Clarissa et al.

My father is rather upset. A little local paper has published an obituary of a friend of his which instead of doing it right (see comment 3 on the blog below for good example) has chosen to criticise his manners and sense, rather than dwell on his many real achievements.

Apart from anything else it is plain bad manners to the grieving family, and there is not a thing they can do about it. Even if it were totally untrue, there would still be nothing they could do as there is no law of libel to protect the dead. As it is, everything there is an interpretation of the truth coupled with a certain amount of innuendo.

It is, for example, very easy to reinterpret a domestic benevolent despot into a bullying tyrant (as Joe frequently does with both his grandfathers), and there could be no redress, but it seems that once they are dead (which will, I pray, not be for many years yet) anyone could choose the outright lie and portray either of these peaceable, sober, family men as promiscuous, violent drunkards – than which nothing could be further from the truth!

Of course, you don’t sanctify the memory of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin etc. simply because they are dead, but for the normal run of flawed human beings surely there is a period of mourning before anyone begins dwelling on their faults?

There is, of course, something of a culture of bad manners at present which we all find ourselves falling into from time to time. My brother-in-law has the irritating habit of greeting people with "Not you again" and addressing them as 'Fatty', 'Baldy', 'Stinker' etc. He thinks it is funny. So do his sons. It isn't: it's very irritating, and the worst thing is that one finds oneself answering in kind.

On a similar line the now grown-up daughter of a family friend at one time had the habit of greeting people with the words "Hello trouble", which is a perfectly reasonable greeting from uncle to niece (or, better still, human to cat) but which always used to set my teeth on edge as a greeting from a teenager to a friend of her parents' generation although I am sure she never intended anything other than friendliness. Maybe if we had adopted the custom of honorary auntship it would have been easier for her to address me, though I have never insisted on formality and like the fact that my own nephews and nieces, my godchildren, ex-pupils (sometimes current pupils), friends' children etc. address me simply and unadorned as Lissa.

This, of course, leads to a certain culture clash: my father's family likes to retain the formality of uncles and aunts (although Steve and Clare are as close to me in age as they are to my father), while my mother's family does not, though I still have a couple of honorary aunties - long-term friends of my mother's whose older children had dubbed her Auntie Mary before I was born. Helen's in-laws carry the honorary relationships even further with any friend of an older generation being called auntie and uncle including even older cousins of the same generation, and those of a grandparently age becoming Grandma Mabel or Grandad Fred. Moreover they regard addressing an older person by his/her first name as being rude and correct the young person (including young adults) even when they have been invited to do so, and seem to be equally down on the 'unfriendly' use of Mr., Mrs. or Miss. (Sir, Dr, Lord etc. are fine as this is respect to a superior person!) The trouble with honoraray uncle-and-auntships is that, once adult, both using and dropping them are almost equally likely to to give offence, and it is so much easier never to start.

All of which takes me a long way from my original theme - or possibly not - since it all comes down to having respect for the feelings and sensibilities of other people.

Today would have been my mother's eightieth birthday. It is also the day of her brother Peter's funeral.

This formal picture was christened by Peter "Concession to the Bourgoisie"

Apparently it is the custom where he lived on Gabriola Island, BC, for lots of people to contribute memories, verses and tributes to the memorial service.

I had been trying - not very successfully - to think of something to send to be read out about Uncle Peter which his own children wouldn't say better and with a stronger grasp of the details of his life, when, very late last night, I thought of this:

Sometime in the 1930s Nan (his mother, my grandmother) wrote this little poem - I suspect as part of a parlour game as there are companion pieces called Mary, Dad and Mummy and they are on loose paper and written in pencil.

PETER

Peter has learned a new trick,
He can now snap his fingers.
It has taken him six weeks to learn,
But he knows it now
Very thoroughly.
I wonder
If the time spent
In acquiring this infuriating habit
Has really
been worth his while;
But, of course,
When I remember
That it took two years
To learn to whistle
And another year
To wiggle his ears,
Perhaps
He really has
Achieved something
After all,
Who knows?

It seems to me that this trivial little piece of ephemera catches something of the very essence of a man who throughout his life refused to be beaten by anything great or small, whose personal motto could have been either "Go for it" or "Never give up".

I also thought of this more serious and considered poem also by Nan:

Requiem

It must have been for one of us, my own,
To drink this wine and eat this bitter bread.
Had not my tears upon thine face been shed,
Thy tears had fallen on mine
And thy mouth for mine made moan.

