Album 1 - April 1999

Here's the first of a set of albums in my collection ‐ apart from those below, this album contains photographs of holidays in Ireland, and the first of a set of photographs sent by Ann to myself in April 1999, prior to my first visit to NYC.   As I remember, you, Michael may have been persuaded to take the photographs of Ann at the time, God rest her soul.   She appended a description of some of the items in the apartment on the reverse of the photographs as I reciprocated when sending pictures of my house in Thamesmead at the time.

I have two or three of those fish fridge magnets still, gifts from Ann, on our fridge here!

Album 2 - Abigail and 2000s visits to UK and New York

This second album has miscellaneous groups of photographs of Ann, with a few of myself mixed in.   Ann took a holiday to London and we both went down to Brighton in Sussex for the day, visiting the Royal Pavilion and the pier.

I think we first met face‐to‐face when Ann came over to London and I met her in Heathrow as shown in the two murky photographs.   We were both a little late as I recall ‐ me initially going to the wrong terminal and Ann spending time getting ready in the airport.

Following my first visit to NYC, the Coney Island photographs show the last of the Thunderbolt, which was, without ceremony, demolished on the orders of Rudy Guliani.   It was gone in the space of a half day, no chance for objections!   He wasn't able to dispose of the parachute jump quite so easily, being designated a national monument.   Gone also are the twin towers, seen in the background and a sad reminder of another tragedy.

Album 3 - Bay Ridge Photographs 1999 visits to UK and New York

This album includes some excellent of photographs of Ann, looking very smart and lovely and taken, I believe by yourself, Michael.   As already mentioned, Ann took a holiday to London and we both went down to Brighton in Sussex for the day, visiting the Royal Pavilion and the pier.

These, I believe, were all taken in 2000.   The last few photographs are a mix, the last five being of the interior of the O2 Arena in Greenwich, London, in the year it opened.   I recall that I had the worst sore throat I'd ever had, and was unable even to speak.   This didn't put us off visiting the new O2 ‐ the tickets were expensive! There was a concert in the Arena which we enjoyed ‐ the music of Peter Gabriel was the background for the acrobatic group Cirque du Soleil.

Three odd photos in this set before those of the O2 ‐ Outside Brighton Pavilion, a pub lunch in the Plough, Godstone, close to where Ann used to work and outside the Greenwich Observatory, not too far from my house in Thamesmead.

Album 4 - Ann and I

Looking through my old passports I see that I came to New York nine times:

June 26th 1999
October 4th 1999
February 18th 2000
August 11th 2000
December 15th 2000
August 16th 2001
September 28th 2001
February 20th 2002
May 5th 2004

I'm sure Ann came over to London, perhaps three times throughout this period.

This time, some of the photographs were taken by "the old man" the disreputable denizen of the cellar in Bay 25th at the time.   He drove us down to the riverside in the rickety Lincoln Continental and helped to take the photos.   What happened to him in the end?

The photographs record pleasant days out to see the Statue of Liberty and on another day, the Coney Island boardwalk and Nathans.   I recall us bringing you back some fries.

Here's my record of wonderful times, in the little front cottage aloft of the house.

Album 5 - Winterlude and Washington

Another set of photos, once again a mix ‐ some belonging with earlier photo sets.  

The writing was on the wall and I soon became aware of bizarre and worrying behaviours and addictions.

An interesting few days in Washington DC, by train from Union St Station?   The railway station in Washington was spectacular in my opinion.   A line of infant ducks with their family waddled across our path to the reflecting pool.

Lobster was the most expensive item on the menus I remember.   Restaurant dining once by the Potomac River, they served warm Chelsea buns as a starter???   You, Michael were suffering from a weight problem which you remedied very soon after returning to NYC.   I really enjoyed the postal museum and all of the Smithsonian but the southern heat was something else.   There was a great photo exhibition in the hall where the declaration of independence was exhibited.   I saw yesterday that guards protected the Lincoln memorial from the mob.

I wish we'd been able to ascend the obelisk and the Lincoln memorial to it's roof.   We caught up with you at the Capitol building as I remember, Michael.   I was reminded of that in yesterday's news.   There were quite a few derelicts sleeping rough around that area at the time.

