WordPress Daily Prompt: Right to brag

Tell us about something you (or a person close to you) have done recently (or not so recently) that has made you really, unabashedly proud.

I was quite proud of this photo of one of my Sweet William flowers. It came out well, but I am also proud of the actual flower on the photo. I love doing things myself from the beginning and one day I decided they would look good in the garden. I visited the local supermarket and bought a paket of seeds. Believe me, these seeds are not large, they are tiny, and sewing tiny seeds is an effort for a golden oldie. If you just distribute them in the seed tray, they begin to grow hugging each other and fighting for space. This means that eventually you have to space them out in nice organised rows so that they have room to spread their roots and breathe.

I did all this a few years ago and eventually, despite backache, tired legs from squatting and not being very good at standing again, I did it. I planted them in my garden. I now have a bed of Sweet William that blossom every year in June, colours ranging from pink to deep red with some crimson in the middle. Unfortunately some wandering grass seeds decided to interrupt the bed of flowers, meaning more backbreaking work to remove them, but undaunted, year for year the grass is pulled out.

There is another proud moment. Not all of my photos are perfect, it is more luck than judgement, but I believe this photo was a success. I am not an Ansel Adams rival, he specialised in black and white photos, but nothing and no-one is safe from me and my camera. It accompanies me everywhere.

Admittedly Mr. Swiss sometimes gets slightly annoyed when we take a walk together and he finds that together is quite a distance behind on the path taking a photo of a grasshopper, a mushroom or just a bunch of weeds. It can also become embarrassing when shopping and he is deciding what to buy, and I am taking photos of the goods on display. I explain that the photo might be useful to illustrate a blog, one of my prize suspicious contributions to the WordPress world. He shake his head in sympathy.

Of course I am unabashedly proud that Mr. Swiss has remained by my side for so many years. I even annoy myself now and again, but he remains, undaunted, despite my rather loud voice. Most people hear me before they actually see me. This afternoon he has made me proud. He decided to bake a Swiss style apricot flan. He lined the baking tin with pastry and arranged the halved apricots in a pretty pattern on the pastry (of course he professionally removed the stones first of all). Cornflour, eggs, sugar and a mixture of milk and cream were whipped together in the kitchen mixer. The oven was already set to the correct temperature, he poured the mixture over the apricots and put the whole creation to bake at the right temperature. All this was happening whilst I was writing this fantastic blog about how good and proud I am of myself. As I sit on the porch, I smell the scent of a apricot flan baking à la Mr. Swiss.

I am also quite proud of my dad. He is now 98 years old, had a pacemaker fitted about a month ago and lives alone in London in sheltered housing. He has his own apartment and has a carer that makes sure he is OK. I spoke to him on the phone today and asked how the pacemaker is going. Despite my loud vocal organ, I have to repeat the question a few times as he no longer never heard very well. He said “fine, no problem, I forget that I have one.” He has now understood the intricacies of a micro wave oven, which he never wanted. He now walks with the aid of a zimmer frame, which he never wanted. He is now glad for his television, which never really bothered him, but it is now regularly switched on at eight in the evening when the World Cup Soccer matches are shown from Brasil.

Just a fleeting thought. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a proud moment about the world, that we would have no disagreements with each other. I live in such a lovely country, it is small, picture book similar, and although we have 4 national languages and two basic religions we have no fights, women and men, French, german, Italian and romantsch speaking citizens live side by side, even the food pakets in the supermarkets are printed in three languages. There is so much suffering in the world that I sometimes feel a little guilty.

And now to prepare the evening meal: the apricot flan is a success, Mr. Swiss is satisfied and I can take over the kitchen again.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Futures Past

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close or far are you from that vision?

I made this little bird happy when I adopted him the day before yesterday. He was sitting, forgotten and lonely in the corner of the flower department in the supermarket. He did not even have a price ticket on his sweet little claws, like his brothers and sisters. He was a blue bird and all the others were green, so he felt more left out, excluded from a happy life guarding his own territory and then I came along.

