Tag Archives: figura

Karen and Julia at UEA

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Dave, Dot and Julia at the start of the walk, near Paston Great Barn
Dave, Dot and Julia at the start of the walk, near Paston Great Barn

The roof has been restored – we hope. It’s raining today, and it rained more on Saturday: no evidence of water getting in, but we’ve had nothing like the downpours that caused the original problem.

Builder Bert finished on Thursday – earlier than we thought and his departure coincided  with the appearance of the window cleaner; so I didn’t have a proper discussion with him. Later I noticed that some leading around the chimney was loose; so I contacted the scaffolders, who I thought were going to remove the scaffolding on Friday. They said they weren’t, and  they’d get Bert to ring me, but nothing happened.

I rang them again on the Saturday morning and left a message asking for Bert’s phone number (which I’d lost). They rang back with it, and I was eventually able to speak to him. He came round on Sunday morning and repaired the leading – all of this fitting in neatly with our other weekend activities centring on the visit of the Evetts. The scaffolding is still there, but it should go tomorrow. The Evetts are in St Albans, on their way to pick up Amy.

Before they got here, on the Wednesday, when it was still warm, I visited the dentist, who cleared me at a cost of £98, and then Geoff Saunders, who had had a recent seizure problem resulting in a sudden visit to hospital. This turned out to be more spectacular than serious, and he was quite chirpy. His right side had improved a lot, and he said his feet were getting better. HIs carer, Lisa, was there, and we all had a cup of tea and biscuits.

In the evening, while Dot was at orchestra, I visited the Arts Centre for a performance of The Shipwrecked House by poet Claire Trévien. It opened with some new poems from Martin Figura, and I found myself seated next to his wife, Helen Ivory; so I couldn’t heckle. As if: one or two of the poems, on politicians and machines, were quite good. The main event was disappointing, despite its glowing reviews. I probably should have read the book before I went, because it was hard to make out what was going on, and she wasn’t easy to hear in the face of the sound effects (sea, storm etc). 

The next day I was picked up fairly early by Rob Knee, and we visited Karen Smyth at UEA to talk about a big research project relating to the Pastons that Karen would like to get money for. In the afternoon Dot and I were supposed to have our hair cut, but when it became apparent that Linda wasn’t coming, Dot rang her, and she said she’d sent me a message on Facebook. I then discovered that she had, but for some reason it hadn’t reached my e-mail inbox. Ho hum.

Dave and Julia arrived about 1.30pm on Friday. We had lunch and then walked the riverside path up to the art school, followed by tea and coffee at Costa’s in London Street. It was warm enough to sit outside, and it was still pretty warm the next morning when Julia went off to a conference at which she was speaking at UEA and we took Dave (via bus and the rail bridge) to walk round the new broad at Whitlingham, plus a bit of Thorpe Green.

After lunch we took the bus again – this time to the Sainsbury Centre for a superb exhibition entitled Reality. Some really mesmerising  paintings, including a couple by Kate Coleman. Particularly liked Clive Head and John Keane. During this the forecast rain arrived, and the temperature fell. Julia emerged from her conference and joined us for a drink in the restaurant, and then we took the bus home – a 70-minute marathon during which we waited interminably on Foundry Bridge to turn right into a road packed with stationary cars. The bus was jammed, but at least the rain was stopping.

In the evening we walked up to Jamie’s for an excellent meal: our waiter was Steve, who we had had before. He was first class.

On Sunday it was dry, but with some chilliness in the air. After Bert fixed the leading round the chimney, we drove to Mundesley for scones and tea, and then did a shortened version of one of the Paston walks, starting at the church and visiting Edingthorpe after doing a bit of blackberry picking on the way (crumble for supper later); then completing the circle. Just over four miles, and we popped into the recently repaired church before we returned to Mundesley for tea and cake.

In the evening we watched the Japanese grand prix, the result of which we had been keeping from Dave all day.

Some kind of poetry

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Dot doing her Princess Diana thing at Chatsworth
Dot doing her Princess Diana thing at Chatsworth

And this was the second week in the year we didn’t go to the cinema. Nothing really calling to us at the moment. But we did watch North by Northwest on television  this evening by way of recovering from Norwich losing 3-0 at Swansea and England being ejected from the 20-20 cricket world cup.

Lovely warm day today. Bought some flowers and took them up to the Rosary while Dot was going through the torment of listening to the Norwich match. It’s Mothers’ Day tomorrow. I slipped a couple of little roses on to my grandparents’ grave as well. It’s looking neglected.

Not a very busy week. I managed to get down to my last blood pressure pills and had to beg some emergency ones from the chemist. Also had some interesting laser work done by Ross on one of my upper teeth to get rid of some minor problem at gum level. Bit uncomfortable, but not too bad. Health continues to be up and down. Today I’ve felt tight round the abdomen and odd altogether. So hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong, but something is definitely not right.

On Wednesday went to the last performance of Whistle, by Martin Figura, at the Arts Centre. The evening started with a 20-minute warm-up by Russell Turner (The Vodka Diaries), which was quite entertaining, though not something one would want one’s grandchildren to witness. This was followed incredibly by a 20-minute interval, which probably shows that poetry audiences are very thirsty. Martin Figura himself was good – more monologue than poetry, but he did justice to the story, during which his father kills his mother.  This did actually happen, which just goes to show.

Yesterday I got a call from a woman who wanted to use my poem Some Kind of Lamb in the Wymondham Abbey magazine. She was very complimentary about the poem and said that several of her friends had it pinned up. That is the kind of thing that makes writing poetry worthwhile. That and the writing itself.

I have also written a short piece on Betjeman and Clare for the Parish Pump website, at the request of Anne Coomes. And at last I’ve put together five of my songs with chords for the next Seagull session. Dot and I practised some of them tonight. Sounded good.