Clarissa et al.

I went to have a look at a 400 year old cottage in Waltham with a view to father financing it for Joe to live in, work on and eventually sell on.

At present it has no heating and a kitchen and bathroom which are both minute and considerably older than I am. It is lovely - two good size rooms downstairs plus an attached workshop, and two bedrooms upstairs. I could live there quite comfortably, and for a young man the fact that there are two supermarkets, a pub, a kebab shop, a fish and chip shop, a Chinese takewaway, and a restaurant - plus a chemist for bouts of man-flu and other afflictions of the malades imaginaire - within a minute's walk (yes, truly - ONE minute) can only be a bonus. AND it has a guide price of £60,000.

So, what is wrong with this little piece of heaven on earth apart from the fact that it needs a good bit of work doing?

Well, for me not much, although the lack of off-street parking and the tiny garden could be a snag. (On the other hand there is a car park outside the chippy, kebab shop, supermarket etc. just over the road.) For Joe (and most of my friends except Inge) there is a big problem. Most of the door cases are less than 6 foot - some 4 or 5 inches less, and the ceilings are too low to make enlarging them a possibility (apart from the rules surrounding listed buildings). Upstairs (or I should say upladder since the steps are so steep and narrow) the problem continues: I could stand upright in large parts of the rooms, but for Joe it would be a matter of staying in the middle under the roof ridge and wearing a hard hat at all times.

Having to go through one bedroom to reach the other one could also be a bit of a nuisance, and moving the staircase would only create a similar problem with reaching the bathroom - even if listed building regulations permitted such a thing. (My guess is that health and safety regs and listed building regs would put up a long fight against each other over those stairs whatever the buyer wanted to do.)

So will we be putting in an offer? We are having a think.

I would give up alcohol for Lent, but I don't much like it and we only ever drink wine for Sunday lunch anyway - or special company for dinner, but we've done family birthdays until April (and that's Helen who is t-total) unless we want to toast people miles away.

I would give up chocolate, but that's another thing I eat in such moderation (it gives me asthma) that it would be no real deprivation.

I could give up tea or/and coffee, but am I so caffeine dependant that it would be other people who would suffer when I exploded at them?

Sugar would be good, but, since I only take sugar in tea and coffee, the above would still be true, and sugar substitutes make me gag which would not be pleasant for other people either.

I could follow Rev Ruth's example and give up fiction. All fiction or just written fiction? Because I have already read 5 chapters of a Ruth Rendell and watched an episode of Lovejoy today (It is half-term.)

What I should really give up is my sins of omission, and do all the things I ought to have done rather than putting them off until tomorrow. That would really make me think and be a constant reminder throughout Lent. That way I would be giving up things I enjoy: time spent dusting instead of blogging, time spent ironing instead of reading, time spend hoovering instead of making another pot of tea, time spend gardening instead of watching repeats of ancient Sunday evening serials on ITV3 . . .

So that is what I am going to try and do.

It has been a very busy week in Swallow. Following Norman's funeral on Thursday, there was Lyn and Phil's wedding on Saturday, and today Diane was baptised. As I have mentioned before, Swallow is a very small village in which not a great deal happens - the last christening was two years ago, the last funeral four years ago, the last wedding seven years ago, and this week we have had all three in the space of 4 days!

Diane's was the first adult baptism I have ever attended. She doesn't live in the village, but had decided that she wanted to be baptised in the church where her ancestors were baptised and married and buried. I felt it was sad that this was a lone decision and that she was unsupported by family or friends, while the those of us who make up the regular congregation met her for the first time this afternoon. I was left with a vague feeling that Anglican adult baptism is a rather lonely decision and lacks the family joy of infant baptism, and that somewhere along the way there should be a role for friends and supporters ever though, in this case, those supporters would have been strangers. As it was - except for a single sentence which we joined in - it seemed to me that, from the time we stepped out of the usual order of the communion and turned to face the font to the time we turned round and resumed with the intercessions, we were onlookers rather than participants. Even if there had been a small change in the positioning of the baptism within the service so that the passing of the peace followed on immediately after and we could straightaway shake her hand and welcome her personally into the family it would have been better.

