Dot, Amy and Oliver pause for a rest halfway round the Iceni nature trail at Cockley Cley
We are venturing into winter, the clocks are back, and the weather is pretty miserable. But it takes more than that to stop us in our tracks. Last week Oliver and Amy were with us for three days, with David staying for most of the Wednesday before returning to Caddington. The next day we took Oliver and Amy to Cockley Cley, and the Iceni village which she was keen to see for her homework project on Boudicca. The weather was less than wonderful, but at least dry enough for us to wander round the village and its associated nature trail, some of which was quite striking.
We were the only visitors, which was a bit eerie, with Amy rather nervous in case a few stray Iceni had lingered for a few hundred years and were preparing to leap out at her. The figures in the huts didn’t help. Still, she dutifully gather the information she needed. At the end we visited a 17th century cottage and an old church that were even more impressive. As the rain set in we headed for Elveden and a meal at the restaurant there. I had a game pie, for which I paid during the night.
On the Friday we popped up to the Castle Museum to look at the Boudicca section there. I was the advance guard with Oliver, but the other two soon caught up. I cooked roast half-a-chicken for lunch, and we squeezed in yet another game of Dixit before driving them home to Caddington. I drove down and Dot drove back while I thought I would doze, but didn’t.
Saturday was wild, windy, wet and peculiar. I drove to Mannington Hall to help set up the Paston exhibition for the History Day. Seeing no Paston people there, I returned more than half a dozen times, after making phone calls and driving round, before I noticed a narrow bridge at the back that looked private. Sure enough, there they all were, invisible even from the front of the house when I looked through the windows. By then most of the work had been done, which suited me fine, but I helped them finish off.
The next day I picked up Kay and her rather large advertising board from Wood Dalling. We arrived at Mannington Hall shortly after 10.15am to find most people there. The event was rather badly hit by the weather, but the cold and dampness at least drove people into the house to listen to our performance of Margaret Paston – a Medieval Heroine. This was Chronicle (Kay, Rob, Caroline and I) using poetry, dialogue, monologue and songs to portray Margaret’s life and letters. Quite professional: we wore black, and historical hats were provided by Rob’s wife Penny, a serious seamstress. The room was packed for the first performance at noon, and was pretty full for the second at 2pm, by which time Dot had arrived. She had been to church.
Packing up took a bit of a time, and as it included quite a bit of outside work in cold drizzle was rather uncomfortable. Still we managed it and got away not long after 4pm. Sadly, Lucy didn’t make it at all, as she has another infection, but at least she has managed to obtain another £10,000 grant for future events. Don’t know how she does it.
Today I have struggled to catch up with Stuff That Needs to be Done, and managed a trip into the city to put church cheques into the bank (and take money out), and to send off some supplementary money to Andrew. Philip Robinson called in the afternoon to use the loo (!), and Dot has been working hard on her Philosophy conference ideas. I am playing chess tonight, but don’t feel much like it.
My granddaughter is now a year older. It happened suddenly, last Saturday, and fortunately we were on hand to help her celebrate her eighth birthday. We arrived on the Friday night, driving through pouring rain all the way, with almost ground-level clouds. In the morning I went with David and the children to the swimming pool in Dunstable, where Oliver and Amy had their lessons. Meanwhile, Dot stayed at home and iced the chocolate cake made by David the previous night.
We gave Amy a scooter with lots of street cred, which went down very well, even when she fell off it while executing a tight turn. The children have friends in the street, and they came out to play, so that was good: Thomas and Grace, I think. Not related. After a party lunch prepared by David we played Dixit, a remarkable game that he’d bought her which involved making up a line of a story to match cards, and then guessing the card. Actually it made a lot more sense than that. Later in the afternoon, Vicky, accompanied by Saskia(?), came to pick up the children, and we left soon afterwards, arriving back in Norwich earlier than we’d expected.
At church on Sunday I “launched” my new worship songs booklet, simply by using it for one of the hymn slots. Seemed to work all right. Howard gave a very Howard sermon, including animal noises, on how OT people might have reacted to Isaiah. In the evening Dot and I went for a meal at Anne and Philip’s in the company of Bernadette and Barry Hutchings, who live in Alpington. Touch of nostalgia there – very enjoyable, though I wasn’t feeling great, a theme which repeated all through the next few days. I took some out-of-date antibiotics, but that seemed to make things worse; so I’ve stopped. The right thing to do, I feel.
