Tag Archives: ethel

2 February 2009

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Snow arrived just too late to spoil the big day yesterday, when relatives converged from far (Wolverhampton) and wide (Portsmouth) for Auntie Ethel’s 85th birthday celebrations at her niece Angela’s house in Dereham. David and family were up for the weekend and came too. An awesome buffet defeated everyone, and goodwill was everywhere. Oliver and Amy were on best behaviour, and Oliver spent much of his time looking after Maddie, who must be some relation; let’s think – it’s his father’s mother’s cousin’s son’s daughter. That sounds fairly close. Anyway, she’s two and having fun. Justin and his friend Heidi drove up from Portsmouth (and back), Donna came from Wolverhampton with her friend Andy, and Rosie came from Buck Brigg with her friend Roger. Sadly Peter (Maddie’s grandfather and Ethel’s nephew: are you following this?) is in hospital with pneumonia. I am reading his autobiography and have just reached the bit where he went into hospital with pneumonia and hoped that he would never have to go through that again. Well, it would have been nice.

I have just discovered that you can generate primes by the formula x2 + x + 41, which is neat, and what’s even neater is that I worked out how to include superscript in that by using html. Very satisfying.

Anyway, David and his family arrived on Saturday. We looked after the children while David and Vicky went into the city, and had a generally pleasant day, culminating in a game of bridge, which Dot and I lost conclusively. It was the cards, you know. That and superb play from our opponents.

After the Ethel extravaganza they went straight back to Caddington, because snow had started to fall and it was bitterly cold. They got home safely, but today Oliver’s school was closed, and there was heavy snow over much of the country, especially the London area, which was pretty much crippled. It snowed here too, but nowhere near as much, and tonight it was above freezing and soggy rather than slippy. Nevertheless we felt it prudent not to go the PCC meeting…

On Saturday evening we went to the Eagles for dinner and met Roger’s brother Tim, who works at Hansells and knows Jonathan, who he described as “very good”. He was with Jackie, who was Scottish and knows all the places we do, plus a good many more. So there was plenty to talk about, and we didn’t leave till well after midnight.

Today I wrote an article on the Paston book with the hope that Eco Echo might like it. I also attempted to book Blakeney for our reunion in June, but found that their single rooms were booked up. Will try again tomorrow: Maureen has agreed to accept a double room if necessary. Dot is busy over-preparing her stuff for tomorrow – her big day.

27 January 2009

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This is Dot’s cousin Roger in typically relaxed style, pictured at Jessie’s last week. Another family meal looms on Sunday, when quite a large number of people are due at Angela’s at Dereham to celebrate Ethel’s 85th. This was supposed to be a sort of a secret, but the cat has been let out of the bag by someone who shall remain nameless. As the nameless person’s husband is in hospital with pneumonia again, she can be forgiven. Dot has been at Ethel’s this afternoon, calling in with presents on her way back from Yarmouth, where she has had her first school visit as diocesan school support officer, followed by lunch with her friend Anne. She is keeping pretty busy: a long afternoon yesterday was spent with Barbara preparing for next Tuesday’s head teachers’ conference, including a visit to the venue – St Luke’s Church Centre.

This morning I got over an appallingly shoddy loss at chess last night by going for a walk that turned out to be nearly four miles. It started innocently enough with a call at the sorting office to post a letter for Dot, but then got out of hand. I walked up through the Rosary, down the steps to Cintra Road and down on to Thorpe Rod, left and up the hill again via Stanley Road and Harvey Lane, then through what was Pinebanks and down a footpath back on to Thorpe Road and up to the River Green. I sat on a seat for a while in the sun – the weather was really mild compared to what it has been recently, people were feeding ducks, geese and swans, and it was all pretty idyllic really. I then went really mad and walked up to Whitlingham Lane and over the rail footbridge on to the river path, where I noticed that work on the third Whitlingham Broad was far advanced. All we need now is a bridge over the river from Thorpe to Whitlingham. Someone … Anyone? A couple of pretty ramshackle vessels were moored there, and an old man had got a fire going on the bank. Not sure what for. I returned to the main road and caught a bus back to the station, feeling I had earned my favourite cheese and onion sandwich, which I bought from Budgens.

