Category Archives: Uncategorized

5 February 2009

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This is Barbara and Dot as they set off for their head teachers’ conference on Tuesday. The snow had miraculously melted overnight, and there was no problem in reaching the venue – either for Dot and Barbara or anyone else. It was all a big success, with universally excellent feedback. The only problem came afterwards when an exhausted Dot sent out the invoices for the packs all addressed to the wrong school. This turned out to be a technology problem, which I helped her sort out yesterday. Lots of people indicated that they would be booking them to do in-school sessions. I greeted them with champagne on their return home and did all the cooking and preparation for the Tuesday Group, which makes a change. I usually sit around and let Dot do it. The only thing I’m worried about now is that Dot is practically working full-time at the moment. She visited two schools yesterday with her DSSO hat on and has more in the pipeline. She is also down for two inspections next month – following one next week. Today she has spent all day on her PIB (don’t ask) for that. Meanwhile the man came to change our electricity meter, which he did remarkably quickly.

This morning we woke up to more snow, but during the day it melted. Meanwhile in Caddington it is still thick, and the children and Vicky were all at home because of the treacherous roads. Here a meeting at Diocesan House was cancelled, though probably not for any good reason. Helped Dot, though.

Yesterday, while Dot was out at Hapton and Tasburgh, I picked up the Paston book from the library. The librarian kindly protected it with cardboard for me, and I just had to carry it down to the car. It is now in the guest bedroom, which is a little bit worrying as it’s worth over £1000. Of course, the average burglar wouldn’t know that and would be unable to sell it anyway. Lucy has sent me loads of stuff for her upcoming guidebook in the hope that I will be able to knock it into shape. I now have to work out which shape to knock it into.

2 February 2009

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Snow arrived just too late to spoil the big day yesterday, when relatives converged from far (Wolverhampton) and wide (Portsmouth) for Auntie Ethel’s 85th birthday celebrations at her niece Angela’s house in Dereham. David and family were up for the weekend and came too. An awesome buffet defeated everyone, and goodwill was everywhere. Oliver and Amy were on best behaviour, and Oliver spent much of his time looking after Maddie, who must be some relation; let’s think – it’s his father’s mother’s cousin’s son’s daughter. That sounds fairly close. Anyway, she’s two and having fun. Justin and his friend Heidi drove up from Portsmouth (and back), Donna came from Wolverhampton with her friend Andy, and Rosie came from Buck Brigg with her friend Roger. Sadly Peter (Maddie’s grandfather and Ethel’s nephew: are you following this?) is in hospital with pneumonia. I am reading his autobiography and have just reached the bit where he went into hospital with pneumonia and hoped that he would never have to go through that again. Well, it would have been nice.

I have just discovered that you can generate primes by the formula x2 + x + 41, which is neat, and what’s even neater is that I worked out how to include superscript in that by using html. Very satisfying.

Anyway, David and his family arrived on Saturday. We looked after the children while David and Vicky went into the city, and had a generally pleasant day, culminating in a game of bridge, which Dot and I lost conclusively. It was the cards, you know. That and superb play from our opponents.

After the Ethel extravaganza they went straight back to Caddington, because snow had started to fall and it was bitterly cold. They got home safely, but today Oliver’s school was closed, and there was heavy snow over much of the country, especially the London area, which was pretty much crippled. It snowed here too, but nowhere near as much, and tonight it was above freezing and soggy rather than slippy. Nevertheless we felt it prudent not to go the PCC meeting…

On Saturday evening we went to the Eagles for dinner and met Roger’s brother Tim, who works at Hansells and knows Jonathan, who he described as “very good”. He was with Jackie, who was Scottish and knows all the places we do, plus a good many more. So there was plenty to talk about, and we didn’t leave till well after midnight.

Today I wrote an article on the Paston book with the hope that Eco Echo might like it. I also attempted to book Blakeney for our reunion in June, but found that their single rooms were booked up. Will try again tomorrow: Maureen has agreed to accept a double room if necessary. Dot is busy over-preparing her stuff for tomorrow – her big day.

