A health warning

For the past two or three years my husband has been having problems with his back and also some issues with arthritis, so it didn't strike us as particularly odd that he had become so tired he could barely function. As time went by he seemed to be needing more and more rest and sleep, usually going to bed around 10:45pm, wakening at around 7:15, and needing to go to bed for a nap of two to three hours on work days after work, say from 4 or 5-7pm. That seemed excessive but his back problems meant he wasn't getting a good sleep so it didn't ring any major alarm bells.

This year things have been worse. He's barely done anything in the garden, which is usually a great passion of his and we've done nothing on weekends either, no day trips, no sightseeing, no entertaining. He has stopped blogging and given up on all his usual pastimes such as language learning, and other computing tasks. When I went to visit my two older kids in London and Madrid, he stayed home. Whenever our oldest daughter needed picking up from work at 10pm, he said he couldn't do it because he was too exhausted. Any time Léon needed driven home from a party, I would have to go alone as he was unwakeable. Over the past few months I noticed he was finding it harder and harder to waken up. His alarm would go off in the morning but even though he'd sit up in bed, instead of taking in the morning news on his phone as he would have done in the past, he'd sit almost comatose for up to an hour before coming to. He tried various physiotherapists but nothing helped. 

So to be honest the only thing he actually managed over the last six months was work. Even simple things like asking him to help me with my tax return on the computer was too much. And I had to do all the distance driving as he couldn't. But both of us were convinced that the reason behind it all was his disturbed sleep due to back problems. Then, fortunately he developed a constant sore throat. He visited the GP who sent him to a throat specialist as he could feel his thyroid was enlarged. He discussed that issue with the throat specialist who has sent him for biopsies and other tests which we are still waiting for, but he pointed out that an enlarged thyroid should not be giving him the dry, sore throat he was complaining about. He asked if he had any issues with snoring or sleep apnoea.

Thomas has always had what we considered very mild sleep apnoea issues. They run in his family so he knew the signs to looks out for such as bad snoring, difficulty staying awake during activities such as reading, meetings, watching TV, or driving, morning headaches, choking sensations but he suffered none of these, well other than the snoring, but don't all guys snore a bit?! Once awake, he was awake. He never once fell asleep in front of a movie or in a meeting, so figured if he had it at all, it wasn't worth treating. He simply seemed to need more and more sleep to function. I had pointed out nearly twenty years ago that his night-time breathing wasn't even; he often paused for a moment or two but then it would correct itself, so again we both figured that once it got to the stage where he was falling asleep in front of the TV, he would look into it.

The throat specialist thought, given his family history, that he ought to take a sleep machine home one night to measure his breathing and oxygen levels just to rule that out.

I delivered it back to the clinic the next day and before I had even made it back home the specialist had phoned him in a complete panic. Not only did he have sleep apnoea, but it was so severe that he was in real and imminent danger. He stopped breathing altogether more than 50 times an hour, the highest acceptable number is apparently 5 times an hour. His blood oxygen level overnight hovered around 51%. Anything under 90% is dangerous and under 80% is critical.

He was moved on the patient list on our island to the number one spot and called in the following Monday as he was at imminent risk of death, they told him flat out. This was not to mild apnoea that causes you to fall asleep, this is the severe version that starves your brain of oxygen and kills you without warning. The doctor looked at him sternly and told him he was not to underestimate why he was called in urgently before all the other patients on their list. So, of course when we got home we read the leaflets we'd been given and checked some health pages and these are apparently the issues he faced:

• Cardiovascular Problems: Chronic low oxygen levels can cause high blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. 
• Heart Failure: Prolonged hypoxemia can lead to heart strain and eventually heart failure​.
• Cognitive Impairment Memory Loss: Hypoxia can damage brain cells, leading to memory problems. 
• Dementia: Chronic low oxygen levels can increase the risk of developing dementia and other cognitive impairments​​. 
• Stroke Increased Risk: Severe sleep apnoea significantly raises the risk of stroke due to fluctuating oxygen levels and increased blood pressure​. 
• Diabetes Insulin Resistance: Sleep apnoea can lead to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes​. 
• Arrhythmias Irregular Heartbeats: Low oxygen levels can cause abnormal heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation, which can be life-threatening​. 
• Pulmonary Hypertension Lung Complications: Prolonged hypoxia can cause high blood pressure in the lungs' arteries, leading to right-sided heart failure​.
• Metabolic Syndrome Cluster of Conditions: This includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels, raising the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. 

The bottom line was that untreated severe sleep apnoea with chronic hypoxia significantly increases the risk of premature death​ by 300% and I was lucky not to have woken up one morning beside a dead husband. They insisted he go home that night with a machine to pump oxygen into him constantly and told him he shouldn't even nap without it on as oxygen levels of 50% during sleep were life threatening.

What a fright that gave us both. Life has been tough enough that last few years with my own brushes with cancer, our moving to a place where we have no friends or family close by to support us. The thought that I could have woken up one morning to find him dead is unimaginable. The kids need their daddy and I need my rock, my soulmate. We can probably get through anything life throws at us together, the last few years have shown that, but alone would have been unimaginable. I'm not sure who it would have been worse for: him dead at 52, or me entirely alone in a foreign country without a steady income and three kids to see through to their end of their education. We are truly shaken.

On the positive side, he's now had his machine six nights and I hardly recognise him. He's now only stopping breathing 3-5 times an hour and he's so refreshed in the mornings, he's jumping out of bed at 7am and reading the news before skipping out to the garden. Of course, he's still meant to take it easy as his body has been damaged by the years of oxygen deprivation but it is so nice to see him slowly reverting to the man I knew, rather than the barely conscious and exhausted one he had become. Somehow it was hard to be fully aware quite how ill he had become when it happened as gradually as it did. 

He's already so much better, I'm half scared he'll now need to trade me in for a younger wife as I am suddenly the more tired of the two. But, joking aside, if you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, go an ask your GP. It could be nothing but it could just turn out to be life threatening.

More on the maybe-aunt

Maybe I'm just slow, or naive, or dare I suggest too sweet at heart, but it has taken me a good number of days to realise I may have jumped to some premature assumptions on my grandfathers' front the other day.

When I was mulling over the mystery of the internet stranger who's in her 70s and apparently, according to DNA at least, a direct descendant of one of my grandparents and therefore a younger half sibling to either my mother or father, I naturally assumed one of my grandfathers must have been a naughty boy. That was quite a logical conclusion of course, because in my head the only other option was one of my grandmothers having an affair and giving birth a few years after my mum or dad, then giving the child up for adoption, all without anyone noticing their new addition... sounds fairly unlikely, no? Also given it was pre-DNA-test times, would they not just have kept the sibling and passed it off as a full sibling?

So, once again during my night time musings, it suddenly hit me that there's in fact a third option! What if one of my grandfathers actually wasn't my grandfather!? What if one of my grannies had an affair that resulted in my parent and simply pulled the wool over my grandfather's eyes? Then, none the wiser, the biological father could have gone on to have this maybe-aunt with a different partner; they'd still be a half aunt to me genetically. Bloody hell, my life is turning into an episode of Dallas!