Togged out by the Dungaree brothers, the clothes prices were great, compared to those in London.   On the day I was due to return to London, I put on the TV and everything was closed including the airport due to the snow.   Diminutive Aztecs would do the rounds, clearing people's driveways, including Ann's.   I was able to stay on for an extra week.

Album 6 - Email headers

A couple of photographs of Ann with Abigail.

Dear Michael

How do you occupy yourself these days, may I ask? I was serious about our invite ‐ if you fancy getting away from it all for a holiday you would be more than welcome to stay here, in this beautiful place with aircon! We have vehicles and can meet you at the airport etc.

Don't mean to contradict and I could easily be mistaken but I remember that Ann told me that you had taken the many photographs of her down by the Atlantic.

I've been hunting around for the images of Ann when she was an adolescent and earlier, taken in Bebington and on holidays in the Wirral. So far I've not been able to find it. As I mentioned I was shocked when she flew into a rage when I found her date of birth on the back of one of the original black and white photos that I'd already scanned. This fact did not bother me in the least but she must have been embarrassed about it just being a couple of years older than me and very angry that I'd found it. Anyway after tearing up all the photos she asked me to destroy all the copies ie the scans that I'd made and burnt to disk. I have a feeling that I secreted one copy on disk but so far, I've not been able to find it. I think she'd brought or sent the original copies to London where I scanned them and made CDs. Looking for this has made me realise that I need to sort out my data ‐ I have hundreds of thousands of images and need to collate. I have two laptops, a new pc and have kept my old pc ‐ those pictures might be in there so I need to fire it up.

It was fate that I happened to pass by her place of work every day on my route to Redhill. I would travel there and back at the time by motorbike, later by car. At the time I was a freelance programmer working in a team on motor retail software. The job was very well paid. Around 2000 the company folded and I continued freelance, writing property systems and other financial systems for various merchant banks and the insurance company Prudential, in London. One other diverting and interesting job was software for the European Script fund to do with Movie and TV script progression and funding. Ann and my own 'digitial compatibility' was vetted by the AOL algorithms and more genuinely with the chats where we found that we had a lot in common. I loved Ann and we were engaged to be married. Every day I wrote making graphics for the email headers which I've posted here.

After our initial meeting in London, as you know I travelled over and Ann met me at JFK. I'd brought over kippers (smoked herrings), marmalade and other goodies hard to find there in NYC at the time. We went to Manhattan and Chinatown I remember where I bought a good engagement ring with her. We then went on to a great Chinese restaurant near Motte Street? for lunch, the first time I tried a fortune cookie. As well as all of the tourist sightseeing that we did together, I remember one restaurant in theatreland which had a small entrance with a huge interior. We shared one dish which was more than adequate to feed us both well, something we often did after that when dining out. The guys on the next table had huge ribs on their plates a la flinstones! We went together to Ann's trick cyclist in an hotel around the corner from the Dakota center opposite Central Park and also to another psychologist or doctor in Bay Ridge who had great offices in real 1950s style. One time after her appointment ended we went across the road and into Central Park where I visited a lovely memorial to John Lennon ‐ mosaic tiled and someone had put an apple in the center. We went to an exhibition of Salvador Dalis works in the Guggenheim Museum, not Ann's cup of tea.

Ann told me that one of her ancestors was an executioner in England, can't remember which era ‐ might have been way back. She said that her father had worked for British Rail (or one of the British Rail Companies before they were nationalised) as a steam engine driver, quite a prestigious job. She said that one day in Bebington she couldn't get one of the doors inside their house open and discovered that her father had collapsed from a heart attack and had died, blocking the door. She didn't seem fazed at all about it when she was telling me this but I guess that it must have been traumatic. She did relate that she'd had a very unhappy childhood with a dominant mother and perhaps that's another reason why she didn't care about the early photographs.

Gerry Marsden who passed away a few days ago was the singer in a very successful band of the 1960s, "Gerry and the Pacemakers". Ann told me that she and her girl friend would get the ferry over to Liverpool (Ferry Cross the Mersey) at the time and go clubbing, not to the Cavern but their preferred club called "The Iron Door." She told me that one of her friends once acted outrageouly at a party with the bass player in the band and that Gerry had to sort him out. In the 1990s there was a uk tv documentary about the society ladies of Cheshire and I think one of them was her teen friend. Ann would tell me sometimes about those people's terrible and outrageous behaviour in the society of the 1960s there.

