Monthly Archives: April 2012

Bob Brolly and the birthday party

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Katy Wakely with her mother and brother at her 40+ birthday party in Ditchingham village hall

Yes, it is still raining. Funny you should ask. Not surprising, since April is the cruellest month. While I was staying dry by not going out the other day, however, I did make an interesting discovery in the family tree area.

For a long time I had been wondering why my father’s parents were living in Mansfield before they moved to Norwich, since his mother was born in Sheffield, and his father’s family was long established in the area immediately to the west of Peterborough (Yaxley, Normans Cross, Folkesworth…). Then I discovered when looking at newly online records that my grandmother’s parents were not from the Sheffield area: one was born in Shirebrook and the other in Kneesall. What do these two small places have in common? They are near Mansfield. What could be more natural that the newly married couple should go and live either with or near the wife’s parents’ relatives? Well, it makes sense to me.

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, we had the church annual meeting and dinner at St Luke’s last Tuesday, while Dot was in Thames Ditton, preparing for a philosophy session. Good meal, but a longish “farewell” to John and Jean Easton, who weren’t really going anywhere, but were stepping down from several church posts because they had reached the age of 70. Took Ian and returned with both Ian and Tim Mace, managing to return the jacket TM had left at our house several weeks previously.

On Wednesday a remarkable event that turned out badly for me. I went to the doctor’s surgery to get my blood pressure checked, and arrived a quarter of an hour early, intending to go to the loo and then sit quietly, breathing deeply, until I was called into the surgery about half an hour later if I was lucky. Wouldn’t you know that I was called when I was in the loo, which obviously pushed my blood pressure up, or at least stopped it going down. Very annoying. I am now on another pill, which may be irritating my stomach. I’ve had a couple of bad nights. We shall see. What was remarkable? Being called into the surgery a quarter of an hour early. Almost unheard-of.

Despite the weather I did take part in the Reading the Past in the Landscape walk at Paston on Saturday, which was just as well, since the guy leading it didn’t know the path back from the edge of the cliff. I felt almost useful. Also climbed Stow windmill, which was nice, though greyness restricted the view. Refreshments were at Lucy’s.   The confusion over St Peter Hungate has not been totally resolved, but it’s heading in the right direction. I’ve left Rob sorting out the publicity with Lucy, which seems like a plan, as the Murrays would say.

In the evening we took the Greens to Ditchingham village hall for the 40+ party of Katy Wakeley, who is the granddaughter of our former church member, Maud Lincoln, and sometimes comes to church with her mother Chris. Like Maud, Katy is mainly in a wheelchair: she has ME very badly. She got out of it to cut her cake on this occasion. Chris and Ray were also there with Phyllis, and there was some dancing to an Irish band led by Bob Brolly, which is his real name. He also broadcasts on Midlands radio. They weren’t bad, actually. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but it was raining. Hard. All evening. Bob Brolly asked me to lead the men in singing Happy Birthday. Strangely, I was not at all nervous about this. Times change.

The party food was excellent, but for some reason my stomach reacted badly to it and I was awake for much of the night. After communion this morning I didn’t feel up to going to Fakenham for Caroline’s party, so I made my excuses and stayed home. Dot is busy working on her DSSO visits for the current term.

Drama, rain and confusion

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End of the road at Happisburgh

I know I keep going on about this, but it’s still raining, and the forecast for the rest of the week is about as wet as it can be. I wouldn’t mind if it was going to have any impact at all on the drought, but of course it isn’t. Don’t you just love water companies? On the plus side, there’s just a remote possibility that the weather might have got it all out of its system by the time we go to Scotland. Or more likely, it will have no effect on it whatsoever.

While our pitch-and-putt was rained off last Wednesday, Dot and I beat the Robinsons at table tennis, 3-2, 3-2. Not bad, since we were losing 3-0 in the second series. The next day we had the Greens round, but somehow table tennis didn’t crop up, and we spent the whole evening at the dining table devouring an excellent curry and other goodies provided by Dot.

On Friday it was curry again – this time with Heather, Sam and Simon at a rather upmarket curry house called the Merchants of Spice in Colegate. I know it was in Colegate, because it used to be called the Merchants of Colegate, before it suddenly became Asian. Delicious meal, preceded by drinks at the Playhouse. Exceptionally convivial evening.