Even leaving aside those denominations in which adult baptism is the norm rather than the exception, surely somewhere in the christian communion there must be a more joyous model to follow?

What constitutes good manners when blogging?

Personally I like to leave comments on friends' blogs even if I have very little to say on the subject of the moment just as an indication that I am still reading and still interested, but I have to admit that this can lead to a lot of waffle and occasional accusations of trying to take over.

As a recipient I like to know who has visited, and appreciate the sort of comment which may in reality amount to no more than "Still here, Lissa". I also like to answer comments even if it is only "Thank you for your comment", and will usually visit the commenter's blog at least once.

And what about friends made while blogging? If you find yourself in the area do you make any attempt to meet them outside the virtual world of Blogland? I can imagine that if Sunday and the right part of Scotland coincided I might visit the public persona of Rev Ruth or Rev Kristan since I would want to go to church anyway, but surely attempting to visit the private people would be an intrusion, wouldn't it? On the other hand I think that I might respond quite warmly to an email from a long time blogging acquaintance saying that they were going to be in the area.

What do other people think?

Following another win by Grimsby Town(!) - and as an apology for Joe's lapse yesterday - I thought that I would pop in this little bit of nostalgia for Liz - the Mariners squad of 1972.

Back: Stuart Gray, Mike Hickman, Dave Booth, Clive Wiggington, Harry Wainman, Lew Chatterley, Matt Tees, Graham Rathbone, Barry Lynch
Front: Dave Boylen, Paddy Campbell, Dave Worthington, Lawrie McMenemy, Jack Lewis, Allen Gauden, Stuart Brace

Today was the first wedding in Swallow for ages - I mean literally seven years since the last. My idiot nephew was there to ring the bell and lock up afterwards. He took my camera with him, took photos of the flowers (500 daffodils which he had helped to arrange) and not one of the bride!

Unfortunately the church is so cold that the daffodils hadn't opened much, although they looked quite nice and will presumably be lovely for tomorrow afternoon's service.

Midnight

These blog providers are disgusting!!! One minute past midnight and they have already added a year to my age! I have eight hours and four minutes to go before I am actually 52! Besides, Liz has been 52 for 22 days and they haven't changed her age yet!!! I've always been her little friend - a foot shorter and three weeks younger! (Well, actually when we were first friends - a great many years ago now - the difference was seven inches with my 3 foot 7 inches to her 4 foot 2 inches. I remember distinctly: we were seven years old and the whole class had been lined up in height order and we were the end stops. Incidentally, when we were lined up in age order I was in the exact middle with Pat Leesing - whose birthday is also today. I think that Mrs. Tuplin must have been teaching us about averages.)

I've just remembered - the height line-up was used to give us partners for country dancing, and I had to swap places with Anita Thickett so that I danced with her twin brother, Nigel, and she danced with Alan Dawes, and, at the other end of the column, Liz danced with James Peters. How's that for memory? *

Morning

On my own for the first time in ages! I think that is a birthday treat in itself. I'm going to lunch with Isabel later, but for the moment I can just chill. I've been rushing around like a blue-arsed fly for the last week. I could do housework, but I'm not going to, and just for a couple of hours I have no auntly, work or parish duties: as my grandmother used to say Peace perfect peace and loved ones far away

Late Afternoon

I'm back from lunch with Issy - Pike Pate, Seafood Pasta and Victoria Sponge (jam & cream) - very, very nice. Inge was there too with baby Tilly and also Callum who was off school with this cold everyone has had. Jess and Josh have both had days off with it this week. Liz is obviously taking being a distant cousin seriously and, like most of the rest of the family, has not sent me a card. All my other friends have sent me one.

