A rather lovely picture of grandson Oliver walking through a rather small section of woods in the park. Quite mild today. Met with a student from Fakenham and her mentor, Jo Stone, in the Forum, had lunch, gave her some advice about journalism and gave her  a short tour of Prospect House. Just in time – Editorial about to move out for refurbishment. Many boxes.

Now about to go to Alburgh for a meal with Julia and Alan.

Nanna gets into a bit of trouble among the fallen leaves with grandchildren Oliver and Amy. This picture was taken last weekend in the small park on the hill above our house. Oliver thought it was hugely funny to throw dead leaves at his grandmother, who joined in enthusiastically. Amy was quickly drawn in.

Today we called on Annette and Mike at The Barn and saw some of Annette’s new paintings. Quite exciting! Then on to Alburgh School, where Dot was greeted warmly by everyone, especially the children.  Unfortunate timing, because the new head was in process of being chosen: governors and LEA representatives present and in choosing mode.  Still nice, though.

Back in Norwich, went to look at some taps: surprisingly difficult choice.  Then I finished my column for Monday, and as I write the floor man is trying to make our landing floor fit – a rather difficult task in view of what he has to work with.

All part of the family – my mother’s side. Here we have two of my cousins  –  left centre Eddie Potter, who is the son of my Aunt Olive and Uncle Ted, with his wife Christine far left; and Sandy Maxwell, daughter of my Aunt Vi and Uncle Bill, with her husband Alex. Olive and Vi are sisters to my mother. Vi is still alive and living in South Africa with her second husband Richard Crawford. Bill’s surname was Shorten. Olive and Ted have both died fairly recently. This picture was taken at Eddie and Christine’s home in Fencepiece Road, Ilford, during a flying visit by Sandy and Alex.

Weather now is much milder than it has been, but extremely windy today. I went to the memorial service for Reg Brighton yesterday – a very old friend from Surrey Chapel. Packed church. Spoke to some almost equally old friends. Reg was 87.  At the same time Dot went to a funeral in Cromer of Alison McCrory, who died from cancer at 64, as I mentioned last time. 

I have just entered three poems in the Fish Publishing poetry competition, partly because I like the work of one of the judges – Michael McCarty. Here is one of his poems:

In Memoriam

Let’s say the year is twenty-one-sixteen.
The headstone says I died in twenty-thirty-six.
Though I’ve been dead these eighty years
I’m pleased to see I lived to ninety one.

The graveyard perched
above an S of sea where boats can rest
along a lonely curve of shore
where tourists no longer come.

Beneath my name: the dates of birth and death,
some long-forgotten lines I haven’t written yet,
Beside my grave a grass-grown gravel path
unused except by fishermen at night.

I see a woman, pushing back the grass.
She’s twenty-five or so,
Researching for her PhD, her subject:
Forgotten Irish Poets.

She found some poems of mine on micro-disk
buried in the archives of a library
in Edmonton Alberta, where
I was almost famous once.

She stands among small raindrops
as I once stood
in the graveyard at Drumcliff,
She weeps as I wept over Yeats.

A strand of hair clings to her face.
A briar sways in unnoticed wind.
Far below the waves say hush.
Close by a blackbird sings.

Back in time again –  about 34 years. This is my son David and his mother, probably shortly after moving to Norfolk in July 1972, when I started 30 years’ work at the Eastern Daily Press. We may have been staying at my mother’s in Norwich at the time, or possibly at Dot’s parents’ house in North Walsham. We moved into our own house in the November – Holly Bank, Yelverton, where we stayed for 12 years. It seemed a long time.

Today is a bit milder, and David is bringing his own son and daughter to our house tomorrow. Our kitchen has just been upgraded – the tiler finished today, and Dot has quickly brought the entire house up to scratch. Hope today’s rain eases off tomorrow.

Have just discovered that the person who owned the care home at Cromer, and who looked after Dot’s mum so well, died on March 11 – Alison McCrory. Bit of a shock.

Going back in time again – this is a photograph of Loch Lubnaig, near Strathyre in Scotland, where Dot and I spent some of our honeymoon in a white-washed, thick-walled cottage that was much colder inside than out. This was in August 1968, and the weather was glorious.

Some years earlier, in the mid-1930s, my parents had also spent theit honeymoon here. In fact the cottage we used belonged to someone they met then.

