Tag Archives: eddie

4 December 2008

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This is Jeanette and Graham, her husband, who are staying with us at the moment. Jeanette is my second cousin, from South Africa (near Pietermaritzberg) – the first daughter of my cousin Howard, my uncle Leonard’s son. They are coming to live in England – possibly in Cornwall, where they have a arranged a three-month rental of a holiday cottage near Tintagel while they sort themselves out. The rental doesn’t start till after Christmas, however. They arrived on Tuesday and are leaving by train tomorrow for Liverpool, where Jeanette’s aunt Ann (my cousin) lives. Yesterday I gave them the tour of Norwich, including lunch at Caffe Italia. It was a bright day but got colder and colder, and we were glad to get home in the end. Dot cooked lamb steaks. The previous day we directed them to Prezzo’s while we had our usual Tuesday gathering, and they also had a walk round. They are very easy to get on with and have plenty to tell us about the family in Africa, which has been fascinating.

Today is quite different: dull and wet. Dot has just taken her car to fill it with petrol prior to a trip to Ipswich this afternoon for a meeting to do with her Philosophy4Children project. She’s also showing Graham how you get petrol in England! Later I’ll take J & G round for a drive round a few significant spots, such as Howard’s birthplace in Queen’s Road.

At the weekend David and Vicky and the children came up, and we bought Oliver a Norwich City football kit for Christmas. Technically I didn’t, because I was cooking roast chicken at the time, but I was there in spirit. In the evening we all watched Hot Fuzz after the children had gone to bed. On Sunday I had to go to church owing to a shortfall in the music group, and all went well. We all went out to lunch at Prezzos, and when we got home Eddie, my cousin from Ilford, called in with his wife Christine and saw the grandchildren for the first time. Might also have seen David for the first time, come to think of it. Oliver became rather unwell during the day, with asthma affecting his chest. He was away from school a couple of days but is back today and improving. Hate to see him unwell. Amy showed us a few of her ballet moves and was generally adorable.

22 January 2008

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This is Eddie, my cousin’s daughter’s child, who paid us a visit on Saturday, together with his grandparents and mum and dad. To me he looks exactly as his father (also Eddie) did when he was a child. They all came for a meal, and he was extremely well behaved and quite delightful. The five of them were up in Norwich for the weekend, which was bad luck as far as the weather went. For many days now – until today – it has been overbearingly grey, with plenty of rain.

Today we had some blue sky, the wind dropped, and it was pleasant. Dot and I took the opportunity to get out of the house and walked round the Broad at Whitlingham. I took a few pictures, some of which turned out very well. I have invested in a new fast memory card and a gorillapod – a small tripod that can be used to stabilise the camera practically anywhere.

Last night I travelled to Lowestoft to play chess – and lost again after getting a reasonably good position. Either my judgement is totally shot, or I’m getting too old to sustain concentration, or I’m very unlucky. The last is obviously favourite. Gave a lift to a teammate who I discovered is a paramedic: clearly I shall have to give him more lifts. Just in case.

I’ve sorted out my photographs on iPhoto up to the Event stage: I now have 56 events, and my next task is to tag all the pictures. Put three of this afternoon’s pictures on Flickr.

On Sunday we had an alternative guy called Adrian joining us on guitar – in short space of time he managed to upset pretty well everybody, and I have to hope he doesn’t show up next week. Not the right attitude, I know. The evening’s Ambient Wonder event was excellent, with a good attendance despite teeming rain. The theme was “new beginnings”: not strikingly original, but it was refreshingly unusual and left everyone – as far as one could tell – feeling optimistic.

This feeling disappeared for me yesterday when there was still no mention of my page ending in the paper, and no sign of the final page appearing. Felt quite low most of the day, alleviated in the afternoon by a visit to Jessie’s. Today my replacement was described as our “controversial new columnist”, but I haven’t seen him write anything controversial yet. Even Ms P R Bland-Bland still has her page. Bitter? Me?