over something like the cucumber crisis.  Good to know though that now we can eat cucumber, tomato and lettuce  and be safe. 

So yes it has been a quiet week.  Things have happened which are too private to recount here and that is frustrating.  But of course you cannot include private things in a public blog.  But I can tell you that we are upset as our best friends are splitting up because you won’t know who they are.   So no more meals out with them or trips.  They are our only close friends in Spain as the others live in Belgium and the UK.  Eladio remarked the other day that at this late stage in life it will be difficult to find a replacement.  We are sad that they are splitting up of course but we are equally sad that we are losing them because, once they are separate, our friendship will just never be the same again.

And on that sad note I leave you.  However I have an action packed week ahead of me with important meetings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  What I am most looking forward to, is our trip to Brussels on Thursday for a long weekend with Sandie, Jeffer, Adele and Bernard, another wonderful University reunion.  I can’t wait and I know it’s going to rain but I don’t care.  There’ll be plenty of news about it in next week’s edition.

Till then, have a good week,

Masha

An uneventful week, news from a distant relative in New Zealand, discovering Boadilla and a weekend without my laptop.

The Palace of Boadilla.
Hi again

Well we are now at the end of the first week of March and luckily the good weather made an entry this weekend. The week was freezing with blustery winds and we thought the winter would never end. However things brightened and this weekend has been lovely.

As I said in the title, the week has been uneventful in that nothing special happened. I had lunch one day with my best friends Julio and Fátima to belatedly celebrate my birthday. Thanks guys for the lovely necklace and ear rings, as well as the good gossip together. I do miss working with you!!

I’m not quite sure which day it was but early in the week I got an email out of the blue from an unknown distant cousin in New Zealand! Julio thought that was quite fascinating and once again encouraged me to write a book (I will my dear but probably when I retire). I must write back to Tanya. She found me on the Lieven page of Wikipedia where I had left a comment asking for the authors to get in touch with me as I wanted to find out more about my Mother’s Russian aristocratic family, the Lievens. Apparently Tanya’s grandfather, a Lieven Prince, left Russia in 1917 and escaped to Australia. I must find out which Lieven he is and how he was related to my Mother’s Father. I have yet to write back so more on that in a later post. I supposed it is quite fascinating to discover you have a cousin in the antipodes whose descendents also went into exile thanks to the Bolshevik revolution. So actually my week was not quite as uneventful as my title promises.

The highlight of this week for me was my visit to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. I went there on Wednesday morning for the presentation of the new campaign for prepaid card users to be identified. The presentation was made by the Minister himself, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba , a politician who has been in and out of government posts since Felipe Gonzalez’s days in the mid 80’s. He’s a true survivor and whether you like him or not, a very clever man. It was interesting to see him live and the best part, at least for the journalist in me, was when the media asked him questions on issues other than the new campaign, such as his views on the election results in the Basque Country or the problems of immigrants coming illegally into Spain on make shift boats via the Canary Islands. His answers were very “political” in that he didn’t seem to answer any but just played with words which sounded clever. He would not take the bait on the Basque question for example.
Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the Minister of the Interior.
And, yes this week we have local elections in Galicia and in the Basque Country. The latter had a very surprising result as the socialists won enough votes to govern there, although they will be needing the support of their arch enemies, the right wing Partido Popular. They have ousted the pro independent party, “PNV” who have been in power for decades and who are suspected of supporting the Basque terrorist movement, ETA. So change has come to the Basque Country and has brought much hope with it for many people.

