Still a lot of rain about, considering it’s the middle of summer. Not all that warm, either. Rain featured quite strongly in Amy’s school speech day, to which we were invited together with the other grandparents, plus David and Vicky of course. To get there fairly early in the morning we had to stay overnight, so travelled down on Friday and bought some fish and chips for supper.

This would be our last visit to Beechwood Park, and it was memorable. The speech day in a massive tent included an excellent address from the headmaster and a good motivational speech from Paul Gustard, the defence coach of the England rugby team and formerly of Saracens, where he brought a couple of wolves and a snake to training. Happily he only brought mirrors to Beechwood. (“The person in the glass is the one you have to look in the eye.”)

Afterwards we had a picnic on the playing fields – a magnificent spread prepared by Vicky and interrupted only slightly by a couple of heavy downpours. Fortunately we had umbrellas, which enabled us to deflect the water on to our neighbours. Oliver also came to this, but he departed to a party before we went on a tour of the classrooms, led by Amy, during which I was able to tell her English teacher how good I thought she was at writing. Happily, her teacher concurred. The tour ended with cake and tea back in the tent. Dot and I returned to Caddington with David, and left soon for a quick journey home (Dot driving). Amy and the Evetts went with Vicky to Aylesbury.

Yesterday was Eleanor’s birthday celebration at church. Before that I preached and was just about able to cope with interruptions from an old guy who has started coming occasionally. He sees himself as central to everything that happens, which is a bit sad and annoying at the same time. I talked about the liturgy, and why it was as it is. Got a lot of positive feedback, some of which may have been a sympathy vote.

After the lunch (provided by Eleanor) Dot and I went to the cemetery at North Walsham and from there to Jessie’s – briefly, as she was being visited by Roger and Debbie, who were staying for an evening meal. Later Iceland were 4-0 down at half time to France and eventually lost 5-2. This is the same Iceland who beat England 2-1. Meanwhile, some time last week, Wales beat Belgium in a brilliant match to get through to the semi-finals. Other sporting events: Djokovic was knocked out of Wimbledon, Hamilton won the Austrian grand prix, despite an attempt by Rosberg to push him off the track; and Cavendish won the first stage of the Tour de France, which gave him the yellow jersey (apparently the only jersey he was lacking). Oh, and England did quite well at cricket against Sri Lanka.

Earlier in the week we had cake and compline at our house (Tuesday) and I drove Dot to an orchestra party at Stoke Holy Cross to celebrate their concert (Wednesday). On Thursday I had another visit from Lily and Linda, and we walked up the Rosary, where I showed them lots of graves of people they knew, and they told me about various Surrey “scandals” that I knew nothing about. Afterwards we had tea back at the house. In the evening we had drinks and nibbles at the Hendersons, again to celebrate the concert; this turned out to be a little uncomfortable. We shouldn’t have mentioned the war.

This morning Dot had her “diabetes” eye test at the doctor’s. I drove her because of a risk of blurred vision. I shall be driving her to a school visit at Cringleford this afternoon for the same reason.