The drama continued on Saturday, when we went to the Maddermarket to see Present Laughter by Noel Coward. Not the most brilliant play I’ve seen, but a bravura performance by the lead actor, and some nice performances elsewhere too.

More drama on Sunday, when after I preached the sermon at St Augustine’s one of  our occasional visitors arrived and promptly collapsed. He has mental health problems, but in this instance he also had stomach pains, so one of our congregation phoned 999, and eventually we got the attention of a very pleasant paramedic on a bike. Unfortunately I had to go out and guide him in, which meant I got wet because – astonishingly – it was raining. Eventually said member of congregation drove him to a drop-in centre (the ill man, not the paramedic) – at which point, I was told later, he took fright and walked off.

Today Dot has been observing at a school in the east where they are choosing a new head teacher. She arrived home tired and then had to prepare for the next couple of days, involving more observation and then a visit to Thames Ditton for a P4C session (staying overnight). Meanwhile I was having a Chronicle meeting with Rob and Caroline, trying to unravel the confusion Lucy has inserted into what was going to be a pretty straightforward concert at St Peter Hungate. More on that story later.

Drought gets wetter and wetter

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Happisburgh lighthouse on a cold Sunday

Drought is now in full swing. It’s rained every day recently, often for a long time. Yesterday we had a hailstorm, and it’s pouring outside as I write, thus putting paid to our projected pitch-and-putt with the Robinsons. Helpfully, Anglian Water has sent us a leaflet describing lots of different ways to save water, like spending two minutes less in the shower. I would put this into effect immediately, except that I don’t have showers in the normal run of things. It doesn’t say anything about baths. One question: if water pipes are leaking all over the place, shouldn’t that be helping in terms of the water table? I suspect not, but I don’t know why.

Anyway, Dot has baked a cake. So we can have afternoon tea instead of pitch-and-putt. And I’ve managed to write my sermon for Sunday, though I have no doubt it will be changed before delivery.

Yesterday was my father’s 99th birthday, and today is Jack Earl’s, which means he is one day younger (than my father). And has lived 57 years longer, which doesn’t seem fair. Having a bit of trouble with his daughter at the moment: Rob and I went to St Peter Hungate on Monday to sort out plans for our event there in June; on reporting these to Lucy, it turns out that she wasn’t anticipating an evening event or sharing the proceeds with the church, both of which we’d agreed. So not sure what will happen. I have written a linking script and Rob has designed some publicity.

Dot is considerably better, but still has a bit of a cough. She spent most of the day yesterday at the Cathedral for a church school head teachers’ conference. Meanwhile I went to the John Innes Centre in pouring rain for the Archant annual meeting.  Very few people there that I knew: no-one from EDP editorial except the editor, and no editorial pensioners. Spoke to Robyn Bechelet, Kath Silver, Ann Lown, Mike Almond and Doug Bird before I spilled some red wine on myself and made a fairly swift exit, pausing only for a bit more of the delicious buffet, which seems to get better every year.

Johnny Hustler gave an interesting talk (oh, yes he did) about Archant innovations, including a device whereby you could use an iPhone to run a video by pointing it at an ad in a magazine, which seems pretty amazing to me. Whatever next? No, don’t tell me.

On Sunday we went to have a look at Happisburgh, where they have astonishingly built a new car park on the cliff and a ramp down to the beach. They are also in process of demolishing some cliff-edge houses. Dot and I walked down to the beach and back in a bitterly cold wind, then repaired to Jessie’s for a cup of tea, with Roger in attendance.

Dolphins on a silver field

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Oliver with Canary-coloured bow tie, created at Bewilderwood

Dot is still not feeling great, but her coughing seems to be subsiding a smidgeon: she went to the doctor on Tuesday, and he said it was a virus and could linger on indefinitely, which is encouraging. However, he did tell her that her potential cyst had just about vanished, and she no longer needed it cut out. So that’s all good, as they would say on Twenty Twelve. In fact Dot is now out with Anne in the city. There has been plenty of rain in the last two days, but it’s sunny at the moment.

