Clarissa et al.

Swallow Bookworms met this evening. As I predicted only one person actually liked Life of Pi, and only three more of us had read it to the end - all with pretty much the same feeling of horrid fascination, but . . .
Would we read it again? No
Would we read another by the same author? No
Would we recommend it to someone else? No

As the evening's host, and anticipating something of the reaction, I prepared a simple - well I thought it was simple - quiz in case we ran out of things to say or those who hadn't read it wished to redeem themselves as serious readers (although nothing here they couldn't have seen on the telly).

CASTAWAY QUIZ

What is the name of the ship in Treasure Island?
What sort of food did Ben Gunn dream of at night?
When they find the treasure chest it is empty: what has happened to the treasure?

On what day of the week did Robinson Crusoe first encounter his servant/companion?
What was the name of the real person on whom Robinson Crusoe was based?
Hum the theme tune of the 1960s TV version.

With which island do we associate Ralph, Jack and Peterkin?
Who wrote this book?
Who used the same set-up for another book a century later?

And the name of that book?
What is it that gives this book its title?
How do the boys light the fire?

The Swiss Family Robinson was written jointly by a father and son: what was their surname?
In what language was it written?
What other person do they find on the island?

Can you place the 5 books in this quiz in chronological order?

What was the name of the island in the year 2000 series of Castaway?
Which TV presenter made his first appearance there as a castaway?
What is the name of his actress mother?

What is the name of the theme tune for Desert Island Discs?

Answers given in Comments below

I like a nice garden. I like them best when I can just wander round, or sit and admire the view.

Unfortunately our half acre of paradise requires work. Now me I talk a good garden, and father is good on mowing and much too keen on pruning/lopping/slashing. Weeding is something neither of us like.

Still it has to be done and the beds right in front of the house were in desperate need, so I spent a couple of days doing a proper job, dividing clumps of summer flowering bulbs and getting right down to the deep roots of the perennial weeds.

Sometime during these two days something bit me on the leg. I'm fairly typical of the women in my family, and our photo albums are full of fat women with slim ankles and unlined necks, but I have not reacted well to that bite and, while my left ankle remains slender and the calf really quite shapely if a bit short, my right leg has swollen up and looks as if it was designed to support a concert grand. It doesn't hurt, and my sister assures me that a week's course of anti-histamines will bring it back to normal, but I am not a happy bunny.

Have you ever had to tell a child that the work they have done is too good?

Well, it happened to me tonight. I have a speech and drama pupil who is 13 going on 40 - a very serious, old-fashioned young man. For his current exam he has to speak on one of a selection of titles on literary/dramatic themes; his subject is a comparison of two story tellers, and he has chosen two of his own favourites Dickens and Tolkien. Today, after spending part of the last few lessons discussing what approach he should take, he did his talk for me for the first time.

As a piece of written work it was superb - any A level student would be proud to present something so cogently argued and stylishly written. Knowing Jack I have absolutely no doubt that it is his own unaided work, yet putting myself in the shoes of an examiner I know that I would be suspicious that it was the work of a parent or teacher rather than a 13 year old.

Fortunately it is not an essay which he has to read, but a talk which he has to deliver, so I could praise it to the skies as an essay, and still tell him truthfully that to turn it into a talk he has to make the language less formal and more conversational. Not that Jack's normal conversation is ever particularly informal: not merely have such expressions as 'yunno' and 'innit?' never passed his lips, but his normal mode of speech consists of sentences in which you can all but hear the capital letter and the full-stop, which have subjects, verbs and objects each limited by their adjectives and adverbs, and which often include several dependent clauses.

Even so, I am willing to bet that when he takes his exam he will be questioned very closely about the content and style of his talk and will only be in this conversation that the examiner will be convinced that the style of it is very much Jack's own.

I remember my mother talking about a similar problem with one of her pupils - a boy who, at the age of nine, had a great passion for the works of Jane Austen and who was kept in the exam room a full fifteen minutes beyond his time proving his genuine encyclopaedic knowledge of all six books to an examiner who proved to be a fellow Janeite.