30 January 2009

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How Hill nature reserve, near Ludham. I did a 4.8-mile walk in the area yesterday, after Dot and I had visited Jessie and then left some flowers at the cemetery in North Walsham. It was her mum’s birthday. We also left some on what Dot thought might have been her grandmother’s grave, though there was no gravestone. Then on to Ludham where we shared a turkey baguette in the King’s Head before she dropped me off and went on in her DSSO role to a school at Sutton, about four miles away. I walked some very damp roads before venturing into a deserted How Hill, where I walked down to the River Ant and took a couple of pictures before continuing back to Ludham church. No sign of Dot, so I walked on to Womack Staithe and back. I was about to go into the church when she pulled up. The longest walk I’ve done since my operation, and I felt reasonably OK, though tired. In the evening I went to a St Augustine’s local ministry team meeting in the Ribs of Beef on Magdalen Street, which ended with Nicholas, Howard, Phil and I (the only attenders) discussing concerts we had been to and the first albums we’d bought. Dot stayed at home. She’s been working too hard recently.

It was a cold day, as it is today, with a wind that’s biting if not particularly strong. We’ve just heard that my second cousin Jeanette and her husband, who were emigrating here from South Africa, have decided to go home. They did pick a particularly cold winter to come over here, and their holiday home rental in Cornwall has not given them much warmth. And in the current credit crunch crisis they haven’t been able to get jobs. Sad, really. I’d been hoping to get to know them via visits to Cornwall!

Today I’ve spent a few hours at Paston learning how to use iMovie with assistance from Lucy, who also gave me lunch. She’s a bit better at the moment, though long-term prospects aren’t much different. Naomi is also going through a rough patch and will have to come home for treatment, since the medical people in Durham have proved particularly inept at looking after her.

27 January 2009

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This is Dot’s cousin Roger in typically relaxed style, pictured at Jessie’s last week. Another family meal looms on Sunday, when quite a large number of people are due at Angela’s at Dereham to celebrate Ethel’s 85th. This was supposed to be a sort of a secret, but the cat has been let out of the bag by someone who shall remain nameless. As the nameless person’s husband is in hospital with pneumonia again, she can be forgiven. Dot has been at Ethel’s this afternoon, calling in with presents on her way back from Yarmouth, where she has had her first school visit as diocesan school support officer, followed by lunch with her friend Anne. She is keeping pretty busy: a long afternoon yesterday was spent with Barbara preparing for next Tuesday’s head teachers’ conference, including a visit to the venue – St Luke’s Church Centre.

This morning I got over an appallingly shoddy loss at chess last night by going for a walk that turned out to be nearly four miles. It started innocently enough with a call at the sorting office to post a letter for Dot, but then got out of hand. I walked up through the Rosary, down the steps to Cintra Road and down on to Thorpe Rod, left and up the hill again via Stanley Road and Harvey Lane, then through what was Pinebanks and down a footpath back on to Thorpe Road and up to the River Green. I sat on a seat for a while in the sun – the weather was really mild compared to what it has been recently, people were feeding ducks, geese and swans, and it was all pretty idyllic really. I then went really mad and walked up to Whitlingham Lane and over the rail footbridge on to the river path, where I noticed that work on the third Whitlingham Broad was far advanced. All we need now is a bridge over the river from Thorpe to Whitlingham. Someone … Anyone? A couple of pretty ramshackle vessels were moored there, and an old man had got a fire going on the bank. Not sure what for. I returned to the main road and caught a bus back to the station, feeling I had earned my favourite cheese and onion sandwich, which I bought from Budgens.

The rest of the day I’ve spent writing some liturgy for our Tuesday group. Sort of experimental, based on a book we went through for Advent and Epiphany. I had a phone call from Annette last night saying there had been a radio programme about the Paston book, following a page of publicity in the EDP, and as a result we had sold another four of the big hand-made books at over £1000 each. It would have been nice to have had this news the day before, when 15 artists and poets met at Cringleford to discuss the future of the project. The meeting was at poet Adrian Ward’s rather splendid house, and was followed by an InPrint meeting, which didn’t last long after I’d persuaded everyone to admit that they didn’t really want to apply for a grant to do stuff they didn’t really want to do and didn’t have time for. So we shall proceeed with the Paston project, producing more work, hopefully, and maybe running some more workshops. I’m not too bothered about the workshops, but Annette, Caroline and Lisa are keen. Fuller story on InPrint website.

