Tag Archives: rosary

Going for ride after a fall

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Dot looking lovely in the garden
Dot looking lovely in the garden

Winter is reluctant to let us go; still a chilly wind today, though it was very pleasant (as it often is) at the top of the Rosary when  I called in on the way back from fetching my pills from the chemist.

This was my second visit to the Rosary in less than  a week: on Thursday I walked up there and fell over while greeting a woman who was looking for her aunt’s grave. Did some damage to my hand and wrist, as well as spraining my ankle. Bruising has spread in strange ways: bits that were bruised to start with now aren’t, while bits that weren’t (inner wrist and outside of thumb) are now badly discoloured. Still quite painful if I get it in the wrong position, but on the plus side (for me) I can still play the guitar and (for the woman I was greeting) I found the grave she was looking for. She was very concerned about me and gave me her bottle of water.

Dot is up at the UEA today giving her presentation as party of a UEA/Schools philosophy conference. She has been very nervous about it. Later I shall be going to St Luke’s for the parish agm and dinner.

After falling over last Thursday I went with Dot to the Paston annual meeting, at which the sandwiches were very good; so as there were only 13 of us, we took some home. All the usual suspects except Lucy, who has shingles. Fred has shingles too, and we’re going on holiday with him in about ten days. Lots of it about. Well, two lots so far. The annual meeting was fine, though the room got rather cold later on. Nice view of the sea.

Big surprise on Friday, when Linda didn’t change the time of our hair appointment. In the evening we went with the Robinsons to the Red Lion at Eaton to celebrate Philip’s birthday. He thinks it’s the best food in Norwich, but it’s not really in Norwich, and I’m not sure about the quality either. Nevertheless it was very good. I confined myself to fish on the assumption (probably correct) that I wouldn’t be able to cut much with my injured hand. Spreading butter was not easy either. Afterwards they came back here for coffee, and I think I went to sleep. Must have been the stress. No-one seemed to mind.

On Saturday, as Norwich City FC threw away their chance of automatic promotion by getting a man sent off and drawing 1-1 with Rotherham, Dot spent most of the day at Acle – rehearsing in the afternoon and performing in the church in the evening with Sillars Orchestra. Obviously I attended the latter, which was very good indeed, especially the second half. I sat with Graham, who we’re going on holiday with, and Neville, who thought the second half should have been first. I definitely didn’t. Refreshments at half time too!

Another busy day on Sunday when, after I preached in the morning and notching up a hat-trick of Sunday sermons, Phil came round in the afternoon to rehearse and eat, before all three of us went the Seagull Theatre and performed three songs. I think Dot was flaked out, but she performed heroically, and it was well received. I also read a poem, and Kaaren filled me in on what was required for the Suffolk Poetry Festival (five minutes).

Yesterday, despite the chilly wind, Dot and I went for a 35-minute walk round the riverside path and, after lunch and a rest, called in at Morrisons for £100 worth of food, plus a new kettle. Then we watched quite a lot of TV.

Lunching with the Bishop

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Our Christmas present from Oliver – a rose – has produced two lovely new blooms.
Our Christmas present from Oliver – a rose – has produced two lovely new blooms.

Rather a lot of paperwork to bring the month to a close this week, and so a regrettable reduction in physical activity. Not much to record there, other than a trip into the city to pay a cheque and a walk round the Rosary yesterday. And here I am at the computer again while Dot ventures into the city. On her return we head to the church hall to rehearse a few songs with Phil.

The paperwork included researching and writing three article for Parish Pump – on the Armenian Genocide, Einstein and the Mt Tambora eruption in 1815 – writing a sermon, and compiling a financial report for the year for the DCC. I am also trying to write a tanka a day for Lent. In addition I have spent about half an hour on the phone renewing my car insurance, and a further quarter of an hour (most of it waiting) to sort out our lost Gift Aid repayment. I have also booked some tickets to see Adrian Plass in June, which is more complicated than it sounds because I had to do it in batches of three. The e-mail replies are the ticket, and the five of us may not go together, partly because Dot and I are due to return from Scarborough that day, with hold-ups always a possibility.