The weekend too has been uneventful but full of activity. We have been living in or around Boadilla del Monte, a small country town on the outskirts of Madrid, for 20 years now. We knew of its famous forest or wood but had hardly ever walked there. Suzy and I decided to go for a walk there during the week and so I returned with Eladio on Friday and Saturday, so lovely did I find the walks. I say walks, rather than walk, as there are many paths and we have now got lost twice.
The Boadilla forest - El Bosque de Boadilla, what a magical place.
To get there we parked near the Palace which is Boadilla’s main landmark. It is a beautiful building built in the 18th century by the Spanish architect Ventura Rodríguez for Philip V’s son, the Infante Don Luis. Unfortunately today it has gone to seed and needs serious renovation. What has been renovated though is the esplanade in front of it which we discovered too was nearly finished. We also discovered a new restaurant right in front of the Palace to which Eladio and I went on Friday night and I must say it was good and a nice change from La Vaca Argentina or La Alpargateria. It hasn't got a website yet as it only opened a week or so ago and is called El Palacio Restaurante Asador. So, yes, we have sort of rediscovered Boadilla this weekend.

I have had more time to do so perhaps because I have been without my laptop this weekend. Unfortunately it developed a nasty virus on Thursday and is in the “sick bay” at work. Leaving it behind on Friday was like leaving my baby behind. I somehow don’t know how to live without it or without internet. Right now I am writing from Eladio’s computer, so I’m not quite without Internet.

My other baby, of course, is Nora. Nora got her third vaccination on Saturday and since then is no longer living in the kitchen. I think we are all thankful for that, including her as she now has the whole garden to play in. Of course, as the weather was better she is thoroughly enjoying her new adventure. Spring is definitely on its way to judge too by the blossom on the trees.

Talking about blossom, we went to see the new German film by Dorris Dorrie, Cherry Blossoms. It’s a story of a long married couple whose children have grown up and moved away. They seem to have no time for their parents in their busy lives. When Trudi dies, her husband Rudi visits their son in Japan, the country she always wanted to go to. Here he witnesses the cherry blossom festival and the film ends with a pilgrimage to the snow topped Mount Fuji. The film is about love, time and death but somehow doesn’t convince me although parts of it are very moving.
A scene from the film Cherry Blossoms
And that’s about it for this week really, except to mention that I have now fully booked our Summer holiday to Yorkshire in July including the flights, the hotels and the car. We will be staying in Haworth and Robin Hood’s Bay and hopefully will be joined by Amanda and Andy. No doubt we will be visiting our favourite haunts such as Ilkley, Harrogate, Bolton Abbey, the Yorkshire Dales and of course the Yorkshire coast around Whitby. We will of course be visiting our old house and our neighbours as well as my Mother’s grave which I know will be hard for my Father specially. On the bright side I am really looking forward to the cliff walk between Robin Hood’s Bay and Whitby amongst other things. So now we have something lovely to look forward to.

Cheers till next week.
Masha

Camino and the Goya film awards, birthdays, a birthday puppy and a family celebration.

Nora, the birthday puppy
Hi again

This week’s blog post starts with a mention of the Spanish “Goya” film awards, as one of my favourite films, Camino, got 6 awards including the most important ones such as, best film, best director (Javier Fesser) and best actress as well as best supporting actor, and best new actress, the stunning 12 year old Nerea Camacho. In his speech Javier Fesser said that his family was built on love, affection and a good temper, three things that were also fundamental to his job. How true I found his words.
Nerea Camacho receiving her Goya.
This week has been dominated by our new puppy Nora. I had lunch with Fátima and Julio on Monday and Fátima showed me the photo of her sister’s new beagle puppy. We used to have beagles and in fact were breeders for some years until Eladio’s job changed and we could no longer cope. Since then we have only had cats and are now the proud owners of Joe and Phoebe. The girls have always campaigned for a new puppy and up till now we resisted. Until, I saw that photo.

One thing led to another and the three of us persuaded Eladio that it would be great to have another beagle and as my birthday was coming up (today), what better present could there be than a puppy. As soon as Eladio agreed we searched the Segunda Mano website and soon came up with beagle puppies for sale. It took just a few phone calls and one visit the next day to a breeder nearby to find Nora.

