Bonfire Night 2008

The most recent event was Guy Faulke's night (for info on this British tradition check out the 4th post under my Archives/November 2006!). As usual, there was a big open party at the Vicarage, with food and fireworks and a huge bonfire behind the garage. (If you page down a little further on that 2006 archive page you'll find some more scrapbook pages of that year's Vicarage Party with the bonfire and the BBQ - it was all very much like that again. And on the middle picture bottom right corner you see a photo with the inscription "Chris Soup" and a woman looking out of a window: that was my position this year!) Yes, I was on the catering team, responsible for dishing out foam cups of soup to the incoming visitors - "Tomato or Veg???"... There were nearly 250 people there this year - which sounds a lot but was down from the last years, owing to the muggy cold weather and threatening rain. They ended up putting on the fireworks before the appointed time, and just as well as no sooner had they finished as it started to rain for good and everybody hurried home, grabbing a piece of cake from the trays on the way out. Real shame - so far all the years we've been in Chertsey they have always been lucky with the Bonfire Night weekends...

Norfolk: A Visit and Funeral

In October, we had the rather sad news that Sean's nan was diagnosed with secondary cancer and failing fast, so we made a short notice decision to visit her the weekend after. It was really sad to see her so diminished as she used to be quite a sturdy lady. Despite it all she seemed in good spirits and was quite talkative for a while between catching her breaths. She was ever so happy to see us all, as we managed to coincide our visit with that of Sean's mum Paula and his sister Fiona. At some point, Paula mentioned that there were now four Scottish dancers in the room, because both she and her mum used to dance in younger years, I have been dancing for about two years now and Fiona started before the summer break. So more or less our last conversation with Elsie was sharing which ones were our favourite Scottish country dances! Eventually she grew too tired and so Paula and Fiona went back home while Sean and I had a look around town.

Elsie used to live in Sheringham on the Norfolk coast - quite pleasant to live perhaps but not much to see or do out of season. We had a look at the famous station which is done up Victorian style because the local steam tourist train stops there (of course not in October...) - quite cute, down to a stack of old luggage.
Then we went on to the seaside (buying a brollie on the way!) but the weather was really too sharp and the grey-brown sea was in, so there was no beach to walk on anyway.
So instead we found a cute little teahouse right overlooking the sea. It was called "Whelk Coppers", a reference to its history: it used to be three fishermen's cottages and the site around them was used to boil "Whelks" in big "Coppers" (copper cauldrons) to prepare them for the market in London. Whelk fishing was a major industry in Sheringham up to WW2.
The conversion of the cottages made what was reputedly one of the finest houses in town, and indeed the inside it beautiful: panelled floor to ceiling with carved Indian Teak, reputedly taken from an 1830's naval frigate. It was a stylish and cosy place to have a good old high tea with Darjeeling and tea cakes.
But that was about all that could be done in Sheringham and so we decided to drive in the general direction of home and see if there was anything to visit on the way. We stopped at Castle Acre, a ruined castle only a few hundred yards off the road we followed. Although just a provincial castle and a ruin it was still imposing, and also refreshingly open to visitors without gates, fees or restrictions so it was nice to just climb around the earthworks.
Plaques told us the history and showed drawings and sketches of what the complete buildings would have looked like, and also pointed out some of the rare chalkland wildflowers growing on the site. This one is a Small Scabious.
We spent a good hour rambling and climbing around and reading all the plaques - unfortunately, it was too late to visit the nearby abbey ruin by then. However, the journey home was adventurous, too, as Sean chose to take a shortcut out of the village to another road further South - but near the brook at the bottom of valley the road appeared to be completely flooded. We only had the little Smart car and the "puddle" seemed rather like a river to be forded which seemed a dubious manoevre. But as the photo is taken out the rear window you can see that we made it through...
And later on the motorway we were treated to a fantastic sunset (difficult to believe that we had started out the journey in the morning with torrential rains!).
Our second visit to Norfolk - precisely to Norwich on the 3rd of November - was in a more sombre mood as we were going to Elsie's funeral, held at the local crematorium. It was a drafty morning and cold in their chapel, and of course the occasion was sad, but nonetheless everybody seemed in reasonably good spirits and there were not too many tears. The service was short, with Paula reading the eulogy - a lot about Scotland, dancing and music, and I felt that I would have been more appropriately dressed in my highland costume... That would have been a nice touch, picking up on my last conversation with Elsie. We sang "Love Divine" but nobody seemed to know the music they used and it felt like I was the only person singing. Then all the close family had been invited to read a verse or poem (see below for mine). Afterwards, we all went to a country inn down the road for the wake with ample coffee and tea and a nice little finger buffet. It was lovely to see Sean's maternal relatives whom we don't meet very often (they all seem to live in Dorset and Somerset and I hadn't seen them since our wedding nearly 10 years ago!), and to share some old photos...

She is Gone
(Read out at the Queen Mother's Funeral)

You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived.

You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.

Your heart can be empty because you can't see her
or you can be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she's gone
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
or you can do what she'd want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Bellringer's Outing 2008

Let me show you some more photos: these are from the latest bellringer's outing, some time in October. We went with the Old Windsor band this year and unfortunately, the date clashed with the outing of the Guildford Diocesan Guild of Bellringers which we normally join. I would have loved to go with them, too, as they went to Cambridge this year! We went to Kent instead, ringing in four different churches - and very different they were. From the charming old style village church in Lympne which sits right next to the castle on an escarpment overlooking marsh and sea
to some more Victorian churches in New Church and Lydd, to a tiny village church in Brookland which has a wooden belltower separate from the church! Here is what the guidebook has to say about this curiosity: "St Augustine church is well known on account of the fact that it has a detached wooden bell tower. The tower is octagonal, and has a conical roof of three diminishing 'flounces'. Until 1936 it was covered in black tarred weatherboarding. It is believed the tower was built around 1260, and so is contemporary with the church itself."