The highlight of the week was probably the lunch at St Luke’s on Monday with a select company including the Bishop, the Dean, the Archdeacon and two prospective vicars. We gave one of the vicars (and his wife) a tour of the parish in our (borrowed) car afterwards and discovered parts of it that we didn’t know existed. Well, not as part of the parish, anyway. “Our” vicar seemed very nice, and we rather hope he will be selected, though that is hardly fair on the other one, who we didn’t really get a chance to chat to. We believe the name of the “lucky” man will be announced tomorrow, if he has said yes. The Bishop and Dean were very pleasant, and the Bishop remembered Dot’s name; so that’s all good 🙂

After the lunch and tour we picked up Dot’s MX5 from the coachwork off Hall Road (just far enough off to make it hard to find). It looked immaculate. I then returned the Corsa to Enterprise Car Rentals and was given a lift home. Normally I would have walked from Heigham Street, but the wind was icy and I was carrying a file of documents that I didn’t want to lose.

Because the MX5 was finished early, Dot had to take our Mazda 2 to Kent (the P4C whiteboard won’t get in the MX5), which was a pity because of the additional mileage. Nevertheless, she had a good journey both ways, paying the Dartford Crossing toll online for the first time.

While she was away, Rob came round to discuss his forthcoming tour of Paston Norwich for the Cromer group he is giving a series of talks to. As the group is quite large, he wants me to help. One or two small bits of new stuff to me, but the next day I was coming back from the city when I noticed St George’s Tombland was open; so I popped in to see the dragon. This is the model dragon that’s used for the Lord Mayor’s procession each year, symbolising the Guild of St George, which is linked to Dragon Hall. While at the church (and being given a thorough tour by a kind elderly gentleman) I noticed that it also had a monument to Thomas Anguish by Nicholas Stone, who is well know for various Paston links.

On the same day we had our hair cut – a week after the scheduled date, so not before time. On Friday I had a routine blood test, and it was after that that I walked for a while in the Rosary, which I always find moving. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and thousands of crocuses were blooming, together with a few snowdrops. Did I mention that I had also dropped in my accounts file to Susannah (the St Luke’s treasurer), and later the cheque books and paying-in books? I hope the accountants can make some sense of them.

I did not shoot the Sheriff

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Dot with her friend William
Dot with her friend William

We are now the proud if temporary possessors of a brand new Corsa, lent to us while the MX5 is repaired. I was taken to pick it up from Enterprise in Heigham Street on Friday afternoon. The traffic both ways was so bad that it took nearly an hour altogether, and my driver on the outward journey was not slow to point to the Grapes Hill roundabout as the problem.

The car has been on the drive since then, apart from two short trips – one to church yesterday, and one to the doctor’s today. I would also have driven it to the supermarket, but decided to wait till tomorrow because of the forecast heavy rain that annoyingly failed to materialise. Instead I watched the film Bitter Lake for the second time while Dot watched it for the first time. Still good, and available on iPlayer! It explains everything.

The visit to the doctor was routine, and had the added bonus of revealing a reduction in my blood pressure to 136/88. I had a discussion about the advisability of remaining on two Lanzoprasole tablets: the main reason for the visit. I feel better when on two a day; so naturally I have to try to get it back to one. Last Thursday, in a thinly related health event, I went to the hospital to see a urology nurse, which turned out to be a complete waste of time. She didn’t know why I was there, and nor did I (other than receiving a letter telling me to attend). On the plus side, I seem to be OK. On the minus side, she didn’t like me criticising her inaccurate diagram, and I didn’t like going in half an hour late.

When I got back from the doctor’s today I did some cutting and pulling in the garden to get something in our brown bin, which made me quite tired, but I’m sure it was good for me. Last week was a record as far as walking was concerned. When I say record, I mean the best week in the past month. Even counting Buxton.

Last Friday Dot and I went to a house somewhere in the middle of a field. I think it was Framingham Pigot, but it could have been Bixley or some other, nameless part of South Norfolk. The event was a brunch to celebrate the success of a charity run by one of Dot’s friends, Helen (a former head teacher), which involved collecting sugar for homeless shelters. Don’t ask. Anyway it was a nice event. Helen is lovely, her husband Chris was a nice bloke, and I spent much of the time talking to Sue and Roger Eagle, though not Louise, as Louise pointed out. She is the secretary of the charity, and a nurse, I believe. Probably not urology. The food was excellent.

We had to rush back to get the MX5 in place to be collected by the body repairers. It was duly carted off, and will not be seen again until next week. Dot has arranged for them to do another dent unrelated to the recent car park mishap, which will end up costing us over £300. So that’s all good.