I will now send this little fellow to pee on her computer.

Early Evening

Helen, Glen and the children have now given me presents and cards. Pa hasn't even remembered to say Happy Birthday yet.

Bedtime

I had to remind Daddy that he hadn't so much as said Happy Birthday! So he said it from halfway up the stairs.

Saturday Morning

Pa went out this morning and bought me a creme brulee set with one of those flame-thrower things you see chefs on TV using to caramelise sugar toppings. He also bought Joe a load of photo frames. He says birthdays always take him unawares.

*I can also name all the other children in the class.
GIRLS: Sally-Ann Balkwell Janet Bloice Mary Coleman Susan Dows(e) Marilyn Hardy Julie Heaton Mary Marshallsay Elaine Maw(son) Mandy Nicholson Karen Nickells Elisabeth Nicholls Suzanne North Lynne Osborne Charlotte Pycroft Ellen Rimmer Carol Whotton Caroline Willows
I think that is the whole line-up for first year juniors, but there were also in the same year in the other class Helen Bulman Susan Hart Christine Jennings Lorraine Ryan Dorothy Severn Jennifer (Trafford?) Pauline Waddington and there was a certain fluidity between over the years. Charlotte and Lorraine certainly swapped over at the end of the first year
BOYS: John Aston David Bates John Brown Stephen Cook Melvyn Cox Roger East Stephen Farrier John Grant Michael Hawley Stephen Kendall Hamish Mills Shane Nesbitt Richard Spicker David Stagg Ian Thompson Timothy Turner Derek Woollins

This morning was Norman Parker' funeral.

I went early to the church to put the heating on, and chatted to the grave-digger (the grandson and nephew of the grave-diggers I have met before) about the problems he was having shifting the solid chalk which starts under about 3 inches of topsoil here. At least he didn't hit some seventeenth or eighteenth century burial unmarked on our plans and have to start again. Fifty years ago they stumbled on Vikings!

By spreadng ourselves out our short nave was made reasonably full with 18 family members plus just 5 neighbours - Pa, Basil, Joy, Geoff (representing the Parish Council of which Norman was a member before Geoff was elected over thirty years ago) and me, plus the funeral director. But it is sad that after 50 years living in one place (albeit half a mile from the village itself) there should be so few villagers to remember him.

Ian Robinson did the eulogy very nicely for someone he didn't actually know and read 1 Corinthians 13. We sang Love Divine and Abide with Me, and I was interested to hear the grandads in the pew behind singing in two pure clear tenor voices undiminished in their eighties even on the high notes. I've always been vaguely aware that Daddy could sing, but he's never been one like myself, my mother and grandmother to sing almost constantly when working (not teaching work: housework), and I had no idea that Basil sang so well.

You can't really grieve much when someone in his eighties dies quite suddenly and is spared all the indignities of extreme old age, but it was a very sad little funeral unlike the last half-dozen or so funerals in Swallow which have been very much celebrations of the liife of a person who has been well-known, well-liked and very active in the village and elsewhere with the church packed so full that we have had to use the Sunday School benches, borrow chairs from the village hall, put the family in the choir stalls in the chancel and sit or stand in the porch with the door open.

(For information: we generally tell people for weddings that 60 to 70 is the top limit on numbers if they want everybody able to sit down in the pews in something approaching comfort.)

It's Joe's 21st birthday and he is driving me mad, mooching around the kitchen, sniffing with his man-flu and stinking of menthol lozenges and olbas oil while I am trying to cook his dinner menu, keep the kitchen tidy and stop Joe and Pa fussing and driving each other crazy. Oh, yes, and keeping Joe's OTT table setting under control: some silver, some candles, not the pre-electric Blackpool illuminations and the royal treasury!

Starter
Parma ham with feta cheese salad and olive and basil bread rolls.
(bread rising in the kitchen as I write)

Main Course
Shoulder of lamb casseroled in mint and rosemary gravy with new potatoes, sugar snap peas, carrots and mashed parsnip.

