Tag Archives: garden

Baguettes, potatoes and sunglasses

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House at Lamole
The house we stayed in at Lamole, near Greve in Chianti. You can see only two of the three storeys.

An odd week. Dot has been very busy: on Monday she did a church school inspection at Ellingham, on Tuesday she wrote the report, and yesterday she started off at Hapton School, moved to the Bird in Hand at Wreningham for a swift baguette and drink with me, then on to the Diocesan Office for a 2pm meeting, followed by a visit to Catfield School and collapsing on the sofa at home. I have been making vague preparations for our Welsh holiday, cooking some jacket potatoes for the Tuesday Group and buying some new sunglasses. Not simultaneously. I also seem to have fitted in arranging for a new church service leader to take over on August 1, when everyone else is away, writing a new poem and keeping various websites up to date, as well as writing a chess article for En Passant, the Norfolk chess magazine.

Today we had the first rain for some time, occurring roughly ten seconds after Dot and I started doing a bit of gardening to put something in our hungry brown bin. It didn’t last, though, and tonight it’s warm again. I’ve checked the car over and bought some new sunglasses (early birthday present). Spoke to Pieter at The Langleys today, and he’s very concerned about Andrew’s condition in hospital: apparently he’s sedated and hardly makes any response at all. He’s going to keep an eye on him, but I hope we’ll be able to call  in on our way back from Wales.

Getting together

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Ed cuts the cake, with his fiancee Jenny taking a keen interest, and Dot in the background
Ed cuts the cake, with his fiancee Jenny taking a keen interest, and Dot in the background

Dot is in the garden, filling the brown bin. I’ve been in the city paying in the odd cheque – specifically one to cover payment of our roof work. Barclays inform me this cheque will not be cleared till Tuesday, which seems ridiculous. Still, I’ve discovered that I can pay the entire bill without a horrendous penalty, so by this time next week it should all be done and dusted. I hate having large sums hanging over me – unless they fall into my lap, of course. But you can never rest: I have booked a hotel in Venice for next June, and am about to start looking at flights to and from Toronto for February/March.

One of my former colleagues at Archant – Julia Carter – has just died. She had had cancer for a while, and I’d visited her some time ago in Aylsham hospital. Last saw her at the BUPA hospital in July when I was in for my third operation. She was walking past and seemed in good spirits. Apparently she died in her sleep after her most recent session of chemotherapy and a blood transfusion. The funeral is in a couple of weeks, and I shall be there, barring accidents. I heard about it from Yarmouth reporter Stephen Pullinger on Monday evening: his team was playing our B team at the Gas Club, and I was waiting vainly for another player to play a knockout game. I emailed Martin Throssell, who already knew, and I have since been rung up by both Ivor Harvey and Bernadette. Meanwhile Lucy had a bad reaction to her chemotherapy and had to be rushed back into hospital with a lot of pain from a sinus infection. She is now home, but very weak. On the bright side her white cell count is dramatically down, from 50 to 4. Which is good, I understand.

On another bright note, two of our friends have got engaged – Ed Reed and Jenny Weston. Ed has been coming to our Tuesday Group for a long time and has been going out with Jenny for a while now. Bridget brought a cake and we had a celebration last night.

On Sunday Dot and I went to Cromer because it was such a nice afternoon. We had a stroll on the beach and on the pier: very warm and relaxing couple of hours. In the evening we had an Ambient Wonder social gathering at the Workshop cafe bar on Earlham Road, which turned out to be very pleasant. Had a long chat with Annie and her ex-boyfriend John, as well as with Anna, Paul and Heather. Annie is going to Haiti to do some health work, and we said we’d be interested in giving her some support. Dot already has ideas of going there.

On Monday we drove to Metfield for a P4C meeting with Barbara, and while they discussed various esoteric possibilities I wrote a couple of stories intended for their assemblies folder. Pretty pleased with them. Helped Caroline a little with an arts proposal which Lucy instigated but was too ill to complete. The idea is to extend the Paston project into new areas, mainly outside. Have finished a self-imposed course of antibiotics and am feeling quite a lot better. There’s a robin in the garden which comes up close to Dot when she’s working: lots of birds in the hedge, and I spend a bit of time watching them. Much more valuable than most of the things I spend time doing.