This, of course, means I'm now sitting here with a magnifying glass and some very old and blurred black and white photos trying to ascertain whether my mum looks like gramps or my dad looks like granda. If that turns out to be the case, then my money would now definitely be less on mum's side of the family given rumour had it my maternal granny, how shall I put it, preferred a nice cup of tea to anything in the bedroom department, no comment there. And I could add that mum and gramps are very similar looking, the only dark-eyed, dark-haired members of what had been up to then a very blonde, blue-eyed family.

Sadly, my knowledge of Phyllis Buchanan Senior is quite limited. I was named after her as she died just six days before my birth. This untimely loss left my father orphaned at the tender age of 24, and as a result, discussions about Phyllis were infrequent and emotionally charged throughout dad's life. She, like many who depart prematurely, was revered in our family conversations, her memory enshrined as an almost celestial figure. Consequently, I am left with scant insight into her personal character or potential actions. Might she have been inclined towards indiscretions, could she have passed another man's child off as my granda's? I simply have no idea. I do know dad and granda had a wonderful and loving relationship and that granda was distraught when he lost Phyllis at the age of 50 but is this enough to rule it out? Dad had Phyllis's eye colour and his beard was red like her hair but I think he still looks like granda, a bit at least. 

And given neither of my parents had any siblings, I have no one to compare them to either physically or in personality. Arg! If mum was still about, at least I could have quizzed her about these options, and maybe asked her what her mother-in-law had been like. And I've still not tracked this woman down geographically which would help.

I think on balance last week's grandfather having an affair is still the more likely scenario, but in the meantime I'm not ruling today's option out fully.

I'll stick a pic or two on here to see if anyone else has any theories.

Mum's family: gran, mum, gramps

 

Dad's family: gran, granda, dad

Genealogy tips, anyone?

Thomas got the two of us those genealogy test things for Xmas as he thought it would be fun. He knew his dad was German, his mum Danish, but had always suspected given how swarthy some of his ancestors on his mum's side were that there might be some fun little gems in there too. 

As for me, we kind of figured I'd be entirely boring. I knew my great gran was from Ashton-under-Lyne in England and my great great grandpa was Irish, but other than that to my knowledge I was entirely, boringly 100% Scottish, though like Thomas my family was entirely fair-skinned and blue and green-eyed until my gramps and mum suddenly popped out much darker than expected, and brown-eyed. A born traveller, I secretly hoped against all evidence that I would be more exotic than I realised, even just a wee 2% something else, but I didn't dare get my hopes up too high. 

So, we did the wee swab things, sent them off to Germany and more or less forgot about it after that, till ten days ago when we were in Scotland.

Then the two emails came in...

So, sadly we're still in the dark as to why Thomas has several ancestors with dark eyes and skin, which he didn't inherit himself, as his DNA came back even less exotic than just half German, half Danish; it actually pinpointed that he is half Schwäbisch, half Jutlandic! With a mum from Odder in Jutland and a dad from Stuttgart, I'm not sure that was overly enlightening. Money back time????

I, on the other hand, got much more than I was bargaining for and it more than made up for Thomas's yawn-worthy results! Mine came back only 78% Celtic, which was a shock, but more of a surprise was that I was 15% Scandinavian. Given I thought even my Scandy kids were only 25% Scandinavian until last week, this is a huge surprise for everyone. I did chuckle to myself thinking that even my French kids were part Scandinavian. I'm not sure my ex-husband would approve. He might even accuse me of having had an affair with Thomas five years before I met him! 😂 

So, maybe I was originally Danish and could find some loophole to actually qualify for a Danish passport after all these years here as it is one of the hardest passports to qualify for! Moving further across Europe I'm also apparently 7% Eastern European, probably Polish/Ukrainian! Having booked to meet up with my bigger kids in Gdańsk for a week next month, I might go looking for some long-lost rellies while I'm over there! 😃

So, blown away by this info, I hardly noticed the other info attached to my findings and went off to bed mulling over my new multifacteted, jet-setting background. At 3am however I found myself fully awake, sitting bolt upright...

My subconscious had well and truly kicked in. Wtaf did I read under my ethnicity results? Sleeping in my nephew's bedroom, I searched the floor under his futon with my fingertips till I found both my phone and glasses. Under my ethnicity results was a list of people on their database that I was very distantly related to. Our DNA matched 2%, 1.6%, 0.8%. This wasn't overly interesting, but one person on their long list stood out: a woman. The only info on the database was her name, her age (70-79) and that she is resident in the UK. Our DNA match was over 12.5% and it stated that she could only be one of two relationships: a first cousin or a half aunt. And they indicated with a neat graph that half aunt was much more likely than cousin. 

But here's the Halloween-sized family skeleton! Because both my parents were only children, I knew I definitely didn't have any first cousins. But till last week I didn't think I could have any half aunts either! 70s would make her most likely a half sibling to one of my parents who currently would have been 79 and 80 had they lived. My dad's parents were never apart, not even during the war as granda was an essential munitions worker at Glasgow forge with flat feet into the bargain and though dad was an only child, he was more an only surviving child as his parents had two further kids after him who died at birth of Rhesus disease. I'm not fully ruling out dad's dad having an affair or a drunken one-night stand but it seems highly unlikely. Gramps (mum's dad) however was a different kettle of fish. In the RAF till 1948, stationed around Blackpool, while mum and gran lived in Springburn alone, he spent the majority of the first four years of mum's life leading a very separate life from his wife and child. Later in the 1940s my gran had to move to England (Wolverhampton) to care for her older sister who was dying of cancer, so once again the family was apart for some time.

And here's the most frustrating thing. There's a contact email for this half aunt, so of course I contacted her (extremely tactfully!) to try to work out at least from geography who she's most likely to be related to, but she hasn't replied. Is she in shock? Hasn't she seen it? Has she died since her DNA was analysed? Arg, I'm so frustrated!!!!

I don't know if the surname on her DNA results is her birth name, married name or other. Her first name is a diminutive form too, so is that her real full name or has she shortened it? Anyway, the bottom line is that I have checked the birth records from 69-80 years ago for anyone of that name in Scotland, England and Wales and when that drew a blank, I looked for anyone with that first name to see if she'd married a man of that surname any time between the 60s and now and that drew a blank too! So what now?! Just a hint as to where this woman was born could confirm or negate any of my grandfather suspicions. I don't know where to look now, but the bottom line is that someone covered up something big in my family back in the forties. It's sad to think that if I do manage to do some sleuthing neither mum nor dad is about to find out about their potential long lost half sibling.

Oh the scandal and intrigue!

