Animal Magic: The nutty world of Grace Quirrel and Samantha Fox

Working for peanuts...Grace Quirrel on my patio

THE garden of my villa in the Costa Blanca coastal town of Guardamar is not short of wild life - particularly in the summer.
OK, I can do without the eerie twilight flapping of bats around the turrets of neighbouring houses. And I wasn’t best prepared for the three baby hedgehogs my grandson rescued from the hedgerow as they tried vainly to suckle milk from their lifeless mother.
But the suction-padded lizards that scurry up and down the walls fascinate me. So does the incessant chatter of the crickets or whatever they are (I wonder if they ever play Test matches with the bats?)
Back in September, I felt I was in the Garden of Eden when a litter of tiny feral kittens took temporary tenancy of the bamboo gazebo in my garden.
Nevertheless, I have yet to see anything in Guardamar to compare with the urban beauty of my furry friends Grace and Samantha back in Manchester.
Grace Quirrel and Samantha Fox (cringe cringe) have taken up semi-residency at my UK home - and while I see precious little of them thse days, I adore them.
The hunting fraternity would no doubt dismiss both species as vermin...and happily rearrange Samantha’s fur into a natty Manc coat.  But urban foxes and grey squirrels have become as much a part of life in the northern ferretlands as flatcaps and black puddings.
Even four miles from Manchester city centre.
They get an unintentional  helping hand from local councils, too. None of those slick nightly refuse collections we all marvel at in Spain -- it’s once a fortnight if you’re lucky. And if the lid is not tightly shut on the garbage bags, it won't be emptied, presumably by order of a council terrorist called Bin Over-Laden.

Anyway, the council's inaction means that Grace and Samantha will have bags and bags of goodies for Christmas...courtesy of a garbage-emptying cycle which leaves enough overflowing bins to fill the bellies of an entire colony of foxes.

My only fear is that Grace will become too fat to chase cats (yes, I have seen her in action). She's already a bit of a pudding, legacy of the unending supply of peanuts  chucked out to her through the patio doors by the grandkids.

But did you ever see a more beautiful specimen of vermin?

Year of the miracle: Buddy's first birthday grin and tonic

IT’S exactly one year since my sixth grandchild came into this world – and went perilously close to leaving it at the same time.
Buddy John Harry Holmes was born by Caesarian section, three months early and just 28 weeks into my daughter Hayley’s pregnancy.
He had no heartbeat, wasn’t breathing and weighed less than one kilo.
For the next few days, it was touch and go whether our Buddy would survive.

We all hoped and prayed he’d make it and that the lack of oxygen in those first few minutes had not caused any permanent damage.
For the answer, look at the picture above, taken at his first birthday party in Burscough, Lanc-ashire.
Apart from his model looks (I would say that, wouldn’t I?), our Buddy is as good as gold. He rarely cries, sleeps virtually to order - and always has a beaming smile.

Hardly the frail, emaciated, under-weight specimen you'd expect of a pitiful child who was born half-dead.

No, my Buddy miracle is just Buddy gorgeous!

Will the strain of pain in Spain drive me back to the rain?

I’VE always been mystified when elderly expats, who clearly love the Spanish life, up sticks and return to the rain and pollution of over-populated Britain.
I know at least half a dozen couples who have turned their backs on the Iberian sunshine, always reluctantly, citing fears of deteriorating health and/or losing their partner.
“Why worry about healthcare?”, I’d ask. “The Spanish system is generally regarded as superior to the NHS in Britain. And as for being on your own, the expat community is awash with widows, widowers and never-weds all in the same boat.’’
I certainly don’t mind being on my own.  It’s been fun going solo for the last couple of years and I couldn’t be happier. Apart, that is, from the fact I’m too old to dismiss my  ever-growing waistline as a ready-to-drop papoose.
I certainly have more friends in Spain than I ever had in the UK, many of them, like myself, without partners. And I am never lost for something to do on the odd occasion my eyes aren’t glued to a computer screen.
However, during my current visit to spend Christmas with my family in Manchester, I’ve begun to see the idea of repatriation in a different light…or darkness even.
Yes, I am beginning to question how I would manage on my own in Spain if, as I fear, I become wheelchair bound and reliant on the assistance of carers.
Regular readers of my column (if there are any) will know that humour is the weapon I use to fight adversity. I dismiss the intermittent trembling of my left hand by admitting I have Parkinson’s Disease and adding: ‘If the shaking gets any worse, they’re giving me my own chat show.’’
As for my blocked cardiac arteries, I joke about my visits to  the stentist, an Irish lady called Angie O’Plasty.
No one wants to hear this, but I have so many health problems that I’ll soon have an entry of my own in the official  medical dictionary. I can see it now.
Donnagitis: A multitude of different complaints. A person who craves the invention of oral stental floss.  (Give me a break from those damned angioplasties!)
But seriously, my mobility has deteriorated alarmingly this last few months and I know my problems will become progressively worse. Here in Manchester I have an amazing team of carers who are, quite simply, the best.
With two daughters and six grandkids here among the flatcaps and ferrets, I am beginning to ask questions of myself. I already struggle to get up from armchairs and sofas and get out of cars – so I’ve no hope of coping in Spain when I perpetually need winching up. The price of hiring a crane is outrageous as it is.
I never believed I would say this, but I am slowly resigning myself the fact I will one day return to the land of my birth. Still breathing, too..
Returning to the UK sounds so unlikely when I tell you I love every minute of living in Spain.
I live the dream – waking each morning to the accompaniment of bright sunshine and that indescribable atmosphere of ‘foreignness’. Just as I did 30 years ago, when family holidays in Spain were the highlight of my year.
I’d wake on the final morning of our stay and think to myself, ‘Hell, it’s so wonderful here and I’ve got to head back to England and work. I don’t want to go!’
This past couple of years  I’ve been waking   every morning and bursting (very badly) into song – my favourite being   ‘’Every day’s a holiday in my house’’ (to no particular tune). It was going to be my anthem until that weird morning when I wake up dead.
Now I’m beginning to think I’d quite like to spend my final days ferreting for flat caps, if you get my drift (yes, even in the snow).
If I freeze to death, I’ve got to go sometime anyway.  But at least  my daughters will be there to wrap me up warm, look after me, and earn that inheritance they think I'm going to leave them...