Before the Cringleford meeting, Dot and I went to Martin Laurance’s exhibition at the Grapevine on Unthank Road – a splendid gallery which will be home to a Paston exhibition from March 29. Martin is a superb artist and worked on the Paston project (he used a couple of my poems for collaborative pieces). The private view was pretty full, and Rosemary, the librarian from Archant was there. So were Annette and Caroline, and so were some other Paston people, though I didn’t see them. They had probably already left by the time we got there. Dot and I only had a few minutes there because we’d been to church (I had been preaching on the conversion of St Paul), and Caroline gave me a lift to Cringleford so that Dot could take the car home. Later Dot picked me up and we gavc Lisa and her two children, Dash and Blossom, a lift to their place in Pottergate.

This afternoon Phyllis Seaman from church called unexpectedly with a gift of some windfall cooking apples. I love stewed apples. It’s my one weakness. No, it’s really one of many.

24 January 2009

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Just for the record, the scene outside our house when I discovered the wing mirrors had been smashed up. Our next-door neighbour, Mary, came round yesterday and said she had heard something at the same time. She was very sympathetic. Dot told her about our plan to invite neighbours round, so it’s beginning to look as if we’ll have to get our fingers out and set a date. The last few days have been very wintry – two of them extremely wet too. I seized on a bright moment about 4pm yesterday to do a walk of just over a mile that included two stiff climbs. To my surprise I managed Gas Hill with no real problem and without stopping, so my energy must be back. At the time Dot was in Ipswich at a Philosophy for Children meeting: she went by train after discovering it was only £8.50 return.

I’ve spent quite a long time preparing my sermon for tomorrow on the conversion of St Paul, mainly because I kept discovering interesting things about him – for instance, why he changed his name. As usual I got far too much material, and it’s a bit long. Dot says it can’t be too long, but she’s just being nice. Spent some time today photocopying some material she got from Ipswich.

We’ve seen the Bob Dylan film, I’m Not There, which I got for Christmas from my son, and it was fascinating. Not easy, but really interesting followinig the director’s train of thought. Cate Blanchett was brilliant in her impersonation of Dylan.

21 January 2009

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Beautiful day, but cold. To celebrate Jessie’s birthday, she took her niece Dot and me, with her son Roger and her friends Janet and Ray, to Elderton Lodge for lunch. Lovely setting: deer in the park, folly in the distance. Meal was delicious: I had game and duck terrine, followed by game casserole with short crust pastry and a fantastic Eton mess dessert. The wine was good too. Afterwards we repaired to North Walsham, where I had another cup of tea and Jessie (pictured) tried to make us eat even more – unsuccessfully, in my case. Left just after five to pick up my car from the garage, where it was having its wing mirrors replaced.

You may wonder why it was having its wing mirrors replaced. I woke on Monday morning, after winning a long chess game the previous night, and found both mirrors smashed, and bits scattered around the path and road. As I was taking pictures Sam, who lives at Number 15 and has a two-year-old called Ellie, told me she had seen a gang of five youths running up the road at 1.30am and kicking all the cars, then wrenching off my wing mirrors. She yelled at them, but they just made a rude gesture at her and ran off. I reported it to the police and had my fingerprints taken for elimination purposes (I had handled the pieces from the wing mirrors). I believe the police have also spoken to Sam. Obviously they dusted the pieces for fingerprints as well, but I’m not optimistic. I rang the garage and discovered the mirrors would cost £260 to replace. As I have a £250 excess on my insurance, it was clearly a waste of time making a claim. So the vandals owe me £260. Fat chance. Tonight the car is in the drive. It is only six months since it was badly damaged by vandals climbing over it and denting it.