Mum and her mum

I'm not usually much of an anniversaries kind of person. If someone forgets my wedding anniversary, I'm not devastated. After all it falls on an arbitrary date nearly 3 years after we actually wanted to hold it, decided partly by the date my ex finally gave up his nearly 4-year battle to not let me divorce him and was brought forward when my husband was threatened with redundancy leaving us without the funds to marry when we'd actually planned. Romantic, huh? I always wanted a summer wedding as I love summer. My wedding anniversary is in February🙄

Maybe it runs in the family? As a child I remember asking my granny when she got married, to which she replied 'it was either 6 o'clock on September 7th or 7 o'clock on September 6th. I can't remember...' either that or she didn't want to, she always found my gramps a bit of a handful. 

My own mother, her daughter, was the opposite. Birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day etc were big. Expensive cards and flowers marked every occasion and you daren't forget. Long after I had given up sending Christmas cards, for the sake of the planet, honest, I still sent one - to my mother. Dad was a bit more forgetful, often wishing me a happy birthday on my brother's birthday or similar, but he wouldn't have dared forget one of their special couple dates. 

Death anniversaries, well deaths that marked her, mattered too. I once noticed the symbol 'x' on her kitchen wall calendar. The year was 1986 and there seemed to be an 'x' on the 11th of each month, starting in March. I enquired what the 'x' meant and was told each 'x' marked a month on from the day someone had run over her cat, Snoopy. A decade later there were no 'x's on 27, the date of her own father's death. Hmmmm.

I've always found grieving to be more something that can hit you unexpectedly. I can hear a song I associated with my dad, happen upon an old photo, smell mum's perfume or catch a look in my kids' eyes that reminds me of how one of them looked, or I even a glimpse of myself in the mirror first thing in the morning with no makeup and that sets off the pain much more than a simple date on a calendar. 

Maybe I relate less to dates because I have moved time zone in my life. Had I had my boys where I live now, both would have a different birthday to the one they actually have, given both were born in the UK after 11pm, so dates are less set in my head.

Years later, mum's date obsession became an issue for me. My dad died on May 11 2012. Every 11th of the month that year, her usually sad and lost demeanour visibly worsened and she wanted to talk about little other than how awful the 11th made her feel. This broke my heart at first; she had never been without him in her adult life; she, like dad, was only in her 60s; it just wasn't fair but as the months passed I got more agitated. It felt almost like she was deliberately gearing herself up to be extra miserable on the 11th of each month, than she already was and I had a vested interest. Of all 8 of her grandchildren, only one had a birthday that fell on the 11th and she was one of mine. Approaching 3, I didn't want her birthday tied up in the spiral of sadness that the 11th was becoming. And give her her due, she didn't let that one 11th descend into depression just eight months on, but I certainly dreaded it more than I should had dreaded my baby's birthday that year.

So, today my mum has been dead for two years. It feels both like she's been gone for a decade, and simultaneously like she died last week. Growing up, February 26 was always a fun day as it was my gran's birthday. We knew we'd get nice fairy cakes and we'd spend the weeks beforehand saving up to buy her a little something: a cotton hanky with flowers on, a pin cushion, a hairbrush, a vase from a corner shop, something small that would be greeted with great appreciation. Even after she died, I still tended to remember Feb 26 with a smile as it had always been a big deal. It also marked the beginning of a big surge of birthdays in our tiny family. There were only the four of us, two grandfathers and one grandmother and of those all except my brother had their birthdays in the six weeks around Feb 26. To me that date was synonymous with endless cake and the making of cards. And by adulthood one of my best friends also had that birthday so there was always something to celebrate, usually over a shared plate of chips in the Collins canteen.

So now I'm not really sure how I am meant to feel about Feb 26 anymore. There's something rather unnerving about mum dying on her own mum's birthday. 

I really am at a loss.

Animal farm revisited

Yesterday's post left me ruminating on the concept of equality, and its impact struck me more profoundly than I initially realised, beneath the veneer of my flippant tone.

For any immigrant in Denmark, especially during their initial decade of residency, the foremost stressor is often the instability stemming from the lack of either permanent residency or citizenship. Let's juxtapose the journeys of two couples. It starts out along the same path:

• one partner is born in 1968, the other in 1972
• he is a Dane, she is a UK citizen or a dual UK/Aussie citizen
• they meet in the home of the non-Danish partner in the early 2000s
• they have a few kids together and stay married till at least 2024, with no plans to change that

So far so good but things diverge then...

In couple one, they marry and the non-Dane is granted full citizenship on the day of their marriage just four years after their first meeting and less than two years after arriving permanently in Denmark. Hey, the government even rewrites the immigration rules for her and has the Monarch okay the change and it's given the cutesy title 'Mary's law', because after all it only applies to one person, Mary. 

Let's look at the other couple now... 

With only eight weeks preparation they move to Denmark in 2019 unimaginably stressed because of how precarious their predicament has become in the UK, where they had set up home together in 2006, four years after they first met. They are up against the Brexit clock because moving after the UK's exit would have huge repercussions. The date for Brexit keeps changing so they have no idea what they are up against. She has just undergone a full hysterectomy because of two pre-cancerous grapefruit-sized tumours on her ovaries so can barely stand up but be that as it may they have no option but to move before Brexit to be ensured a future as a family. After the magical, yet illusory Brexit date:

• She wouldn't be allowed to own a house in Denmark for the first five years as she would have lost her EU citizenship
• Her rights to stay with her family wouldn't be covered by the UK's EU withdrawal agreement
• Her driving licence wouldn't be valid any more

Thanks Britain, just thanks!

So in a rush, they arrive in Denmark in early 2019. She finds out that to obtain a guaranteed secure future in the country of her husband and children's citizenship, she needs to go through the following steps:

• Live in Denmark continuously for 5 years to apply for permanent residence (it's usually 8 if you're Australian)
• Apply for no money from the Danish state, and therefore remain ineligible for all help in finding employment for the first five years. You're on your own with that task.
• Be fully self-sufficient
• Have no breaks in your residence in Denmark
• Pass a C1 Danish language exam
• Pass the knowledge of Denmark Naturalisation exam
• Have no criminal convictions
• Live in Denmark a further 2+ years after the 5 you needed for your permanent residency card before attempting to get citizenship
• Have a full-time job for at least 3 years and 6 months within the 4 years prior to applying for citizenship*... lose it for 7 months and you're back to square one requiring a further 3.5 years work. Non-EU citizens must earn a minimum of DKK 487,000. (Covid getting you laid off is not a valid excuse, neither is serious illness!) It's like playing a grotesque game of snakes and ladders with your life and future.
• Swear allegiance to the state and the monarch (I guess the two couples converge again here momentarily!)
• Sign up for a naturalisation ceremony
• Pay DKK 3,800

The journey becomes even more stressful with changes in government over the course of that decade often moving the goalposts after years of diligent effort.