And so it comforts me - yea, not in vain -
To think of thine eternity of sleep.
To know thine eyes are tearlesss, though mine weep
And though the years be long, through mists of pain
In God's eternity, we'll meet again.

Anyway, here they are again, brother and sister about 77 years ago:
and here is Peter with Nan in the last picture we have of her, and Uncle Peter looking as I best remember him.

I'm back after a beautiful sunny week in beautiful sunny Wales.

Just a taster to start: The cottage we stayed in in Beddgelert - back (second along), front and the view early in the morning from the garden.

SATURDAY

We managed to make a reasonably early start which was amazing considering how much I hadn't had time to do on Friday with all the drama going on.

Our journey took us first to Clumber Park (Sherwood Forest) where we had a drink and a sandwich, then across the country via Bolsover, Chesterfield, Buxton, Congleton and Crewe (a mainly beautiful route) to Little Moreton Hall. I had been here before and remembered a feeling of slight disappointment in this fascinating building. Usually such feelings are dispelled on a second visit when expectations are less high and therefore all that is good comes as a pleasant surprise. This time it didn't vanish, but was reinforced. Architecturally amazing, it remains an unfurnished shell. Joe. a Fred Dibnah fan who remembered a programme he made about it, had precisely the same reaction. Yes, it's interesting. No, it neither moved nor excited either of us.

On our arrival in Wales the rain started - just spitting, but enough for Joe to sing his little triumph song about Wales being wet and my being wrong. (Our previous holiday in Wales had been dry all but the Sunday morning and one overnight rain storm.) The cottage, as you can see from the pictures above was lovely. In the heart of Beddgelert with a frontage (backage?) on to one of the rivers, it was furnished in that pretty, slightly kitch style one associates with the better sort of holiday cottage. Once we had taken our luggage in, we went in search of food which we found at the Antique shop cum Bistro just opposite the end of the bridge. Joe had his favourite lamb shank (how anyone can eat a whole lamb shank is beyond my understanding - I would serve that for a family of four) and I had crab thermidore. The standard was reasonable, and the price a little high. The owner (or to be accurate the owner's husband) was a Scot who had been brought up in Canada - in Hamilton where not only has Emma just finished a year at MacMaster University, but where the brother of one of my great-great-great-grandmothers settled in the mid nineteenth century. Mini-mini world!

SUNDAY

We went to church at St. Mary's - footpath from behind the house and across two bridges - where the service was in a mixture of English and Welsh with a service book printed in both languages so it was easy to follow. Afterwards we got talking to someone whose native place is not far from Kris's parents in Michigan. As I said, it's a mini world.

It is still early in the tourist season so the timetable for the Welsh Highland Railway is somewhat limited, and - going from Rhyd Dhu at the foot of Snowdon - Sunday was the only day which would give us a clear two hours in Caernarfon rather than a quick turnaround.

Back to the cottage for a quick cup of proper coffee, and then a couple of miles up the road to Rhyd Dhu where we parked the car and admired the view of Snowdon until the train arrived.

It was a beautiful day so we travelled in one of the open carriages to make the most of both the fresh air (plus sooty specks and sulphurous steam engine scent) and the photo opportunities. Joe has recently bought a superior (ancient and heavy) camera with many lenses to complement his enormous digital one and lugged both of them wherever we went doing his imitation of a Japanese tourist.
Here are some of my photos of the journey and the trains taken on my nice little camera which lives quite comfortably in my handbag.

Once in Caernarfon we found a cafe (not the one which was bad in 1963, still bad in 1978, and looks unimproved since, but another round the corner where we had some quite acceptable vegetable soup at a very reasonable price) and thence to the castle. Is it a sin to say that this is my least favourite of the Edwardian castles? Well, it is, but it isn't often that you find it as empty of people as this

which I find a big improvement on the usual crowds. And here are some views from a tower or two - there wasn't time between trains (nor the energy) to climb the lot, but we managed a respectable selection. Joe insisted on buying a new guide book which was big, fully illustrated and expensive; I would have been happy going with the yellow card guide that my father purchased for 4d in 1963, and on which there is a perfectly adequate plan. After all, how many accounts do I need of Edward I's annexation of Wales?