7 April 2009

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A photograph of my mother’s sister Vi, who has just turned 93. She is in Cape Town, in what they call Frail Care, with her husband Richard, also pictured. Her daughter Sandy and Sandy’s husband Alex, who live not far away in Table View, are also in the picture.

Have been feeling pretty frail myself the last few days. Practically anything I do leaves me tired out. I’m hoping it’s just an after-effect of the antibiotics and am trying to ignore it. The weather has turned quite springlike, though there’s a chilly wind today. The garden is looking terrific following the attentions of Garden Man Colin and Dot – a formidable team. Two chairs have been delivered to the upholsterers, the carpet has been cleaned and the bathroom taps are halfway fixed. They’ve stopped dripping, but on the minus side, they don’t turn on and off with any great conviction. My Twitter list is developing too.

Sunday was pretty busy, with church lunch and a an Ambient Wonder planning event in the evening. It could have been followed by an exciting DCC meeting on the Monday, but I took the precaution of booking myself a chess game, which I managed to draw. Dot had no such excuse, and claimed the DCC meeting was actually quite interesting. She is busy booking events for the visit of the Murrays in May. We seem to be booked in for tea at The Ritz, and possibly a sailing experience at Blakeney. Meanwhile I’ve got tickets for the Maddermarket for a Terence Rattigan play. For four of us, that cost £40, with the added benefit of it being a picturesque, historic and truly lovely theatre. I also booked Dot and I to see HMS Pinafore at the Theatre Royal later this month, which cost just under £40 for the two of us, after a £20 discount that I had been given for another reason. Something doesn’t add up: perhaps it’s why the Theatre Royal is often half empty, except for guaranteed audience-pullers.

24 September 2007

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This a picture taken by my son David of his son Oliver, who is clearly showing promise of solving Spurs’ striker problem. Nice balance, ball control, concentration – it’s all there. Meanwhile, England did avoid losing to Samoa, but Norwich City look candidates for relegation. They lost 2-0 to Wolves on Saturday and had two men sent off. Spurs scraped a win against Bolton (away) and could have done with Oliver up front.

Artists M & A came for a meal on Saturday night, and we spent some time discussing South Africa, where some of A’s family live. I also showed her how to use the InPrint calendar and e-mail facility. The InPrint site is on the brink of fulfilling its potential, with lots of news coming up about the poetry vending machines being placed in a couple of new spots, including the biggest bookshop in Norwich. (www.inprintartsandpoetry.co.uk)

Amy2, daughter of Vicky2, was dedicated at church on Sunday, with family visitors from far and wide. Lovely occasion: Vicky asked me to take family pictures, so I hope they come out all right. It was a beautiful day, and after the meal we went for a walk through the Rosary and to the nearby exotic garden, which we found because V2’s family told us it was there. It comes to something when you live about half a mile from an attraction and have to be told it’s there by people who live in Yorkshire (and occasionally South Africa). £4 entry, but probably worth it. Some unusual plants, original layout on the side of a hill and a splendid tree house. Always something interesting round the corner, including V2’s family, who must have thought we were stalking them.

In the evening Ambient Wonder on art, which featured (as well as some thought-provoking visual stuff) Bridget’s magnificent buns and juice.

25 June 2007

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Just a shot of my favourite flowers, taken in Suffolk a few weeks ago. Pictures of last weekend’s activities at Blakeney not yet available.

Arrived at the Manor Hotel fairly early in the afternoon – amazingly the first to arrive, but quickly joined by friends Alan and Rosemary. Booked in: we had a first-floor room with a view of the estuary and a four-poster bed. Actually it wasn’t just a view of a four-poster; it was an actual bed. Also a small entrance hall with table, and a walk-in-and-hit-your-head cupboard.

The other three members of the party arrived as we were unloading and after a pause for thought and recuperation, most of us went down to the Blakeney Hotel for tea and scone. Why the switch of hotels? The Blakeney has a first-floor lounge with a fantastic view out across to Blakeney Point and very tasty scones. That’s not a view of tasty scones but actual tasty scones.