They had a special offer going for orchids. I collect orchids and I had one spare orchid container for another orchid. I now have the non-flowering collection outside on the porch hoping they will go forth and flower, but the flowering orchids are inside in the living room. Mr. Swiss was in a generous mood, which he always is really I suppose, coming to think of it. He pressed a twenty franc note in my hand and said buy one. They were half price (otherwise I would not have bothered) and I selected my orchid. In the meanwhile Mr. Swiss had disappeared outside the supermarket. He needed to breathe the fresh air of escape from the relentless traffic of trolleys filled with hunting trophies. It was the day before Ascension day when Switzerland has a national holiday, and everyone was buying food to cover the day of famine.

He did not actually say keep the change, although the orchids were only about eleven Swiss Francs. It was then love at first sight. The little blue bird looked at me with metal tears in his eyes and I pounced. A week ago my lawn in the garden had been transformed into a stone desert and he was the dot on the “i”. He had his price, nineteen Swiss francs. You see I was not being greedy. Mr. Swiss gave me twenty, I spent eleven on an orchid and nineteen on a metal bird, so I even donated about ten swiss francs myself, it was all in a good cause.

Another advantage was I spent more time than programmed in the flower department, so Mr. Swiss was impatient to go home. No questions asked “that’s a nice orchid” he said after a quick glance through the plastic bag, and then “What’s that?” followed noticing a mysterious clank when I settled the metal bird into the car boot. “Just something for the garden” and we drove off. He did ask “how much was the bird?” and I gave him a truthful answer “nineteen Swiss francs”, but no further questions were asked. The only problem was that my artistic arranging gift was questioned. He replaced the bird in the garden as I had it too near to the apartment window, but we are now all happy. The bird is happy, my orchid is happy amongst its brothers and sisters, and I turned twenty swiss francs into thirty, but only paid ten. Oh, we women are so clever.

Today was the day after the Swiss National holiday in the supermarket. The shoppers were ripping the food from the shelves, I even had to queue at the butchers counter for my meat and we forgot the milk and grit for the cat tray. Tomorrow is another day and Mr. Swiss will go on a quest tomorrow morning for the missing items. We still have two litres of milk and the felines can use the garden in the meanwhile.

And now to the prompt. I am sure you are all waiting to hear what I wanted to be when I was younger, the problem being I cannot really remember. I did not want to collect orchids or have a big metal bird in a garden. There was something about being rich I think, but we just made do Then I really wanted to be a cowboy like the Lone Ranger, but without the mask. Of course I wanted a dog, something like Rin Tin Tin, but mum said no and when mum said no, dad usually agreed and living in a house built in 1884 with an outside toilet and no bathroom would not be the ideal place for a fully grown Alsatian. I wanted a cat, and I got one, but I was then eleven years old already. The only reason we had a cat, known as Whisky because he was black and white, the same name as the whisky brand, was because we had many lonely mice in the neighbourhood looking for a place to live. Mum did not like mice for some strange reason; she was actually terrified of them, so the cat moved in. I do not remember him ever killing a mouse, but she felt safe, so a childhood dream was half fulfilled, we had no dog, but a cat.

As I did not have visions, I cannot be close, but I succeeded in achieving a few that I never had. I think we have all been there and done that on my blog journey before so I will not bore you how I left the safe shores of England for foreign parts, known as Switzerland, met my rich Swiss banker, who was not a banker or rich, and ground the Swiss Family Robinson Angloswiss. My dream of becoming a well-known blogger is yet to be fulfilled. I once ordered a WordPress t-shirt, yes really – no joke. It arrived. I ordered the largest size possible, but discovered it was too tight to fit my contours. I have it. I complained and had the option to return it, but sending goods with TNT/UPS/DHL would have cost more than the original t-shirt, so if anyone would like a WordPress t-shirt in dark blue with white lettering, you can come and pick it up.

My dad is arriving home again in his apartment today. A week ago he was delivered into hospital, had a pacemaker fitted to his heart, terrorised us the main part of the week saying someone had stolen his telephone (he forgot he was in hospital) and someone stole his Swiss army knife (a present from Mr. Swiss, which he had not taken with him to hospital). Eventually he decided he could not walk any more. Two days ago this miserable state of golden oldie terrorism changed. He was moved from a single room to a ward with three other platinum oldies. Things started happening, and he no longer had time to worry. Thanks to my good friend in England, I had contact with him through my iPhone. He is 98 years old and of course he is always right. I am always right, I am in training. I will be 68 years old this year, so just imagine the nuisance I will be if I reach 98, but one thing I know, I will still be blogging. I might start my own blogging group, “Blogging with the Golden/Platinum Oldies”.