There was no time to look around the town (which once beat Grantham to the most boring town in which to live title - as voted by teenage radio listeners) but on our hurried return to the train we passed a 'gifte shoppe' in which I saw a toy border collie puppy. Sometimes a present metaphorically has someone's name on it: in this case it was literally so as the name on the pup's collar was 'Jess', so I stopped to buy it. Jess sat looking out of the window on the train, and thereafter slept on the spare bed in my room for the rest of the week; she proved to be very well trained.

At the station there was something of an altercation going on between two people concerned with a bus tour. I gathered that the mainly wheelchair bound passengers had been one way on the train and someone had reacted badly to the journey, and that this apparently was all the fault of one of the organisers who should have known better than to subject someone with a disability to such a disagreeable experience. I wonder how many others had really enjoyed their train ride, and how many other wheelchair users travel on the Welsh Highland Railway each year with no ill effects and just as much enjoyment as the rest of us?

The return journey was every bit as enjoyable as the outward one.

Back at the cottage I cooked a massive mixed grill which Joe well and truly ate.

MONDAY

Down the Lleyn Peninsular to visit Plas yn Rhiw - Joe's rather surprising choice for a revisit. I love the simplicity and charm of Plas yn Rhiw, but Joe tends to go for the private palaces rather than anything smaller. We managed to get there early despite a diversion on the road to Porthmadog, having to stop to buy a battery for my watch, and the fact that the Tesco petrol station had closed which necessitated a hunt for petrol at anything approaching a reasonable price.

I said most of what I wanted to say about Plas yn Rhiw in September 2006, so I won't repeat myself, but just add that the gardens are even more lovely in the spring. The first two photos are of the same views I took last time, while the third was taken while I was chatting to an old lady (92) who was also visiting the place (quite sprightly, and still mentally all there - we should all be so lucky!)

On then to Aberdaron - usually too crowded to park, but a good visit this early in the season. We had a pot of tea, and I bought a fresh crab to take back for supper, after which I went down to the beach where I spent a pleasant couple of hours painting a very bad watercolour and having a paddle, and Joe mooched around doing his own thing (he doesn't do beaches and certainly doesn't do anything as childish as paddling!)

This is much better than my painting.

By missing the junction for Nevin I took us home by an accidentally scenic and circuitous route, but the crab salad together with the hovis I bought from a baker in Porthmadog made an excellent supper and was well worth the wait.

TUESDAY

I went for a walk to Gelert's Grave while Joe stayed in and watched some Find an Unsuitable House for a Fussy Couple who Don't Know Their Own Minds programme (repeat). Unfortunately I reached my destination to discover that my camera was not in my handbag as I had taken it out to recharge the battery the previous night. "Never mind," I thought, "it's only a short walk - I'll be back before the end of the week." I wasn't, so I have 'borrowed' this picture from someone else's website.

A chat with a young woman ranger who was monitoring the stream's flow, then back towards the village and a quick visit to the shops. I had noticed a craft shop and intended to buy something typically Welsh for Joshua. The shop in question had many wonderful craft items from all over the world (as well as a certain amount of tourist kitch) and a fair trade policy, and I was seduced into buying a didgeridoo - not so much a product of Wales as - possibly - of New South Wales, but something which I knew he would really appreciate and only £8! Across the road to another shop to buy some Beddgelert made fudge for Daddy and a postcard of Gelert's Grave to send to Jess and Helen; I also spotted a silly (rude) one about sheep and shepherds which I knew would appeal to Glen, Jacob and Josh so I divided the family by gender and sent the two. It was at this point that I discovered that my address book was also not in my handbag and made the decision to send no more postcards since I carry no postcodes but my own (and by extension Helen's) in my memory, and precious few house numbers.

After a cup of coffee, Joe and I set off for the National Slate Museum at Llanberis - somewhere which I never got round to visiting in my many stays in Wales in the past. I may well have been the winner here as it is one of the national museums which now have free entry. We had a little look round, then went in to see the film 'How to steal a Mountain' about the slate industry, and thence on to the demonstration of slate splitting. I think the demonstrator was called Daffyd Davies, and he gave an excellent talk.

Here he is trimming a slate. He then cut a round one, and offered it to anyone who could work out what it would be used for bearing in mind that they were never made commercially, but just for the worker's themselves. Plates, teapot stands and chimney covers were all guessed, but my guess that it was for covering dishes in the pantry won me the slate which I shall possibly not use for that purpose, cling film, tupperware and fridges having rendered them obsolete. Teapot stand seems good to me.

