Slipped into September almost without noticing, as usual. Dot is far from me, having journeyed up to Middlesbrough with Barbara yesterday, where she stayed the night before delivering some Philosophy4Children at a nearby school. She is doing this as I write. They will then drive back, arriving early to mid evening. This means I shall have to attend a PCC meeting without her invaluable support, but I expect I’ll manage 🙂
As usual I have wasted much time, and now have to work hard to catch up. Today is Joy’s birthday. I took her presents round yesterday: they included some old Amy Carmichael books that I unearthed, one containing a letter from the Dohnavur Fellowship to my aunt Mary, thanking her for looking after one of their lads. Joy is into AC at the moment, so hopefully she will find that interesting.
Also yesterday I was sole musician at church until Carrie took over the first hymn (at my invitation). We tried to do the second one together, but it didn’t work too well because of the tricky timing. I easily get lured off track by people singing slightly differently… Still, nice service altogether. I forgot to take the collection home and had to go back for it.
It’s been another busy week. When isn’t it? Back on Monday, a week ago, we had lunch at Lucy’s with Simeon. It may be the last time we visit Dayspring, because she’s moving to Mundesley later this month. Very pleasant: we had tea in the garden afterwards: warm sun with a bit of wind in exposed places. Afterwards we went to the cemetery in North Walsham and then called to see Jessie, where we found Roger, Adrian, Clarissa and some tea and cake.
Later, Adrian and Clarissa came (as planned) to stay with us for a couple of nights because Bury were playing Norwich City in the Capital One Cup on the Tuesday. Confused? Well, Adrian’s son Gareth is now captain of Bury. Dot and I also got tickets (declining the offer of free seats with what turned out to be an extremely noisy Bury contingent), and it was a great game, Norwich winning 6-3 and scoring some excellent goals.
Adrian and Clarissa departed on Wednesday, and we left too, eventually – for Caddington, to pick up Oliver and Amy.  They stayed with us until the Saturday. On Thursday we all went to West Runton in the afternoon and stayed till early evening as the tide went out and the beach got more and more peaceful. There was a certain amount of rock pool investigation, and some enthusiastic climbing and descending of a steep cliff slope. Both have huge amounts of energy, of course. Amy did some gymnastics on the groyne.
On Friday, with Oliver feeling a bit less energetic because of a cold, we took a bus into the city, where we followed part of a gorilla trail and then visited a bike shop to look at a possible bike for Oliver’s birthday. Afterwards we had a slightly surreal lunch in BHS, because Dot had a voucher. David arrived at 9pm.
On Saturday David, Oliver, Amy and I returned to the bike shop and, rather unexpectedly, completed a purchase. This meant that David had to go to Halfords to buy a bike carrier for his car – and then fix it on to the car. In the middle of that we had lunch at Prezzos, which seemed to have recovered some poise following our last, rather disappointing visit. Plenty of Norwich City supporters about: happily the Canaries beat Southampton 1-0.
David and the children returned home early in the evening with a certain amount of trepidation, but both bike and carrier survived the trip in sound condition, as did Oliver, Amy and David.
While we were in the bike shop I got a really unexpected phone call from Andrew, who seemed surprisingly coherent. Is something amazing happening, or is it part of a cycle? That wasn’t really meant to be funny.
I’ve just finished a book called Quiet, by Susan Cain, which David got me for my birthday. This is about “the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking”  – and so clearly right up my street. I should have read it 50 years ago. Unfortunately, she’s only just written it. Fascinating stuff. Makes me feel better, which can’t be bad.