Have a nice week-end – see you all on the flip side.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Break the Silence

When was the last time you really wanted (or needed) to say something, but kept quiet? Write a post about what you should’ve said.




This is what they did to me when I could not keep quiet. They could not find a bandage large enough for my big mouth, so they decided when I could not see it, I did not know what it was and made no remarks. Honestly are WordPress testing me? My famous last words on the forums make a mark on the blogging landscape, I cannot keep it for myself. The last remark spread over two pages and eventually I gave up as one of the experts together with an assistant expert took over the conversation and I was left out in the cold. Actually it was a photo taken at one of our first aid helper training evenings. We were studying the senses and had to eat something but could not see it, so we were blindfolded. Not that you think the Swiss are employing methods to get the truth out of you. You cannot hide anything in Switzerland, even if you want to build a hut in the garden you have to get planning permission.

What is “kept quite”? I do not even think those words exist in the polyglot tongues that I speak, or I just missed them out, although I do have a sort of inborn defect. I grew up in the big city (London) with lorries thundering past at all times, street criers selling their goods on the market “two for a penny missus, and all the best” etc. etc. and you had to make yourself heard, otherwise you would have been ignored. The only time I was ever silent was during the day when my dad was on night work and he was sleeping. I think mum would have shut my mouth up forever if I had even breathed too loudly, dad’s sleep was holy. Luckily I was at school or at work most of the day so I did not have to keep my mouth shut.

I grew up in a loud family so I blame it on the genes. Mum had a loud voice – she had two sisters and they were often engaged in shouting competitions. I think the winner was Aunt Annie, or was it Aunt Lil. My mum was the youngest so I suppose it was the hierarchy that counted. There was one brother, but he seemed to let the women get on with it. This was coupled with a dad that served on the heavy canons in the Second World War and returned home, but with a slight hearing defect. No-one really noticed that he did not hear so well, until we had this new-fangled telephone thing. It would ring for at least five minutes and we thought he ignored it until we discovered that he did not really hear it so well. When we had the additional bell fixed up in the hall, the whole street heard the telephone ring and sometimes even dad did.

Dad worked in a loud factory all his life, so things did not improve. It was just a case of speaking a little louder. Now he is 98 years old. His hearing has not improved, but it is just a matter of getting used to things and talking to him in a loud clear voice. When he says “yes” after every word you say, you know he does not hear, so just say it again.

These are the facts, and so I was at a disadvantage from the beginning. It was a question of survival, say what you want to say in a loud clear voice. What is the point of keeping quiet about it, you might be ignored and left on one side. It can be that this might become an annoyance in my surroundings, people not really wanting or needing a loud voice, or not really wanting my opinion, although there are times when I can be quite silent: one of the reasons why my blogging episodes are so popular. When I am writing my prize winning masterpieces for the WordPress world (copy to Blogger world) my brain is talking, an internal thing. I have to train my lines of thought into a pattern. I am sure Charles Dickens and even Charles Bukowski (what is he doing here?) would agree. There are times to be silent and times not to be silent (now I know what Bukowski is doing here).

And now to something completely different: I was very concerned over the past two days about my 98 year old dad. I wrote in my blog that he had had a fall, was in hospital and has now been fitted with a pacemaker. Yesterday he was very confused. I have a wonderful dear friend, from my school days, who looks in on him for me now and again because I am so far away. She is visiting him in the hospital once a day and now takes her mobile phone with her. I can now call her at an arranged time and speak to my dad on the phone, as English hospitals do not have phones for the patients in the rooms. My dad now feels a lot better, and realises what has happened. The first two days were just too much for him, his daily routine being mixed up. He realises that he has a pacemaker and now feels a lot better. I had a shouting match with him on the mobile phone and it worked very well, so tomorrow at the same time my friend said. She is a gift for me at the moment and I know when I go to London I can always stay at her house. There are some people you meet on the path of life that are blessings in disguise and she is definitely one of them.


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WordPress Daily Prompt: Memory on the Menu

Which good memories are better — the recent and vivid ones, or those that time has covered in a sweet haze?

How can you analyse memories? Life is full of memories, some fade and some remain. They are similar to the clouds that swim above our heads, drifting and moving on, some form mountains, some are small hills and some just lay flat waiting to arise. This is all very philosophical but so are the memories.