Finding and sustaining full-time employment in one's mid to late 50s poses a significant challenge, particularly when seeking further training or assistance from the local job centre would nullify the terms of your residency for the first five years. So far I am no closer to my goal as I can only find freelance jobs, and as I turn 56 next month I suspect the insurmountable 3.5 year rule will be the hurdle at which my ability to ever gain the same citizenship as my husband and children ultimately falls. And with that goal goes all hope of security and a guarantee of a future no state can remove from us at a whim.🙁

Reflecting on the divergent trajectories of these initially parallel paths, I'm compelled to acknowledge that the concept of equality seems to have slipped through the cracks. Fully 22 years after I met my Dane and five years after our move, I am no closer to what she magically achieved in four short years than I have ever been. Her family matters much more than mine; the trauma they would suffer if she was no longer allowed to reside with her husband and kids is considered somehow greater and more important than the trauma my kids and husband would feel in the same situation...  It all feels kinda sucky. 🙁 

I come from a country where even Royal foreigners are made to jump through hideous hoops to be allowed the peace of mind that lets them stay with their partner, married or not, parent of a UK citizen or not. Don't get me wrong, I am not part of the school that adheres to the idea that I had to suffer so you bloody well should too. I am more someone who thinks that this modern situation where parents do not have an automatic right to live in the country where there kids have citizenship or with their partner of many years, without fearing which whim of the current administration will potentially send them into a tailspin of terror is a sad place to be. 

Eighteen years and several kids down the line, ours obviously wasn't a marriage of convenience, so it would be nice if one of our governments saw us as human beings rather than just statistics.

*Education doesn't count towards citizenship, so if like Léon you came here at 13, you can only start to work towards your 3.5 years of work requirement once you finish your uni degree at the age of 25, so in his case citizenship will have taken much more than half his lifetime to achieve: Arriving at 13, working till 28.5 (15.5 years later).  

Queen out, King in

It would appear Denmark has a new monarch. 

Back on New Year's Eve I happened to see the Queen's speech. Normally I don't make a habit of watching it, but I'd been ill all Xmas with some flu-like thing and hadn't been outside so I was lying on the couch when it came on so I just let it roll. It's actually quite a compliment that I bothered given I have never, not even once in my life, seen the UK monarch's Christmas speech! As a good Scottish republican family, I was brought up to know that the one thing you really must never do is sit down to watch old Lizzie address the nation, though I guess it is probably Charlie these days. 

I saw the Danish one the first year after I arrived here as my homework for Danish class was to listen to it to see what I understood. Unlike most Danes the old Queen speaks very slowly and clearly and is positively a delight if you're a foreigner, from a comprehension point of view anyway, even if you have your reservations constitutionally! Most foreigners coming here really struggle to understand spoken Danish more than any other form of the language as Danes mumble, swallow the ends of their words and speak quickly. Given I learnt Danish passively by hearing it over many years, understanding spoken Danish is what I find easiest, even today. It definitely outstripped my ability to speak the language back then for sure, but I followed the teacher's instructions as my first lesson on arrival here was the last one before Xmas, only to find out that when I went back in January that I had been moved into a whole different class with a different teacher and completely different homework!

So, there it was running in the background when two minutes from the end of a fairly long and not overly riveting speech she nonchalantly announced she was going to abdicate in a fortnight. This was a bit of a shocker given no one has abdicated in Denmark for 878 years. Denmark went into meltdown. First there was a half hour of shocked silence where people acted like she'd upped and died during her speech but they all seem to worship her the way bees do their queen, so within half and hour the hive mind had collectively decided that if their beloved Daisy had decided to resign then that must be the most wonderful event ever to befall the Danish people and not only would it be ideal for her to step down but it would also be just perfect to see her son and his wife take over the throne two weeks later and they would turn their love and adoration to him as well/instead. Polls on the day said support for the monarchy was up at 80% 😮 (wtaf!) with only one in five Danes having any reservations about spending their hard-earned tax money on this family's luxurious lifestyle, oops I mean service to the nation. Wow, what an interesting take from a country that professes to prize equality over most things. I guess some really are more equal than others...

So last Sunday was the day. I figured I should get into the spirit of being Danish by buying a cake to celebrate the big event. Unfortunately the whole of Funen had the same idea and my favourite prize-winning bakery had already tweeted this before I woke up!

But when it comes to cake I am not that easily defeated, so off to the big Coop bakery in Søndersø I went instead. It was a ghost town, not to mention almost sold out too. There were maybe two cars in the car park, while the rest of Denmark sat glued to the telly or better still in the courtyard of their parliament building waiting for the new monarch to be presented.

There's nothing quite like a change of the head of state in one's new country to make you feel reeeeally foreign in your adopted home...

There were flags up in people's gardens, kids wearing crowns looking like they'd been on a mass outing to Burger King, folk waving flags galore, weeping pensioners, 90 000 people on parliament square in the freezing cold chanting 'hurrah' in unison with the Prime Minister in some vaguely culty manner! They were even all over TikTok sharing this kind of thing: 

Watching their traditions, for example that the monarch has to ride in some golden horse-drawn carriage presumably without the heated seats and comfortable suspension of the car used to transport the rest of the entourage seemed a bit to me like they'd drawn the short straw. No wonder the old girl decided to resign if it got her out the carriage into the limo! One thing I could never have in Northern Europe is a car without heated seats in the winter!

Nor have I ever been overly comfortable with all the deferential curtsying and bowing. There was King Frederik bowing to his own mother. What?! My kids sure don't so that when I'm around! It's just plain weird. And as she stood up to leave the room she proclaimed 'Gud bevare Kongen!' (God save the King). Again, it's just not something my mother ever said leaving me or my brother to go into another room! It's just all kind of unrelatable! Maybe it's actually monarchies in general rather than specifically this one that I struggle with. 

This is a little country and seems to function more like a clan than a nation. As a foreigner, I could see how they all felt, but I couldn't feel it. I didn't know how to. What makes this family different to any other here? The new King was born the same year as me, has four kids instead of five. Are we really that different? Apparently, so, but I am not sure why! I definitely felt very much an outsider watching this national family party that I felt I just hadn't been invited to, mentally at least! I secretly wonder whether the new Queen herself, a fellow foreigner, felt just a tiny bit on the outside of all this too, or maybe it's easier to feel part of it all when the crowd is going wild for you, the state is filling your bank account and instead of a ten year plus battle for Danish citizenship, you're simply given it as a freebie on your marriage!

Interestingly, when the kids went into school on Monday morning, Léon whose Gymnasium class is in their final year and full of 19-20 year olds, said that to a man they were gushing over the weekend as if a member of their own family had married and thrown the best party ever. Anna whose class is two years younger and still in the first year of Gym were on the whole the same, though a few were more neutral, however Amaia who is in her first year of the 3-year middle school, surrounded by 14 year olds, said no one mentioned it and when the history teacher tried to engage them on the topic of the historical occasion from the day before no one showed the slightest interest in any of it! Come to think of it the kids in the crowd at the actual event were all very much younger than Amaia. Maybe it is cool to rebel at 14, but by 20 you are back securely in the fold of this enormous family.

I suspect this is all very familiar to those who watched Charles' do last year in England but you see I was way too busy washing my hair that day to catch any of the footage. 😉

Anna summed it up on the day for this house succinctly... 

Anna: You see that crowd of people waiting outside in the cold to greet the new king of Denmark, mum?

