Tag Archives: creation

Speculation about past

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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.

Lured into all sorts of fascinating byways

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Site of one of the Pastons' Norwich houses – in Elm Hill

Taking “busy” to a new level. Next week will be full of Paston-related events, and I have made the mistake of agreeing to lead a group at St Luke’s on Thursday and do the sermon there on the following Sunday. As I have also had to prepare a walk round Norwich taking in all of the Paston sites, and a poetry workshop for Tuesday, you might guess that I am up to my eyes in research. I’m also trying to keep the Paston website up-to-date, which will become even more demanding next week.

After being lured into all sorts of fascinating byways while researching the Pastons in Norwich, I eventually had to get my head down today and produce a plan for the walk with historical details as accurate as I can manage them. I found a few errors in the odd printed source, which was quite satisfying, until I realised there were probably far more errors in what I had written. Still, there are no Pastons around now to challenge me, though there will probably be some local historians prepared to have a go.

Having more or less completed that by lunchtime, I spent the afternoon finishing the Thursday talk on our relationship with creation. There is an almost infinite amount of material available for this, of course, so the challenge was to reduce it to something practicable. Not sure I’ve achieved it – yet. At the end of the afternoon I felt I had to leave the house, so I went for a walk up to King Street to check a new fact I’d discovered. It was pretty chilly, but the fact was spot on.

All this has not been made easier by the fact that Dot has been quite unwell since Monday. She stayed in bed most of Tuesday, so I had to look after the Tuesday Group. Since then she’s been dragging herself to various places and coughing and spluttering around when she’s at home. I can do without catching it, but I hate to see her in that state. I’ve not been feeling well myself, but I don’t think it’s the same thing: I’ve been feeling a bit virusy. Is that a word?

Yesterday, to exacerbate the whole busyness thing, I had to be at the church hall most of the morning to entertain the man who came to give us a quote on a new heating system. While I was waiting, I picked up some litter, brushed some leaves and mended a ventilator guard that had come away from the wall. After rushing home I had to hasten up to Dragon Hall to listen to Lucy brief the DH volunteers on facts about the Pastons. Fascinating stuff, but it got very cold after the first hour. Lucy and Diana (who was driving her) came back for a cup of tea.

On the bright side, we have new handles for our kitchen cupboards. They were fitted on Wednesday morning, quite early, by a resourceful guy who filed them down to make them fit, and left us with a supply of tape to replace worn bits on shelf edges – after fixing most of them himself. Our new fridge is being widely admired.