Farewell, Feisty Lady

"Things go in threes" they say.  I'm beginning to wonder whether that axiom also applies to death.  A few weeks ago, I reported the demise of someone with whom my friendship of many years had declined to an annual Christmas card and the occasional letter.  On Tuesday morning while I was at work, I received a phone call.  The caller said she was someone's sister ... I didn't catch the name and had to ask her to repeat it.  She had just found my Christmas card - accompanied by the ubiquitous 'round robin' newsletter - and was ringing to let me know that her sister had died on Dec. 1st.  This was another friend in the same category as the one mentioned above.

Ada came into my life - or rather I into hers - as the friend of a friend.  She had met another lady, Sheila, who was already my friend, on a tour to Israel and they discovered that they lived not far apart.  Ada owned a small cottage in France and, in the course of conversation, had invited my friend to visit her there later in the year.  Sheila did some research and found that she could get a coach from London's Victoria Coach Station to Brive, only a few kilometres from the cottage, and Ada had offered to collect her from there.  But Sheila didn't like the idea of a long solo coach journey; I don't think she spoke any French, either.  Consequently, I received a phone call, inviting me to a week in France!

Ada (L) and Sheila, at the Orientation
Table overlooking the cottage

The cottage was tiny indeed.  Ada already had another friend staying with her; they shared the only bedroom, while I made myself comfy on the sofa, and Sheila - anxious to experience 'camping' for the first time - utilised my tent on the back lawn.  Over the passage of nearly 30 years, memories become confused, but I recall my enjoyment one evening, playing some kind of word game with Ada, while Sheila was reading a book.  We seemed to share the same sense of humour, as well as a knowledge of the local language and culture.  The week was over all too quickly, and we were driven back to get the return bus home.

I think I only met Ada once after that, when my new wife and I paid her a visit a few years later.  We've always exchanged the annual Christmas greeting, though, and usually a newsletter too.  Ada made regular trips to her second home in France using an 'old faithful' camper-van that she named 'Duchess'.  It was older than any I've owned since, and was in frequent need of engineering attention.  One of Ada's letters that I've just been re-reading told of a hazardous return journey, plagued by garage delays, ill-health and the problems of coordinating medication, insurance cover, accommodation and a brief stay in a French hospital.  A two-week break seems to have lasted a couple of months!

Such experiences seem to have been characteristic of this adventurous spinster.  Some years ago she moved from her home in the east Midlands to a flat in a wardened complex on the south coast, but she would always travel each spring to Nottingham for a choir weekend ... as nothing, of course, compared to the regular trips to France, sometimes with one of her many siblings, often alone!  She finally decided to sell the cottage only three years or so ago, when a fall left her reliant on a wheeled walker frame and thus unable to drive.

RIP

Ada Hollands (1931-2019)

Au Revoir!