Me: Yes.

Anna: I can guarantee you one thing... My future husband is not in that crowd!🤣

Flores de Pascua?

I know I know a language or two, but I wouldn't say my Spanish is quite up there at the level of some of the others I've learnt, though I am attempting to get better at it given my daughter seems to have moved there! I could probably write a short blogpost in it, even if I still find it harder to converse with the natives as yet.

When I was over for a week just before Xmas, I noticed the festive decorations in Madrid seemed unlike those I was used to from other countries I have spent Christmas in: Scotland, France, Germany and Denmark. The predominant white and cream lights I was used to were replaced by spring flowers in myriad colours. I asked Lots if this was traditional all over Spain and she admitted she was puzzled. She'd been in Barcelona a week earlier and also in Segovia and their lights were more what she was expecting.

Madrid had daffodils, tulips, fuchsias and snowdrops above the road on the Gran Vía! I happened to remark that it all felt a little more like Easter flowers than Xmas ones. Charlotte started to laugh. Do you think they maybe used a foreign contractor to manufacture and provide this year's lights? she asked. Why? I wondered. 

Well for some strange reason the Spanish word for poinsettias is flores de Pascua, or Easter flowers, so if they had asked for poinsettias, a non-Spanish contractor could easily have thought they meant tulips or daffodils! And once they arrived the mayor would have had the choice of no lights or these unexpectedly fancy ones.

An interesting and amusing theory, but I'm definitely leaning towards it!

Retiro at Xmas

Charlotte and I had an interesting experience the other night...

Madrid is knee-deep in Xmas decor at the moment, so we decided every evening after dark to go for a long walk and discover a different part of town's contribution to the festivities.

On my last night we opted for a trip over to the Retiro park as we were sure it would be a highlight. Being sensible, as always, Lots checked if the park had a closing time and we saw it was 10 pm. We wandered round the lakes, taking pics and finally made our way to the main exit. The park was pretty full as many had had the same idea. I stopped to take one last photo of a pink Xmas tree reflecting in some water, three steps from the gate. As you can see on my last photo, time-stamped at 10pm, there were a number of us.

None of us, however, spied the bloke I have circled in red. The park attendant who was tasked we thought with emptying the park... In fact his job actually seemed to be more specific than that - more locking up the park than emptying it. Despite being less than three steps from Charlotte and within shouting distance of everyone in the picture, do you think the bastard shouted over 'closing time!' or do you think he sneaked some hefty padlocks onto all the gates then disappeared in a puff of smoke?! 

Yup, you got it in one! He didn't utter a peep! So one minute later when we attempted to leave, he was nowhere in sight! A crowd of about ten of us figured we should probably walk to the next entrance/exit, though given the main one was shut, it was a long shot.

The crowd had swelled to about thirty, including some elderly Spaniards who were finding the going quite hard. Needless to say the next exit was also bolted, and the next and the next! By 10:19 I was beginning to wonder if my Iberia flight the next morning could be moved if I was still locked in the park! 

Finally after about 25 minutes of walking the perimeter in the dark, we found one park attendant who let us all out, but I am still puzzled as to why the first guy didn't simply announce it was everyone's last opportunity to escape. I guess he was maybe just in grinch-mode and having some free fun at our expense!

A tiny surprise about my gran

My kids had a bit of a falling out with their dad back in 2012 and it took till this year for them to decide to visit him again. Long story...

Marcel was running the Côte d'Azur marathon and Milly the 20K, and Charlotte and Léon were cheering them on. That is where their dad currently lives so they invited him to spectate, had lunch with him two days in a row and did a little sightseeing. They got to meet the woman who, on paper, has been their stepmother since 2016 too. I always thought it would be better if they had some contact with him but the amount was, of course, up to them. 

So, because of this rift, from early childhood Léon has been known as Léon Buchanan-Widmann. That was always unofficial as it would have required his father's consent until he reached adulthood, so his passport and Danish residence permit still insisted on Gautier. Now he's 18 he wanted to make it official after all these years but found out that adding the ‘-Widmann’ he has used since he was six would have caused all sorts of bureaucratic nightmares with the change of his French passport unfortunately. 

Changing to your other parent’s surname is a box-ticking exercise now thanks to a change in French law from July 2022, but changing to anything else requires courts and can be declined. Poor Lots tried to change her name in 2020 so had to pay over €500 and go through the French courts to change hers, Marcel waited till after the new law (accidentally - he didn’t actually know the law was going to change) and it took him 6 weeks as against Charlotte’s 3 years. Anyway the upshot is that Léon finally decided following Marcel’s route might be a tad less stressful than following Charlotte’s, so dropped the ’-Widmann’ with a little pang of regret and became Léon Buchanan. 

When the message came in from the Scottish register to say it had been changed, he logged on to order the new birth certificate he needs to change his UK passport. While I was on helping him, I got lost down the rabbit hole of the registry. 

First, I checked if my great auntie Cathie was still alive, and strangely she seems to be! The woman must be 100, and still doesn’t talk to the remaining members of the family despite still having all her marbles, weird woman! 

Then I checked a few of mum’s friends and from there I looked back at old records of family members' births and deaths. 

Growing up I used to moan to my gran about disliking my name, feeling it was too old for someone growing up in the 70s, yes I know I was named after my other dead gran but that didn't please me at the age of 7... and she confided in me that she felt exactly the same. Her name was boring and too common in her age group… not exactly my issue but we could relate at least! Gran was called Jean and confided in me that sometimes as a kid she signed things Jeanne and pronounced it the French way to make herself see much more exotic. 

She soon realized as a little girl in Springburn that Jeanne was a little farfetched so often contented herself simply with changing her name to Jeanie, just to be a tiny bit more exciting. Longing to be a little more than just a Jean and a Phyllis became a leitmotif between us during our brief 16-year overlap on this planet. 

I found gran’s death certificate from 1984. Jean Stirling had died of metastatic cancer of the lungs and brain at the age of 68. I found her marriage certificate from 1943. Jean Napier Henderson had married Matthew Thomson Stirling. Then I went back to 1916, but Jean Napier Henderson had never been born!

That puzzled me, given I knew she was definitely not born down south or elsewhere. I stuck in a wildcard and to my surprise found little ‘Jeanie Napier Henderson’ born to Annie (née Venters) and Allan Henderson in 1916. All the names matched. 

 

In those days things weren’t digital. Records were written and recorded by hand. My gran never learned to drive, never owned a passport, so probably never saw her own birth certificate which had been lost in the first world war. Her mother had died when she was a child, her father has a breakdown when he was left to raise two young girls alone. Her family called her Jean, so she thought her name was Jean. By the time she married, it had changed de facto as she filled in Jean on her marriage certificate, but she was never the plain Jean she hated so much, she was the Jeanie she always dreamed of being and never knew she had been! 

My own mother died in 2022, not knowing her mother’s first name was not what she had always believed it to be! How weird is that? I’d love to ring them both up today and tell them, but that is obviously never going to happen. 