I’ve made entries to several competitions – mostly poems but also a short play and a short short story. These range from Kent through Wales and Ireland to Scotland, so I am casting my net wide. I’ve also entered the annual Norwich Writers’ Circle poetry competition. Well, you have to give it a go. Today we picked up the printing for Dot’s workshop next week. All looked very good until we noticed that a number of apostrophes hadn’t printed. As it was done through PDF files, I can’t understand how this could have happened, but Dot will give them a ring tomorrow. It’s not a complete disaster, because it’s easy enough to insert the apostrophes without making a mess, but it would be tedious. Dot is working extremely hard on her Philosophy material and had another two people sign up for her workshop today.

Through a Genes Reunited contact I have discovered that my mother’s grandfather and great-grandfather came from Sussex. Her grandfather, Charles Brown, lived in Brighton and then moved to Cambridgeshire, where he was head gardener at Hall Lodge, Milton, and married a local woman. My mother’s father was also a gardener, so I guess the skill was handed down. Her great-grandfather, Henry, was an agricultural labourer. So many agricultural labourers in my family tree… All ploughing the same furrow.

19 January 2009

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Dot on our walk near Caistor on Saturday. She has been with Barbara today, working on her philosophy with children stuff. I have been up to collect her pills, but otherwise have been working on poems and plays to enter into competitions. Have made some progress, but need to buy some more paper and A4 envelopes. Keep getting bizarre phone calls, from Zenith, market research people and other odd unknowns. Quite wintry today.

Yesterday I booked a couple of holiday cottages – one in Scotland for July, to be shared with David and Vicky and the children, and the other in Cheltenham in August, when we plan to go to Greenbelt with the Greens. Appropriately enough.

17 January 2009

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Another three-mile walk today, and the halfway point turned out to be French Church Farm (pictured), on Caistor Lane, where my paternal grandparents lived when I first knew them, in the early 50s or very late 40s. Later they moved up the road to The Hawthorns, a bungalow about half a mile away but on the main Norwich-Poringland road. I suspect the first at least was rented, and possibly the second. Strangely, despite all the changes in Poringland, The Hawthorns remains more or less as I always remember it – at least from the road. I assume that the chemical toilet has been replaced. French Church Farm now looks smart and is probably worth quite a lot. The barn where the pigs used to be has now been converted into a rather swish-looking quite separate residence.

The countryside there is quite undulating and strangely beautiful, at least in winter. There was a bit of a wind, but it wasn’t too cold, and we would have walked further if Dot hadn’t had stomach problems, which meant we had to cut it short. We’d parked on the low ridge where we saw the shrew a few days ago and have now completed another section of a walk given in a book we got for Christmas from Dot’s cousin Peter.

On Thursday we went to Bernard O’Brien’s funeral at Earlham Crematorium. I didn’t know he’d died till Peter Wright rang on Wednesday to let me know. Apparently he died on Christmas Eve: he’d been unwell for some time – with bad arthritis apart from anything else. His death resulted from pneumonia and heart failure. Bernard and his wife Barbara (and son Bart) had been our neighbours at Yelverton for 12 years. They lived in a chalet bungalow called Mallow, and Bernard was very mellow – a gentle giant who was generous and kindhearted as well as rather eccentric and full of esoteric knowledge. He made me a 7×7 “chessboard” which I still have beside my computer. There’s a Viking game you can play on it, and I may take it up in his memory. Barbara looked quite well, and Bart was extremely emotional.

I’ve decided to sort out all the files in my room, which is a bit of a mammoth task, but I suspect it will free up lots of space. I am determined to enter some competitions and am digging out a couple of plays I wrote but never got round to offering to anyone. They don’t seem bad to me, but then they probably wouldn’t, would they? I wrote a very short piece yesterday to enter in a short short story competition. I’d also like to continue with my autobiography-up-to-a-point, encouraged by Peter Beales publishing his. He sent it to us yesterday, and Dot has already started reading it. Haven’t written any poems this year yet, but I’ve discovered a few from the past that I think are quite good and might be worth entering in competitions.