Yesterday was the final rehearsal for our Chronicle performance at Mannington Hall, complete with hats. Everyone agreed that mine suited me very well, which is a bit worrying. The hats came courtesy of Rob’s wife Penny, who is a seamstress of some repute, and we rehearsed at Rob’s house, with his grandchildren providing noises off. In the evening, with our vegetarian Bridget away with her husband, I cooked chilli con carne for the Tuesday Group, and I have to say it tasted pretty good. Well, I don’t have to, but I will.
Now I am waiting for the arrival of David, Oliver and Amy. The children will be staying with us for three days, and I am told we have to visit the Iceni village at Cockley Cley, because Amy is doing a project on Boudicca. I feel Amy would make a good Boudicca.
The speed of light – and therefore time – increases again. I don’t care what anyone says: I’m from Yorkshire. Well, no, I’m not, but nevertheless time does seem to be hurtling past, and I don’t seem to be achieving an awful lot. Certainly not on Tuesday, when the Broadband was down for several hours. As we all know, when Broadband is down it’s like a newspaper strike. Nothing happens.
It was also the day the accountant came, and we spent some time trying to open one of Barbara’s files, which was in some outlandish open source software, and compressed to boot. Gave up in the end, because we couldn’t access the internet to find out how it might be opened. Went back to the pigeon.
Last Saturday we went to a concert at St Augustine’s, and on the way discovered that it was part of the Magdalen/St Augustine’s Festival, which aspires to be a kind of mini-Notting Hall. The concert was in three parts, of which we saw the first two – an organ recital, which was strangely dampened and attended by very few people; and some music from a violin, a cello and an organist who doubled as an amazing counter-tenor. More people at that one, and some of it was very good. But I think a few songs from Far Cry would not have been out of place.
On that theme, I have today printed out 24 song booklets for church, each of them containing 20 of my songs (words only). I should be able to produce music versions: I can write music, but I can’t think of any way to do it that would be useful. Lack of imagination and a touch of laziness thwart most things.
I have also been judging the Two Valleys Poetry Competition for the second year running. At first the entries seemed unexceptional, but on closer examination there are a number of pretty good ones, and it’s been hard to make a final choice.
Much of the rest of the time has been spent on being church treasurer, including the usual trip into the city yesterday to pay in cheques. This occurred after a lunchtime visit by the Higbees, before they rushed down to Bedford to babysit their granddaughter, Arianna. Dot did a rather nice curry, following up her triumph the previous night of butternut squash and potato soup for the Tuesday Group. The Higbees also bought a patio cleaner for Dot to try out, and she got so enthusiastic that she did the whole of the back garden area while I went into the city. Effective but dirty, rather like the Roses road train.
Good food day on Sunday. We started with lunch at church – soup and rolls left over from the aforementioned festival – and proceeded to North Walsham for mince pies at Jessie’s. She makes a mean mince pie. Home through pouring rain and up to Loch Fyne for an evening meal, purely to obtain a free bottle of wine for which we had a voucher. Loch Fyne meals are good, though on this occasion service was very slow. But maybe spending £50 to get a free bottle if wine is not the most economical thing to do.
Lasers coming in at the end of racing off Roses, Catalonia
Catalonia seems a million miles away, and not just because of the cooler weather, which really hasn’t been too bad. It’s getting back into the normal swim and catching up with so many things, such as church finance, post and e-mails. In the midst of it all, I’ve upgraded my computer to Mountain Lion and sorted out a couple of resulting problems: the disappearance of my Notes and the Folders in Mail. Needless to say passwords turned out to be a difficulty, and I ended up redoing them, which is sometimes easier than trying to work out which one they mean. Of course you do eventually run out of passwords.
