Pressure has eased somewhat, although we still remain pretty busy. Weather is a bit cooler, but not unpleasant. Gave my talk to the Norwich tourist guides on Thursday evening, and it went well after an initial panic when the projector wouldn’t work because it was switched to video instead of computer, something with my limited experience I didn’t know it could do.
About 15-20 guides present, including the unique and obscure Jude, who landed me in it in the first place. Surprisingly, she brought Roger with her. The talk lasted about an hour, with a few questions afterwards, and the guides were quite complimentary. I had been worried about speaking to them because of their vast knowledge, but I must have come up with one or two things they didn’t know.
One of them came up with something I didn’t know: one of the many John Pastons – this one a brother of Erasmus, Clement and Thomas – is buried in Huntingfield Church in Suffolk. Will have to go and look at some point. Did a bit of research on it when I came home.
I had managed to complete the brochures on Pastons in Norwich and Dragon Hall (a new, smaller flyer) by the time I gave the talk, and so was able to make them available. The Pastons in Norwich one was Vistaprint, and I had to manually correct an error in all 100 of them (my error), but managed to do it without spoiling the look. The other one I created myself on Pages. Left a few of them at the Library yesterday after attending a talk there by Dr Karen Smyth on Julian of Norwich.
This is Julian week, and after the talk (and a chat with Karen, who is speaking at Dragon Hall on the Pastons, and Louise Øhrstrøm, the Danish Julian expert who spoke at St Augustine’s) we went up and looked at a display of books on Julian. Interesting map of medieval Norwich.
Afterwards Dot and I had lunch at Presto and had a long chat with Kathy and Roberto. In the evening we went up to the Cathedral Close for the opening event of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, which was an amazing performance by a group of French artists unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They were rather like Iain M Banks’ Culture books, in that any attempt to describe what was going on would fall woefully short. Basically they were on stilts, shrouded in white, and used inflated costumes and lights to produce eerie, alien effects as they walked through the crowds, ending down on the Green with a kind of dance and launch of lighted balloons. Incredible. Dot and I were so intent on taking pictures that we lost each other in the crowds at one point, but were reunited under a lamppost by the Green. I am not easily impressed by spectacle, but this was totally exceptional.
Thursday had been a good day even before the talk at Central Baptist Church to the guides. It was one of those days when everything falls into place. After taking Dot up into the city I left the car at Kwik Fit for a slow puncture to be fixed, and while there noticed that they did windscreen wipers. Dot had broken one of hers, so when I returned with my car later in the day, she took hers, and they did it on the spot. Also arranged for BT to come and install Infinity (there’s a poem in that somewhere) and British Gas to do our annual service. And I got in touch with Andrew’s carer, had along chat and got her mobile phone number. Should be going over there on Tuesday with Dot, hopefully to catch the doctor on his ward rounds and to see Minster Lodge, which Andrew said would “do for now”. Deep shock.
On Wednesday I had a nice surprise when I visited the doctor: my blood pressure had dropped considerably, despite my not taking the additional pill that the doctor had been under the impression I was taking. He still tried to persuade me to take it, but I declined.
In the evening Dot and I went to the Christian Resource Centre to hear the coroner, William Armstrong, give a before-dinner talk. He is an old admirer of Dot’s (they were at City College together), and the two of them had a chat afterwards while I was talking to Régine Godfrey and her husband Peter, next to whom we had been sitting. She is French and writes for an Archant magazine; so we had something in common (complaints about page designers). I was also able to keep up with her remarks about French politics and the French words that she used on and off, so I was quite pleased. They live in the old hospital complex on St Stephen’s.
The talk was excellent too, as was the meal, though I think I prefer the usual format of having the meal first.
On Bank Holiday Monday we called to see Jessie for tea and cake, then I walked to the cemetery to get a bit of exercise. Dot joined me there, of course. A beautiful day, and I think we did well to keep clear of the crowds who apparently, and understandably, flocked to the coast. Today we’re awaiting the arrival of Linda to cut our hair. Much cooler now, with a bit of rain.