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) December 14, 2012

Five-mile high life is plane shaky on the throne of a Monarch

IT’S not as if it came as a surprise. These days I don’t expect visits to the UK to be fun – a least not outside my own little family circle

So it was with some apprehension that I boarded Monarch Flight ZB677 at Alicante for the nearest thing I’m going to have to a holiday this year. The idea was to take in a couple of family celebrations in the build-up to Christmas before returning to Spain early in the New Year.

By the time Flight ZB677 squelched onto the rain-lashed runway in Manchester, my nerves were completely shredded. My body had been invaded by more shakes than the Manchester City boardroom, thanks to a pilot who learned to fly on a Big Dipper. Either that or he got syphoned into one long tube of French turbulence from which there was no escape.

Have you ever tried doing the Hippy Hippy Shake in an airborne  loo at 35,000 feet to the sound of a panicky stewardess barking out orders for everyone to return to their seats and belt up muy pronto? 

‘’The toilets are NOT to be used at this time,’’ came the instruction from the cabin as yet another airquake caught me with my pants down. Literally.

I’d have fallen off the seat if there had been room. As it was, I chose to sit it out until the shuddering stopped…happy in the knowledge that at least I couldn’t be drowned by a tsunami. 

The sea of white faces that greeted me when I finally emerged from the toilet and made my way back to seat 9C told me all I needed to know. My fellow passengers weren’t enjoying it either.

Even my choice of seat had rebounded on me. I usually choose an aisle berth because I invariably need to use the loo during a flight and don’t like to disturb the people next to me.

Unfortunately, that feeling is not always reciprocal. On this occasion the couple who had bagged the two inside seats BOTH decided they wanted a wee within half an hour of takeoff. And as luck would have it, their preferred time for urinary exercise was just as I was tucking in to my 10-euro Monarchaise dinner treat – a very tasty Lancashire Hotpot.

If you think it’s a long walk from the plane to the meeting point at the new Alicante airport, try flying into Manchester’s Terminal 2. I wore out three pairs of shoes getting to passport control, where I finally raised my first smile of the night.

No queue to show my passport – and  a delightfully eccentric Sikh midget with a high-pitched voice directing everyone at full volume.

It’s not so bad after all, I thought as I jumped into daughter Lisa’s car for the 15-mile motorway  drive home. At 11.30pm, we’d be there in a quarter of an hour.

Don’t you believe it! Within ten minutes of leaving the airport we were stuck in a solid queue of traffic stretching across  the M60-M61 interchange. As ever, UK traffic jams can strike at any time of day or night. The British traffic is truly terrific.

It was lovely to see the home I lived in for 30 years still standing, if somewhat weather-beaten. But it was the police car in next door’s drive that threw me.

It turned out  the neighbours had been burgled earlier in the evening by cheeky villains who had then done a bunk in  the family Merc. Unfortunately they hadn’t bothered to raid my place as well.

Unfortunately? Well yes, they are welcome to what little of value remains in the house, particularly the 42 inch plasma TV, which has a colour problem that will cost more to repair than to buy a new one.

The guarantee has run out so I’m saddled with it as it is…unless it is stolen and then replaced by the insurance company.

Anyone know a good, honest colour-blind burglar?

Thanks Tulisa - your jibes have given Christopher the X Factor

A COUPLE of months ago, I vowed never to watch the X Factor again after joke singer Rylan Clark was manipulated back into the show by the collusion of the judges. Well, I have a confession to make – I’ve started watching it again.

And that’s because there’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing so-called experts with egg all over their faces.
 
 In their desperation to see the back of vulnerable Christopher Maloney - and, perhaps with a little coaxing from Simon Cowell - three of the judges have constantly pilloried the camp Scouser. But as someone who delights in seeing an underdog win, I’m happy to say that the cynicism of Tulisa and Co has rebounded on them bigtime.
 