On another subject also connected with education. On Wednesday I was chatting with Ann and Hilary after work, and Ann talked about the herb garden she had worked on at a school where she had taught and which had featured on a regional television news programme, and how it had all gone (as such projects do) since she had left. I expressed surprise since the headmaster had brought a group to do our 'Trug to Table' workshop at that time, and his enthusiasm had been such that I was really pleased that, when hearing that he wanted the workshop to have strong links with that herb garden rather than the more usual social history slant, I had gone that extra mile downloading a lot of information about medicinal herbs and their properties and getting one of the gardeners to give me my own instructional tour of the garden so that I would know the more obscure plants as well as those we always talk about.

Surely, I asked, a man so enthusiastic about the project would not have let the garden go to wrack and ruin? No, he wouldn't, but sadly he had died of cancer and his successor had not merely been uninterested in the garden, but had rubbished everything he had done, turning a happy school into a hotbed of discontent and academic failure - which is just one reason why Ann is now a museum education assistant, and no longer a teacher at that school.

It set me thinking about all the school choirs, chess clubs, drama groups, science clubs, sports teams etc. which depended on one enthusiatic teacher and, despite their popularity and success, found no one to take over their running when that teacher left. It is all such a waste. And don't get me started on school websites: I recently had a look the website of one primary school known to me and found that it hasn't been updated since Josh (taking his GCSEs this term) was in year 5 and Jess was still in the infants!

We had a staff meeting this morning sitting in a sunny room eating cakes and drinking coffee, tea and chocolate while discussing various matters including the restructuring of the museum service; all agreed that them upstairs are not always very nice with their cost cutting measure of foisting early retirement upon an assortment of senior staff, but were relieved that our jobs are untouched by the changes.

In the afternoon we had a walk round the park in the sunshine going over the summer workshops, and being instructed in plant and bug identification by two of the rangers (one of them Hilary's son Richard).

Here are some of my colleagues hard at work.

Added on Thursday: I have just realised that they are arranged in exact age order from front to back and left to right. How very odd! They are Linda, Hilary, Ann, Rachel, Sarah, Lauren, Kristan: missing are Dianne, Sharon, Margaret and myself who would fit in order from just ahead of Linda to just after Ann.

Below - especially for Liz - are some pictures of the bluebells at Normanby

It's tough old life!

Back to work today with a school from Beverley doing History Detectives. Staff meeting and training day tomorrow before we are inundated (I hope) with work.

It is not easy working in Scunthorpe at the moment as they are all so cockahoop about their football team's promotion, while Grimsby languishes in the middle of League 2 - the old 4th division - which means that Scunthorpe will be two divisions above them next season. I believe it is still technically possible - if Scunthorpe loses the remaining two games and their nearest rivals win both, and all the matches have spectacularly unlikely goal differences - for Scunthorpe to be knocked off the top spot, but it is highly improbable.

Speaking of unlikely goal differences, Grimsby won 5-0 on Saturday. Good. Why couldn't they play like that all season instead of in a few odd little spurts?

Friday: the last day of the school holidays (not including the weekend) so I took Jess, Joel and Joe to Belton House.

Belton is a stately home (National Trust) with really good opening hours and a lovely garden (this is not my picture as Joe had vanished into the shop with my camera in his pocket by the time I went into the garden - it came off the National Trust website).

It has to be said that it isn't either the most interesting house or the most beautiful garden in the National Trust's portfolio, but it has those extras which make it perfect for a family day out: a superb adventure playground and a miniature train as well as lots of space for picnics and ball games.

We arrived at quarter-to-twelve, so we went for the picnic first - bit of a scratch affair since I gave it no thought before about 10 p.m. on Thursday, but fortunately everyone of us likes cucumber sandwiches and choc-chip cookies. Then Jess and Joel rushed off to the playground while Joe and I cleared up and followed on more sedately. Joel treated us to a train ride, and then Jess and Joel went back on most of the apparatus again.

When they had done everything at least twice we wandered back to the house where the kids went round fast and Joe and I took our time. The children rejoined us at the two o'clock talk on the history of the house, and then came round the second half of the house again at our speed rather than theirs.

Joe treated us to afternoon tea. I went to the garden where the children were supposed to meet me after looking at the stables. (Last time Jess went to Belton it was for a Three Day Event where she met her heroes - Willian Fox-Pitt and Andrew Hoy.) I wandered round the gardens alone, and eventually ran the children and Joe to earth in the shop - an easy guess as they all seem to have this obsession with spending money.

