Monthly Archives: April 2008

8 April 2008

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A motley crew on a snowy April Sunday. For the record, left to right: Brian and Jacqui Quentin, Dot, Sue and Bob Bushell , Ruthie (Ann) and Ken Caves and yours truly, all gathered at Leatherhead Golf Club for the ruby anniversary of Bob and Sue, who was at teacher training college with Dot, as were Jacqui and Ruthie. As I often visited the college, Wall Hall, and the house where they lived – Otterspool – I’ve also known Ken and Bob for some time (very intermittently), but Brian is Jacqui’s second husband, and it was the first time I’d met him. Also there were Liz and Pete Stabler, who were also a couple back in Wall Hall days. They had just left when this picture was taken.

Quite an epic journey to reach Leatherhead. We came down the previous day (Saturday), and got stuck in a huge, extremely slow-moving queue on the A11. It took us an hour to go about four miles, because the road had been closed south of the Stansted turn, and everyone was merging into a single lane up to the traffic lights. We took the road less travelled – a B-road going south-east, and Dot navigated us across some of the lesser known parts of Essex, like Chipping Ongar and South Weald, with the occasional piece of intuition from myself, until we hit the M25 at the A12 junction. From there, surprisingly, it was plain sailing, and we reached Junction 9 without incident, Dot sirecting us by an interesting route to the Woodlands Hotel. The entire journey took four and a half hours – long enough normally for us to get to Hastings and halfway back.

Very smart hotel in country house style, with a friendly and efficient staff with no discernible English ancestry. Had a meal in the Brasserie in the evening. Expensive and good-average food. On the down side, the five terrestrial TV channels were unavailable (“aerial affected by storm”), so we were stuck with Sky News, which didn’t make me want to get Sky at all. Talk about repetitious. Talk about repetitious. Talk about repetitious. And in the morning the hot water was lukewarm (“maintenance are looking at it”) till after breakfast. You had the feeling that on a good day it might have been exceptional, but it wasn’t a good day.

Nevertheless, it was comfortable, and looked great after the forecast heavy snowfall that greeted us the following morning. Got some rather good pictures of the surrounding gardens. Still plenty of snow around when we left at about 11.45 (after coffee in the lounge – £6.50) to travel the short distance to the Leatherhead Golf Club, which we soon found after a brief excursion up the wrong road. Very pleasant afternoon there with a good carvery meal and wine which left me on the brink, and by the time we left at about 5pm, the snow had amazingly almost vanished. The M25 turned out to be straightforward, and we reached Caddington at 6.15pm.

It’s been very cold for several days now, and it was still very chilly when we left Caddington with Oliver yesterday just after lunch, arriving home after a straightforward journey at about 3.15pm. A former student, Sally Campbell, called in just after 4pm to pick up a reference I’d written for her, and in the evening I won a game of chess against a guy from Dereham – Oliver had been rooting for me, after he played me in the afternoon and “beat” me. He’s very keen on it at the moment. He’s also brilliant on the computer, picking up anything I show him very quickly. He produced a page of comic art in quick time this morning, though I wasn’t in the room at the time.

5 April 2008

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A not-very-good picture of our church music group in rehearsal last Sunday, featuring Dot on violin, Phil on guitar and Matthew (hidden) on piano. When not on camera, I was on guitar. I’ve been trying to take a few pictures to go on the Norwich Christian Meditation Centre website, with limited success. Inside shots of a large area like a church hall are quite difficult.

We got rid of far more books than I anticipated – probably over 100 – and also managed to extricate the small bookcase from its inaccessible position under the stairs and reposition it on the landing. This opens up more space for books and also looks quite nice. Good week for clearing out: Dot spent yesterday afternoon doing the garden after the arrival of our £35-a-year brown wheelie bin for garden rubbish. She’s pretty much filled it. I’ve also got through a lot of the large pile of newspapers and magazines that were waiting to be read, and my in tray is looking almost manageable. We now also have all the new lights ready to be installed: Dot has phoned the electrician, but is pessimistic about whether he will ring back as he promised to fix a date.

I have booked a hotel in York for later this month, when we are planning to see a play and spend a day looking round the city. I’ve also booked the train tickets, and on that one journey alone have made the purchase of our senior railcards worthwhile. Today we head south for Surrey, where we are spending the night in a hotel before attending the ruby wedding celebration of one of Dot’s college friends at Leatherhead Golf Club. A little bit worried about this, because after two or three days of warm and very pleasant weather, snow is forecast again – especially in the area we will be tomorrow when we travel from Leatherhead to Caddington to stay the night before bringing Oliver back home with us. It’s rather critical we get home by 4pm Monday, because I’ve written a reference for one of my former students, who is picking it up from me then: like most former students, she is trying to meet a deadline that is almost impossible.

On Thursday after taking the books to a charity shop (and picking up our new sofa cushions from Multiyork and taking some glass to the recycling centre at Waitrose) we paid our monthly visit to Park Farm for lunch – and a new ear-piercing event for Dot, who had been having trouble with the previous attempt. Then in Norwich we revisited one of our banks (a former building society) to sort out the chaos that had ensued from our previous visit. I think we’re OK now, subject to their updating my ISA without incident. In the evening a lengthy PCC meeting, at which potential conflict over use of buildings was averted by a brilliant and inspired speech from Paul on what church buildings were actually for.

Today Dot is meeting Anne in the city at 11am before “rushing” back to leave for Surrey. Anne’s daughter has just got engaged, and our Italian friend Eugenia has had a baby girl – Francesca. Almost as excitingly, our free national bus passes have arrived, together with the train tickets for York. There will be no holding us now.

2 April 2008

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Dot on a little-known bridge over the Wensum, halfway along the riverside path from the Gibraltar Arms to Sweet Briar Road – our Sunday afternoon walk. Now we’re halfway through another week, and the weather is almost springlike. I’ve just written another piece for my website and made some changes to both the InPrint site and the Meditation Centre site (still in development). I have four websites to keep up to date, which is proving quite difficult, although it will become easier when they are all established. Maybe.

Yesterday Dot and I travelled down to Metfield in Suffolk to see a friend with whom Dot is discussing expanding their “thinking skills for children” activities. While they went into detail I took a three-mile walk through the surrounding countryside and at the end of it found a house which looked as if it might suit us. Nice village, but I’m not sure it has enough pluses: for instance there are no mountains, and it’s no nearer the coast than Norwich is. In the evening we had our usual Tuesday group round – plus one, who said what a nice house we lived in. Which it is, of course.

In between these two events I went to see the nurse, who looked into my ears and said that if she syringed them, she might perforate the eardrum. I asked her how many ears she had syringed, and she said: “Hundreds.” I asked her how many eardrums she had perforated, and she said: “None.” Still, I didn’t go for it. This desire to warn patients about every conceivable thing that could go wrong is clearly having the desired effect.

On Monday I spent a couple of hours with a friend from church showing her how to put a piece on the website. As she had a Windows laptop, this proved a bit of a tortuous experience, but we got through it all right. She has a lovely little house on King Street, in the section that has been done up.

This morning Dot has taken her aunt up to the hospital and left her in the city. We are planning to go through our books this afternoon and get rid of as many as possible, which may not be many, but we shall try to be ruthless. Have just read a brilliant novel by a Swede called Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.