As you may remember, I was interested in Coney Island history and we visited there together using the elevated a few times. One time we went into the funfair and I managed to persuade Ann to have a go on the log flume ride, which I thought was very funny but Ann complained afterwards about the adverse effect on her back. I tried a Nathan's hot dog which I thought was disgusting. In the UK they call them Saveloys which is a mix of beef and pork ‐ I prefer weiners ie pork only. Their fries were lovely. As you know, your mum's cooking and particularly her burgers were wonderful ‐ she used a disposable bbq to cook them in the yard a couple of times. I enjoyed cooking a few things if you remember ‐ I think you enjoyed an egg white omlette once and the pasta I made. You yourself also once made a memorable chocolate and raspberry confection and other goodies. My favourite restaurant was the french one, a small establishment in Bay Ridge. They had antique tins all around on the shelves and beautiful pattiserie in the cabinet by the counter. Some of the local retail foods were new and most enjoyable to me ‐ baskin robbins yoghurt icecream ‐ zero calories, the local Low Mein (called chow mein in the UK).

All good things come to an end and this was soon sadly the case in our relationship ‐ after the first two visits Ann no longer came to meet me at the airport when I came over, a good signal to me of the deterioration of our regard for each other. I'm sorry to say that I failed in my attempts to pull Ann away from her addiction to sleeping pills, ie Temazepan (Restoril), a hypnotic sedative. I failed in my attempt to help relocate your sitting tenant. In spite of my regard for you, the behaviour of Richard in the family quickly became an anathema and his trip to Norway and subsequent expulsion made my fear and cowardice of the situation clear to me. I pulled out and returned to London for good, never to contact or hear from Ann again. I hope that our own brief email correspondence in 2010 was in some small way helpful to yourself ‐ my offer of help to you was genuine.

Ann and I never did go to the twin towers but were due to visit them on one occasion, in fact the plane was all but empty when I flew over a couple of weeks after 9/11 (2001). Don’t know if it was my imagination but I am sure I could smell burning paper in Manhattan. The poignant portrait photographs were posted in many shop windows there for missing loved ones.

Below is an indulgence and a record of my adventures since we last were face‐to‐face.

At the offices of First National in Redhill, they were still using the same programming languages after five years that they had been using when I started so it was all doomed to obsolescence ‐ most customers buying proprietary software out‐of‐the‐box to deal with their sales of motors and insurance. A residual team were employed to wind things up and the staff in Redhill, including me were let go with a redundancy payment. Incidentally, the office was almost identical to the one in the British "The Office" TV series ‐ complete with urban roundabout. It was while I was working there, towards the latter end of this job, I'd written software to deal with motorcycle sales which had some success and was distributed. I'd been in charge of checking for any problems in the PCs operating systems and our software on the turning of the century to 2000.

I did meet some great people there and I am still friends with Ali Raza and Paul Marro ‐ we would have a fixture in Redhill for dinner on Fridays at a good carvery. They were both brilliant programmers. Ali in particular has a great sense of humour. He'd decided to study stocks and shares and on one day he made about 12 grand (12,000 pounds) at his desk next to me doing a bit of trading on the side. He slowly lost most of it over the next six weeks doing the same thing, I hasten to add. He's moved up in the IT security world now, travelling every week to Berlin and back. He's just moved house and we met up last on 3rd March 2019 at his new house. Paul has moved into a completely different field ‐ he has a hypno‐therapy practice in Harley Street and other offices, although he still is a part time analyst ⁄ programmer.

By this time I was getting on for 50 and with dated experience in modern software languages by then, it was extremely difficult to find work as a programmer. However while at First National I took to learning about 3d graphics on the PC using software called 3ds Max. This was and still is, used for animation, engineering and artwork. I had to make ends meet for the mortgage and took a job in Morrisons supermarket nearby, selling pies etc on the euphemistically named "Market Street".