In the evening we went to the centenary dinner of St Augustine’s Hall, which was honoured by the presence of the Sheriff of Norwich, William Armstrong OBE, the former Norwich Coroner who used to go out with Dot when they were both at City College. So obviously she chatted him up. His wife Monica was very nice. Obviously I didn’t chat her up. Or shoot the Sheriff, though I’m saying nothing about his deputy. Nice meal provided by Carrie’s crowd, and I helped with the washing up. The plaque looked good – a rare example of a suggestion of mine coming to fruition.

On Valentine’s Day Dot went to see Norwich City beat Wolves 2-0, which made her happy and relieved that she was not an unmitigated jinx. In the evening I cooked her an M&S meal that I had bought earlier. It came with fizzy stuff and was quite tasty.

On Sunday after church we were prepared to go and see Jessie, but it turned out she was spending the afternoon with Roger; so we stayed in. I walked up to the Rosary while Dot did some sewing. I know that’s hard to believe. Also hard to believe is the fact that I sent off for and have now fixed a new letterbox. It wasn’t easy, of course. The fittings were not quite right (although they looked right on the diagram), and I had to cut off some plastic bits and screw in where nothing had been screwed before. I amaze myself. The cut in my hand was not very deep.

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.

Lighting in the loft

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Spring flowers in the Rosary, pictured on iPhone during my walk yesterday

Rainy and miserable today, with Dot off into North-East Norfolk for a meeting with a friend. Yesterday Allan H was round all day, mostly in the loft, installing lighting so that Dot can spend even longer up there than she does now. Unsurprisingly, it proved a longer job than expected, but it seems to have worked. While clearing up afterwards, Dot produced a suitcase of old paperwork which proved to be mainly her letters to me before we married, plus some rather bad short stories and poems I wrote in the same era, and a few photographs. Also my mother’s handbag and some letters she’d written to me. No doubt I will be leafing through it all some time in the near future.

While this was going on I walked up to the Rosary on the way to the supermarket (trying to get some exercise) and became rather melancholy for no apparent reason. Envisaged David and Oliver coming to see my grave and Amy asking Dot: “Why did Grandad die?” I do tend to be a bit morbid nowadays. Snapped out of it fairly quickly on reaching the supermarket, which was overrun by half-term families. Dearth of rice, for some reason, but managed to get some for Tuesday Group meal, which featured Matt on curry. Dot had to run the gauntlet of football traffic to fetch him, but I devised a cunning route for her that worked a treat. Didn’t work quite so well when I took him home afterwards, but you can’t have everything. Even Norwich City managed to thrown away a win, and Spurs went one worse by losing 3-1 to Blackpool. Meanwhile in New Zealand a huge earthquake devastated Christchurch: Louise Robinson came round in the afternoon (when I was out, annoyingly) to reassure us that her parents were not involved, but in fact Anne had texted us in the night with just that message. Christchurch is part of their itinerary, but at the moment they are in Auckland. Very thoughtful of Louise to realise we might be worried.

Last Saturday was probably my most energetic day  for years. We spent most of it painting a couple of walls in the living room – a process that also included going to the shop for extra paint; touching up two coats all round the room where the skirting heating had been; glossing the skirting board; moving three bookcases to different levels; hoovering the entire house; and, mysteriously, sorting out my tools drawer and stumbling across 28 screwdrivers. Quite enough for one day, you might think. But in the evening we had the Greenacres round for a meal: Sheila is a teacher I’ve worked with a number of times over the years and her husband David, who we’d never met, is an ex-police officer.  Dot and Sheila had never met either. As Dot had done most of the painting, I cooked the main meal and purchased most of the starter from the supermarket. Something must have gone right, because we had a really good time.

Other things going right: I managed to draw a difficult chess game against Yarmouth on Monday. I played a German dentist who had no local grade but seemed pretty strong to me. Was pleased to hold a tricky bishop-and-pawns ending. Sadly, our captain lost a won game and we are now probably heading for the dreaded drop. Felt for him, as he is very keen and an excellent captain, as well as being a nice bloke. And on Sunday at close to 11am we were staring at a congregation of about five for Communion, but we ended up with around 20. Don’t know why that happens. Scarily, David Coomes is threatening to come to our service on April 10 when they are visiting and I’m leading.

Keeping it all going

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Potters
Kevin, Lisa and Matthew Potter with grandson David. Not a great picture.

Bit of a delay there. A lot going on: amid all the preparation for our holiday, I’ve written a new poem, entered poems for two separate poetry competitions, updated my website with quite a protracted piece and written up lengthy minutes from the DCC meeting last Wednesday. That’s quite apart from real life, which has included another ground-out chess win, this time in 66 moves, and taking my car to be serviced, MOTd and have its rear brake pads replaced: it turned out to be the most expensive service, and with the renewal of Mazda Assistance came to well over £400, just when I didn’t need the expense. I say “real life”, but of course that’s open to dispute.