On the way home we managed to avoid the clash of tastes over music by the simple expendient of not having any, but we were subjected to the silly jokes; fortunately I know a great many of these. I can also tell tales of every gaffe Helen and Inge made as teenagers which keeps their children endlessly amused.

This month's book at our Swallow Bookworms is "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, which I have just finished reading. I am willing to guess that this will be one which only about half of us have the stamina to finish, and few will like. I actually found it quite compelling, but rather too graphic in all its gore for actual enjoyment. It is the sort of book which sends you running for a nice, cosy Miss Read, or a comfy reread of a childhood favourite by way of an antidote.

Yesterday Joe and I noticed that the show house on the new development opposite the church was open to view so we went to have a look. Not that we have any plans to live in one of these houses, nor indeed have we the half million needed to buy one: our motivation was sheer nosiness.

This development consists of seven 4 or 5 bedroom houses each costing around £500,000. In the one we saw two of the bedrooms (one single, one double) had en suite shower rooms, and two small doubles shared the family bathroom. There was an enormous landing. Downstairs there was a fairly small kitchen open to a dining room, and a separate utility room. From the dining area was a small sitting area which is also a passage room from the front hall to the kitchen etc. Off the front hall is a small study, a loo and a large sitting room with a conservatory-type room behind it - this has a proper roof rather than a glass one which is just as well as it faces due south. The kitchen was blandly modern, and a lot of the finishes around the house were noticeably rough. The show house has been expensively furnished in a style which I would describe as Louis Quinze meets insipid modern minimalism: in other words rather a long way from what I like, although Joe loves it.

However furnishings are a side issue. What really amazes me is how non-eco-friendly the heating etc. is; you would think that an expensive new build in the country would make use of the best of green technology. The plots are quite small although described as large in the advertisement. That advert is seriously misleading in any case as the artist's impression of the site shows it backing onto empty fields whereas it actually backs on to Chapel Lane in which dwells half Swallow's population. Through the field on which they are built flows, trickles or stagnates - depending on the season - the beck: and that field has always become totally water-logged whenever it rains. Nobody in the village sees any reason why the gardens should not be equally water-logged.

As far as I am aware nobody has bought any of the seven houses yet - either those that are completed or those that are still at little beyond the planning stage. It was mentioned at our PCC on Monday that proximity to a pretty church added value to houses; another thing which adds value is school catchment area which couldn't be better unless, like me you have a rooted objection to selective schooling. Yet in Swallow there are eleven houses facing the church, of which seven expensive new builds, one large, well renovated old house and one largish modern house are all for sale. There is another old farmhouse for rent, and just one old cottage with a family who intend to stay. There are several more houses dating from the 1960s/70s in the village for sale. It's a nice village in good commuter territory for Grimsby, Lincoln, Scunthorpe and the Humber Bank industries, but about 15% to 20% of the houses are empty or for sale, and absolutely nothing is moving on the market.

A few weeks back (March 26th) I reported that Calor Gas had moved our tank into what they deem a safer position i.e. out of its little niche into the drive in a very good place to back the car into it.

Today they came to put in a new gas tank since the one they had just repositioned was out of date.

Last week they sent a man to fill the old tank.

Far be it from me to suggest that people at Calor don't know what they are doing, but maybe they need a better internal communications system.

Lincolnshire schools have another week of holiday, so I told Jess that I would take her for a day out on the days Helen was working. She asked if she could bring a friend, and chose Joel. So yesterday we went to Lincoln: Jess, Joel, Callum (Joel's little brother, my youngest godson, who goes to school in North East Lincolnshire and is back today), Joe and me.

We parked, left Joe at the cathedral, and headed downhill to The Collection - Lincoln's new museum of archaeology - where we split into two groups: Jess and Joel, Callum and Clarissa. There is lots of hands on stuff which Callum enjoyed enormously; so did the other two, but they insisted on keeping up a teenagerish commentary of boredom all the time they were making mosaics, sorting bones and pots, trying on costumes, and examining materials. We went on to the art gallery where the Lowrys, the de Wints etc. etc. as well as all the modern stuff in the temporary exhibitions was met with indifference or 'I could do better' until we came to two paintings of horses and hounds on the stairs of which the children approved. Now, I won't pretend that all the modern art on display appeals to me or even makes much sense, but there was nothing which did not display considerable craftsmanship. One nice thing was two large drawing pads and pencils for visitors to add their own artwork. Callum sat in a chair and dozed off so I have left a small pencil sketch of him, and Joel has done a portrait of Jess who drew a horse as her contribution.

