Tag Archives: chronicle

Blood pressure rising

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New bike successfully purchased – officially for Oliver's birthday tomorrow, but he seems to have got wind of it...
New bike successfully purchased – officially for Oliver’s birthday tomorrow, but he seems to have got wind of it…

Another long gap, which might seem to reflect how busy I am or, possibly, how little is happening in my life. Reader, it is the former.

Dot returned safely from a successful philosophy session in Middlesbrough, and is now in Hethersett, sorting and packing on her aunt’s behalf with Angela, because the bungalow has to be vacated very soon. She will probably be there all day, as she was last Wednesday. It’s amazing how long it takes to empty a house, even a small one.

Over the past week I have successfully navigated a DCC meeting; transporting Phil and Joy to the doctor’s; an uplifting visit to the dentist (no pain, nothing wrong); and (yesterday) a meeting at the Norfolk Record Office about the Paston exhibition, which starts next month. The latter was followed swiftly by a gathering of  Chronicle at our house, accompanied by a lunch lovingly prepared by Dot. We made plans for the CD, for a performance at the NRO and Cromer, and for more writing, with Oxnead as a focus.

In the evening I played what will probably be my last chess game for some time, losing to Martin Woolnough in the club knockout tournament, which I have got knocked out of on an annual basis for many years. Not a bad game, but for some reason a bit of a relief. Don’t know why, because I love the game, and I have friends at the club.

I have been feeling a bit down for the last few days – at times extremely down, which is unusual for me. It followed a visit to the bank (Santander) by Dot and myself to try to sort out our accounts following the bank’s decision to reorganise their system. I got so angry by all the complications, tie-ins, requirements and so on that I left without doing anything and told the guy what he was saying was rubbish and very annoying. He didn’t seem to agree.

I think I got depressed because this came on top of a number of other things that I haven’t been able to sort out – seats for the flights to Florida and Andrew’s money being prominent among them. I can actually feel my blood pressure rising.

The car’s air-conditioning is another thing. I took it in for diagnosis on Thursday, and the mechanic, who was very helpful and taught me a lot about air-conditioning by actual demonstration, decided that it needed a new compressor and some replacement seals. These are on order, which means the air-conditioning will have cost me over £1000 by the time it’s done, and there’s not even a guarantee that it will work properly when it’s finished. Meanwhile, Dot’s car is making alarming noises.

On the bright side, we had a very pleasant evening on Thursday with the Eagles and Bob and Felix from next door (Mary was meant to come, but she was ill). And on Saturday the Higbees came round for a lovely lunch, which stretched into late afternoon. It’s nice to have friends.

The weather is looking extremely autumnal, with plenty of rain today. The gorillas have gone, but not before I completed the trail on Saturday morning, the last one being hidden in the Roman Catholic Cathedral. This narrowly failed to win the prize for hardest to find, however. That was in Jarrolds’ basement.

End of a Scottish era: the cottage is sold

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The wee house at Ballater: our home from home for more than 20 years

End of an era. The wee house at Ballater has been sold – back to the council from whom it was originally bought. One can only hope they now do something constructive with the whole site. Today we received a parcel from Ella with a memento: a small column with a Farquharson crest on it. It will be really strange being somewhere else in Ballater. It’s like losing a home: we had become so familiar with it.

Meanwhile, Dot was sitting in the garden during a momentary burst of sunshine and slight heat yesterday  when a Wildlife vehicle backed into our wall. No damage this time, but it heightens our suspicions that the fallen section mentioned earlier was indeed provoked by a collision. Maybe the cutting back of the hedge makes it easier for the rear of vehicles to reach the wall. Unexpected consequence. No word from NWT yet.

It seems a long time ago now, but David and the children left last Thursday after a really nice few days, and our ex-best man Fred arrived around 7pm the same day, staying the night so that we could all go the CNS Old Boys’ event at Dragon Hall the next morning. The latter was sunny but still pretty chilly, but it all went well. Dot immediately met someone she knew: Mary Thrower, who plays clarinet in the same orchestra as her. She is the wife of former classmate Neville, who I never knew all that well.