We’ve just been practising the songs for tomorrow. I’ve written a new one, called Echoes of God, but I’m not sure it’s quite ready to be sung.

Norwich City have just won 4-0 after sacking their manager. Brian Gunn was the caretaker manager for today. Perhaps he should have a shot at it…

14 January 2009

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We’ve just been for a three-mile walk at Venta Icenorum, the Roman town about three miles outside Norwich, and this is Dot approaching the church in a mist that lifted as we arrived and came down again as we left. Other pictures on Flickr. In between, quite briefly, bright sunshine. We did the longer walk around the site, found a couple of swans on the river, which was flowing briskly, and some magpies on the hill on the other side. The combination of mist and sunshine was spectacular at times, with naked trees coming out of the mist like Romans emerging from the past. After finishing the round we walked a further mile and a quarter on permissive paths that have only recently been opened along the sides of fields. We walked up to a low ridge (the only sort you get in Norfolk) and sighted a tiny shrew by a marker post. Then walked past an Anglo-Saxon burial site marked by pines reaching into the sky, through the mist, towards the sun. All very pleasand and unexpected: in Norwich it has been bright sunshine all the way.

Earlier today looked at some cottages in Scotland for a possible holiday with David and Vicky and the children. We also received the sad news that Bernard O’Brien had died on Christmas Eve. It is his funeral tomorrow, and we hope to go. Bernard was our neighbour for 12 years in Yelverton – a gentle, eccentric giant.

Dot has been busy with her philosophy for children. She spent most of Monday at Terrington St Clement with Sue and Roger Eagle, and they have another three dates there in the next couple of months. Then she was down at Barbara’s all yesterday afternoon after we had had our hair cut. Naturally I have been putting the time to good use, though I can’t quite remember what I did. Our Tuesday Group was at the Archers’ last night, which meant we didn’t have to worry about cooking.

10 January 2009

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Just been putting together a mixture of old and new pictures for a photo book for A Ethel’s birthday as a surprise (unless she reads this, which is pretty unlikely, as she doesn’t have a computer and wouldn’t know what to do with one if she had). This picture features her and U Ted together with Dot and David, and a little bit of me. Must be around 1980, I should think – perhaps earlier. Dot and I had to research some old albums, which was interesting: quite a number of unidentified people emerged. The process was interrupted (a) by problems with the printer, which I think have now been fixed after many abortive attempts and (b) by an unexpected visit from Joe and Birgit, who got a puncture on the way and eventually stayed for lunch. They bought us a bottle of pear liqueur from Germany, which was very welcome though stronger than I remembered it. I’m not sure “though” is the right word.

Very cold today – a couple of degree below zero – so no real desire to go out. Yesterday I helped Annette take the Paston book to the Millennium Library (meeting Lisa there), where it has a display cabinet to itself. The cabinet was embarrassingly big, actually, but one of the librarians managed to find some relevant books to make the display look half-decent, and they also printed out an information sheet I provided – on disc because our printer had just “broken”. The breaking turned out to be a blessing in disguise (pretty heavy disguise, it must be said), because they printed it out at A3, which made it look almost professional on a stand in the cabinet. I could not have done that.

The printer “breaking” occurred at a difficult moment, because Sue and Roger Eagle were here discussing philosophy for children with Dot at what sounded a pretty deep level. While I lured Dot away to look at the printer I gave them some mini-baguettes which I’d bought from Budgens on the way back from the dentist’s, together with some cheese, a few crisps and a cup of tea – all in a huge rush because I was late to meet Annette. Aargh! It worked out all right in the end, though. Annette came back for a warm drink (she had been working at freezing Bally) and I put off my visit to the post office to retrieve an undelivered piece of mail. Dot then returned her to Bally and went to the supermarket while I caught up with various stuff.

Dot is now printing out some stuff for her P4C visit to Terrington St Clement on Monday. She’s been very busy over the past few days, and Norwich City have just lost again, which doesn’t help.