Tag Archives: violin

Problems with access

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Maddison and Darcy Beales on a visit to Aspland Road last week.
Maddison and Darcy Beales on a visit to Aspland Road last week.

After a warm day yesterday (albeit with a slightly chilly breeze), today turned cooler again under a grey sky. Certain people say this is the hottest April on record, but I don’t know where they’re standing.

On Sunday I was preaching again, standing in for the rota person, who was hard-pressed. I was also leading the service (as per rota), and before that chairing the DCC agm in the absence of a vicar and the churchwarden, who is in Sri Lanka. The vicar-elect is in Marrakesh, but that’s another story. The DCC was pretty straightforward and no-one queried why Ian was standing down. No election was necessary, because all the gaps were filled, with Judy and Eleanor being new DCC members.

Afterwards we had a Far Cry rehearsal, which went fairly well.

On Monday I was up at the Forum by just after 10am for a PHS trustees’ meeting with Karen about the new bid (Discovering Paston Footprints). Went well up to a point, then degenerated into chaos as usual. Lucy has shingles, though this wasn’t known (even by her) until after the meeting.

A new private website has been created to get all the bid material together. I spent ages trying to access it and failing until it occurred to me this evening that my two websites (this one and back2sq1) are not WordPress.com sites but just built on WordPress software. Rang David to confirm this, and then I was able to reach the Paston/UEA site by pretending to create a new WordPress.com site. At least, I think that’s what I did.

Later on Monday Dot and I went to Morrisons, who were woefully understaffed on the tills, and in the evening to the cinema, which had a similar problem: tickets could be purchased only at the ice cream or popcorn counters. Wonderful. We saw The Water Diviner, which was very good,  though quite gruesome in the war scenes (Gallipoli). Russell Crowe and Olga Kurylenko were excellent, as was Dylan Georgiades as Olga’s young son. Thought he must be Turkish (or Greek), but he’s actually Australian. Yilmaz Erdogan (a Kurd) was also good as the Turkish Major Hasam.

Yesterday Dot went to see Dr Dar, who said she was diabetic (blood count) but had no symptoms. She is going to be monitored at the moment and will probably have to have a pill to correct what appears to be a problem with the pancreas. Later we went to Poringland, where Dot had a violin practice with Janet Smith from the orchestra and I went for a long walk with her husband Graham, who has a train set in his back garden. They are coming to the South of France with us.

In the evening Vicky, Bridget and Judy came round for tea cakes and compline. David is in a bit of a bad way with his swallowing problem and had to be taken to A&E a couple of nights ago. This may turn out well because he now has to see a doctor and get it sorted out.

Today was the Archant agm, held this time at the Forum, where the buffet was not quite so good. However the new CEO, John Henry, gave a very good presentation and reacted well afterwards when Dot pointed out that the EDP had too many mistakes in it. During the meeting itself Maryta asked about demographics and was misunderstood. She also asked for a job, and this was understood. Robin was there, but not Brian, and apparently Bruce is in a bad way with a lung infection (possibly pleurisy).

Dot had to leave early in the buffet to go to Hopton for a school Ofsted feedback, but I hung around until the bitter end and had two glasses of white wine, which wasn’t bad.

Not stringing her along

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Jack Earl at 100. One of the others is his eldest daughter, Loveday.

Dropped Dot at Elm Hill on Thursday morning, where she met a violin man (sounds like the beginning of a folk song) who told her her violin was worth quite a lot of money and he would certainly bring it up to scratch for her. Meanwhile, he has lent her one that is unusable, so this morning at church she switched back to her electric violin, which worked well. Later in the day our piano tuner, Joe Logan, vouched for the guy, so that’s OK. He was not stringing her along.

Between violin and piano I called in at Dragon Hall to tidy up some loose ends concerning the Dragon Hall day next month. Sarah Power is very upbeat and bouncy, so I was feeling quite encouraged by the time I left. Dot and I went to Park Farm for lunch, which was even more relaxing: long time since we’d done that. In the evening Dot went to Little Plumstead, where she’s a governor, and my Find-a-Friend iPhone tracking device played up to such an extent that I got quite worried. It had her in the middle of a field for a long time. She assured me she wasn’t, and as she was still apparently in the middle of the same field after she’d been home for a while, I totally believe her.

