Snippets from Liz at Lancaster

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Continuity is reassuring

Liz at Lancaster has been around for sooo long that it has built up a very large family of repeat guests. Recently we had Zambian guests stay with 12 year old Thomas. He hadn’t even been thought of when his mother first came to stay! We have seen grandhildren born to children of guests, many of whom then come back for special reunions. I mentioned but one in another “Snippets from Liz at Lancaster” post when family visited to celebrate Great Grandmother’s 9oth birthday in Decemember 2024.  In these factured, unstable, changing times, continuity is very reassuring.

“Living with purpose and playfulness”

A wonderful Kwazulu Natal couple stay on a regular basis to see Ray’s father.  They came recently when he, James or Uncle Jim, was celebrating his birthday. So remarkable was Uncle Jim’s birthday that he was interviewed by Hot 102.7FM as the oldest man in Johannesburg at 105 … yes, it’s not a typo … ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE.  Uncle Jim has what it takes to be a very special person: grit, kindness, optimism, gratitude and a marvellous twinkle in his eye. Please watch the video and … SPOILER ALERT .. the secret if his astonishing age (which his 77 year old son, Ray insisted he divulge): “Sex every day and a bottle of whisky”!!

Four generations of Martins
Uncle Jim surrounded by care dogs who have come to visit
I couldn’t resist saving this image from the video. During the war an evening out was arranged with the local nurses. Jim’s friend had malaria and could not go so Jim went in his place and there was Esme. They were married in Cairo with the bride wearing “a dressd made from a Yankee parachute,” Jim recalls proudly.

And as this is not enough to warm your heart: his son Ray says “He’s got a girlfriend, her name’s Betty, and when I leave the room, she comes in and gives him kisses. It’s just so wonderful to see.”

These guests, stories and extended family connections, enrich us all at Liz at Lancaster.

To light, warmth and brightness of a much more mundane kind …

Guests love these convenient little night lights which are motion-sensored. They are unobtrusive but give just enough light for people to make their way to the bathroom in the middle-of-the-night darkness in a strange environment.  I am sure in our lives, we have all walked into a cupboard door or hotel-room wall!!
On a crisp winter morning the doves love to sun themselves on the thatched umbrella by the pool.
No filters – just glorious late evening winter light falling on the flowering tree aloe on the pavement outside Liz at Lancaster.
Uploading the photo above sent me back to my photographic record to see when we planted the aloe and the indigenous pavement garden. Here is the pavement in 2008.

I wish I had a before-photo of the oak tree as a sapling in the mid 1970s when my ex-husbnad first planted it. Now it has to be brutally trimmed (much to the outcry of many guests), at least every 3 or 4 years.

About to receive its severe trimming  in November 2023 as seen below
And not even 2 years later the oak is back to its pre-shaven style.  My dear longstanding friend Greg, who is also a loyal repeat guest, barely spoke to me at the end of the day when he returned to see what we had inflicted on his beloved tree. He said he could hear its screams from Rosebank. It does seem brutal but it has to be done.  

And so back to the very beginning – continuity it reassuring!

 

 

 

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