Pudding
Pot au chocolat
Lemon cheesecake
(made yesterday)

Cheese Board of mammoth proportions, celery, grapes.
Fruit
Sweeties - mint and turkish delight chocolate thins, mint imperials, and Cadbury's mini eggs.
Coffee (or tea?)

Much Later

Well, that all went very smoothly.

When I was Joe's age I prided myself that I was not ageist in my friendships and that my friends covered many decades in their range of ages. But I think that Joe takes these things a step or so too far in that his youngest dinner guest is just under 20 years his senior. I didn't have a 21st birthday party (being at home from college laid low with bronchitis at the time) and Pa was saying that he was in a ship just off Iceland for his 21st so maybe we don't know that much about 21st celebrations, but we both found Joe's guest list just a touch eccentric - I mean does a retired vicar, 4 churchwardens, a county councillor, a shop-keeper (ex-policeman) and an accountant sound like a 21 year old's normal choice of boon companions?

Having said that, it all went remarkably well and the party didn't finally break up until after midnight.

This evening I was helping Jess with her history homework in which she had to write a diary of plague year. They were given an A4 sheet with an outline of entries and material to be covered. In it were two spelling errors - serchers for searchers and aloud for allowed - as well as its being in a generally childishly illiterate style with commas used where there should be full-stops, sentences without main verbs, repeated words and inappropriately modern vocabulary. It also starts in January 1665 and goes on through March, April and September 1665: what happened to new year which was still in March in those days? I realise that this last might have been a conscious decision to avoid confusion, but there is no excuse for the rest.

This sheet is used year after year. It is bad enough that such poor stuff should come from an individual teacher, but Jess informs me that it is out of a book which means that these errors are perpetuated in school after school across the country and have gone uncorrected by a whole range of publisher's readers as well as the computer's own spell check.

It's half-term in North Lincolnshire, so that is what I'm having. The fact that the other local authorities in the area don't have half-term until next week makes no difference. I'm glad it's this week with Joey's 21st on Wednesday, and plenty of work to do. Joe - both gourmand and gourmet - moved out of his mother's cooking and into mine some years ago so I am responsible for his Birthday Dinner Party.

Did you watch the BAFTAs last night? I didn't - I detest awards ceremonies. Foyle's War was my Sunday evening choice preceded by Top Gear. However, everyone I have talked to who has seen both says that, while Helen Mirren is very good in The Queen, Judi Dench is superb in Notes on a Scandal, yet the latter doesn't seem to feature at all among the winning films.

A Bit Later

I had just finished writing the nothingness above when our neighbour's daughter came round to tell us that her father had died in the night. Norman had a stroke last week (when my father found himself having to look after him and call the ambulance as Jean couldn't manage much only months after her own stroke when it had been my sister who rallied round - I was out on both occasions) but he had seemed to be doing quite well.

Ours is a small village where not a lot happens, but there is a wedding booked on Saturday which, with the flowers to be arranged on the Friday, has limited the available time for the funeral which will be on Thursday morning at 11 o'clock.

More importantly, if you read this, stop and say a prayer for Norman and Jean who have always lived quietly and are now parted for the first time in over fifty years.

It has rained solidly for two days now.

I have an incipient cold - sore throat at 7 o'clock every morning, and a blocked nose each night at around 2.00 a.m., but nothing develops beyond a vague feeling of malaise.

