J came back to London to vote - and every vote counted in our redrawn borough: we'd been removed from Hammersmith and Fulham, where the excellent Andy Slaughter has held a big majority, to Chelsea and Fulham. The Tories had always held sway in Chelsea, and it was only because I saw Labour folk out at the tube stations every day, including our new MP Ben Coleman, that 'we' won by a very slim majority of 132. We stayed up until about 5.30am watching the results with our very politically savvy near neighbour Peter Rose, catching Rees-Mogg's defeat - managed with dignity - but missing the demise of Liz Truss - mismanaged with the opposite.
My mum's good friend Joy Teunion died recently after a fairly miserable last few years, and of course mum wanted to go to the funeral service in 'our' church, All Saints Banstead, the next day - her first outing from the brilliant Greenacres Care Home since pre-Christmas lunch; again, J wheeled her there. The service was a happy celebration of a quirky life, and refreshments were held afterwards in the Open Door, the cafe where until the middle of last year mum used to take her cakes. The jelly babies were a Joy favourite.
J had been due to return to Dublin on Monday evening, but we heard that Max's funeral - see here for a celebration of her wonderful but too brief existence - was to be held in Amsterdam on Tuesday. This meant some rapid rearrangements - I was due to leave for the Pärnu Music Festival on Wednesday - but I'm so glad we did it.
I finished my Zoom class and we got an evening flight to Schiphol, staying there very comfortably in the Marriott with a view of sunset beyond the airport. Then after a hefty breakfast we made our way into town, walking across many of the canals to the Begijnhof, where the service took place in the English Reformed Church within the lovely grounds. Shrieking flocks of swifts marked part of the way (click to see them properly below).
It was a relief to see so many familiar faces and old friends afterwards, but by 3.30 we were off to get the bus back to the airport. A storm broke while we were both sitting in our respective planes - mine to Gatwick, J's to Dublin - and Schiphol was closed for an hour. But it didn't matter being later back because I'd been booked into another airport hotel - same price, but a mere pod - so that I wouldn't have to go home and back out again for the flight to Riga the next morning. A contrasting view at 7am.
Pärnu this year was a very different experience from 2023. Then I was feeling great, cycling, walking and swimming on the eve of the big operation, so supported by everyone in the meetings at the Passion Cafe. This year I was less mobile, and still mourning, so didn't do many of the big socials but was still glad to see familiar faces in ones, twos or threes. Best news of all was when married violinists Ben Baker and Marike Kruup met me for tea at my favourite cafe, Supelsaksad, with Lucy Maxwell-Stewart, the great organiser, and told me Maarike was expecting. It caught me emotionally by surprise - one life untimely gone, another coming into the world with the best parents imaginable.
Otherwise, the musical experiences were unforgettable as usual - I duly chronicled them for The Arts Desk - but somehow solitary walks in nature accorded more deeply with my mood. There was the nature reserve toward the southern end of the beach
where my Merlin app picked up golden oriole (saw a flash), dunlin, green sandpiper, reed and snow bunting and redshank, inter alia, and there was no end of pleasure to be got from terns soaring and plunging. One can just be seen at the top of this beach shot.
One evening I walked back from the concert hall with good friend and master photographic artist Kaupo Kikkas, left him to return to his hotel and continued to the stone jetty at the mouth of the Pärnu River. There were still some Baltic orchids in the sea meadows
huge flocks of starlings (you can just about make them out here)
and among the other birds a solitary Brent goose - last seen in big flocks in Dublin before they headed north for the summer.
The sunset that evening, in four days of variable but always warm weather, was the best.
The best was yet to come, a fortnight later, when I discovered an Estonian coastal resort further north, Haapsalu, and a very different music festival. More on the wonders of that place anon; here's the Arts Desk report in the meantime.
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