It’s been a very busy week for Dot on the schools front– even busier than she thought it would be, because she’d forgotten to enter a couple of appointments in her calendar. At around noon yesterday I noticed that my diary said she should be at Hickling at 1pm. At the time she was at Neatishead and about to head for a lunch date with Carrie; so I texted her to check – which didn’t help as she had no signal (of course). Happily though she rang me on the school phone to ask me to phone Carrie to say she’d be late; so I was able to redirect her. Today she is at Tacolneston, another date originally missing from her list.
She’s had a day working on Philosophy with Barbara, and has also been working on her tax data. Meanwhile I’ve been slowly ploughing on with mundane matters, but I have written an article and a poem for my website, and edited the Chronicle material for Mannington Hall. I’ve also bought some presents for Amy and had an eye test, which proved positive: I do have them. I also have slight signs of incipient cataracts, but apparently this is normal at my age, and usually they don’t turn out to be a problem. I’ve also given a fairly large cheque to the Norwich Christian Resource Centre after sponsoring the guy there for a cycle ride and mistyping what I was planning to give him. It seemed the right thing to do.
Third day back from Catalonia and beginning to recover from the journey. Not the bit between Roses and St Pancras – the bit between St Pancras and Norwich. But it could have been worse. When I bought the tube ticket, I was told we had to travel via Holborn because of work on the Circle line. Simple enough, except that everyone else in London seemed to be doing the same thing.
After battling our way through the system we emerged at Liverpool Street to find no trains scheduled for Norwich. On mentioning to one railway guy that we wanted to travel to Norwich, he riposted: “You’ll be lucky.” But he had a twinkle in his eye and directed us to Platform 13, and the train to Southend. Apparently we had to alight at Billericay, catch a coach to Witham and then another train to Norwich. Us and a large number of Norwich City fans. Norwich City had just lost 4-1 to Chelsea.
And that’s roughly what happened, with a half-hour wait at Witham and no buffet on either of the trains. The Norwich train was painfully slow and felt as if it was going to break down any minute. We reached Norwich at about 12.30am. Happily the City fans did not turn nasty and were quite funny, except for their inability to control certain bodily functions. Note to City fans and young men everywhere: this is actually not funny at all. Really. What was funny was that all the railway staff had jackets bearing the words “Customer Services”, which obviously has a completely different meaning for them.
Anyway, back to the holiday, which was exceptionally good. Here is a day-by-day summary:
Friday (September 28): Straightforward journey by train and tube to our hotel, which turned out to be only yards from St Pancras Station. Excellent hotel (London Pullman), friendly staff. Walked to the station for good meal at Carluccio’s, followed by coffee/tea back at the hotel.
Saturday: Started off sunny, but worse and worse the further south we got. Raining at Roses. Early start in London (6am alarm) meant we were very tired towards the end. TGV very impressive up to Valence, then slower, but scenery was beautiful near the coast. In the hotel, which was first class, we had a really nice buffet meal. The quality of this was high all through the week. Half a bottle of wine free each time, and a huge choice of food.
Sunday: Fine, sunny but very windy on boat for our cruise to Cadaques, a stunningly beautiful town beloved of Salvador Dali. The coastline was rocky, and on the way back the rather large boat nosed into a cave for a close look. Act of bravado, or just normal behaviour for a Catalan? I suspect the latter. While in Cadaques we had a wander round the narrow and steep streets and eventually stopped for coffee (and loo) in a seafront cafe. Back in Roses we had lunch at the Balkan Grill (mushroom and garlic tapa with chips) then spent a couple of hours in the Citadel, a huge walled area full of history. All in all we walked about six miles during the day.
The coast path
Monday: Sunny and warm throughout. This was a free day, so we slept in a bit. Left at 11.15 for walk to north end of Roses and along the coast to the next village, a tiny one called Canyelles, where we had lunch in Antonio’s restaurant: grilled prawns and sangria. Delicious. On the way back we stopped at a small beach, where Dot paddled, and we saw huge numbers of Laser dinghies lined up for a big European event. Everywhere in Catalonia quite big fish were visible in the clear water. Back at the hotel we had a dip in the rather cool swimming pool, but it didn’t last long. Went to bed early after a short post-supper walk. Eight miles in all during the day.
