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 It ran as an egroup on OneList and had a site on Geocities - see an archived page on the Wayback Machine.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.

ABC Wednesday: O is for Orange County

Orange County lies next to Los Angeles in California. We visited there for a week in 1999. This fountain was inside a mall in Tustin.

Our host was Viki, a writer whom we had met through the internet. She and her husband Mike invited us into their home and made us very welcome.

The last of these three photographs is of the Crystal Cathedral another photograph of which I featured on Saturday under Weekend Reflections.

For more O posts see ABC Wednesday.

Weekend Reflections: Crystal Cathedral

When I mention to James about a glass church in Orange County, he reminded me that it was the Crystal Cathedral so I went back to my archives and dug out this photograph as a contribution to his Weekend Reflections.

See more of my California photographs.

ABC Wednesday - C is for California 1999

We went to California in 1999

I've already published a selection of photographs at California 1999, but today I thought I'd post another batch here. The Olympus digital camera I had then took pictures only 640 x 480 pixels and cost then more than double what my latest camera cost me last year, so don't expect to enlarge these by much.


We flew from Manchester to Los Angeles via Amsterdam with KLM. This young lady was in the seat in front. She'll be a teenager now.


After a long time in the heat going through the customs, one of the first people we met was touting for a shuttle-bus company that was going to take us, eventually, to Tustin in Orange County.


We were staying with our good friend Viki Tarrani and her husband. Viki was one of the founders of an online writers group which later became Wordwizards.


This is a picture of a nearby church we visited. I don't remember the details and haven't had time to research it, but it was here I discovered the peculiar American practice whereby a 50 cent postcard is actually 57.5 cents when you get to the till and they add sales-tax. No wonder their prices sometimes seem cheap when the tax isn't included in the quoted price.


Here we have the underneath of the catamaran on which we sailed from Long Beach to Catalina Island.


We took a trip from Avalon, the island's only town, up to the airport which was created by slicing the tops off two mountains and filling in the area inbetween.


After the heights we returned to sea level.


Then we took a trip on a glass-bottomed boat in order to explore the depths. It was Christine's birthday and we had had a wonderful time.


The next day we ventured out to Palm Springs. This is the carpark at the tramway. I am holding the camera level. The road really is this steep. I went to look at the tramway. Viki and her husband 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 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 LA.


Keeping a long story short, the following day we visited Viki's doctor who correctly diagnosed that the ankle was broken, not merely sprained. In the UK it would have meant encasing it in plaster, but here he fitted what is known as a "cast-boot", provided us with a pair of crutches and a presecription for pain-killers.


On the return flight we got bulkhead seats, but arrived in Amsterdam in a snowstorm. I took a bus out to the Manchester-bound plane which was in the middle of the tarmc. Christine was transported there in a luggage-trolley! We arrived home to a cold house and eventually ended up in Tameside Hospital, but that is another story.

For more ABC Wednesday posts, check out the links on my sidebar.

ABC Wednesday - T is for Travel

I could have gone T for Tallinn but you can see my photos and account of that lovely city here and here.

I could have gone T for Trondheim but you can see my photos and account of that lovely city here.

I could have gone T for Tenerife but you can see my photos and account of that island here.

People seem to have the impression that I am well-travelled but I have only visited 13% of the world.



This map and the others you can compile on the net are bit misleading but interesting nonetheless. For the first 50-odd years of my life apart from a week in Amsterdam in 1980 [which included a day-trip to Brussels] and one holiday in Denmark, I never left the UK. However we saw an awful lot of the UK from St Agnes in the Scillies to Unst in Shetland. Very few areas of the British Isles are unvisited.

We didn't start world-travelling until 1999 when we ventured across the sea to Ireland. Later that year we flew via Amsterdam to Los Angeles. On the visited countries map that is enough to colour in the whole of the USA from New York westwards including Alaska.

In 2001 we had our tremendous holiday of a lifetime spending a month travelling around New Zealand which puts some colour in the bottom right-hand corner. The dot representing Singapore, our only stopover in Asia barely shows up.

The following year, having had to give up driving, we took a coach holiday through Europe visiting 9 countries in 9 days. There were some highlights but, in some respects it was possibly one of our grimmest holidays. It certainly colours the map though.

It was three years before we ventured abroad again on a fabulous cruise to Ireland, Greenland, Iceland and Norway. In 2006 we went quite mad (and why not?). Firstly we had a holiday in February to Tenerife, which adds Spain to the map even though we've never seen its mainland. June saw us on our second cruise, this time to the Baltics. Although we only visit St. Petersburg, the map covers in the whole of Russia all the way to Siberia! Finally at the end of September we went to Crete, which adds Greece to the map even though we've never seen its mainland.

Our only holiday this year was a week in Southport. We have enjoyed a few day-trips to various places. The likelihood is that we won't be doing very much physical travelling in the future except for short journeys. Any regrets? Absolutely none. I travel Around the World everyday without leaving home.

Black Swans

Swans have featured recently on a couple of DP sites. Lynn at Cheltenham started it and then Ame from Santa Clara and Mark from Taunton joined in.



We found this black swan swimming in the pond on our visit in November to Oswaldtwistle Mill.

Actually there were two swans.



I'm not sure if black swans are quite as viscious as their white cousins, such as the ones I encountered at Thorpe Acre in Leicestershire.

And here is a link to one I photographed in Southport