Our next port of call was the restored inclined plain with the same guide rushing ahead to demonstrate that too. He scampered up the steep side like a young chamois to get the thing started, and a bit later we were joined by another guide who explained very nicely what I would have though was clear to anyone watching the thing at work, but apparently from the questions asked wasn't.

Back in the museum proper we had lunch, and then finished the tour looking at the miners' cottages furnished in three periods
No. 3: The Golden Age of Slate (Tanygrisiau near Blaenau Ffestiniog, 1861) was rather sparsely furnished even for the period, and there was no real feeling of the crowding you would find in such houses.
No. 2: The Penrhyn Strike (Bethesda, 1901); this too had less clutter in it than one would expect.
Number 1: Dinorwig Closes (Llanberis, 1969); this was the one that convinced me that the museum curator's heart isn't really into domestic history as there were so many glaring anachronisms - biscuit tins in a design which didn't appear until the late 1970s, and a TV which anyone on a halfway decent wage would have replaced long before 1969 if only to be able to watch ITV, let alone BBC2 and even the burgeoning colour output. We were very much in Heartbeat territory here where anything from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies will do for any year in the 1960s. It's a shame, since the industrial stuff was excellent, and I would have liked to see the Engineer's House (which was closed for decorating) to see whether it was better presented than the humbler dwellings.

The waterwheel just couldn't be captured by my little camera, so here is another borrow - this time from the museum's own website.

But the foundry picture is my own.

Outside the museum we decided to indulge in another steam train journey on the Llanberis Lake Railway which was very pleasant and gave us a lovely view across the lake to Snowdon seen from the other side from Sunday's journey.


The combination of the lake, mountains and steam train made me think of Uncle Peter, so, Uncle, this journey is for you, and I hope that you find all these things in Heaven, and not 'every valley exalted and every rough place made plain' (Isaiah 40), which in my opinion would be very dull and not at all heavenly: I prefer 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my strength' (Psalm 121).

My last visit of the day - I somehow managed to mislay Joe who, I think, believed that I was heading underground - was to the hidden lake - actually a flooded quarry. This is very deep, very still and very mysterious, and belongs to a diving centre.

WEDNESDAY

Conwy always strikes me as having all the virtues which Caernarfon lacks. From the car park we headed straight to Anna's Tea Rooms in the Georgian drawing room above what is now a climbing shop, but in a building which was clearly once a fine town house. We came here in 2006, and Joe was determined to come back - they do serve very good coffee.

We went on to Aberconwy House (see last year's description) and then went on to Plas Mawr. A good many years ago Liz and I visted this building which was then an art gallery holding at the time, I seem to recall, a less than inspiring exhibition. Since then it has passed into the hands of Cadw and has been totally transformed with a restoration which goes to the very bounds of what that can mean, and leaves one feeling that it almost is a Tudor house as the original owner intended. The furniture is for the most part very good reproduction, the decorative scheme goes back to the closest that a study of layers of pigments can reproduce and in the kitchens there are rushes on the floor - it is very convincing and much too good to be thought of in terms of fakery.


It is a hard line to follow, and so easy to drop into disneyfication or dismal failure as at Connisborough Castle, or to play it safe as at Alford Manor House or, as I mentioned earlier, Little Moreton Hall. Here, as at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum and Gainsborough Old Hall, the success is triumphant. Of course there are criticisms: I for one cannot believe that any housekeeper in any period of history would have game hanging and dripping blood (though we have to imagine the dripping bit and I assume that is what the display designer failed to do) all over a table on which other foods are placed and prepared!

And here is the view from an upper window.

As you will see from the above, it was but a short walk to Conwy Castle, and thither we went for a brief revisit, and an opportunity to enjoy the fantastic views over the harbour and of the two bridges - well, three, but the 1958 road bridge wouldn't fit in and in any case interests me less than the Telford and Stephenson bridges.

Our last port of call in Conway was back to Anna's Tea Rooms for a very good fish pie each followed by lemon meringue pie for me and summer fruits cheesecake for Joe.

A brief stop on the way home - originally to check on what felt like a flattening tyre, but was actually just a noisy and bumpy road surface, but ended up as another long look at the amazing views of Snowdonia.