Excitedly, I did double check my own birth certificate, but apparently it wasn’t a mistake. I am still frumpy Phyllis with no middle name alternative! Ho hum!

2 days, 2 years later

Every so often I feel like writing about a quasi-taboo subject matter and then go to delete it once I have. But the only way to make those topics less frightening is writing about them; maybe it'll help someone else go through something similar one day.

It's now been 2 years and 3 months since I rather carelessly lost one of my boobs. Let's just say you can no longer call me a 'right tit', no matter what I do!

Humour is one way of tackling the situation. Another is distancing yourself from the occurrence to the point where you almost can't believe it happened, to you at least. 

It is never a good sign when they tell you at your mammogram that they would rather you didn't put your clothes back on, but instead follow them to an ultrasound room to meet a consultant.

That in itself was a rather surreal situation, because you are at best psyched up for reading mammogram results a week after the most unpleasant boob-squeeze. You are not psyched up for watching your own boob on an ultrasound screen within five minutes. 

Having been in lockdown almost since my arrival in Denmark, I hadn't had many opportunities at that point to practise my Danish. My passive Danish was fine, I'd been listening to it for 13 years at that point, but I was just learning to speak it out loud, which is no mean feat as there are some seriously hard-to-pronounce sounds in this language. And this mammogram was at the height of the covid outbreak, which didn't hit Denmark anything like as badly as the UK, but it did still mean I had to attend this appointment alone.

To my untrained eye, things didn't look dire. There were no obvious clumps of dodgy cells, suggesting a tumour, there were no lumps or bumps and none of the outward signs you get on that diagram that makes the rounds of Facebook every few months. The only surprise I could see were long strands of white that looked vaguely like long worms. The consultant explained that these were long, maybe 10cm, areas of calcium built up in my milk ducts. I had breastfed five kids for two years each so it was of no surprise to me that there might be a little build up of something in there, some wear and tear, some damage. And they kept using the word calcium, so that isn't a bad thing, is it? They gave me a leaflet on calcium in technical Danish and booked me to come back for a biopsy. That word I liked less, but again, if it was to determine if there was a calcium build-up, how bad could it be?

The biopsy made the normal mammogram seem like a walk in the park. Every older woman knows the horrors of a mammogram. I don't know about in the UK, but here there are signs up claiming the procedure isn't painful, mere uncomfortable. Bullshit! They take a carpenter's vice, squish your boob into it, turn the handle till your eyes water, then turn it just a little more till you think you might pass out, take a photo, then repeat the procedure from different angles three more times. For the biopsy, however, they need to see your boob in real time. So you get to lie face down on a bed with a hole to put your boob in. A nurse pulls and tugs on you till they have you in place in that vice and onscreen. Instead of the usual 5 second photo, you lie there while the insert a knitting needle into you to extract cells. They keep you clamped while they check each sample to see if they have enough cells, they repeat this procedure for about half an hour. All the while a second nurse holds your hand looking incredibly sympathetic, which is both nice and terrifying, in equal measures. Even if you weren't being investigated for a cancerous growth in your breast, it would be a bloody nightmare, but add that psychological layer on top and it is almost too much to bear. 

As you go to leave, you're given a further booklet on calcium, and they mention almost as an afterthought that very occasionally, if you are really unlucky, the biopsy needs to be repeated if they didn't get the right cells. A week later of course I got the email asking me to come back to repeat the entire ordeal as I was one of the unlucky ones. The bruising was quite a sight!

After the second biopsy, I was invited in, this time with my husband, an ominous sign, to discuss the way forward. That was when I was first given a leaflet of DCiS, (ductal carcinoma in situ). The consultant told me Danes usually react ok to this as they mainly know germanic languages so know none of those words, but as a speaker of many romance languages, I didn't need any explaining of that condition. They went on to explain that if the carcinoma was still in situ in the duct, I would be ok until it grew and burst out into my breast or was carried round my body by means of my lymphatic system. All in all, it would probably be around ten years before it mutated into incurable cancer. The only way to tell was to inject dye into me and trace which lymphs were being used by which ducts. More than two years on my breast is still blue where the dye went in! Once the lymphs were located, they were removed and biopsied. They came back clear so it was indeed still contained to my duct.

In the UK, they usually perform a lumpectomy at this point, according to the NHS Scotland website anyway. In Denmark the standard procedure, and only one on offer to me was a full mastectomy within a week. I could decide whether or not to be reconstructed during this operation, later or not at all. In my head there were only two options: 'then' or 'never' (and 'never' was not even a close second in my head). I couldn't face going through it all, healing, physio and then going back to square one. Had they removed both, I might have managed to consider the option of 'never', but I couldn't face it with only one. I had been 'top-heavy' since my teens, it was part of my femininity and I couldn't imagine what having only one breast would do to me psychologically in my early 50s. Already I was facing looking like a train wreck naked, but in my clothes I could hide and feel normal and that mattered to me. It was six months before I could bear to have anyone look at me, even reconstructed with all the scarring, so I am not sure I could have got my head round the alternative. I have nothing but admiration to the stronger women than me who opt for 'never'.

I expect if your mind is strong enough, 'never' is probably more comfortable. I have no feeling on one side from my shoulder to the bottom of my ribs. I can feel tugging, but pinch me, burn me and I have no reaction. It aches but it doesn't feel like it is part of me. With all the muscles cut away, it took six months of physio before I could lift a salad bowl down from a shelf or close the boot of my car. I simply couldn't reach upwards with my right arm. Even now it is harder to use my right arm than my left.

For the first few months, you are so caught up with the physical aftermath, you don't get as far as analysing the psychological. When I think back now, I am gobsmacked. I took the three youngest kids to Hamburg (3 hours away) for a four day holiday 3 weeks after my op, 1 week after the drains were removed from my body, because I felt I had let them down by not being able to go on the summer holiday given I was operated on at the beginning of July. With hindsight I must have been insane. What on earth was I thinking clocking up 20 000 steps round Hamburg and Lübeck so soon after such a huge operation?

I didn't even tell my mother or the members of my family who weren't in Denmark, because Covid restrictions meant they couldn't get to me, so I didn't want to worry them. I rang my mum on the Monday for our usual chat saying I was busy Tuesday and Wednesday and then rang again on the Thursday as if nothing had happened. She died six months later thinking I had had nothing more than a minor procedure at my GPs to remove a little calcium, not imagining I had had a lymphadenectomy, a mastectomy, a breast reconstruction, a breast reduction on the other side to even things up a bit. And those were only the physical things.

The mental side of things was a whole other realm. It was two-pronged. On the one hand, it had been caught early enough that major surgery was enough, meaning I got to bypass the horrors of chemo, radiotherapy etc, and I wake up eternally grateful for that every day. But on the other, it was one of the worst things you can go through without reaching that final level of horror. So, I was in this odd limbo where I didn't feel mentally I had the right to mope or complain because I had been so lucky; so many people have it so much worse. It did seem weird though to go through what I went through with no acknowledgement from myself or others of the depth of that trauma. On balance though, I think I coped reasonably well with it all and was sure it was all behind me.

