Less rain nowadays, but the past couple of days have featured a chilly wind from the north, which is not what you want at Great Yarmouth. I found myself there yesterday after late arrangements saw me dropping off the new PHS magazine at Rob’s and chatting with Penny; having tea and a roll with Jessie; giving Jessie a list to the hairdresser’s; visiting Sainsbury’s and the cemetery; picking up Jessie from the hairdresser’s; and driving to Yarmouth and dropping off Dot at the school she was visiting.
While she was visiting I went for a chilly stroll on North Denes, called in briefly at Caister Castle before calculating that I didn’t really have time to go in, and then returned to the North Denes before picking Dot up at a pre-arranged spot at 3pm. (Yarmouth has very limited pick-up parking.)
The previous day we were on the coast again – this time at Lowestoft, for the poetry cafe at the Seagull theatre. I read a bit from Isaiah 6, which as far as I’m concerned is a poem, then two poems – Send Someone Else and Not Syria. Dot and I also did a couple of songs – Here I am and The Sands of Luskentyre. Dot discovered that taking one of her air travel pills before performing removed the tension, and she was much more relaxed, and very good. Nice evening.
Earlier in the day we were torn between a talk at the Julian Centre and a tour of the Bishop’s Garden, but because the service ran late, we did neither. Carrie announced that our new interim vicar had been named –the Rev Sarah Quantrill, from Oulton Broad. Her CV etc sounded ideal; so I’m very hopeful. Happily LD’s attempt to start a discussion were thwarted, and a later convoluted e-mail from DH was widely ignored. General feeling among the congregation was very good.
Anne Travis died on Sunday morning at 4am – just reaching her 97th birthday. She had been in hospital for a few days, and her heart was failing. I had been in touch with her daughter Chris, who is lovely person, and on Saturday afternoon she asked both of us to pray with Anne over the phone, using What’s App on speaker. Apparently this works really well in hospitals. Anne had not been responding and her eyes were closed, but the nurses said she could hear what was going on; so it was quite a privilege.
We always got on really well with Anne, who was a former theatre sister and very welcoming, usually with a joke and a story about her son Andy, who had been a choirboy in the old church.
On Saturday – just after the prayers with Anne – we went to Liz Cannon’s house on Colney Lane for her presentation about Palestine, which was very interesting, though we knew most of it. Met her sisters and cousin who, apart from her husband David and Elvira and Eleanor from church, were the only ones there. Very pleasant couple of hours.
After several attempts Naomi came round for a meal on Thursday evening. She asked me to pick her up because she was feeling a bit vague – a result of her drugs – so I put the time back because I didn’t want to be driving through the city at 6pm. All worked well, though, and we had a good meal and chat. She bought excellent chocolates.