THURSDAY

Some time ago I watched a programme in the Restoration series which implied that Gwydyr Castle had long been in a state of ruin and neglect when the current owners bought it in the 1990s which belied what I remembered of visiting it in the early 1980s. To be fair the claim seems to be an invention of the television people and is not made in any of the literature left in the rooms by the present owners who have done a great deal of work and some amazing restoration especially in getting the entire fittings of one room back from America. Much less good than their restoration is their presentation of their home. There are no human beings to talk to about the house apart from the middle European girl with a less than perfect grasp of English who sells the tickets at the entrance, and the typed room guides in each room are very tatty with lamination which is coming adrift and feels quite dirty when you hold the sheet - moreover there is just one copy per room. One of the beauties of the computer is that new copies can be made of any document with very little trouble, and using a laminator is hardly more difficult. To be fair, I don't think that tourism is high on the owners' list of priorities, and their literature suggests that in letting the public into their private house they were bowing to the inevitable rather than fulfilling a long held plan; nonetheless it wouldn't hurt to update their room guides.

I recall that last time I visited I was wearing sandals and that the gravel got painfully between my toes; this time I was wearing trainers which may have a somewhat Minnie Mouse look with my bare legs and dress, but which improved my enjoyment of the garden no end.

For years I told people that the best cream tea in the British Isles could be bought at Ty Hwnt ir Bont in Llanrwst, but as the distance in time between me an those fondly remembered teas became greater an element of doubt entered into my mind about how good they really were; after all standards of catering have generally improved so much that surely anything which was outstandingly good thirty years ago must be fairly run of the mill in the twenty-first century?

On entering Ty Hwnt ir Bont seemed completely unchanged, and we took our seats and ordered - I a no.2 special (scone, jam, and cream, barabrith, and a pot of tea) and Joe soup of the day, coffee and scone, jam, and cream. Now I make very good scones (they are my speciality produced for village fetes, friends to tea etc.) and as a rule other people's scones are graded on a scale from 'not very good', 'quite nice', 'not as good as mine' and 'pretty well as good as mine'. At Ty Hwnt ir Bont there is another category 'better than mine', and I realised that my assertions over the years about the quality of the cream teas were nothing short of the plain unvarnished truth. Joe and I raised our cups to Liz, with whom I first visited this excellent tea shop. It has in fact changed hands just the once since those days when the couple who had run it for thirty years retired six years ago and the present couple took over, presumably inheriting the recipes in the process. In the upstairs gallery there are a few changes with the odd bits of tourist tat giving place wholly to original art.

Our next port of call was Trefriw Woollen Mill which I had never visited. We watched the sorting, carding, spinning and weaving with reasonable interest and Joe bought a set of dinner mats. I don't suffer from his urge to buy souvenirs wherever we go.

Back in Llanrwst we had a look at the Almshouses Museum which is a tiny but nicely presented local museum, and I bought milk, mushrooms, grapes and bananas at the cleanest shop I have ever been in - just a little Spar, but the whole place shone and, even in the middle of the afternoon, you felt that you could have eaten off the floor!

Along to another place which is much changed in the twenty-eight years since my last visit. Ty Mawr Wybrnant is the birthplace of bishop Morgan who translated the Bible into Welsh at the behest of Elizabeth I. When Liz and I went there in 1980 it was just another Welsh farm house in which one room was given over to mementos of the bishop. We knocked on the door and were admitted by the tenant/custodian. She showed us the few treasures including a copy of the Welsh Bible, and asked whether either of us knew Latin as she wanted to know what the dedication at the front said. Having myself failed 'O' level Latin not marginally but spectacularly badly, I happily nominated Liz, who (after a certain amount of modest protest) sat down to start the translation, whereupon two year old Richard needed to go to the loo. Left on my own while the custodian showed Liz and Richard up to her private bathroom, I too looked at the dedication which proved to be reasonably simple and by the time they came back I was able to give a rough gist – an interpretation with which Liz agreed. "That's what the other gentleman thought it meant" said the custodian, and offered us a cup of tea (which we accepted - the only time any school subject has directly earned me anything).

All has now changed: the house has been completely gutted and returned to its sixteenth century form and there is far more to see. There is also a massive collection of Bibles in numerous languages - all donated by visitors to Ty Mawr Wybrnant. And there are visitor lavatories in another building together with a display about the life and times of Bishop Morgan.