The rest of the day I’ve spent writing some liturgy for our Tuesday group. Sort of experimental, based on a book we went through for Advent and Epiphany. I had a phone call from Annette last night saying there had been a radio programme about the Paston book, following a page of publicity in the EDP, and as a result we had sold another four of the big hand-made books at over £1000 each. It would have been nice to have had this news the day before, when 15 artists and poets met at Cringleford to discuss the future of the project. The meeting was at poet Adrian Ward’s rather splendid house, and was followed by an InPrint meeting, which didn’t last long after I’d persuaded everyone to admit that they didn’t really want to apply for a grant to do stuff they didn’t really want to do and didn’t have time for. So we shall proceeed with the Paston project, producing more work, hopefully, and maybe running some more workshops. I’m not too bothered about the workshops, but Annette, Caroline and Lisa are keen. Fuller story on InPrint website.

Before the Cringleford meeting, Dot and I went to Martin Laurance’s exhibition at the Grapevine on Unthank Road – a splendid gallery which will be home to a Paston exhibition from March 29. Martin is a superb artist and worked on the Paston project (he used a couple of my poems for collaborative pieces). The private view was pretty full, and Rosemary, the librarian from Archant was there. So were Annette and Caroline, and so were some other Paston people, though I didn’t see them. They had probably already left by the time we got there. Dot and I only had a few minutes there because we’d been to church (I had been preaching on the conversion of St Paul), and Caroline gave me a lift to Cringleford so that Dot could take the car home. Later Dot picked me up and we gavc Lisa and her two children, Dash and Blossom, a lift to their place in Pottergate.

This afternoon Phyllis Seaman from church called unexpectedly with a gift of some windfall cooking apples. I love stewed apples. It’s my one weakness. No, it’s really one of many.

16 January 2008

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Heavy rain on Friday last week didn’t worry us too much, but Howard was the car park attendant. Well, you can’t win them all.

Dot is off for the day on an Exclusions Board, hearing an appeal by the parents of a boy who has been excluded from high school. She spent most of yesterday reading the related papers, which led to the cancellation of our normal Tuesday evening meal – that and the many apologies for absence. In the end we couldn’t reach H, who turned up, and so we did her a baked potato before Dot returned to her study.

Earlier in the day we had lunch at Park Farm before calling in to see A Ethel, who had been rumoured to be very ill. In fact she was in bed but in good spirits and quite lively, except that she couldn’t move. Her leg is very bad – probably fluid on it – and something will need to be done soon. Nevertheless we had a good chat, and left when Rodney and Angela arrived to move some of her furniture – it has to be thinned out on doctor’s orders, so that she can use a walking frame.

Afterwards we went to Waitrose, then I dropped Dot off in the city to get some boots repaired. A wet day in general: happily today is quite bright. I went to see the nurse late in the afternoon. Everything Ok, though my blood pressure is still higher than she would like. I said I didn’t want to take blood pressure tablets unless it was absolutely necessary, as I have an aversion to going on something you can’t come off. She seemed to understand this.

So it was a quiet evening. I finished a mainly graphic novel that I got for Christmas – Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Fascinating stuff, and beautifully drawn.

BTW, I managed to lose another chess game on Monday. Yet again I got a really good position – this time against someone graded higher than me – and made a knight sacrifice which he said afterwards “should have won”. But I followed it up inaccurately, and left my king too exposed. When he just managed to get to the time control, I had to resign.

Nearly as bad as Norwich City, who went out of the FA Cup against a poor division two side (Bury) after scraping a replay at home and having to travel north. Still, Spurs are through, beating Reading 1-0 despite the absence through illness of Berbatov. They are starting to look quite reasonable in defence, but will have to be more than that in the next round at Old Trafford.