Yesterday, I was completing my tidying-up activities by going through a cardboard box containing some Christmas cards from years before. Why I had retained them, I am not sure but I did glance at each one before throwing them away. Towards the end of the pile, if not at the very bottom, one particular card caught my eye and it was not a Christmas card but a card some 8"x 4" in landscape mode and on the front was a pen-and-ink illustration celebrating the 1000th year anniversary, and some of the classic buildings, of the town of Krems in Austria. But what I found inside amazed me. It had evidently been signed by all of the participants in a linguist's ERASMUS (= European Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) conference. It had been signed by 20 participants which I should imagine was everybody attending the conference and was addressed to Meg and apart from English, there were messages in German, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish. What brought tears to my eyes, and made this find so remarkable, is that so many of the conference delegates said how much they missed Meg and they hoped she would soon be restored to health. I think that Meg realised, even at the time, that her back would get her in the end and it did indeed force an early retirement. At a previous conference, held in Thessaloniki, Meg had even engaged in the Greek custom of dancing on the restaurant table (a local custom) after the conference dinner and one of the contributors to the card made reference to this. Meg even informed me at the time this event was photographed but I think neither Meg nor I ever saw the photo. What I found so incredibly poignant about the card, which had lain at the bottom of this box for about thirty years, was the evident affection and esteem with which Meg has held by these conference colleagues. The group was incredibly supportive of each other and I know that Meg was particularly friendly with a Flemish delegate (called, as I remember Martine) and Meg had helped to care for her when her friend was confined to bed with a stomach upset. So I shall treasure this card and will, perhaps, with write out each of the contributions (with a translation) in such a form that family and friends can read it. Looking back on these times, I suspect that Meg was really in her element with this international group. The Erasmus network organised exchanges pf students and sometimes staff (including myself on one occasion) organised and the 'rules of the game' were that there had to be a network of universities participating in any particular scheme to avoid too cozy an arrangement if only pairs of universities were involved. And, as a reminder, when the invitation came to Leicester Polytechnic (later De Montfort University) to participate in an Erasmus network, it was Meg who translated the letter as it was written in Spanish. Later Meg was to organise the Erasmus scheme for our students which generally involved getting them up to a working knowledge of Spanish after a year's intensive study and this was an addition to her 'normal' job of a placement tutor of the Polytechnic's sandwich degrees. I am glad now that I had glanced at each card as part of my clearing up activities because had I thrown away the whole bundle without perusal, then this really valuable artefact and reminder of Meg's life would have been thrown away- as it was, it had lain hidden at the bottom of a box for the best part of 30 years.
After we had breakfasted, I tucked Meg well into her chair and we set forth down the hill. The weather was a little overcast and cloudy and cooler than of late but not really cold. We met up with our friends in Wetherspoons as we normally do each Tuesday and I told them about the discovery of the signed card for Meg that I had made the previous day. We had a little time in hand so I bought some cosmetics as well as Vitamin D and calcium tablets and then made off for Waitrose. It is an interesting philosophical question how old one's children have to be before they become offended by not receiving an Easter egg so I made for the Waitrose selection that I knew would be expensive but of high quality. I bought a couple of innovative chocolate products for my son and daughter-in-law and was also treated by one of the staff (known as 'partners') who knows us so well with a gift of yellow roses for Meg and then we made our way slowly up the hill. We had not been in for very long before the lunchtime carers turned up and we made Meg comfortable in her specialist chair. We also put on Meg some specialised therapeutic boots which I have christened Meg's 'elephant feet' because they keep her ankles and feet beautifully cushioned whilst she is in her chair. I did not feel particularly hungry today and did not feel like starting to cook our normal risotto as it was getting a little late so I made do with a baked potato and some melted grated cheese.
Trump has a policy of seizing people who he wishes to deport and entrusting them to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Some days ago,, because of an administrative error, a US citizen was deported to this gaol and the Supreme Court has ordered that Trump should facilitate his release. But Trump and his lawyers are arguing that the USA has no legal power to order the release the inmate of an El Salvadorian gaol even if there because of an administrative error that caused the inmate to be there in the first place. So now we have a situation in which Trump can consign to an El Salvadorian gaol whoever he likes and, once they are there subject to no trial or legal process, they could remain for the rest of their lives. One can imagine this happening in the most autocratic and totalitarian of regimes but the realisation that it is happening in contemporary America makes the blood run cold. After a recent onslaught by Russian missiles of a city in the Ukraine, Trump is now saying that 'Ukraine started the war' and therefore must accept anything that Russia throws at it. Modern warfare is dominated by drones (on both sides) and one can predict that the warheads that they carry will only get more powerful as the technology advances.
© Mike Hart [2025]