In Memoriam: Victoria Tarrani

Apologies for the lack of photos in this post but blogger seems not to want to load any at present.

 I was quite sad to hear that Victoria Tarrani had passed away in October 2020. I first came into contact with her around 1997 when she and I were both members of Cyberscribers. Cyberscribers described itself as an International Writers' Forum. It ran as an egroup on OneList and had a site on Geocities - see an archived page on the Wayback Machine. For some reason or another that fizzled out and she started up Wordwizards on yahoogroups. It was a lively group for many years. Members included Salena Ford, Shanna Baldwin, Terrie Relf, Maureen Weldon, Alison Williams, Yvonne LaRose and many others. Group conversations dwindled in recent years as some people left and others turned more to Facebook, Twitter and other spaces for social interaction. Now it seems the plug is about to be pulled on all yahoogroups.

 In November 1999 to celebrate my wife's 55th birthday we decided to visit Los Angeles taking flights from Manchester via Amsterdam on KLM. Viki (as she is known to her friends) and her husband Mike invited us to stay with them at their house in Orange County.  A brief account of our visit to California can be found on this blogpost. 

 Following a wonderful visit to Catalina Island, the next day we ventured out to Palm Springs.  I went to look at the tramway. Viki and Mike went off to photograph the rocks. I returned to find Christine in the back of the car in agony. In crossing the road, her ankle had caved in underneath. At Palm Springs Hospital we waited nearly three hours to see a nurse and the first thing they asked us was "Why didn't you put some ice on it?" Just where two strangers to the country were expected to find that ice seemed not to enter their heads. In due course they took X-rays, strapped it up and sent us back to L.A. Viki and Mike looked after us splendidly until we got our flight home. 

 You'll find only a handful of things if you search for Victoria on the internet. I came across this cinquain she wrote (using her pseudonym "zephyr" in the archives of the World Haiku Review:

Stardust 

scattered diamonds 

shimmer across the sky 

galactic nucleus sparkles 

glitter.

  In our memory she will always be shimmering.