In the unemployed gap I sent a graphic I'd made to a magazine and had a reply from a secretary to my surprise. I made a couple more and sent them and she had them posted on her website. Her husband Francis Schnetzler, got in touch, asking to meet up with them both and a month or so later I got the tube to visit them in the Lanesborough Hotel in Hyde Park Corner (it used to be St George’s Hospital). I was very nervous but they called Francis from reception and he was friendly and put me right at ease. His German accent helped as my mum was German and so I always liked the sound. We went into a large wood‐panelled lounge room and he ordered coffee. His beautiful wife Veronika came in and we said hello. For Veronika I'd brought a present: a matchbox full of silver hearts and a small silver miniature tuba which she opened with delight. They made it clear to me that they were both very impressed with my work and Francis asked me if I would make his newsletter for the hedge fund more attractive as well as his marketing materials.

His wife Veronika wanted calendars on the new years for her website. Francis said he might be able to get a calendar published if I could come up with enough work, as one of his hedge fund clients was Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily Express Newspaper at the time (he said that Richard Desmond would call him, Francis, an old Nazi as Francis had spent most of his life in Munich – although he was born in the UK.) For the calendar there were to be monthly images for one of those dreadful rags ‐ the "OK" magazine or "Hello" something like that. Francis wanted editing and some layout input. At this time the mixing of digital and real images was not commonplace and I'd found an effective way of doing it using the software I'd learned. This was late in the year so I didn't have enough time to come up with further calendar pages for that year. There was plenty of other graphics work for both of them to keep me going quite comfortably. All this time I kept my job in Morrisons as I was so nervous of being without employment at my age, around 50. On one occasion in 2007 they both came to my house for dinner and I took them into Morrisons as they were curious as to where I was working. I made this dish Kaiserschmarrn for Francis ‐ a favourite of his ‐ a kind of pancake with apple sauce.

To skip forward a bit, alas the calendar was never published but all the rest of the work was completed and lucrative, I produced three of four calendars over the next years, but they were all made available through Veronika's website. Each time I came up with a new composite or other graphics they would invite me into their London hotel or a restaurant, first of all to the Lanchester but after a year or two they started staying at the Dorchester. We dined out in Mayfair, Soho, Portobello and other places in London and I was able to experience fantastic food. They once thought they would like to buy property in the country here so I took them around Kent and Surrey in the car. In the end, they thought that the country life here was too isolated for them and they bought a villa in Ibiza. Once we met up in Bloomsbury where they had tried out staying at a different hotel there ‐ but only once ‐ they returned to the Dorchester on further visits. On one visit we met up went to a pub ⁄ restaurant in Soho. It was a sunny day I remember and they wanted to try out the new craze of Botox injections ‐ what on earth for I wondered and said as much. Francis actually offered me a free session to join him at the clinic that they went to after our meeting! No thanks!

After our 'tour of the home counties', looking at different houses with thoughts of perhaps buying a property here in the UK, they did, in fact, rent a whole house in Walton Street for about nine months. It had a blue plaque outside "P G Woodhouse lived here". I visited there a few times and we had tea in Harrods, around the corner. They had an appointment with their private doctor, a psychiatrist, while we were having tea in Harrods. Oddly, he asked me a lot of questions which I found a bit scary. Maybe trying to make conversation. After he left Francis told me that he used him for therapy for back problems! Another time Veronika had an appointment at her gym in the top of the Carlton Towers and we walked round from Walton Street and had lunch up there. Another time we sat outside a café behind Harrods and watched the oil rich boys race their sports cars up and down.

As mentioned, they bought a beautiful hilltop villa in Ibiza from a gay couple Victor and Paul who owned other property on the Island. In 2008 they invited me for a holiday there in September. It was, and still is, one of the most beautiful houses I’d ever seen, let alone stayed in. A wonderful seascape down to Santa Eulalia beyond a swimming pool, my room was on one end of the property. Francis had an office building in the gardens and Veronika and Francis's rooms were the only two upstairs in the main villa. They had two people working for them, Marilyn from the Philippines and her then recent partner Isham from Algeria, who had their quarters next to the entrance area. It was Isham who met me at the airport, holding up a paper "mr Malachy", he could hardly speak a word of English.