On Friday, while Dot was at a Nafpht conference losing her glasses and the weather was getting more springlike, I created  an account on Twitter for Margaret Paston and then spent a couple of hours wondering around taking pictures of Paston sites for my talk in a couple of weeks’ time. In the evening we went to the Hostry for the launch of a new edition of a Robert Llewellyn book on Julian. Liz French was there, as were Nicholas and Heather and of course Tim Mace. Nice refreshments; interesting event.

But it couldn’t compete with Saturday’s event, which was a party celebrating Jack Earl’s 100th birthday. We arrived at Sea Marge Hotel, Overstrand, in bright sunshine quite early and helped with the balloons, as well as getting tea and coffee. Jack looked unsurprisingly frail, but was relatively fit and clear-headed. He gave a short speech in reply to his son John and survived the photographs. We spoke  to Nicola and Andy among others (Edna Jones, who lives at the Great Hospital, plus the owners of the home where Jack lives, plus various Earl relations).

Jonathan left early to go to the football match – a critical encounter with Reading. We left just before 3pm, and Dot managed to reach Carrow Road in time for the second half. Just as well. It was 0-0 at half-time, but her arrival sparked two quick goals and City eventually edged out 2-1 ahead. Are they safe? Who knows?

After church this morning Dot and I drove out to Mangreen to see if we could find her glasses, but without any success. Had a brief chat with William and Naomi, then came home for lunch. I sat in the garden and read some material that had backed up; so it must have been quite warm. Got chilly later, though.

Exploding oven and torpedoed rehearsal

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Unusual use of aeroplane at County Hall. Or maybe things are not quite as they seem…

Spring has not yet put in an appearance, despite the equinox. The air remains chill, and there is further risk of snow at the weekend. On the plus side, there is some blue sky today.

The quiz went quite well last Saturday. Our group of six came 5th out of 11, which is respectable enough not to be embarrassing, and everyone contributed. It was also fun, and the fish and chips was not too bad. The wine helped. Cold walk home, though.

I led the service on Sunday, and Margaret preached. I used a very old hymn called It is well with my soul, which I introduced by listing all the problems the composer had gone through. The hymn made quite an impact, as it had done on my poet friend Joy, who sent it to me. Funny how these old hymns still work.

The PCC meeting on Monday attracted the usual high attendance from  St Augustine’s (Dot and me) and brought a discussion on whether the church should state where it stood on controversial issues such as women bishops and gays, or indeed gay women bishops. Interesting arguments on both sides (of whether we should state where we stand), but no final decision reached.

Have almost finished the Dragon Hall leaflet; now need to get to grips with the one about the Pastons in Norwich, but I’ve been strangely lacking in energy. I’ve made an appointment with a sports injury specialist recommended by my doctor – not because I have a sports injury, but because my arm is getting worse rather than better, and there’s a chance she might be able to find out what’s wrong.

During preparations for Tuesday Group our bottom oven exploded. Happily and strangely, this had no adverse effect on the top oven, and we were able to transfer the jacket potatoes. Today a man came to repair the oven, which he did remarkably quickly and for a modest £77 – replacing an element and some other piece of gubbins which governed the display panel.

Other items which have taken up my time include stopping a couple of cheques that went missing en route to The Langleys. I have now arranged to pay Andrew’s fees by bank transfer. I have also confirmed that Fred will be joining us on April 5 for the CNSOB reunion at Dragon Hall and Yellows, which is nice. He’s the only one I know other than superficially.

Dot is spending a lot of time practising her violin to get ready for a concert by the Sillars Orchestra at the end of April. Meanwhile our band rehearsal scheduled for Sunday has been torpedoed because one member will be in Bristol. Oh well (Fleetwood Mac).