Two weeks ago, I went for my first mammogram on the remaining breast since that whole rollercoaster ride. I hadn't needed one till now as the tissue from the remaining breast had been biopsied when the reduction surgery was carried out. I managed to attend the appointment without being too traumatised, driving myself there, chatting to the staff in the health centre. It is hard for me to undress in front of strangers now, which is odd as I was never shy before. I look completely normal in clothes, so as I undressed, I warned the woman who was going to be doing the xrays and the young male student who was obviously there to learn about the job, before turning to face them. Yes, they probably see this every day, but I still struggle with how I look, even if they don't. Maybe one day I'll have the balls to go topless sunbathing in Spain again and simply tell people I was attacked by a shark or similar but I am not quite there yet. They said they had read my notes and tried to put me at ease.

I wasn't taken through to the ultrasound this time, which had to be good, right? Yet, three days later when I got an alert that there was a new message from Syddanmark health service in my private email box (all medical correspondence is secure digital in Denmark), I couldn't open it. I thought I was fine, but I simply couldn't bring myself to read it. Thomas asked if I wanted him to read it, but I would know from his face, so I sat on the message for a full two days until finally on the third morning I woke up with enough mental strength to finally dive in and read my results, which were fine this time. So I guess it did affect me more than I am willing to admit if it took me two days and a night simply to open an email.

Onwards and upwards, I guess.

18 today

So my boy is 18 today, except he isn't really! He was born at 23:45 on 29/09/05 in the Queen Mother's Maternity hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, so given he now lives in Denmark, although on his birth certificate his birthday is still September 29, if he wants to raise a glass at the moment of his birth, he now needs to wait till 00:45 on September 30! 

I guess in a way it is a metaphor for the complicated path his life has taken till now. He was born after my marriage to his father died. French by birth, he was brought up from the age of one by a Dane so even before we moved to Denmark, his Danish was better than his French. Now we live here and have done for 4.5 years, he is what a truly bilingual person looks like. He's not just good at both Danish and English, he is native in both now.

He's a Dane living in Denmark, but not eligible for Danish citizenship, at least not until he's sat a whole host of qualifying exams about Danish language and culture, despite having studied till 19 at a Danish STX (the highest level of Grammar school). When he leaves school next year many of his mates want to do a gap year travelling, but Léon can't as he's on the kind of residence permit that doesn't allow you to leave the country for more than six months without losing your right to be here. 

To be Danish he needs to work a minimum of 4.5 years full-time before he can apply, but for some crazy reason university doesn't count towards that goal so whereas he could become Danish 5 years from now if he doesn't go to uni, he has to wait nearly 10 years if he does, as the degree will take 5 years before he can begin the compulsory 4.5 years of work. It's so unfair given he feels every bit as Danish as his two Danish passport-holder sisters. He will have lived in Denmark nearly 15 years before he can apply to be a citizen at the age of 28 and he will have been brought up by a Dane since before his first birthday. He will have called a Dane Dad for more than 27 years before he can apply. 

It is almost as if the government is encouraging foreign-born kids, however bright, not to go into further education. Why penalise someone for wanting to be say a doctor, and encourage them to go work full-time in the local supermarket instead? I thought Denmark prided itself on the level of education given to its young people and I also thought it needed more doctors than it needs unqualified supermarket workers.

Anyway, however long it takes, I have no doubt he will one day qualify for a Danish passport. I just wish he got to celebrate his coming of age in a more equal manner with his peers.

Happy birthday Léon!

Should I be worried?

We had a Spanish girl staying with us for three weeks. Since she was 18, Charlotte has au-paired off and on for Sara and her little sister Paula and their cousin Eva in Madrid. When she first met Sara, she was 10 and her parents wanted an English-speaking au pair to help her with school. As the years went by, Sara got too old to need a babysitter but our two families had become entwined, culminating in us finally flying down last year to meet them for the first time. 

They had brought Charlotte food parcels when she was isolating in her flat in Madrid with covid at Xmas 2020, they had invited her to their house for her 21st when covid restrictions had meant she couldn't see any of her family, and she had visited them most summers becoming more like an older sister to her two Spanish sisters. 

So when their mum tentatively asked me last summer over dinner if I would let Sara come and stay so she could live in an English-speaking house for a few weeks, I was more than happy to accept. She's 15 now, and so is Anna, so I knew it would be good for both of them as Anna has chosen to do Spanish at Gymnasium too.

On arrival early July we thought a few board games would be a good way to break the ice. The kids had only met her once over dinner last year in Madrid and she seemed quite shy. Articulate would be a good one to help her with English, we thought. (You get a word and have to describe it to your partner and they get to guess which word you are describing.)

Léon was first up, describing for Anna. He drew the word 'van'. His description: 'A vehicle that is often white and used by bad people who want to kidnap small children'. I was somewhat surprised that his go-to use for a van was kidnapping rather than say deliveries or being used by a worker of some sort such as a gardener or plumber, but Anna guessed it immediately and the game continued.

The following day, Amaia, who had been out with friends on our first games evening, joined in. By some coincidence she too drew the card 'van', this time describing for Sara. She had neither been there the night before, nor heard of our game, so I was more than surprised when she started immediately with: 'it's like a car but bigger, people use them for kidnapping kids!' 

Am I living in a much more sinister world than I realise or are my kids all just quite disturbed?

Quick update

Quick update on yesterday's blog post: 

Charlotte finally found out yesterday that she was one of the lucky few who would be told her final grade before the day as she’d scored enough on the 75% that’s already been marked to get a First class degree! I can’t begin to imagine how she managed it through all that but she is one of the most determined people I’ve ever met, so I’m just bowled over. I can’t wait to see what she does next. For now she’s gone to see friends in Madrid, then later in the summer she won a scholarship to go on an all inclusive extended Catalan course being held in Majorca, then she’s going straight back to spend another year in Madrid teaching while she considers her options for the future, so watch this space!

Charlotte's unforgettable uni years

It's been a wild ride. The five years of Charlotte's university life have been, shall we say, an unorthodox mix of trials and tribulations that feel more like a roller coaster designed by Salvador Dalí than the blissful journey of self-discovery and academic enlightenment I'd optimistically envisioned back when she left Mearns Castle in 2018. 

Year 1: Bombs, Pre-cancer and losing her family:

The inaugural year kicked off with a bang - almost literally. A bomb scare served as a less than warm welcome to university life with the whole campus being evacuated within days of her start. Sitting home in Newton Mearns and receiving texts telling me that police had ringed campus because of a bomb threat but not to worry because she was 'just fine' was not quite how I'd envisioned Charlotte's welcome by my alma mater! 

And just when we thought things couldn't get any more dramatic, I had my own little scare. A seemingly innocent visit to the doctor turned into a two-month ovarian cancer scare leading to a full hysterectomy and not one, but three, hospital stays for infections over Christmas. Fortunately everything had been caught in time so the damage was mainly psychological rather than life threatening. 