Adrian O’dell, the organiser of all this reunion stuff, gave us a tour of the Hall that was surprisingly informative, and we then had a talk from Peter Bussey on the Large Hadron Collider, where he has worked. He did well with a difficult subject, but it left our brains a little fuzzy. Then on to Yellows for a meal that was described later as “not quite Premier League”. But the company was good. As well as Fred, we spoke to (the Rev) Graham Drake, and others including Barnard, Chadwick and Cowell from the L stream.

We spent the rest of the day recovering from the food (amount rather than quality), but on Saturday we were out again – first at Winterton, looking unsuccessfully for an earring that Dot had lost earlier in the week, and later at the Kibbles’, where the conversation is even more filling than the food. The next two or three days were spent catching up with things that had been set aside while the grandchildren were here and exciting things were happening: I caught up with some Chronicle stuff and sent a potential blog to B J Epstein at the UEA. I was quite pleased with it, but I haven’t heard back.

Yesterday I struggled to get out of Norwich for a Chronicle meeting at Kay’s. Big hold-ups on the inner ring road and on the Aylsham road; so I diverted on to the Reepham Road and approached Wood Dalling from behind, as it were. Happily I was able to find Kay’s rather remote cottage without much trouble. We spent much of the meeting discussing the potential recording of a CD, and we did trial recordings of small sections that worked well in the end, after David (Kay’s husband) struggled to make the machine work properly. And he’s an expert. Why is sound technology so difficult?

We also talked about out plans for the year and allocated a few tasks. I am producing a script for Dragon Hall and printing some letters for reading at Paston Church at the open day in a couple of weeks’ time. We also fixed a date for rehearsal, which is good.

Now I am about to have my hair cut by Linda, then my shoulder massaged by Sharon. One of my better days.

In search of the Iceni

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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.

Eye test proves positive

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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.

The wilds of Wood Dalling

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Sky at Paston last week

Feeling the usual trepidation before setting off on a holiday abroad. Not sure why, because in this case everything is organised for us. All we have to do is get to St Pancras about 7am tomorrow. But of course there’s concern that we pack the right things (the Spanish weather seems to be taking a sudden turn for the cooler), don’t forget anything crucial, and find the hotel in London. An added complication today is that our hairdresser is coming at 11am: this wasn’t in the original plan, but she couldn’t come earlier in the week, because she’d been in hospital and couldn’t drive.

It’s certainly been cooler here this week. On Monday I met an old friend, Sue Moore, at the Forum and we had tea and a snack in the Glass House for a pleasant couple of hours, catching up on holidays, illnesses, and so on. As you do. On Tuesday we had a reduced Tuesday Group with several absences, and on Wednesday I drove out to the wilds of Wood Dalling, one of the biggest parishes in Norfolk with 14, 16 or 22 miles of roads, depending on who is boasting.

So plenty of scope for error, but eventually I found Katy’s Cottage, which is poet Kay Riggs’ house. Rob and Caroline were equally successful, and so we were able to have a Chronicle meeting at which we slimmed down our Hungate piece for use at Mannington Hall. Kay’s husband David then showed us his recording studio, small but impressive, in case we decide to record the performance for possible sale at Paston events. I also toyed with the idea of recording Far Cry, but I fear he may be expecting a more professional performance than I can deliver.

Rob said he had received a letter from Jo, resigning as a Paston trustee on health grounds, which is a bit of a blow as she takes on a huge amount of work, especially to do with the re-enacting and the possible use of the village hall. My initial reaction was that we need two new trustees just to cover what she does, but I spoke to Lucy last night, and she said that before Jo joined she used to to much of it on her own. However, we were a bit dubious about continuing with the village hall project.

This was at a meeting of the Norwich Record Society at County Hall, where they launched a volume of edited letters by Sir Robert Paston. Interesting introduction to it by a professor (not the author), painting a quite detailed picture of the penultimate Paston. Jo and John were also there.

Dot’s cousin Roger also called round on Wednesday evening. Dot has had a busy week, much of it in front of her computer sorting out her autumn programme and supplying information for a book, and now of course, as we’re going away for a week, she has to clean the house. I’m not sure why.

