Yes, it’s Tuesday again, and a small pause for breath. Have just had another go at booking airline seats for our Florida holiday – this time a bit more successfully, having obtained our British Airways booking number (strangely omitted from our original documentation). I have also been promised a refund from the agents for seat booking which didn’t happen.
This followed an all-action weekend, beginning on Friday with a day of interviewing UEA students for an internship at the Paston Heritage Society. This was made a little more tiring by having to fetch Lucy from Paston and return her there, and by the chosen candidate being constantly unobtainable by phone afterwards. When I did eventually contact her (by e-mail), she had just accepted a full-time job, so withdrew from the internship. We now have our second favourite, an earnest young lad who seems nevertheless to be extremely competent and has a car!
In the evening Dot and I went to the Norwich Christian Resource Centre to hear a talk by Allison Barnett, of Jews for Jesus, who rather unexpectedly turned out to be a brilliant speaker, deserving of a much bigger audience.
The next morning we met Heather Savigny and Simon for breakfast – something I would consider for only a selected few people – at Grounds coffee bar on Guildhall Hill. Had a teacake and as always some great conversation. They are scheduled to move to Bournemouth next month, but have already found an Indian restaurant there. We have been promised an invitation.
Later in the day was the long advertised event of autumn: Donna’s marriage to Andy at Oaklands Hotel. Many West Midlands accents in evidence, but also most of the surviving Beales family, with the exception of Rosemary. David, Oliver and Amy came up from Caddington, and we found ourselves sitting at the same table as Richard, Maddy and Darcy – lovely girls. Great opportunity to chat with Richard, the next generation coming to the fore. Justin took the official photos, and Heidi sat next to David. Angela was a witness. Vicki and Graham were also there, as was Rodney’s son Chris and his wife Sarah. Great food and drink from Oaklands: we used a taxi both ways. Oliver gained an admirer – four-year-old Darcy, who followed him everywhere. I think he quite liked it.
No rest on Sunday, when we were off to London by 10am for the second major event of the weekend: a day with the Coomes, followed by a Leonard Cohen concert at O2. This was all paid for by our ever-generous hosts, including the taxi back from O2 to Leyton, a not inconsiderable sum to which we contributed a small amount behind David’s back. Cohen was as ever brilliant. Here is his set list:
Dance me to the end of love; The Future; Like a bird on the wire; Got a little secret; Everybody knows; Who by fire; Where is my gypsy wife tonight?; The darkness; Amen; Come healing; Lover, lover, lover. After the interval Tower of song; Suzanne; Chelsea Hotel#2; The Partisan; In my secret life; Alexandra leaving (sung by Sharon Robinson); I’m your man; 1000 kisses deep (read as poem); Hallelujah; Take this waltz; then as encores (!) So long Marianne; Going home; First we take Manhattan; Famous blue raincoat; If it be your will (sung by the Webb Sisters); and one verse of Closing Time.
It got better and better, and the O2 was a good venue, though the loos are laughably inadequate: there was a huge queue for the men’s toilet(!). Some peculiar people in the audience: one middle-aged man in a hoodie kept going out for a pint of beer; presumably he thought he was at a cricket match. Another couple brought a baby, but it didn’t last long. Probably preferred Iron Maiden.
Next day we were about to leave the flat much later than expected (Audrey’s partner, Bent, rang to say she was too unwell to be visited) when David arrived home, also not feeling well – he had fallen in the bathroom the previous morning and damaged his ribs. We were on our way out, so continued, assuming (rightly, I think) he would want to be left alone.
On our way home we were fortunate to avoid a major hold-up on the A11 Elveden stretch when a car transporter slipped into a ditch and the road was eventually closed. We had been held up by a broken-down car short of Elveden, then stopped for lunch at the farm restaurant. When we emerged there was a huge delay at the lights, and we just managed to squeeze out after ten minutes or so. I suspect the lorry had gone into the ditch trying to get round the car. There ought to be some kind of penalty for causing such major hold-ups (unless it’s me, of course).
The major event of the previous week was my lunch with Joy McCall and a prospective publisher of a book of Norfolk-linked tanka. We met at the Rushcutters and eventually I had adequate fish and chips to match Joy’s fish pie. The publisher (of a smallish outfit called the Mousehold Press) was Adrian Bell, who turned out to be a chess player. The idea, it transpired from Joy, was for Adrian to publish at her expense a number of our tanka strings with photographs of Norfolk to which they were linked. I am supposed to get a running order together and send it to Adrian, which I need to do quickly. Together with a number of other things.
That was on Wednesday. On Thursday I made my second attempt of the week to visit Geoff in hospital (on Tuesday he was somewhere else getting his toes looked at). This time I coincided with Nicholas in the car park, but we were told Sophie had taken Geoff out in his wheelchair. Nicholas knew where they were likely to be, but they weren’t there, and after he left I spent some time scouring the area, in vain. Still, the stroll through the cemetery was quite enjoyable.
Meanwhile, I’m getting tantalisingly close to finishing Amy’s story. This week?