On a side issue: people talk a great deal about dumbing down of school exams. I was talking to Hilary the other week and we are both convinced that the work which gained us top grades for Art A-level 30+ years ago would hardly get us a C at GCSE nowadays so high have the standards become. Carolyn, who studied art and design to degree level, is of much the same mind and says that students are now doing for A-level work at the standard she was working on at college.

Back to yesterday: we went up the hill and met Joe at the ice cream parlour for a healthy lunch of ice-cream and cake. The plan was then for Joe to take Joel and Jess for the roof tour of the cathedral about which he had enquired in the morning. He had specifically mentioned that he would be bringing two 12 year olds, and was given to understand that would be OK, but when they got to the cathedral they were told that there was a lower age limit of 14. Joe feels that he wasn't believed that he was 21 and therefore they were treated as a group of unaccompanied children rather than two children accompanied by an adult.

Since writing this I have received an email from Lincoln Cathedral - the under 14 rule is an insurance requirement and unbreakable. They will make sure that it appears on the website and that all the volunteers know, not just those directly involved.

Anyway, we all went to the Bishop's Palace instead, which is where I was going to take Callum anyway while the others were up on the roof.

Looking at the view over Lincoln we managed lots of very sensible discussion of the changes in that view since St. Hugh's time: not much we agreed in the layout and general roofscape (more tile, less thatch nowadays) of the old city, and the common grazing land is still common grazing land, but huge changes in the distant view where once Sherwood Forest came almost to the city walls and now the industrial city sprawls to the south and west.

On the way home we stopped in Market Rasen to pick up some chips to complete the healthy lunch we had started in the ice-cream parlour.

After a lovely day yesterday I spent today defrosting the big chest freezer in the garage. By the time I got to the bottom there was a miscellaneous collection of peas, prawns, sweet-corn and blackcurrants scattered in the frost, as well as a large number of UFOs (Unidentified Frozen Objects).

Everything is now tidy, and we have eaten a strangely unbalanced meal of chicken legs (possibly tandoori or maybe some other spice), chicken kiev, some sort of pasties (probably chicken and vegetable) and chocolate eclairs all of which were too defrosted to return to the freezer once it was cleaned out and ready to receive them. The cat has feasted on prawns, and Helen will soon be the recipient of large quantities of pet meat since Albert is an eater of processed cat food (the expensive sort in envelopes) while his predecessors liked raw meat meals alternated with tinned. Helen's dogs eat everything not nailed down so they can have all the stuff which has gravitated to the bottom of the freezer - some of which may date back to Inga who died nine years ago although most of it will have been bought for Cally.

I seem to have vast quantities of assorted fruit purees, and tubs of fish stock which I never seem able to find when I want to cook paella. In fact, with a freezer full to bursting, why is it I can never find anything when I need to have a meal ready in a hurry? Dressed pheasants and joints of venison are all very well, but they're not exactly short order food.

Anyway, the job is done. Now for spring cleaning the sewing room which is knee deep in ironing waiting to be done. Just finding the floor will be a step in the right direction!

It isn't often I get to visit an historic house I have never seen before, especially one within two hours drive from home. And I really don't know why I have never been to Sutton Park before. There are a few historic houses, castles, abbeys etc. in Lincolnshire and the neighbouring counties which I haven't visited, but they tend to be those which are open only in leap years on the third Sunday in April and the second Thursday in July between the hours of 2.45 and 3.15 provided the owner isn't stricken with hereditary laryngitis and the sukebind is in flower. Sutton Park is not in this category being open a perfectly reasonable two days a week throughout the spring and summer.

It is the home of Sir Reg Sheffield who owns Normanby Hall; his parents bought the house in the 1960s when Normanby was threatened with open-cast mining and Scunthorpe Borough Council took over the running of the hall and park. You can see why they chose Sutton Park which is a charming eighteenth century country house of very reasonable and liveable size.

