A last-minute offer of a ticket to Norwich City’s match against Millwall meant I was at Carrow Road last Saturday to witness one of the best matches I’ve seen. Norwich were 1-0 down at half time, but playing quite well, and it was no surprise when they went level just after the interval with a really good goal by Pukki. It was even less of a surprise when Pukki missed a penalty shortly afterwards, but then Leitner scored a great long-range goal to put us 2-1 up.
We then turned off and lost two goals very quickly, which meant we were 3-2 down approaching full-time. At this point I’m delighted to say several people went home, but not us – which meant we saw City equalise through Rhodes in the 90th minute and then score the winner through Pukki in the 95th. Interesting player, Pukki. He seems to score from the most unlikely situations. We were quite excited.
Afterwards we walked up to Hungate for the Vanishing Points exhibition, which comprised photographs by Nick Stone with a first world war battlegrounds theme, and information about local people who had died – particularly those from Paston School. Very effective: Rob and Penny were there, but Karen is in hospital again after her insulin pump failed.
Sunday was Remembrance Day (the big one – 100 years) and following the service at church we had a talking circle which I think was supposed to be about church services but never really got that far. However, Sarah said she had felt very welcomed and had a sense of belonging – which was not what she had been led to expect. And our two newest members – Marjorie, who is in a wheelchair and nearly 100, and her daughter-in-law Sharon spoke about about how much they enjoyed being there, which was very moving and worth all the rest put together.
Dot had various appointments in the city on Monday morning (she had a brief coffee with Maryta in Jarrolds), but afterwards we went to see Jessie. Before that I had had a call from Jude Sayer to say that she had been one of the two women stabbed in an incident that made the papers last week. We told Jessie, who was quite upset and gave us money to buy flowers. Both of us felt Jessie seemed weak.
So did we after the PCC meeting at St Luke’s, which ended at about 10pm.
On Tuesday we had our hair cut in the morning, and in the evening we gave Judy a lift to the Archers’ for cake and compline, which was nice as always. Vicky was there, but not Claire, and Eleanor was on duty.
Dot was out till about 1.30pm on Wednesday. I did quite a bit of work, but spent 90 minutes with Jude in the morning, taking her flowers round from Jessie – and a card from all of us. Jude was a bit shaky but looked Ok apart from her arm, which was in a sort of crafted basketwork cradle. Her fingers are Ok, but the thumb is numb, and there are worries about the nerves in her arm. I opened some mandarins and a packet of soup for her before I left.
It turns out she was injured while defending a friend of hers from the friend’s husband, who had been abusing her mentally for a long time but hadn’t been violent before. A neighbour intervened and took the man’s knife, but he did quite a bit of damage. He later tried to commit suicide but the police got him to hospital in time. One is tempted to add “unfortunately”, because it means he is still a threat in his wife’s eyes, but of course wishing someone dead is not good.
Today Dot has been walking and I’ve been compiling the next edition of the Paston magazine, which is going quite well, though I had the usual problem with page numbers. When Dot gets back we are going over to Jessie’s again.