Tag Archives: angela

Speculation about past

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,
Julia, Dot and friend in the Higbees' garden.
Julia, Dot and friend in the Higbees’ garden.

Right on schedule, the weather has turned wintry: it is, after all, Bonfire Night tomorrow. Happily the cold conversion was preceded by some unseasonably mild weather, during which Dot and did some tidying up in the garden. But yesterday I ventured into the city with some cheques (accompanied by Dot on a different mission to Dipples and Jarrolds) and a very dark sky presented us with some unpleasantly chilly drizzle.

Ah well: all good things come to an end, they say, and I have also come to the end of my Find-my-Past credits. They warned me their time was running out, so I had a blitz, during which I discovered some stuff about my cousin Brenda, who turned out to be older than I thought, and then a little about my grandmother’s family. I have now decided to abdicate from FMP and stick to Genes Reunited, where I have my Family Tree.

Further speculation about the past occurred last week, when Dot and I went with Judy to a talk at the Quaker Meeting House on fossil evidence for the Flood and a young Earth. It was interesting enough to get Judy and me to a debate two nights later (Friday) at the same place, where the original speaker debated with a vicar who championed Evolution. I had some sympathy with the former speaker, but I don’t think he quite understood that the Bible wasn’t written in English and that references to well known figures could be to legend rather then history. The other guy was more appealing but his dependence on statistics and consensus was not terribly convincing. As always, they didn’t really answer each other’s points.

Why was Dot not present at the debate? She had a ticket to watch Norwich City beat Bolton, about which there was no dispute.

Between these ventures into the past Dot and I had a meal with Angela and Rodney at Prezzo’s, who were understaffed and hard pressed. Still, the meal was nice enough, and it was a pleasant evening, catching up on Auntie Ethel’s latest confusions.

On Sunday, in the absence of Nicholas, en route to Aspen, I led a joint service at the hall. This was because St Luke’s had given the day over to a kind of installation in which people read from the Bible for 24 hours and there was a brazier outside (not sure why). After the service Dot and I went along to hear Judy read from one of Peter’s letters. Our service had 14 Augustinians joined by ten from St Luke’s, and Howard speaking on All Souls, All Saints and Hallowe’en, and suggesting we should pay more attention to All Saints Day.

In the afternoon Dot and I visited Jessie after calling in at a gloomy cemetery to drop off flowers – almost literally, as there was not much space for parking and we were late for Mason Villa. Roger was also with Jessie, and I talked to him quite a bit about his recent America trip and about the flow and power of showers. Nice afternoon. Sad news from Phil about Sam and Lucy, who is still very unwell. Phil and Joy have just spent two weeks with them.

Fine tuning and football

Uncategorized, , , , ,
Dot at the Bella Vista, Cromer
Dot at the Bella Vista, Cromer

Norwich City eventually lost 7-0, but we don’t need to dwell on that. After all, Manchester City put five past a Champions League team a few days later.  Just hope we do a bit better against West Ham on Saturday – Dot and I have tickets.

The weather has been a bit mixed, and we’ve reached that stage in the autumn when the ground never seems to get dry. The last two days have been wet and lethargic, but today looks brighter. I hope to go and see Geoff this afternoon, but at the moment I’m waiting for the piano tuner and his football commentary. Dot is on her way to a school at Bradwell after Mary next door came round for a few signatures. She is applying for a new job. Ex-head teachers rank way above ex-journalists and poets on the respectability scale.

Rather disappointingly, I failed to register in the winners’ list at the Seagull poetry competition, but Rob Knee was joint first (and had another commended). He and Penny were at the NRO yesterday for a talk by Anthony Smith on how Fastolf got on in 1450 (I paraphrase).  A dense but interesting 50 minutes, especially after they got the microphone working. I wrote a piece for my website based on it.

Penny’s mother has just died, and I was able to commiserate. This meant, however, that I missed chatting with Judy, who was also there.

Because of the damp weather I drove to the NRO, thus failing at the second fence in my bid to walk to all of the talks. The tanka book is now finished, and I have only to establish some sort of meaningful dialogue with the publisher. However, Joy is in a bad state again. We need to get it published for her.