I have a few vivid memories of the early days, streets flattened by bombs, remains of old houses dotted around the sites saying “I was built, housed a family, and now I am no longer”. The house memories are the reminders of what we saw. Playing children amongst the rubble of a time gone, but I remember it well. Some might say they were the bad memories, better forgotten but I say no, they are there to perhaps remind us not to do it again, but we will.

Happy times, parties at Christmas, visits to relations, holidays at the sea with the family: all part of the past, never to be recovered and we were all in the prime of life. No grey hair, no aches and pains and our faces radiated with youth. Oh to be back in the good old days. Were they good, perhaps not, but the memories are good.

We move on, we now have smartphones, televisions computers. I often wonder what will be the memories of my children, will they laugh when they see the primitive apparatus we had and remember how it used to be.

Today I had a problem. My father is 98 years old, lives in a good place, is cared for and has everything under control. He is not in my country and I only have contact by telephone. I am his constant memory of his only child. He had an accident two days ago, nothing serious, but during the night he fell. The ambulance took him to the hospital and discovered no injuries, but the heart was no longer as strong as it should be. Yesterday he received a pacemaker. Try to explain to a 98 year old man what they have done. I had no possibility of talking to him, English hospitals do not have telephones in the rooms and I have to rely on my friend who visited him today with her mobile phone. I could speak to him. My father is full of memories of the place where he now has an apartment, people who care for him, a kitchen, and above all a telephone.

I spoke to a very confused elderly man. He was taken to another hospital by ambulance to have the pacemaker fitted and is now in the local hospital. The memory of the pacemaker being fitted has shocked him. I do not think he knows what has really happened. My friend was visiting him and took her mobile phone so that I could at least talk to him. He has never used a mobile phone, but we managed to talk. He tells me he no longer has a phone in his room, they have taken it away. I told him he is now in the hospital but in a couple of days he will be back in his flat and his phone will be there with everything else. I spoke to the nurse on duty at the hospital and explained that I am speaking to a very confused father. She reassured me she will talk to him and explain clearly that this is only temporary.

Otherwise he is OK, no symptoms of a serious illness and he has been told that he will probably have lesser problems with movement with this pacemaker. How can a 98 year old understand that the pacemaker is helping his heart to beat, he just has memories of an unpleasant interference in his body. I have a very worried father and at the moment he has a very worried daughter. It is just a matter of time, perhaps only a couple of days and everything will be OK again. I hope so, some memories can become very bitter. My father clings on to the memories of his home where everything runs to his normal plan.

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WprdPress Daily Prompt: Looking Out My Back Door

Look out your back window or door — describe what you see, as if you were trying to convey the scene to someone from another country or planet.

Another déjà vue I think, but being a regular customer of daily prompt, they do re-occur. So I decided to show my dad’s new back window in London instead of mine again. My dad is more than a golden oldie, more a super golden oldie and with his 98 years I was in London last week helping him to settle in a new home. It is a wonderful place for him. There are 42 separate apartments all connected to a carer that calls in daily.

His bed is made, his apartment is regularly cleaned. He has a modern bathroom, kitchen and living room. Is he happy? Of course not, he is 98 years old and it is his right to complain. If everything is perfect, you still have to complain. He has always lived in a house and in the last couple of years was dependent on some good people that helped him. He can no longer walk so well and very rarely left his house. I asked him on the phone today (I am now back home in Switzerland), how he is now settling in. The answer “well I just have to put up with it”, but that is not being angry or annoyed, that is the prerogative of being a senior citizen. If you lose your independence, you lose a lot. Everyone is doing their best to care, but do not let them know that everything is OK. I know as a daughter, far away from my dad and not being able to do things myself, that he is now in the best place possible for him. I have contact with his carer, an angel in disguise, whose job it is to make sure my dad has no problems. Growing old is not fun. The slow motion effect is creeping in on me and Mr. Swiss and we still have approximately 20 years to go until we are 90 and who knows how we will react.

Back to todays’s theme: I am showing the view from my father’s window in his new home. He looks onto a small garden/park. He lives in an atrium type place so the buildings on the other side also belong to the building where he is now living. At the moment it is spring and the daffodils are flowering. There are some park benches and Vicky, his angel carer, told me that when the warmer weather arrives, she will take my dad down to the park in a wheelchair and he can sit outside enjoying the surroundings. He will also be able to eat outside and will share the park with others that live where he is.