I cancelled Andrew’s visit completely after debating whether to go over and take him our for a day instead; the weather forecast was horrible, and I wasn’t feeling brilliant. I’m much better now and have managed to write the narration for our Paston event – at least, the first draft thereof. Caroline was also ill, so Rob and I met on Tuesday and allocated a few tasks. He is is researching publicity.

Otherwise it’s been a quiet week. We had our hair cut, and I’ve been to the supermarket and into the city to pay in some cheques while Dot has rested, by which I mean done extensive sprucing-up work in the house. I wrote a rather bad sonnet for the poetry group, but it wasn’t as bad as one or two other things that were presented to us. NG and TN, however, made a good job of theirs. Especially NG, for whom I have a growing admiration. Meanwhile I have had a poem published on the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, which is nice. The fact, not the poem.

The computer is going well. David did a trick with Dropbox which got my capacity down to nearly 80%, so that’s now working at no further cost. I am toying with the idea of deleting all the pictures in my Pictures file to reduce it even further. After all, they’re just duplicates of ones in iPhoto which I’ve exported for various reasons.

I took some old books up to the Christian Resource Centre and also left them a box of my poetry books, which I said they could sell for whatever price they liked. I still have three boxes!

I have discovered, thanks to Genes Reunited, that the name Lenton is a very early English locational surname, and derives from the places called Lenton, one in Lincolnshire and the other in Nottinghamshire. The former is recorded as “Lavintone” in the Domesday Book of 1086 and means “Leofa’s village”, derived from the Olde English pre– 7th Century personal name “Leofa”, meaning “dear, or beloved” and “tun”, a settlement or farm.

John Leynton (1455 – 1505) represented the Borough of Cambridge in the Parliaments of 1489 – 1490 and 1491 – 1492 during the reign of King Henry V11. He was the first Recorder of Cambridge in 1494. Rather pleased to discover that in 1584 Arms were granted to the Lentons of Aldwinkle in Northants (where I visited the church a few years ago). These have the blazon of a silver field, a bend between two gold dolphins embowed.

Oliver would be pleased. He likes dolphins.

Bewilderwood comes up trumps again

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Led by Amy, the children cross the rope bridge from the centre of the maze

Well into a wintry April, and this is being unexpectedly written on a new iMac, which I bought from the Apple store in Chapelfield, with a little help from David and Phil Coomes, on Good Friday. The idea is that I can now upgrade to iCloud, but this hasn’t happened yet, despite David taking some considerable time on his last day here pushing files across. We still have to do something about iWeb, which will no longer be supported. However, I have to say the computer itself is a delight. Looks good, feels good, so it must be good. And only £999. Plus Applecare, of course. I am seeing if I can manage without Word and Excel, but if not, I can get it from Amazon, the Apple guy pointed out helpfully.

This came at the end of a week with David, Oliver and Amy, who arrived on the Monday – a week too late for the warm weather. But despite a day of continuous rain on the Wednesday, we still had a good time, including a Maundy Thursday visit to Bewilderwood, which continues to delight. We were accompanied as last year by the Coomes family, with all four children getting on really well together. They stayed at the Premier Inn on Duke Street – not the ideal spot, but apparently a lot cheaper then the Nelson – and came to us for all their meals except breakfast.

Oliver was not too well after the first day or two, but manfully kept going, though David had a touch of whatever it was, and so did Dot and I. As I write, she is still coughing: she hasn’t been able to sleep well, and this lunchtime she had quite a frightening coughing fit provoked by eating something that irritated her throat. She didn’t come to church yesterday, but recovered sufficiently to get to the traditional Red Lion lunch with Phil and his family, including both sons, their wives, and the German contingent. Had quite a long chat with Joe (Wizemann), and the meal was good, though too large as always. Very pleasant time.

As a result of Dot’s illness, and the fact that I wasn’t feeling good myself, I rang Ian Fosten and excused myself from what was apparently an oversubscribed Seagull gig. Watched too much TV instead. But the morning service was enjoyable: I led it as usual, and John Easton preached and did Communion. Quite a good number in the congregation too.

Before the children left on Friday afternoon we had a game of football on Mousehold that either ended in a 4-4 draw, 3-1 to us or 6-5 to them, depending on who you asked. David had a procedure at hospital on the Saturday, but seems to be recovering well. Nothing to with the football.