It was now time to head back to Beddgelert and I had wanted to go to either the Swallow Falls or Conwy Falls on the way, but it had started raining - rain which increased steadily throughout the evening which explains why I neglected to take any photographs at Ty Mawr, although I did hear my first cuckoo of the year. Here are some borrowed photos.

Not all was lost to rain as I was inspired to do a pencil and wash picture of Snowdonia in the rain after we had eaten supper. Distinctly better than my efforts at Aberdaron - I have posted two versions as the photographs of the painting are less than satisfactory - the original being too faint and the adjusted version too crude.

FRIDAY

Our last full day, and revisits to Beaumaris and Penrhyn, as well as a final chance to drive through Snowdonia.

We crossed to Anglesey via the Britannia Bridge - cleverly reused, but a mere shadow of Stephenson's amazingly innovative original design - and drove along the coast road up to Beaumaris, and on to Penmon where I hoped to see the priory. The views from the road were quite wonderful across the straits of the mainland shrouded in mist.

We arrived at the priory and I quote from the website "Parking is free outside the priory (as of 2007) but there is an option to travel further, on a toll road, toward the point and Puffin Island for a small fee (£2.00 as of 2007). The church is open throughout the day, all year." However, as I was about to get out of the car, I was told in no uncertain terms by a man with a very aggressive manner that it was private land and that the £2 fee had to be paid. We left.

Back in Beaumaris we had coffee, and I went to see the Town Gaol while Joe went to look at the shops. I had been before and I thought Joe would be interested, but it seems not and we agreed to meet at the courthouse in a couple of hours.

An early cell, a whipping post and the treadmill
It is well presented, with informative boards about the place.

The Courthouse is also well presented although, as with the gaol, there is a lot of repetition of information as well as the usual problem of having to explain everything as though to the totally ignorant so that it gets quite tiresome having to skip through to find anything specific to the place which I may not have heard before.

There is some sort of family story about great-grandfather Huston (who was a civil engineer) being involved in work on the Telford Bridge. Clearly it is too early for him to have been involved on the original build, so I wonder whether his role was on the restoration project of the late 1930s, although I would have thought he had retired by then. Anyway, whether or not there is any family connection here are two pictures, and - just in case anyone is concerned by the the second - yes, I was driving, but no, Joe took the picture.

Penrhyn Castle had undergone another change since my last visit - or rather my response to it had in that my feelings had veered back to quite liking its massive pseudo-Norman architecture and fittings. Whether on not one likes the interior, the setting is a delight.

I managed to get a cup of tea and a slice of barabrith, but Joe spent so long chatting to the room guides that the castle was closing up around him and the people in the tea shop had cashed up and gone.

A quick visit to Tesco for petrol and the wherewithal for supper, then a final trip through the mountains - fully visible now after being hidden for much of the day in mist and low cloud.

SATURDAY

And finally we reach the homeward journey. It's the beginning of the bank holiday and even in the morning I noticed that there was a steady flow of traffic (mainly caravans and cars with boxes of camping gear on top or in little trailers) heading in the direction opposite to us.

At Llangollen we went to Plas Newydd which was the home in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries the home of two women known as the Ladies of Llangollen. They 'prettified' an ordinary cottage and made this:-

- a house with a much carved and betimbered front, and a totally different back. The garden was very pretty, and I am glad to have seen it, but not to the point of making it a regular port of call en route to Wales.

We went on to Valle Crucis Abbey which is a Cistercian Abbey on a rather smaller scale than those in Yorkshire. Parts of the dorter and Abbot's lodging are roofed and show clearly the signs of having been used as a farm house for centuries after the dissolution of the manasteries.


After this we headed east towards England, but not without a final detour for a glimpse of the amazing Trevor Aqueduct.

Joe doesn't really share my passion for these wonderful feats of civil engineering, but I'm driving the car so we go where I take us.

The homeward journey was mainly a simple reverse of the outward one with just a brief stop at Blaze Farm not far before we reached Buxton for some very delicious ice-cream, and then just a surprisingly traffic free potter across England and home.

Wonderful Wales, here I come!

My Uncle Peter died today.

I had gone into the village to sort out various things to do with the church for this Sunday since both churchwardens will be away where I was told that the lead had been stripped off the village hall roof, so I checked and discovered that all the flashings had gone from the church roof too. This was not a good start to the day, and when I got back there was a phone message from my cousin Robbie to say that his dad had died in the early hours of the morning - the message was timed at 10 o'clock which with the eight hour time difference means that he had probably phoned within an hour.