Francis liked to go and drive in his Jaguar for coffee to an open air rustic café nearly every day and asked if I would join him. He liked dining al fresco and the fresh bread there which he dipped in (the also fresh) olive oil they provided. Once or twice all three of us went together. One morning a woman came staggering along, shouting and swearing, accompanied by two young men. She looked extraordinarily like Amy Winehouse. Completely out of it she was ‐ it was all a bit embarrassing but she didn’t hang around for long.

One day Francis took me to Victor and Paul's Spa ‐ which was a huge complex not too far away from the villa. He wanted me to experience a professional massage, which I'd never had before. Equipped with white dressing gown and towel, I went into the shower ⁄ changing rooms and prepared myself, exiting with just underwear under the robe. The massage took place in a darkened hut with drone music. The petite masseuse asked me to lie down on the table face down ‐ it had a hole for my head and I could see a bowl of flower petals on the floor. She started pulling my limbs about vigorously, repeatedly telling me to relax which I tried my best to do. Francis had told me not to forget to tip her so, after flexing all my limbs, hands and feet joints for about twenty minutes, I tried to give her the tip but the look I got told me that she had misunderstood! I think it was Francis' joke, but I did see her later in the reception and gave her the money.

One morning Veronika wanted to take me for coffee in Santa Eulalia, the nearest coastal town and so she drove me down to the town. She had a dance ⁄ aerobics class there. There was a problem with the red VW convertible when we stopped in the square and she couldn’t start it again. Being Veronika, about fifteen men very quickly clustered around and offered to help, of course. After she called her mechanic, we went and had ice cream and coffee on the esplanade which was very pleasant. The mechanic, I think, was the geezer who’d sold the car to them. He showed up about 20 minutes later and Veronika went off with him to sort out the car and go for her dance class, I had a good chance to look around and I had a nice walk before a call saying that Isham would pick me up.

They had about ten dogs on the villa, all ex‐strays ‐ they loved their pets and even had an enclosure part way down the hill where they kept a few abandoned donkeys. As they knew I wasn't married at the time they were always trying to get a solution for me and decided firstly that I needed a pet. In Ibiza there is the German equivalent of the RSPCA and Francis made substantial donations to keep it going. He took me there one morning and asked me to pick out a puppy ‐ thus Jasmina entered my life. We went there a number of mornings and I would take Jasmina out for short walks so that we would become acquainted. After the holiday, Francis arranged for chipping her, as well as all of the quarantine ⁄ passport papers required to fly her to the UK. I met him at Heathrow when he was on a business trip to London and we drove to the World Cargo building and picked Jasmina up. I dropped him outside the Dorchester and drove on home with Jasmina. She was a little sedated for the flight but soon recovered. Francis had given me the special pet box which we used later to ship Jasmina to the Philippines.

But they were always making suggestions as to human females that they thought I might like to acquaint myself with. One was the 70 year old waitress in the aforementioned café. One evening, Francis and Veronika took Marilyn, Isham and me to dinner in a lovely restaurant in Saint Gertrude. I remember that I had sardines ‐ three huge ones grilled on the plate. Anyway in the course of the dinner came once again the subject of my solitary existence. Marilyn said that she knew somebody who was perfect for me. Tell me more I said. Before the end of the holiday she gave me a piece of paper with Melanie's email address on it.

To cut a longer story short, Melanie and I met up in Manila where I asked her to marry me. We were married in September 2010. She came and lived in London with me and on 24th July 2016 eventually getting UK passports we were blessed with a daughter Marianne who is now 4 years old. We toured all over Europe. We had a new house built here and sold up in the UK. We rented here until our goods arrived some months later and the house was finished. I'm enjoying retirement and in spite of the pandemic I thank God to have been blessed with a wonderful family and home to enjoy.

Can't stop thinking about your poor poor mother, what a terrible, evil and tragic thing that has befallen you all ‐ my heart goes out to you Michael. God bless you. I have found some of mine and Ann's emails. I hope that all of these reminiscences are not painful for you to read and that we can stay in touch.

Malachy McCauley

11th January 2021

© Malachy McCauley, Philippines January 2021
top