Tuesday: Very warm again, and we spent all day in Barcelona – a two-hour coach trip away. After a comfort stop at a motorway service station (today featured the worst loos of the entire holiday) we progressed to the cathedral, which I’m sure would have been much more impressive without its scaffolding. What was visible was certainly up there, if you see what I mean, and even in October the building was surrounded by huge crowds, most of them probably on coach trips like us.A coach tour of Barcelona’s high spots followed, ending at one of the highest, from where we could look over the town and the huge port, featuring two or three massive cruise ships.Most of us were gasping for the loo by now, and again they were very poor (but at least they were there).
Dot and Monica in Barcelona
The coach dropped us at Placa de Catalunya for some free time, and here we met our friend Monica, who took us for a lovely lunch round the corner and off the beaten track. Really nice to see her: she was very welcoming and insisted on paying, which was not the idea at all. Rejoined the bus at 4.30pm for the trip back to Roses, and the guide, who was very nice but spent much of the time warning us about pickpockets, eventually stopped talking.
Wednesday: Again pleasantly warm. We took the optional excursion to Girona on advice from people on the previous trip (relayed through one of our more sociable members), and it was an outstanding trip. Girona is a lovely old town reminding me a little of Chur in Switzerland, but there was a great walk along the walls, which we followed with a coffee stop, where Dot made her first successful attempt at ordering tallat, as recommended by Monica. This is a strong, smallish coffee with a dash of milk, and Dot quickly became addicted. Afterwards we wandered the narrow streets and shopped a bit for gifts. Back in Roses for the afternoon Dot bought a scarf and we had a tapa each of chips and sauce. Catalonian tapas are quite big (one is usually enough), and they are very good at chips. Six miles in all today (3 yesterday), but not enough to offset the large evening meals and very tempting breakfasts.
The bridge at Besalu
Thursday: Sea mist at first, but soon sunny and warm. Left at 9.15 for official excursion to Figueres and the impressive Salvador Dali Foundation. An amazing place, and our appreciation of him as an artist went up several notches. After a crepe we took in his jewellery exhibition as well, then returned to the coach (this was more of a coach holiday than a train one) for a short drive to Besalu, a small town which features a spectacular fortified bridge. Lovely narrow streets again and a brilliant miniatures museum, of which the high point was the micro-miniatures, eg a camel train created in the eye of the needle (quite witty, that one). Afterwards we had time for a stroll and a delicious mango ice cream before returning to the coach.
Friday: Our final free day, so a slightly later start. Rather more cloud as we started our journey by road trail to Joncols. Bit chilly to start with, but it quickly cleared out as we got high up on the cliffs and into the Parc Naturel, which is apparently “sauvage”. For some reason the commentary seemed to assume that “sauvage” is an English word. Spectacular journey on rough roads, ending high up on a cliff with great views (after 100-yard walk). Whole thing was “magical” – Dot Lenton. On the way back by a slightly different route saw Angela and Gordon Reynolds hiking into the interior. Got to know them later in the bar after dinner, and it turns out she is a retired vicar and they live not far from St Luke’s! They passed us again as we sat in a cafe drinking sangria and eating tapas. Before returning to the hotel we watched the Lasers coming in after a day’s racing, and I helped a Swiss guy with his boat trailer. Claim to fame. Seven miles today (3 yesterday).
Saturday: Homeward bound, as our excellent tour manager put it. The entire group was in the coach eight minutes early, but we were like that. Dot and I were frequently last or almost last, but we were never late. After a bit of a wait at Figueres station,we were on board and ready for the off, which was at 10.20, after the Barcelona connection arrived. Various comments gave me the idea for a poem, so it was time well spent. Straightforward journey to Paris, though the buffet inexplicably had no milk. It was raining in Paris, so we got a bit wet transferring to coach and back to rail again. While we were alighting from the coach, someone attempted to steal our tour manager’s bag, but he was spotted and pursued by said TM, who was able to retrieve it. Happily, because it contained all his documents, including our Eurostar tickets. Quite a long time to wait for Eurostar, but we spent it convivially, buying wine with our last euros and chatting to Angela and Gordon. On time at St Pancras, thanks and well-earned tip to TM, and the rest you know.