Ringing inside Lympne and Brookland:
The startling red polo shirts are the team wear of the Old Windsor band and we were all supposed to wear them but it was rather a cold day so Sean and I had thick sweaters on top, and his father (middle of top photo) had clean forgotten...

The day's schedule was meeting at some horribly early time in Old Windsor from where Danny, the Tower Captain, conveyed us to Kent by minibus. It was a long slogging motorway journey through the foggy morning, only broken by a Little Chef coffee stop, and then a bit more interesting down tiny country lanes near the coast (some of them so small the minibus hardly fitted through!). We rang at two churches in the morning and then stopped for lunch in Dungeness. Dungeness is unlike any village or town I've ever been to in the UK: strewn out across a headland, most of which is a designated wildlife area, people seem to have built houses how and where they wanted - from clapboard to brick, all sizes and colours, some with neatly fenced off gardens staked out or an old boat by the side, some just thrown in amongst the dunes. A mini railway takes tourists around the nature reserve and of course where there are tourists there are hawkers - some of the houses had little stalls attached selling the usual array of cheap plastic beach ware. And somewhere amongst the lot sits the Britannia, a sort of old-style pub cum restaurant from the outside but done up like a ship inside. Everything was ship-like down to the menues and waitresses' shirts - obviously aimed at the kids.

This is where we had lunch - I took of course the vegetarian choice which was a lasagne and wasn't half bad. Everybody else had fish - the main item on the menu. Locally caught it said (and I couldn't quite see the wisdom in that as at the tip of the headland sits the big ominous bulk of a nuclear power station).
Right next to it is also the old lighthouse which is now a museum and for £3 a head we were allowed to climb the endless staircase to the top for a good view - of not a lot. The most interesting part was perhaps a series of caleidoscope mirrors fitted to the round inside walls:
The view from the top shows another Dungeness curiosity: it has two lighthouses. The old one (from which this photo is taken and which is now the tourist attraction) and the new one in the photo which is an automated working one.

The view also gives a bit of an idea of the strewn out houses although they get even sparser the further you go away from the "centre" of the village.
Then two more churches to ring at in the afternoon and another long drive back with a stop at the same service station... It was well dark by the time we got home!

Caterpillars, Hawks and Meadows

Okay, my latest interest/project is getting into gardening. My husband usually calls me "brown fingers" because I have absolutely no idea of how to grow things and consequently it has never worked very well when I tried. I've also never tried very hard...
However, with the way the world is going it all of a sudden seems a good idea to grow some vegetables in your own garden, preferably permaculture style, and so I have started reading up on it and have become quite hooked on the idea. Alas, next year I shall try...
On a more immediate note, it so happened that a friend of mine (Emily) became interested in learning a bit of ballet, and she offered me produce from her allotment as "payment". I asked if she could teach me about gardening instead - you know the old saying: give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him angling and you feed him for a lifetime... In the end we struck a bargain of sharing the allotment (she has recently started studying for a masters degree and finds that she doesn't have enough time to do it all by herself) and teaching each other. At the moment of course there's not much to harvest: lots of kale, some turnips and the odd squash but it's so exciting to cook with things that you've just brought in from the garden...

Anyway, the whole garden theme has prompted me to share some photos with you from our own garden. These are not exactly new - and neither are the other stories I'm intending to tell you today - but cover the last few months. I don't think I'll ever get around to keeping this blog patch up to date, but better late than never I suppose...

First of all, I found some of these charming critters the last time I weeded the beds - probably in October or maybe late September. Isn't he beautiful? I have no idea what he would have turned into later on - we did have a lot of Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies on the ivy at some point, but of course that doesn't mean they grew up in our garden! He might well have become a moth instead... So if anybody knows what sort of caterpillar this is please share with me!!!

This one is Sean mowing the lawn - but with a difference. If you have a closer look you'll see that it's lawn on the left (where he has been with the mower) and meadow on the right! Yes, we left our lawn to grow wild this summer and had the most beautiful meadow full of lovely wildflowers, most of them yellow, sort-of-daisy-looking ones. They attracted whole charms of finches to come and feed in the meadow and it was really lovely to watch. Unfortunately Chiefie kept treading the grass seeds into her paws (some of the wild grass seeds can be quite sharp), so we won't be able to repeat this wonderful exercise next year and will have to keep it as boring lawn...

And the final garden story is about a hawk killing a pidgeon at the bottom end of our garden. Unfortunately, the pictures taken through the window of my upstairs study didn't turn out too well but it was definitely a sparrowhawk. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye while working on the computer and as he was presenting his dark side my brain just registered him as something black - crow or similar - and I didn't pay much attention. Eventually the colour white penetrated as he was turning around and also plucking feathers from his prey and I realised that it was a bird of prey, so I started watching and taking photos. He was there for quite a long time, peacefully feeding on his pidgeon - I later took a photo of the "leftovers" which seemed rather "wasteful" :). He came back about an hour later and fed some more but in the end he disappeared and we were left to dispose of the carcass.

And just some more recent garden photos: pretties down the bottom...