It was a lovely day today: the sun shone and the gardens were pretty with a promise of great beauty later in the summer, and the rooms were bright and inviting. I felt that I would love to stay in the Victorian bedroom which is particularly pretty, or sit in the boudoir with its views over the garden.

It was a guided tour which was straight-forward and informative with plenty of leaway for questions and observations. Mrs. Atkinson, the guide, was perfectly honest about what she didn't know, and directed us to David at the gate who would know all the answers. Well, he didn't know everything off-hand, but he gave me his email address so that I can ask him what I want to know where the answers are literally at his finger tips. My main questions concern the late nineteenth century Lady Sheffield whom we call Laura (from the 1891 census) and they call Priscilla - apparently she used both names without any particular favouritism which may explain why she seemed to have disappeared from the 1901 census. More research needed, and still no picture to show the children who do the Domestic Staff workshop.

One of the nice things in the grounds was being able to go right into the ice house - very dark inside, but I took a couple of flash photos which show the brickwork beautifully.

The tea room was very good, if a touch expensive.

I watched a programme about the restoration of Kew Palace this evening - surely the least pretentious and stately palace in the history of monarchy - and thought that I really would like to visit it again now the restoration is complete.

Helen being at work, Jess and Rowan spent the day with me.

I think it must be very difficult for a priest going to a strange church with an unknown congregation to take a service using that church's srvice books possibly without even knowing in advance which of the many variants of wording and form they use there. (In our group of parishes 2 use BCP, 2 Common Worship modern language and 2 CW with (mainly) traditional language, and one seems to be living in the 17th century with BCP Morning Prayer and no Communion - enough to confuse a senior cleric with a lifetime's experience, let alone a non-stipendiary whose experience may well not extend much beyond his/her home parish.)

Cuxwold uses BCP, which I generally rather like. However I have a feeling that the visiting priest was not wholly familiar with this form and I have to say that I was not particularly impressed with the Easter Service. Surely, even if you are being especially careful with an unfamiliar order of service, there is no need to stick so rigidly to 1662 that there was no greeting as in Common Worship or ASB - not so much as a "The Lord be with you" "And with thy spirit", let alone the joyous Easter greeting of "The Lord is risen" "He is risen indeed". In fact she rushed so headlong into the Lord's Prayer that we were all caught still standing from the first hymn. Anyway it continued rather sad and muted, and the rigid adherence to BCP which had marked the beginning of the service including the full recital of the 10 commandments, was abandoned for the readings so that we got a rather non-descript bit of Acts instead of Colosseans 3:1 "If ye then be risen with Christ . . ." and St. Luke's account of the resurrection rather that St. John's.

Her sermon gave us a lot of images - a palm cross, a sprig of rosemary, an empty egg-shell, a picture of the risen Christ, and a rather sad piece of music sung by a Ukrainian choir. On Easter Day I want joy (the Easter Hymn from 'Cavalliera Rusticana' or the Hallelujah Chorus) and I felt that we were left with the sadness of Good Friday still unresolved. At least the church was full which, among other things, meant that our singing was better than usual. And the weather was wonderful.

Here is a picture of Josh (at 16 really a bit on the old side for this), Jess and Rowan hunting Easter eggs.

In Belgium the tradition is not that the eggs are hidden by the Easter Bunny, but are shaken down by the church bells - and this is the tradition we have always followed. Although the Easter Bunny has never played any part in the Turner family Easter, this year there were more chocolate rabbits in evidence than eggs - Lidl did an absolutely magnificent one in both plain and milk chocolate, and it is rare to find the dark chocolate which everyone but Josh (and Rowan) prefers.

Finally a picture for the Rev Ruth of a daffodil cross I spotted on my way home today from buying stuff to sort out the leak in the bathroom.

Good Friday always seems to me to be an odd day where church services are concerned. We all know that it is the most solemn day of the Christian year, but nobody seems quite sure what we ought to do about it.

I say "we all know", but actually it seems that very few people take serious note. Joe and I went to Caistor for today's service and there were just six people there - three of us from Swallow, and there were not all that many at last night's Maundy Thursday Communion. However, I am not writing this to complain about the small numbers in church: I know that a lot of people are away for Easter and that a great many will go to church on Easter Day either at home or with their hosts for the holiday.