I changed my library books yesterday morning, marzipanned Joe's 21st birthday cake, and was informed by Jacob that one of my tyres looked a bit flat. By teatime it was completely flat, and I suggested that Jacob just jack up the car and wait for daylight to come and the rain to stop before he actually changed the wheel. He thought he had better do a proper job, only to discover that my spare (one of those irritating 'get you home' jobs) was also flat. So he left the car jacked up over night as I had first suggested. (I can do all this myself, but if there's a strapping eighteen year old on hand, why bother?) This morning Pa took both tyres to be fixed, and Jacob finished the job he'd started last night. The entire contents of my boot are now on the back seat, but I can live with that minor inconvenience if it gets me out of the major inconvenience of changing wheels in the rain. I also had to pay him a whole 25p bargain bar of plain chocolate! (I reckon that's a bargain.)

I have just left Joe at the church where he is going to discuss wedding flowers with a couple who are getting married a week today - let's hope the weather is better for them by then.

Now for a cup of tea, then to cutting up the oranges for this year's marmalade.

After all that . . .

A totally trivial bit of information:- We have a rather nice linen tea-towel which we always put over bowls of food left to soak/marinate/whatever: it has on it a utility mark for 1942 which means that this is probably the 65th batch of marmalade it has covered - about fifteen more than I have helped eat and about 20 more than I have helped prepare.

They said it would snow overnight, but 7.00 a.m. and not a flake had fallen.

Today's school had a 100 mile round trip from Sleaford, so, before actually setting out for work, we did check whether the school and the bus company were still set on braving the elements.

They were, so I did too. My journey was somewhat of a scenic route as there was an accident near Barnetby where the A18, A180, M180 and A15 meet and I had to wriggle along some rather frosty back roads to avoid the tailback. As I headed west it got darker and darker, and by the time I reached Normanby it was snowing hard. It didn't last long although it looked very pretty and wasn't in a hurry to melt.

The school arrived a little later than expected, and we had a very good day with two workshops - Eyes to the Front (Victorian Schoolroom) [me] and History Detectives (Farm labourer's family in 1881) [Hilary]. The children were well prepared, nicely costumed, friendly, polite, lively . . . and so were the teachers and adult helpers. The one male (parent? classroom assistant?) was so unnervingly like a long ago boyfriend that at the end of the session I just had to ask whether he was related, but he wasn't that he knew of.

Afterwards Hilary and I went to the cafe to have hot chocolate and cream to toast our forthcoming birthdays which will happen during half-term. Hilary's is alarmingly the one which takes her nearer to 60 than 50, but she says she's quite looking forward to 60 when it comes and has long lists of adult education classes she plans to attend just as soon as she reaches the age when they are free. I shall be 26 again as usual. Sadly, my preferred age will be exactly half what it says on my birth certificate.

Thinking about what I said a couple of blogs back, it isn't just Victorian washdays which are to some extent a remembered reality for most of us, but are distant history to our younger colleagues; the same applies to the Victorian schoolroom, and to an extent to the unheated, bathroomless houses we show the children in History Detectives, Step Inside, Victorian Cottage and Living with the Land. We all remember frost flowers on the windows and getting dressed under our nighties to keep warm, and - though we may have lived in houses with bathrooms and indoor loos - I am sure that we all knew people whose only loo was in the back yard (albeit by our day it was a flush rather than a bucket). My grandad Turner's house had a proper upstairs bathroom, but an outside loo because my great-grandad (who built the house and its neighbours for his children) though it nasty and unhygienic to have such things indoors.

I did one of those silly quizzes with this result -

*You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat*

You are a nice blend of cat and dog.
You're playful but not too needy.
And you're friendly but careful.
And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.

Are You More Cat or Dog?
http://www.blogthings.com/areyoumorecatordogquiz/

Don't do moody. Neither does my cat. I bark from time to time and occasionally (metaphorically) bite. The cat doesn't. Love dogs, but am allergic to their hair. Love cats, and they can sleep on my face without bringing on the slightest wheeze.

Yesterday I was sitting watching daytime TV (Homes Under the Hammer) and eating a late - very late - breakfast while deciding whether to get the groceries or do the ironing first, and wishing I didn't need to do either when Rachel phoned from work.