To enter my father’s place you ring the doorbell. My father lifts a telephone, asks who is there and presses a lever to let you in. Unfortunately modern technics are a bit above his head and he had a problem with pressing the button to open the main door. He got the bit about speaking on the telephone, but thought if his own personal door was open that would do the trick. Eventually I was given a key to let myself in at the main door until he got the hang of it.

There are a couple of feeding stations for birds outside, although empty as the birds now find their own food. Those English birds are unique. I saw a couple of magpies, but mainly there are pigeons. Pigeons are everywhere in Europe, but these English pigeons all seem to be on the larger size. They are mega-pigeons; big, fat and feathery. I do not know what they eat, but I had the feeling that a cat would not stand a big chance of survival if there was a confrontation. I do not think that the cat would be carrying the pigeon victim away in its mouth, but the pigeon would pounce and fly off with the cat. I took a couple of photos of these super mega pigeons. I wondered if they had escaped from some sort of laboratory where they had been exposed to radiation or eaten super vitamin food.

There is a large tree outside and I was reminded of Alfred Hitchcock and his film “The Birds”. The pigeons were distributed all over the branches just sitting and waiting and watching. I hope my dad keeps his window closed, you ever know.

I also noticed in England that nature seemed to be a little ahead of Switzerland. Where I have bushes that are only thinking about flowering, particularly my kerria japonica, the English version is already in full bloom.

So now dad is settled in his new place, his thoughts still returning to his old house and days of independence. It gives me food for thought, wondering how I will react in his position and age. 

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WordPress Daily Prompt: If I Could Turn Back Time

If you could return to the past to relive a part of your life, either to experience the wonderful bits again, or to do something over, which part of you life would you return to? Why?

I do not really want to relive anything in my life. I want to preserve the memories as they were and reliving is not the idea. Life goes on, the world has changed and when I see the photos of the old days, they are good memories, not to be replaced by new memories, but to be kept. This photo is part of my family having a family holiday on the Isle of Wight, a small island south of England. I am on the back right (with long hair – yes they can grow), my mum sitting in front of me and my dad on the front left.  The others are various relations.

I have just returned from a week with my dad in England. I do not see him often. He is now 98 years old and I am sure he would like to return to those days when he could walk without the aid of a Zimmer frame, live in his own house and make his own bed and go out. Alas these things are in the past and so he adapts to a new life in his new surroundings cared for by wonderful people, but with his own four walls. He has never had a bank account, still prefers his cash in his trouser pocket, and he even refused the use of the Zimmer frame, preferring his stick, but he now finds it a wonderful invention and is working out the possibilities of adapting it to accommodate his food which he fetches from his microwave in the kitchen to his one and only pefect chair.

He never wanted a microwave, did not want to start pressing buttons etc. etc. but he now has to have one and finds it a fantastic invention. He asked me who discovered it. I told him I think it was by accident, something to do with radiation. You see, he did not want it, but when he has it he begins to think about it.

He did not ask many questions about my iPhone, just asked what the noise was when I switched to see my mails. I always had a thing for the various tones it produces, although I switch them off in the evening (with consideration to Mr. Swiss who is listening to the news on the TV). He was fascinated by the photos Mr. Swiss and I were sending to each other by  SMS with the attached messages.

My dad has a super phone, with extra large buttons and a very loud ring (he does not hear so well). Of course I had to adapt my usually loud voice to being even louder for dad, which did not disturb anyone as we were alone most of the time in his new apartment. I noticed at home in Switzerland I had to reduce my extra loud voice as Mr. Swiss says he can hear perfectly well and the neighbours do not have to hear everything we discuss.

My dad is still living in the same area where his house was so I was reliving the past a little, knowing the area from earlier days, but it has changed. Some buildings have disappeared, replaced by the tall glass palaces. I had to find my way by bus most of the time, not an easy task as the roads have changed. Normal roads are now one way streets. I was staying with my friend who lives a complicated bus ride way, at least it was complicated for me. One evening it was dark (as it usually is in the evening) and I was travelling from my dad to my friend and boarded the bus. Usually there is a light display showing the name of the bus stop where the bus was stopping. This particular bus driver probably wanted to go home to his wife and kids and so he had switched it all off. No problem for a die-hard Londoner, but I am now a die-hard Swiss Londoner and did not really know where I was. I cursed the bus driver and his family and crossed my fingers. Eventually the bus pulled in at a place I knew, so I crossed the road and took another bus back which was more passenger friendly with illuminated signs in the bus showing the way for lost foreigners like myself. Relive the past? I am glad to survive the future.