Getting back to the oddness of Good Friday services: that Maundy Thursday, the day of the original Last Supper, should be marked with an evening Eucharist is obvious, and tradition dictates that Easter Day should be celebrated with the most joyous, most choral Eucharist the congregation can manage. In between is Good Friday. At one time we always had a renewal of our baptismal vows; my childhood memories seem to be a mixture of Morning Prayer and Walks of Witness; in recent years there seem to have been more Communion services than anything else.

Today it was Stations of the Cross. It was a very plain service with meditations at each station, followed by prayers. It was also very different from the last (and only previous) Stations of the Cross service I attended sometime in my late teens/early twenties which was highly choral, and accompanied by clouds of incense. This not only makes me feel physically ill, but brings out the stern, unbending protestant in me. I dislike intolerance in any form, and I particularly dislike it on the odd occasions when I find it in myself. I'm not talking about academic argument about differing doctrines, but the unreasoning prejudice against such unprotestant practices in an Anglican church that incense brings out in me. Maybe that's why it is called incense: it certainly incenses me!

Anyway today's Stations of the Cross was a complete revelation to me in its simplicity, and felt absolutely the right way to mark Good Friday.

Actually it's not: for some mad reason Lincolnshire has decided to keep the children at school until tomorrow.

At Normanby Hall today the park was packed with families (from North Lincolnshire where term ended last week) enjoying the sunshine, playing games and eating picnics. In the afternoon they were looking round the hall - lots of them.

I, on the other hand, was teaching the Victorian Schoolroom to two very nice classes of children from Newton on Trent. In the morning it was years two and three, and in the afternoon years four, five and six. One of the older children was called Clarissa, so we shook hands, agreed that neither of us often meets another Clarissa and that to do so made a nice change. Actually, I think I have only ever met one other Clarissa, although I have met two Clarices.

One day a couple of years back I was having lunch with my friend Isabel who lives at the Old Vicarage in her village when somebody knocked on the door to ask whether she had the key to the church (which she did being church warden and church organist). Issy introduced us to them - must have been quite formal since she gave our proper names, and the man gave a bit of a start and said that his wife's name was Clarissa (although he had already addressed her as Mary). So we did loads of "What a coincidence!" sort of remarks that I am Clarissa Mary and she was Mary Clarissa. It turned out that she had been brought up in that house during the war when her father was the vicar, and she told us one or two snippets of local history including that once she had been walking up the road and met Clark Gable who was stationed at nearby Goxhill USAF. Apparently they didn't have much of a conversation as she was much too over-awed.

Then the couple went off to renew acquaintance with the church where they had been married.

Today is my baby sister's 50th birthday: unlike my own two years ago this make me feel very old.

In spite of her playing it down she has a great many presents and cards - most people (including me) getting her the Joules clothes she likes so much. She has loads of tops and no bottoms. One friend sent her a birthday card with a picture of a fat, middle-aged couple wearing very scanty bathing costumes with the message "Two thongs don't make a right". I'm not making any connection between these facts.

On Friday afternoon there was a leaving do at the museum for Kevin Leahy and David Williams which was attended by a lot of people whom I didn't know. Today we went out for a staff lunch with them. I don't think that either of them wanted to retire and - at 60 and 55 respectively - I don't think that it was what either expected so soon. There is restructuring (council speak for compulsory redundancies) planned and I think they took the golden handshake while it was on offer and before anybody started to pull apart what they had so carefully built up.

That a small municipal museum in a not very large workaday northern town should win so many national accolades is largely due to David's quiet leadership. That it should be such a happy place to work is also largely down to the two of them heading a team in which everyone is valued and everyone has input with nobody needing to be the big "I AM". I haven't said much about Kevin. You can google his name and find a good deal about this distinguished archaeologist's work (although it won't tell you what a delightful, humourous man he is) but it is harder to find out about David, partly because of his common name and partly because being an admirable administrator doesn't tend to win you public praise or even minor notoriety. Goodness, but how we are going to miss them!

I seem to spend my life doing things that people are no longer believed to do in the 21st century.

This morning I went to Church.

This afternoon I made a pie, made some cakes and pastries, made soup, chopped firewood, fetched in coal, laid a fire (too warm to light it before the evening) and will - if a get round to it - darn a starched damask dinner napkin. Or I may read my current book which will be more fun.

Starting with Time Team there's some good television this evening, so I'm not living entirely out of time.