Here in Norfolk the weather is still bitterly cold, and I am due for a five-mile yomp tomorrow. Dot took a friend to Walsingham today, and I prepared some stuff for tonight’s group. Dot is even now cooking a vegetarian meal. Time for spring, surely?

OK, I admit it. This is me. Whenever I think of myself as a baby (which isn’t all that often), this is the picture I think of. I am sitting in my pram and looking pretty pleased with myself. I’ve no idea why. It must have been taken at 15 Brian Avenue, Norwich, my first home, in early 1946.

Back in 2006 I woke up in the middle  of last night with a bad attack of rhinitis, which hasn’t got any better. Don’t know if it’s a straight cold or an allergy to something in the kitchen (dust, glue…) but I can definitely do without it. Annoying how you can be so debilitated when the rest of your body feels fine – relatively speaking.

As I write, the worktop is about complete and the sink is being installed.

Same hall, roughly the same position on the same day, but different camera.

We’re having parts of our kitchen upgraded (new stove, new work top, new sink), so everything had to be taken out of cupboards, and things are in pretty much of a mess, which I don’t enjoy. Confined to other parts of the house, so watched some of the Commonwealth Games. Also wrote next week’s page. Drove up to local tile emprium to choose tiles for kitchen, then called in to pick up processed films in city centre.  In evening went for a meal to Prezzo’s.

Bitterly cold with wintry showers.

This is Stone Gappe Hall, Lothersdale, in West Yorkshire. We’ve just spent a week living a couple of doors up the road. Despite almost continuous rain and /or snow, it was a wonderful few days – partly because the house we were staying in has superb views and is very comfortable, and partly because the landscape is stunning.

We visited the lovely Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale; and Haworth, home of the Brontes, where we visited a superb museum in the Parsonage where the family lived. We discovered that Charlotte had been a governess at Stone Gappe Hall, and it seemed that much of the inspiration for Jayne Eyre came from there. Coincidentally, our waitress at the Cavendish Pavilion, Bolton Abbey, was called Charlotte, and it was her first day: she seemed nervous (but was very good at her job). So I wrote this poem:

JANE AND THE WAITRESS

At Stone Gappe Hall, Charlotte like us looked out
across the valley towards home,
created something new – something transformed
called from the  tension of unfamiliar air
but close to the moor

If I reached out I could almost touch her

Today Charlotte brought me bread and wine:
it was her first day in the valley of desolation,
shoulders tense at the strangeness of it all,
she stood in white and waited to be called, transformed…

Anything was possible
I reached out and almost touched her

Anyway, on the way home from Yorkshire, after the snow melted, we called in at Harlestone, near Northampton, where my great-great-grandparents’ grave stands near the entrance to the church. First time Dot had seen it. We then went on to East Haddon, where we saw the grave of one of their sons and his wife, and found a couple more graves that mnay or may not be significant. When I have the pictures processed and can check with the family tree, I may reveal more.

We also realised that Harlestone is right on the edge of the Althorp estate and may even be part of it. So I am almost certainly related to Princess Diana. Ho, ho. But perhaps our ancestors met.

This is Emma Pike, Dot’s father’s mother  – and wife of Bert Cousens. Spoke about her to Jessie (Dot’s aunt) on Saturday and found that her father was Walter Pike and her mother Susannah Lusher from Swaffham. Susannah’s father was a publican, apparently. Emma had three sisters and four brothers: Nelly, Lily, Daisy, Ernest, Robert, Edward and Lacy. All of them were probably born in Suffield, but I will have to do some research on it.

Now we’re waiting for Dot’s car window to be replaced so that we can fetch the car and then leave in the other car for Yorkshire, where we hope to spend the next six or seven days. The window was smashed on Saturday night by some yob, probably local. However, it’s not unknown for away supporters to take it out on the locals when their team gets beaten, and we’re not too far from Carrow Road. Didn’t hear anything, though the car was outside our bedroom window. Nothing taken, but Autoglass say a crowbar was used.

Tim Mace will be staying here while we’re away. Beautiful day today, but forecast is for rain, of course.

Suspended boxes from the Fringe exhibition last autumn, appearing in the same room as the Poetry Vending Machine. Boxes are by Annette Rolston and Bronwen Edwards. Some of the poetry in the boxes is by me, some by other members of InPrint.

Had a chat with Dot’s Aunt Jessie today and uncovered a few names from Dot’s father’s side of the family, which I shall insert in the Genes Reunited tree as soon as possible. Quite a lot of snow in North Walsham Cemetery.