So there we are, my first blog after a week’s blogging abstinence. I hope to upload my many photos this week from the visit to London, so watch this space. See you on the flip side tomorrow with another dynamic day in the life of Mrs. Angloswiss and Mr. Swiss.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Person of the Year

You’re asked to nominate someone for TIME’s Person of the Year. Who would it be, and why?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us BIG.

Photo taken four years ago: then age 94

At first I was not going to do this one. Why? Because there is no person of the year.

Despite this I have a person, but not of the year, of all the years past, present and future: My Dad.

He was born on 24^th September, 1915, lived through two world wars, knew hard manual work. This year he will be 98 years old, qualification enough to be Person of all the years.

He has shared many memories with me, mostly making me laugh: very rarely talking about the sad times. At the age of three his mother had his arms around a strange man who had knocked at the door, dressed in an army uniform.

“Who’s that man?” he asked his mum.

“That’s your father” was the answer, so there we have the beginnings. Born to a working class family, his mother swept away from the country by his London born father, he grew up in Stratford,  East End of London. The first born died shortly after her birth, the second was his older sister who lost her leg in the first world war through a bomb that hit the post office center in London where she was working at the time. At the age of 16 she had a false leg and I remember her well until she died in her seventies.

My dad had an elder brother who died at the age of 21 through an accident at work. He was repairing the lift at Lloyds insurance company (where my grandfather was nightwatchman” and fell down the lift shaft. Two weeks later he died. So this was my father’s background.

World War two broke out and like many men of his age at the time, he was called up to service. He fought five years, as a normal soldier, nothing special. Once on leave in London he met a young lady that he married and that was my mum.

After returning from the war he searched for a job. He was not highly educated or had a trade. He could have made the grade at school and done his exams for high school but at that time you needed something that was scarce in our family: money. You had to buy school books and a uniform, so he just worked where he could. His first job was messenger boy in the City of London, but he left because he got fed up with calling all the men in the office “Sir”. Next job was apprentice to a menswear shop as salesmen where he learnt the ins and outs of mens clothing trade. Then the war was approaching so he took a job in the City of London in a hat shop, knowing that he would soon be dressed in field green and fighting for his country.

He was in the heavy artillery and saw quite a bit of the world in the army: Italy, Palestine (as it was then called), France and Germany. When he returned to London he married two days later. He had only seen my mum once during the war, but they had corresponded, although most of my dad’s letters had broad black stripes where they had been censored by the War Department before being sent.

His first job after the war was on the London railway, nothing special, just doing the jobs that were called for. Afterwards he worked for many years in a cigarette factory, Kensitas, until a colleague told him to apply at Ford’s motors for a job. He did and that was the job he had longest. He was in the wheel department.

He is my dad. Took me up to London to visit the museums, showed me the City of London which he knew in detail, went to a couple of football matches with me (West Ham United was our team) and was always there for me. He was always joking, telling stories, and had a good singing voice. In his army days he often performed for his regiment with two other good friends he had at the time and they won a few singing competitions.

He loves a party, dancing and singing all the time and just being my dad.

Today things are quieter. He is still 200% there, we still have arguments and he knows exactly what is going on. I live in Switzerland, he lives in London, but I go to London once a year to see him and if necessary I would be there within a day. He now lives on his own, my mum passing on almost thirty years ago. Afterwards he had a “girlfriend” that lived opposite, but at the age of 95, she died. I have no brothers or sisters. Thanks to a super neighbour, who was once a carer for older people, his needs are looked after. I also have a good school friend that lives near to his house and she often looks in on him and deals with things for him. My dad can no longer go out for walks; his legs are not the best any more. He can still get around at home and manages to cook his lunch (being delivered by a special company that caters for food at home), but he can only manage a walk to the kitchen or the bathroom and not more.

He never complains.

Thanks to Skype I often call him. I ask “how are you” and the answer is always “just the same, just the same”.

My dad is my hero, my man of all time. He always talks about “when my time comes” but I tell him we are going to celebrate his 100^th birthday together.