 It is rumoured that Chris regularly gets TWICE as many votes as any of the other competitors and if that’s so, then he will this weekend become the first X Factor winner with no X Factor.

I accept that fellow finalists Jahmene Douglas and James Arthur have vastly more appeal to the younger generation.

But I’m fed up hearing Maloney berated by people like Tulisa, an average singer who has no  right to be judging the talent of vastly superior vocalists.

It seems all the negative comments have inspired the public to cast a sympathy vote for Maloney. - particularly sentimental old grannies like me who find him cuddlingly vulnerable.  All three finalists are assured of a big future, so it doesn’t really matter who wins.

But how enjoyable it would be to see Tulisa’s bitchiness come back to bite her in the bum.

How fate brought sick Daisy face to face with Peter Andre - UPDATE

GHOSTLY WHITE: Daisy in hospital recently

Peter signs a CD for Daisy in 2010

SINCE I wrote the article below, Daisy's health has deteriorated to the point that she is in almost permanent pain and unable to go to school. She has just begun a revolutionary new course of treatment which involves more painful injections and which is by definition experimental. The CICRA charity (Crohn's In Children Research Association) is constantly striving to give children like Daisy the happy childhood they deserve - and I have decided to throw my weight behind their efforts - literally. Take a look at https://www.justgiving.com/Donna-Gee and you'll see what I mean. If you are able to sponsor me, fantastic. Now for something completely different...

THE past four months have been a living hell for my granddaughter Daisy.

She’s spent roughly half that time in hospital, has lost two stone in weight and her once-rosy cheeks have been replaced by a ghostly white complexion.

She is currently on a medical regime which involves taking 32 pills a day…plus a fortnightly injection she describes as ‘’like a really bad wasp sting’’.

Even when Daisy is not in hospital, she’s bent double in agony much of the time and cannot go to school. Such is life for a 12 year-old with a particularly aggressive type of Crohn’s Disease.
At what should be the most exciting time of her life, she’ll become a teenager next month not knowing what the future holds. If she is lucky, the ulceration of her bowel will respond to treatment and the digestive spasms that crease her up will ease – just as they did for her older sister Rosie, 21. She has the same incurable illness as Daisy, but has been in remission for four years.

If she’s unlucky, Daisy will require major surgery. It all seems so unfair for a youngster whose dad suffered a massive brain haemorrhage when she was three years old and has been in hospital, paralysed and blind, ever since.

Last Friday Daisy was discharged from her latest hospital stay, even though she was far from well. The lives of her medical team would have been at risk had they refused to let her go. Her mother Hayley  had booked tickets to see Peter Andre ‘Up Close and Personal’  at Manchester’s Apollo Theatre and this was one event she was NOT going to miss.

Two years ago, Daisy was photographed with singing heartthrob Andre at a CD signing at a local ASDA store in Manchester – and prayed for the day she could see her idol in concert. Now it was actually going to happen…with family friend Louisa, a qualified nurse, joining Hayley’s entourage at the Apollo in case Daisy’s pains became intolerable during the evening.

We’d been racking our brains for a way to contact Peter Andre in the hope he might just find time to say hello to her. We knew it was a forlorn hope…and with 3,500 fans yelling for his attention at the Apollo, that forlorn hope quickly deteriorated to ‘no chance’. Their seats were four rows from the back…just about as far from the stage as it was possible to get.

Frail Daisy was dwarfed by adults vying for the best viewing points and as everyone leapt to their feet to welcome their hero, she was left staring at people’s backs. In desperation, she stood on her seat to get a better view and was immediately ordered down by the fans behind her.

In tears, she resigned herself to the worst. At least she could hear her idol, she reasoned. That was better than nothing.

Then fate took a hand in the most dramatic way. Someone pointed out a free seat in the very back row; here was a chair Daisy could stand on without fear of being ordered to sit down and where she could get an uninterrupted, if distant, view of her beloved Peter.
The six-stone waif was about to enter dreamland.
In the distance, Andre left the stage as his dancing entourage began a routine to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine.

Then the hand of fate took over. ‘Suddenly Peter emerged from a door just to Daisy’s right, singing - and started walking along the aisle behind us,’’ says Hayley.

“Daisy turned round and he saw her straight away. She was crying hysterically and Peter came straight over to her and started singing to her. He touched her face and she grabbed his arm…and then he moved away.

“Daisy somehow found the energy to jump over the seat and run after him but was held back by one of his minders.

“But it was an amazing experience for her and a fantastic pick-me-up that none of us could have dreamed of.’’

Daisy is still overcome by the experience: ‘’I can’t believe what happened. I and lots of my friends had been tweeting him for two weeks hoping he might just agree to say hi to me but it was more in hope than expectation. Then it just happened all by chance. I actually felt the muscles in his arm and I can tell you he smelt wonderful!’’

A great perfumance, you might say – and one that brought a rare smile from a child whose happy personality has been knocked sideways by her health problems.

We all know that pain and happiness just don’t mix. But for those few wonderful seconds at the back of the Apollo, agony turned to ecstasy for a sick child...and the hand of fate showed its gentle side.

Thanks, Peter.