Still in the middle of “discussions” with UEA over the PHS intern who claims to have done over 80 hours’ work but has produced very little. Mistakes on all sides, I think. He should have been much more closely monitored.

Dropped in at the Forum on Monday to look at a display of Holocaust poetry that featured a translation by Kristine – oddly, from English into German. Adjacent to the small exhibition was a circular table, around which a number of earnest middle-aged academic-looking people were holding a discussion group. Each had a pot of tea. I wrote a poem about it called The Holocaust Discussion Group.

In the evening we had a meal at Prezzo with Angela and Rodney, followed by coffee at home. The meal was courtesy of Auntie Ethel, whose house is now cleared out and all-but forgotten. She herself seems physically well and enjoying the home.

I have now booked the hotel for Florida and the seating for all the flights. But I haven’t managed to persuade Coventry City Council to tell me how much they’re paying towards Andrew’s accommodation. It will be nice when that’s sorted.

On Tuesday we had nine for our regular Group, and we celebrated November 5th with sparklers in the garden afterwards. The piano tuner seems to be getting on well.

21 February 2009

Uncategorized, , , ,

This is Wolferton station in West Norfolk, which until the late 1960s was the Queen’s private railway station when she was at Sandringham. It was closed in 1969 and is now a private residence. We visited Wolferton during our trip to West Norfolk last week. It was the first time I’d been there: I hadn’t realised how out on a limb it was. While we drove round it started snowing and didn’t stop for about six hours. You can see the first flakes in the photograph.

It’s warmed up quite a bit since then. It’s also been pretty damp and this week there have been some very dull days when the whole sky seems full of water, just hanging there. Today is much nicer: a blue sky. Dot is at Hempnall for a meeting with members of the P4C group which usually meets at Ipswich. They are putting a book together to introduce a particular strand of P4C to England. It takes the “philosophy” aspect a bit more literally than Dot’s project does, but it has the same basis.

Yesterday Dot was not feeling at all well, but she made a miraculous recovery toward the end of the day after taking an hour’s rest on the bed. Her cousin Angela and husband Rodney came for a meal in the evening, and we had a really good time chewing over family matters and other things. Earlier in the day I had a PSA blood test to be sent to my consultant in preparation for a visit next month to see if my treatment was totally successful. I am optimistic. After a short period feeling a bit under the weather about a week ago I now feel pretty good. I went with my nephew Joe to the Cathedral library in the afternoon to hear a talk on Julian of Norwich which was very well attended and quietly interesting. The speaker was Father Gregory from the Order of St Julian in America.

Earlier in the week I visited the second artist I’m collaborating with for the Norwich 20 Group exhibition. She is Ruthli Losh-Atkinson, and she lives at Eaton. Her current work is centred on a trip she took to the Arctic, and her pictures are abstract meditations on the tundra, which I suspect may be a bit of a challenge to write poems about. But I have a few ideas. Later I managed to win a chess game against an 84-year-old. Quite a nice finish.

I have visited both artists again since then: Sandra because she wanted to photograph the painting I have, and Ruthli because I forgot to give her a copy of my poetry book. I also called in at the Grapevine to take a second look at Martin Laurance’s exhibition and was sorely tempted to buy a picture, but restrained myself because I don’t have any spare cash at the moment.

On Wednesday evening Dot noticed while clearing the garden up that the kitchen drain was overflowing in quite a serious way. I called our insurers, and a very pleasant guy came the following morning to fix it. He also took a look at a mark on the kitchen ceiling which was spotted during our Tuesday Group meeting, but reassured us that it was probably a one-off overflow from the bath through the plug system. He was less reassuring about the firm that is fixing our cooker and suggested we check to make sure the costs weren’t too high. Ho hum. While talking to the drains guy we discovered that drain-cleaning products are generally useless, and a kettle of boiling water is the best bet to keep drains free. He also suggested running the dishwasher and washing machine through empty and at a high temperature twice every four or five months to clean the pipes. Not very eco-friendly at first glance, but probably worth it in the long run.

Later that day, while Dot opened her business bank account with Barbara, I went to Paston for a session on iMovie, which was fun because quite few of the Paston poets and artists were there, including Rupert, but probably didn’t increase my knowledge of iMovie very much. Afterwards I drove down to the cliffs again, past the deserted holiday camp.