Crabbing, climbing and table tennis

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Amy with crabbing net

And so we emerge from a hectic week…into another one. Dot is already out visiting schools, and I have a visit to the dentist tomorrow and to the doctor on Thursday. The latter doesn’t sound much, but it looms pretty large. There is a root canal involved.

I was in the sunny city, paying in church money, on Wednesday, when Dot called me to say Oliver and Amy wanted to come to us a day early. Naturally, a plan was quickly devised, and with Dot busy finishing a PIB (pre-inspection briefing), I set off to meet David halfway just outside Newmarket near Snailwell – a spot identified on Google maps. All went well, except that halfway there the warm and sunny day evaporated into heavy rain, and I realised I hadn’t brought my anorak or taken my guitar out of the boot. No worries, however: the rain turned back into sun before we met, and there was plenty of room for the children’s luggage.

We had a great three days with the children, despite a bad weather forecast. On the Thursday we went to Sheringham, where it was mild enough to have a picnic on the beach after Oliver and I had climbed Beeston Bump (calling in at Fred’s caravan on the way and finding Liz in situ) and Dot and Amy had done some shopping. We also did a little crabbing, and after I retired defeated, the children “teamed up” with another family, who had bait. As a result, Oliver netted one.

Oliver at the summit of Beeston Bump

We then drove (as a result of a miscalculated and rash promise made earlier) to Winterton, in time to have a quick game of hide-and-seek in the dunes before the rain started, and a few drops quickly turned into a downpour. We repaired to the cafe for refreshment and then rushed wetly to the car. We had taken Dot’s car for a service earlier in the day, but it was now too late (and too wet) to fetch it; so I left it till the next morning. The next morning was also very wet, as was the whole day, and we spent most of it in the house or garage, where Oliver showed an amazing aptitude for table tennis. As he’s very competitive, this wasn’t enough for him: he wanted to win every game too. Meanwhile Amy made a den under the table and did some cooking indoors. We finished the day off with a 6pm meal at Prezzo’s: the children are a real joy to take out – or actually do anything with.

David arrived at lunchtime on Saturday, after being held up because the police had shut the southern bypass after a fatal accident. We had roast beef for lunch, and Oliver did his best to beat Daddy at table tennis when Daddy wasn’t tackling my computer. I popped up to St Peter Hungate at 3.30pm to check that the afternoon session with the visiting viols was going OK. I spoke to Lucy and Jo, both of whom seemed very ill, but didn’t hear the viols, who were taking a break. I went back at 5pm for the rehearsal with Rob, Caroline and Kay, and it went well, so I returned home to say goodbye again, picking up the poetry books I’d forgotten at the same time.

I also went and picked up a music stand from the church hall, at the same time replacing a notice which had either blown off or been ripped off, or both (the wind had been very strong the day before). The evening performance –  Heroine of Hungate – took place as David and the children were driving back to Caddington and Dot was cleaning up the house: it did go well, but the audience was very small – only a dozen, including relatives and friends. Hilary came, as did Catherine Mapes. I blame the poor publicity because the viols messed us about (no, we don’t want to perform; yes, we do; no, we can’t do it in the evening….)

Felt totally shattered yesterday morning, but had to leave at 9.30 for the Archdeacon’s Visitation at St Luke’s and a combined service and bring-and-share lunch. Worship music went well, and Dot and I were able to sing three of my songs for the Communion service. The archdeacon, the Ven Jan McFarlane, did a brilliant sermon about writing people off by labelling them: it sounds fairly ordinary, but she did it exceptionally well and brought in all kinds of other stuff.

In the evening our family’s hobnobbing with the senior echelons of the Church of England continued when Dot went to the commissioning service for the new director of Norwich Youth for Christ and met the Bishop, with whom she’s pretty chummy. She pleaded with him not to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and it would indeed be a big loss for Norwich, though probably brilliant for the country at large. I have a great admiration for him (as you probably noticed). She really enjoyed the service, at St Andrew’s Eaton, which I had given a miss in the hope of getting some rest – almost certainly a bad choice. I make a lot of them.