The DCC meeting included much about keeping the church hall going: our new cleaner had several suggestions, some of which we have adopted. Howard was a key figure: he worked with the cleaner on the suggestions and also with a guy who surveyed the hall for longer-term work required. Unfortunately for some reason Howard didn’t turn up to the meeting and couldn’t be contacted, which hampered us somewhat. Still don’t know what happened.

On Thursday Mark and Naomi Tuma came round for a meal. I knew Mark a bit, but Naomi hardly at all, so it was a time for life stories. Discovered Naomi was Scottish, from the west coast near Oban. Good conversation: I don’t have to say Dot’s food was excellent, so I won’t. But it was. Incidentally, while on the subject of mouths, one of my teeth has been giving me a bit of trouble, so I’ve booked to see the dentist tomorrow. Not painful, but feels as if it could become painful, which is unsettling when you’re about to go to Canada.

On Friday had lunch with Keiron Pim at the Wine Cellar on Guildhall Hill. A while since I’d seen him; he is a former of trainee of mine who has recently won a well-deserved award as East Anglian feature writer of the year. He is a beautiful writer and is interested in the same things as I am: he plays blues guitar and is also books editor at the EDP. He has a little girl of 16 months and is married to another of my trainees, Rowan. Wine Cellar a very nice spot; had an excellent Spanish omelette which, together with a substantial meal at home in the evening, got me rather worried about my weight. On discovering that it was indeed up a few pounds I went for a three-mile walk on Saturday morning before meeting Dot in the city and buying a suitcase. This seemed to help (especially the suitcase), as I have now lost a bit, despite having David and the grandchildren up from Saturday evening till Sunday evening. Or maybe because of… Oliver and Amy in very energetic mode; we were joined by Kevin, Lisa and Matthew for the Sunday afternoon, and it was good to see them again. All seem well, and the grandchildren have had good school reports. Amy making excellent progress on writing and reading, and Oliver doing well at his times tables, coached by Dot. (The difference between professional coaching and what I would have done was all too apparent and good to see.) David switched Dot’s photos to my machine so she has some space on her laptop. We spent some time looking at old Lenton family photographs on Apple TV. Some of them were new to both David and Dot. Not sure how that happened.

On the Saturday Dot had had coffee with Anne, who has invited us to a celebration meal for Philip’s 70th birthday at the Swan in Southwold on April 24. This is a disaster, as it is the same weekend that we are seeing the Coomes, in a much-postponed London visit. Not sure what to do about it.

While walking on Saturday I visited the Rosary and noticed that Dorothy’s gravestone was missing. After much hunting around I realised it must have been removed to have Thelma’s name put on it. Either that or Dorothy was a double agent and all traces of her existence are being removed. I favour the former explanation. Now into our final week before leaving the country and still waking up in the night and thinking about what needs to be done.

28 December 2008

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Grandson Oliver takes a break on the way round the Attenborough walk on Boxing Day, which was brilliantly sunny but with a fair ol’ chillin’ breeze, as they might say in Norfolk if they spoke Norfolk as badly as I do. It had got gradually colder as Christmas week went by, and this morning it barely crept above freezing, though there was only a light frost on the windscreen.

Andrew is here for a couple of days. We picked him up on the way back from Nottingham, where we’d spent a very calm and peaceful Christmas with our family at Julia and Dave’s home. Spot the deliberate error in that sentence: yes, it wasn’t calm and peaceful, because Oliver and Amy were there. But it was a lot of fun, and there were far too many presents for everybody. The journey up to Nottingham was very good, but there was a lot of traffic on the way back yesterday, and we eventually diverted off the A14 just after Huntingdon, and Dot navigated a new route through the southern Fens via places like Earith and ending at Mildenhall. We’d stopped earlier at the Thrapston Little Chef, which is usually good, but the service was appalling and the food only passable.

This morning I led morning worship at St Augustine’s. There were nine of us and two children, which is rather more than I expected. Mark Heybourne did a really good talk on Mary, and on bringing light into a dark world. Called at Phil and Joy’s afterward to pick up Andrew, and after a light lunch I took Andrew for a walk via the Rosary (put some winter plants on mum’s grave) and on to St James’ Hill, then back by the river.