Uncle Peter was a remarkable man. His proper name was Arthur Francis Huston because my great-grandfather was a man of strong opinions and when Nan, my grandmother and his daughter-in-law, said that she wanted to call her first born Peter he had declared that "every little street boy in Dublin is called Peter" (a fine comment from a man called Joseph!) and that "an eldest son should be named for his father" - hence Arthur. When she said that she would also like to name him for her favourite brother Frank, he was equally scathing about the use of diminutives - hence Francis. Anyway here he is as a baby and as a beautiful little boy -

When he was still a little boy he got TB and spent a long time in hospital lying on his back with a tubercular hip.

When it was at last clear that he would get well, although he was on crutches for some time and had a limp all his life, my grandparents decided that they could have another child and my mother was born. Here they are in the garden.

Mummy always said that he was a wonderful brother who always had time for his little sister, playing with her when she was small and allowing her to join in deep discussions with serious minded sixth-formers when she was still at primary school.

He went to Kings to train as a doctor, and despite further ill-health leading to his losing a kidney, he qualified and, in the aftermath of the second worold war which had taken so many of his contemporaries including his best friend Geoff, he served as an acting Lieutenant Colonel in UNRA dealing with refugees.

Back in civillian life he met Barbara
They became engaged, and were married on April 27th 1946. My cousin Shelagh was born in July 1947 to be followed at roughly two year intervals by Jackie, Richard, Patsy and Robbie.

The above show Shelagh, Jackie and Richard, then a truly dreadful photograph taken by my father in which I am the baby with my four cousins, my mother, their father and our grandmother, and finally Nan with seven grandchildren.

At this point Peter was 'head-hunted' and joined the brain-drain to America. After a time in New York and Atlantic City, they headed north to Canada where they settled in Regina, Saskatchewan. 'Settled' with Peter was never the defining word: while war was still waging there, he went to Vietnam to work in rehabilitating the young victims of war leaving their two grown-up daughters in Canada and taking the three younger children to Hong Kong. Peter acquired a medal from the President of South Vietnam for his work and Barbara acquired something else; she was spending some time in Hong Kong and some time working in an orphanage in Vietnam where she met and fell in love with Paul.

This is Paul who became their sixth child and third son. Back in Canada they decided that Paul needed a brother closer to him in age than the adult Rick and teenage Robbie, and so Philip, a Cambodian orphan, became son number four.

A few years later Uncle Peter was commissioned to do a study of crippling diseases in children in various places around the world, and they landed up in Bangladesh where Lili joined the family and evened up the son and daughter ratio to four apiece.

Back in Canada Peter had 'Huston Heights' (an apartment block for wheelchir users) named after him , Barbara was ordained, and the number of grand-daughters began to grow - 6 by the time they celebrated their golden wedding. They had by then retired and settled on Gabriola Island BC though Barbara continued her work as a priest. Peter, who has always written poems became a published poet with a slim volume of his own rather than in collections from literary groups. (I will ask my cousins permission to blog a few of them.)

Here they are with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren a day or so after their Golden Wedding. Yes, that is just the one family - since then Lili has added five children, Paul has added two, and their grand-daughters have also been very busy.

I blogged about their Diamond wedding in April 2006, and there are various pictures dotted about through my blogs.

After failing health for some time, Uncle Peter became very ill at the end of last month and went into hospital. With treatment he rallied sufficiently to go home, where he died peacefully surrounded by his family. These two pictures (lifted from the Extended Huston Family Group on Facebook) show him with Morgan, the latest addition to the family, and with Barbara in hospital on their 62nd wedding anniversary at the end of last month.

Most of my life Uncle Peter has lived far away in another continent and been only an occasional visitor, but he has always been a very strong presence in my life; I feel so grateful to have know him and very sorry for the next great-grandchild who will be born later this year and will never know his or her wonderful great-grandad.

Just an odd, and very sad coincidence: tomorrow I am heading off to Wales for a week - last time I went to Wales my Uncle Frans (Daddy's older brother) died the day before I went.

AGM last night - very long as it was the AGM followed by the ordinary meeting at which we elected (or re-elected in every case) the Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Responsible Financial Officer, Village Hall Representative, the people responsible for inspecting the two playgrounds and the Planning Sub-Committee. I'm on the last of these. I'm always quite happy to be Vice Chairman when my turn comes round, but we have all done at least one turn and there are two people who chair meetings really well so I have no ambitions and am happy to leave them to it.