Could she ask a big favour? Was I free? Now? Could I go to Baysgarth House Museum where there was a school party waiting for a "Childhood Memories" (Toys) workshop?

How did that happen? I ask.

Somebody (unnamed) had booked them in just five days ago, well after the week ahead sheets had gone out.

Fortunately I was wearing clothes fit to be seen in (must have had shopping in mind rather than ironing as first task when I got dressed) and my hair was dry. So I jumped in the car and drove - not fast as the minor roads were still icy in patches - the dozen miles to Barton.

Once there I set up, and delivered the first part of the workshop, by which time the year 1 babes were well ready for their lunch, so we took a half-hour break before completing the outdoor play part of the workshop.

We haven't had a muddle like this for a long time, but it does look so bad when it does happen.

Today was a scheduled KS1 laundry with me watching Kristan doing it solo for the first time. She was very good, but I realised that things which most of the rest of us (all in our 50s) have as memories are to her just history. I'm not saying we all remember dolly tubs, but we do remember top loaders which danced around the kitchen throwing water all over the floor and which had mangles rather than a spin cycle.

Boston Utd 0 - 6 Grimsby
Can the Mariners keep it up?
Well, based on past form, I'm not holding my breath. But it makes a nice change.

6-0!
Bore 4 mins
Hunt 7 mins
Toner 20 mins
Bore 42 mins
Paterson 63 mins
Bore 78 mins

According to a local headmaster if he could pay 20 pupils £5,000 each to fail all their GCSEs he could then access huge funds to improve his school, but being successful for a community school (in an area creamed by a grammar school) gives no additional funding.

Nephew Joshua (15) says show him the money and he'll happily fail any exam going. Fortunately the money is hypothetical.

After the Big Brother fiasco, police raids in Birmingham have yet again brought the topic of racism to the fore.

At the museum we do a Key Stage 2 workshop called Take Cover about the home front during the Second World War. We deal with evacuation, rationing, civil defence etc. in relatively easy ways - packing the evacuees' cases, working out what a year's coupons would cover in replacements, finding out about Mrs. Lee ARP warden, sheltering in the Anderson shelter (with sound effects), putting baby (doll) in a respirator, looking at genuine and trying on reproduction gas masks etc. It is a very good workshop which the children enjoy.

Although for 7 to 11 year olds it is probably best suited to the older end of that range, but we had two groups the other week from the younger end, and what they lacked in recording skills (filling in their booklets) they made up for in enthusiasm and interest. Then, as we were looking at the artefacts used by Mrs. Lee in her role as ARP warden, one child asked me the unanswerable question about Hitler's racial policies.

These children are eight years old. About 60% of them are of Asian origin. (Many are Moslem and some may even share Hitler's low opinion of Jews, although I would hope not.)

Lissa takes a deep breath, and looks rapidly at the options:
Pass the buck? "Ask yor teacher when you get back to school, we haven't time now." Not a good response.
Go for the full horror? No, there really isn't time for that, and they are only eight years old.
Suddenly I notice that, of the dozen children seated round the table it just happens that the four blue-eyed blondes are sitting together on the far side of the table, while both the teacher and I (brown-eyed, brown haired northern Europeans) are standing behind the pedominantly Asian mix of dark-eyed dark haired children in shades from Eastern Mediterranean to West African who occupy the other three sides of the table.
"Well," I said, "Hitler had this daft idea that blue-eyed blondes were much better than other people and should rule the world, which means that he would think those four [indicating the other side of the table] are perfect and the rest of us aren't fit to live."
We all agree that this is indeed a very silly idea. The blondes deny any natural superiority as vehemently as the rest deny inferiority.

Was it the right answer? Will they remain vehemently anti-racist? Or could I have I accidentally sown the seeds of racism in a happily multi-cultural class? Have I opened them to ideas for which they are not yet ready? Should I have answered the original question? And, in answering it, should I have personalised it to them in order to show them just how ridiculous such ideas always are?