You'd think we had faced enough excitement for one year, but no, Thomas got a job interview in Denmark while I was under the knife in hospital. We'd been considering leaving the UK since it became clear how EU citizens would be treated after Brexit. The kids, all dual nationals, were fine but I was on the cusp of losing my freedom of movement, so it was then or never. He got the job, quite unexpectedly given he'd been in the UK for nearly two decades and they needed a Danish expert. With extremely heavy hearts, we decided to sell the house the kids had grown up in, pull them out of their good East Ren schools and emigrate. So, Thomas left in March and the rest of Charlotte's first year was spent helping a recuperating mum (who'd been told not to lift anything heavier than a kettle for the next three months) pack a lifetime up in boxes while looking for student accommodation for the following year. Where we found the reserves for that at the time, I don't know.

Year 2: Strikes and a mystery pandemic:

Just as we were trying to adjust to our new normal, Charlotte's lecturers decided to go on strike for the whole of her last term, which wasn't great for her academically, though we could fully empathise with their motivation. But that was merely a prelude to the pandemic opera that was about to ensue. The last week of her last term, which was cancelled because of strikes was further cancelled by Covid lockdown! Charlotte found herself suddenly deserted in her halls as the Covid lockdown sent international students fleeing the country, but although she was in international halls, Denmark had closed its borders to Covid three weeks before the UK went into lockdown, leaving her unable to get home to us until mid-June. And because the first lockdown was so strict, before the concept of bubbles was invented in the UK, she couldn't even move in with her very lonely granny or her aunt and uncle whose flat she could ironically see from her halls window!

Year 3: Spanish Lockdown, Xmas Alone, and what a 21st!

Charlotte's third year saw her bravely navigating a year abroad amidst the ongoing pandemic. I had always assumed I'd fly down with her and help her find a room, but we were a few months into a pandemic and Madrid had been hit worse than most cities, only people with work contracts were allowed in. For a while it wasn't obvious she would even get to go abroad, the year before had been sent home in March instead of at the beginning of July, so I took her to Copenhagen airport with her big case and her masks and waved her off alone. However, the virus soon locked her within the Madrid region though the schools never closed so her year was more successful than we had imagined when she set off. She caught Covid for the first time around Xmas before the vaccine was available, which actually turned out to be a positive! It meant she couldn't leave Spain over Xmas and return home. Many of her flatmates who did leave Spain for a week at Xmas weren't allowed back in until Easter because of the pandemic. It also meant she had a less exciting than expected 21st a week after Xmas with no family and no flatmates. Fortunately for us she has au paired for the same family in Madrid since she was 18 and they made her a cake and bought her some cosy socks as a gift so she wasn't completely forgotten, but that'll definitely be a 21st to tell her kids about one day!

She caught a second bout of Covid within six months and weathered it again fine. I had my own health problems that summer, but as Charlotte was locked in, I played them down at the time, so as not to worry her unnecessarily, so she didn't get to hear about my DCIS scare and mastectomy till she got home two months after it, when I was very much on the mend, physically at least.

They finally lifted travel restrictions four weeks before she was due to leave Spain, so I knew I wouldn't be seeing her any time soon. The now completely mature and self-sufficient Charlotte decided to spend the first six weeks after her job ended back-packing around Spain alone, seeing all the places she had expected to see over the year she lived there and she came home eventually around the beginning of September having seen none of her family in over a year!

Year 4: More Strikes, Granny, and French Frenzy 

The hits kept coming in Year 4. More strikes, dropped courses, and a limited choice of exam questions made studying a Herculean task. In the midst of all this, we lost her Granny, diagnosed with a terminal illness and gone within five weeks. By then Charlotte had moved in with her aunt and uncle as student accommodation is seriously hard to come by in Glasgow, especially if you want to be there less than 51 weeks, and she was only meant to be there 20 September - 15 March, with a month in Denmark over Xmas. Meanwhile mum also moved in with them as she needed to be cared for and then all 5 of us from the Danish side of the family and Marcel and Milly from London also moved in there so she would have her whole family around her on her final journey. Poor Amanda had nine extra bodies in a four bedroom flat! There were a loooooot of airbeds! This probably wasn't the easiest time for Charlotte's studies either.

To add to the turmoil, as part of her degree, Charlotte had to find a job in France, arrange everything, and move just days after the funeral. Shockingly, her internship-paying job soon turned into a full-blown teaching role when the teacher she had been employed to assist in the small private school in Toulouse turned out to be 8 months pregnant and going on maternity leave within days of her arrival. Essentially, she was thrown into the deep end paddling furiously on less than minimum wage. Though four months full-time teaching experience in a private school will be ok for her CV, I imagine, and Toulouse was lovely; I sneaked down for a wee week alone with my biggest girl in May, just to check the granny straw hadn't finally broken the camel's back, and of course it hadn't.

Year 5 Just when you thought nothing else could go wrong, year five said "Hold my beer!" 

Strikes decided to make an unwelcome encore, this time for three days a week. If your classes were Monday or Friday, you got taught, if your classes were mid-week, you didn't. Some students threw in the towel. Lots, forever resourceful, opted to camp out on the floor of the Monday class she wasn't enrolled in, so she could get the info anyway. Having befriended a good number of Spanish and Catalan guys, she spent her weekends hill-walking and partying in Spanish and Catalan to help with her language-learning but the uni had one last surprise for them... Their finals were to be hit by a marking boycott, leaving two of Charlotte's final exams unmarked in time for graduation. Yesterday was the final deadline for degree classification and she now has the results of 180 of the 240 credits her final degree classification will be based on. Many of her fellow students are also missing grades. The uni has decided to 'grade' all ungraded final work (in Charlotte's case all her Catalan papers and all her written Spanish language papers) at D3, the lowest pass grade available, to see if the final total comes to a pass mark, thus allowing them to graduate. This decision was made so they do not need to lower anyone's grade afterwards, only raise them, but is so far from what she is likely to actually have, it is quite underwhelming. When the boycott is over, these papers will be re-marked and the degree classification adjusted accordingly. Yes, in real terms, this isn't going to affect her actual life or future employment, but what a dampener on graduation day to not know what you are going to get. This should be a time for celebrating with your classmates, supporting those who haven't done as well as they had hoped, and none of that will be happening if their grades come in over summer once they are all in far-flung places. Graduation, the culmination of years of hard work and camaraderie, will now have a surreal tinge. As she dons her purple robes and receives her still-blank certificate, she will be celebrating a success tinged with the bitterness of yet another university experience tainted.

So there you have it. Five years that have been far from the standard, run-of-the-mill university experience. Despite the insanity, the strikes, the scares, and the virus, Charlotte weathered it all with a determination and grit that leaves me in awe. She's graduating now - with stories to tell and strength beyond her years. And even though her transcript may be peppered temporarily with a few unjust D3s, she's earned an A1 in resilience and fortitude in the University of Life.

On top of Ben Nevis with her Spanish and Catalan boys