While investigating my family history material following the workshop last week, I found a notebook of my mother’s, in which she describes, day by day, visits to Harlech and Tintagel in 1936 and 1934 respectively. As they got married in 1937, these were obviously pre-wedding trips, which for some reason I found surprising. They drove to Wales, but travelled by train to Cornwall: must have been quite an expedition. There is a list of the stations they passed through.
No pandemic problems for them, though, unlike today. Everything is now quite calm in Norfolk, but in the north they are having to deal with further quite drastic restrictions on movement and behaviour. There is now a three-tier system: we are Medium, which for some reason is the lowest. Why no Low? Perhaps they prefer us to live in a state of trepidation.
It has turned rather chilly, though the temperature shows about 12-14 Celsius. We have had a great deal of rain, but today it has stopped, at least for a while. We have Barry Maskell, the singing decorator, in to do some touching up and to paint the shower room (the flooring has still not arrived). But today his wife is at the hospital having various non-Covid tests, and he will eventually have to leave and go to fetch her. Yesterday he repainted the porches, but there is some rotten wood in the front porch which he is still dealing with.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday Dot and I took part in a Zoom retreat with the memorably-named Mirabai Starr, who hails from Taos, New Mexico. It was 9am for her and 4pm for us – three hours each day. She focused on Julian of Norwich, Teresa di Avila and Hildegard von Bingen, three women mystics from the 12th, 14th and 16th century respectively. We weren’t sure it was going to be our cup of tea, but it was really good – organised mainly by the Julian Centre, featuring Howard Green in charge of Q&A. Mirabai is Jewish but has been influenced by many different traditions.
During the retreat I wrote three poems – Julian and Einstein, Dancing with Teresa di Avila and Prompt – which I sent to Howard, who unexpectedly said he would forward them to the people on the retreat, who I think number more than 100.
Earlier in the day on Friday Dot had gone with Anna to see Sylvia Ford – David’s old head teacher at Alpington Primary and niece of Phyllis Seaman at church – about Phyllis’s money. They had a full lunch, and afterwards Dot drove past our old house in Yelverton so that Anna could see it.
Earlier on the Saturday we walked up to Jarrold’s and had tea and scones in the coffee bar in the basement with Caren and Phil Gazley. Afterwards we bought me a new belt and then went into Ryman’s and bought the last printer in stock with the new ink-bottle filling system. We set it up and it is now working very well. It is Dot’s printer (in her study), but of course I can use it remotely, though I have my own.
We had a long chat with Amy on FaceTime, and in the evening watched The Searchers, a western film that I liked a lot, though it was a little uneven. It covered a lot of ground in both space and time. I think it was one of John Wayne’s first. We are in contact with Vicky about visiting Amy somewhere around her birthday, and looking for dates – assuming Amy is not in quarantine, as one of her year group has tested positive and quite a lot of classmates are off school as a result.
On Sunday we went to church, which was “packed” with 18 people (I doubt that we could take more than 20 with the restrictions currently in place). I preached about rejoicing, and Dot played violin, though not simultaneously. Martin Wyatt organised the music; so of course it was fairly upmarket. A number of us are taking it in turns to sort the music out each week. Kim Bywater from Carrie’s former book group came, as did Vicky. After the retreat we watched the grand prix and some football.
Barry made his first appearance at 8.30 on Monday, and Dot and I had to leave him to it quite soon afterwards, because we had an appointment to meet Liz Day at the Refectory for a chat. Turned out the Refectory was closed (it didn’t open till 11), and so we ended up at the Maids Head, which was excellent. Had quite a long chat with Liz about various matters – she is a Covid sceptic (in certain respects) but also is looking round for the right path for her to take church-wise. I always rather dread getting in conversation with her, because she’s so hard to pin down, but on this occasion (as on many others) we actually had a good time and a very interesting conversation. I advised her to set up a Pop-Up Wisdom website. Oh yes I did.
Later on we had a long FaceTime chat with David, who has a dodgy back and doesn’t seem too happy at the moment about Covid life and waiting for something to happen business-wise and with his residency arrangements. Dot also has pain – in her case in her knee. She rang up Verena on Tuesday and was advised to rest it. Today it is markedly better, but not perfect.
Also yesterday we started on Season Two of Veronica Mary Rolf’s podcasts, now looking at mystics in the Bible. The first one was Abram. We both dozed off momentarily in the middle. Later we had a Zoom Compline with our group (except Claire, who was at work). Had a bit of trouble setting it up, because we used Dot’s computer and I was hosting it, but I got it to work eventually.