And voilá Olivia and Eladio came home on Tuesday morning with an adorable 2 month old tricolour beagle with whom we all fell in love immediately. It took a few days to agree upon a name and now it or she is finally called Nora.
Nora on Eladio's shoulder
You can see her here on her first day at home in a video I uploaded to You Tube. You will notice she was called “Lucy” on the first day. Nora is hyperactive but lovely. The cats, of course, are petrified and disappear for hours on end and hide at the other end of the house. It will take time for them to be friends but that is our hope. I am taking endless photos of her, although she is a very slippery subject as she moves so fast and so often. You can see a small selection here.

The weather has continued to be wintery and, according to what my Father has read, it is the coldest winter in 60 years and believe it, as my Father is a weather expert. We didn’t get the snow that fell in London, but we did get quite a snow storm on Friday evening just as we were taking Nora to the vet. The snow stayed for one day only, but enough to make snow balls and throw them at Eladio on our daily walk.
It snowed on Friday again.
We have recently installed yet another DVD in our house, this time for the TV in our bedroom and we used it for the first time this Friday to watch the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Javier Bardem, Scarlet Johansson and Penelope Cruz. These 3 people are what are known as “beautiful people” and it’s very nice to see them on screen in Barcelona but the storyline is absolute rubbish and the music rather irritating.

I got a friend request from Katya on Facebook on Thursday. Katya is my cousin Sophie’s (or Zuka) daughter whom I think I have only met once or twice in my life. It was such a surprise and lovely to be able to "see" her and her family, including my Aunty Valya in her albums.

Then on Friday I got a surprise phone call from my Aunty Valya who is Zuka’s Mother, the wife of my Mother’s brother Nicolas, or Dyadya “Kolya” as he was known. I hadn’t spoken or seen my Aunty Valya since 1999 when my Mother died. Unfortunately the news was not good as she was ringing to let me know that Masha Stachovich, my Mother’s first cousin and mother of my cousin in Paris, also Masha Stachovich, had died the night before of respiratory problems. I had met her once a few years ago in Paris and found her to be a lovely aristocratic elegant and gentle woman who spoke beautiful English. I know very well that my Mother and her were very close and kept up correspondence for many years. In fact when I met her my Mother had already died and for me the encounter was deeply emotional. My thoughts are with you dear Masha and girls.

Saturday was a very happy day as Eladio’s brother, José Antonio and family came for lunch to celebrate Juan’s and my birthday which is actually today. We hadn’t been all together for more than I can remember; possibly over 2 years. Sara lives in London and we see her even less. But finally we made it and they were coming for lunch. I made a very typical English meal of roast beef and all the trimmings, including Yorkshire pudding!
José Antonio and family. It's not often you can photograph all five.
The table laid for the family celebration
Unfortunately Dolores and Sara couldn’t come until really late and by then Oli had to leave for work, so we never actually got to be all together. After lunch, the “kids” (aged between 23 and 30!) all went their own ways and Dolores, José Antonio, Eladio and I spent the afternoon together, talking about India, going for our walk and having tea in the candle lit lounge to a background of Indian music. Later in the evening we went to Mood in Majadahonda for dinner which proved popular with us all. You can see some of the photos of yesterday here.

And today, Sunday, was my birthday. Wow, 52 and going strong. The day has been very quiet and spent with the family and my new birthday present, Nora. It’s amazing how times have changed the way people send birthday greetings. I got some phone calls, text messages, emails as well as greetings on Facebook from many people I know but I also got them from entities such as my bank, my cinema club card, Cortefiel (a clothes’ store), the FB “team” which of course is part of how society works these days but it is a bit strange and rather impersonal. You are sent these messages via some anonymous server because you are on all these entities’ lists and it’s the cool thing to do these days. Funny! I am however very grateful to all the people who rang and sent messages. I love receiving birthday greetings.

This week promises to be another one of preparations, this time for the Mobile World Congress coming up in Barcelona on 16th February and to which I am much looking forward to going. The girls will be off travelling, Suzy to London on Wednesday and Oli to Amsterdam on Thursday. The three of us will then meet up in Barcelona on Monday 16th and will make our very own Olivia, Susana and Masha Barcelona film which promises to be fun.

Cheers till next week
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