The forecast for the Saturday had been pretty appalling, so we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves walking throught the Cley Marshes nature reserve in pleasantly warm weather after parking at the new visitors’ centre. We did the three-mile round trip first, taking in the shrinking shingle bank and a new hide. Apparently the shingle bank moves inland a metre a year, but it felt quite secure, though small. Saw lots of interesting birds and flowers. A twitcher showed us a spoonbill through his telescope: we also saw loads of avocet, some redshanks, oystercatchers and lots of other less unusual things with wings. Towards the end we saw a couple of marsh harriers, which were pretty spectacular, and some penguins. OK, I lied about the penguins. We had tea/coffee/ice cream at a ramshackle hut at the end of Beach Road which seemed to double as a library or secondhand book store. Apparently it will be replaced in spring 2007. So the notice said. Whoops. As it wasn’t there, I took a picture of it.

Walked on into Cley village where Dave found a great little tea shop: West Cottage, which had the proud boast that spring tides came up to its wall. So lots of fun there in spring. Nice light meal – I had egg mayonaise roll – but the sky was turning black. When we reached a pottery shop it started raining and looked to have set in. So after a while I took an umbrella and walked back to the reserve for the car. This was further than I had anticipated – about a mile. As I was approaching it, the lightning and thunder was getting so simultaneous that I was worrying about possible damage to the umbrella from a lightning strike, but happily this didn’t happen. I did get pretty wet, however, and after picking up the other three Dot and I drove home so that I could change. Dave and Julia stayed optimistically at the visitor centre in the hope of the sun breaking through.

After leaving the hotel in dry clothes, we found really black skies inland of Blakleney and wrote off the rest of the day. However, magically, when we got to Cley (about two miles) the outlook seemed much brighter, and we all walked out again to a group of three hides in the middle of the marsh. It was from the second one that we saw the marsh harriers.

Back in Blakeney, we repaired yet again to the upstairs lounge at the Blakeney Hotel before returning to the Manor Hotel for the evening meal. In between Dot and I made one more brief trip out to try to find some barn owls: we had received some directions from a twitcher earlier. No sign of them (we were probably a bit early), but it was a delightful little walk in warm evening sun. The evening meal was excellent, and we had coffee etc afterwards as usual, spending much of the time boasting about our grandchildren.

After breakfast yesterday the others headed for home, possibly via Holt and Burnham Market, while Dot and I drove up to Wiveton Downs – another delightful spot new to us, only a couple of miles south of Blakeney. Walked around a bit, but it started raining, and so we got back in the car and drove to Kelling in search of a gallery that a photographer exhibiting at Blakeney had recommended to us. On the way we called at Salthouse Church, where there was an exhibition by Sally Lawford: unusual ideas, and the church was very atmospheric.

The Stable Gallery at Kelling was also interesting: Dot and I were the only ones there apart from the woman in charge, and we ended up having tea and cake, as well as buying a chair for the downstairs loo. Don’t ask.

Back in Norwich we went home, then walked to the Bishop’s Garden for a writers’ event at which InPrint had a stall. Bit of an in-crowd, but quite fun despite the indifferent weather, and at least there was only a smattering of rain. Rupert, Lisa, Tonia there with families. Also met Nick Caistor, Tessa West. Dot decided the look of PVM boxes should be improved and volunteered to help. She’s right: it needs doing.

17 February 2007

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Almost exactly 78 years ago, my mother gave this photograph of herself to my father. She was just 17; he was almost 16. I found it in a box full of my mother’s pictures. In pencil on the back is written: “Given to DL 17(or 11).2.29”

Romantic or what? We’re now building up to our holiday in Florida. Today we need to pack and get everything ready. Dot is doing the garden. I’ve just popped down to the InPrint studios, where Annette was teaching a workshop, and checked the newly cut keys work. They do, though one is tricky.

Yesterday we went out to North Walsham, took some flowers to the cemetery and saw Jessie and Frank. The day before I drove to Halesworth to see a trainee and then had a sandwich with Dot at Park Farm. On Valentine’s Day Dot and I had lunch at Cafe Rouge, and we bought me some swimming shorts afterwards. I’ve written my page for Feb 26: hope it’s Ok, but I should be on the internet in Florida in case it isn’t.

Today is sunny and warm out of the wind.