The evening before Joe and I went to Brigg for the Archdeacon's Visitation where we were sworn in as Churchwardens.

Joe is thinking about an invitation to go back on the Village Hall Committee now it has a new chairman.

Well, despite my misgivings (see blog "Not in the Spirit of the Festival" Dec 4th 2007) I was overruled and Swallow took part.

Joe did a stirling job with his all day food, and there was a steady flow of visitors who spent a long time looking at my exhibition of photographs of 'Swallow People'. Local people were particularly interested, and several visitors found ancestors either in the photographs or in the registers, including Ian, the Rural Dean, who found his great-grandparents' (shotgun) wedding.

The weather smiled on us and people arrived to find tea tables set up both inside and outside the church.

We had photographs arranged along all the pews so that people could sit and examine them in comfort. I have now laminated copies of nearly all the pictures in the archive which means that we don't have to worry about them being handled.

Here two members of the Tomlinson clan, who farmed in Swallow for the best part of three centuries but have now all gone elsewhere, look at pictures of one of the two family farms (now lived in by my sister and her husband). Behind them are two montages of (mainly terrible) photos of Swallovians at a variety of village events - I seem to have caught nearly everyone either with a mouthful of food or with a glass of wine in hand - to which I shall add another . . .

And here is one of Pam's amazing cakes with the humbler offerings from the rest of us.
Although flowers were not a theme this year, several people had done flower arrangements

and Madge very successfully managed to combine a flower arrangement with the theme of the weekend with photgraphs of her 7 children, 15 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

We ended the weekend with Evensong. As usual with non-eucharistic services, the Anglicans were outnumbered by Methodists and Catholics. (Does this happen in other villages where the only village church is C of E, and members of other denominations normally have to travel to go to their own church so that they develop a sort of dual affiliation?) Richard, who took the service is a Methodist lay-preacher who is churchwarden at Nettleton Parish Church and has permission from the Bishop to take services in the Swallow Group, so we had a strong Methodist sermon to end our traditional Anglican Evensong in which the first lesson (Acts 2) had been read with great fervour by another non-conformist preacher.

Talking of varieties of Christianity there is a joke that the Catholic variety is centred on the Sacrament, the Protestant variety is centred on the Word, and the Anglican variety is centred on the . . . . . . collection. So, as a good Anglican, I am happy to tell you that the weekend made us over £350 - 75% up on last year.

I must teach around 5,000 to 6,000 children a year visiting the museum or on outreach worshops. I seldom learn their names, and only a few stick in my mind as individuals, but every now and then a child makes a lasting impression.

Today it was reported that a 12 year old boy from Scunthorpe had drowned while playing in a local lake. The photograph they showed was of an exceptionally beautiful child, and I think I recognise him as a little boy who came to the museum something over a year ago who was very eager with his answers and fascinated by everything. I remember remarking to one of the adult helpers who came with the group that it would pay to be in his gang when he took over the world: he was that sort of child, and you couldn't help feeling that he would make headline news one day. What a terrible pity that it should be so early and in such a way.

At the museum we give out evaluation sheets to every school party which comes in for a workshop or to which we go as an outreach. I'm not convinced that they ask the right questions, but that's another story.

Sometimes I think that it would be a good thing if we could do an evaluation of the schools. If we did this week's would have run thus:

Were the children well prepared? Yes
Were the children polite and helpful? Yes
Were the teachers properly organised? Yes
Had they made sure that all the adult helpers were properly briefed? Yes
Did they arrive on time? Nearly
Did they clear up after lunch? Yes, beautifully - not so much as a scrap of rubbish left
Have you any other comments?
Yes. one little girl called Bethany had the best manners of any child I have ever encountered. In coming forward to take her turn she said 'excuse me' to every child she had to squeeze past, and 'thank you' to each as s/he moved aside. At the end of her turn she thanked me for letting her help, and at the end of the workshop she came up to say thank you yet again.
I would also like to mention that. although the children were only five and six years old, not one of them had to be taken out of the workshop to visit the loo.

And do these wonderful children come from a 'good' school in a superior area? No, they come from a shabby old school in a relatively poor area of Grimsby.

I wrote recently about the sort of teacher who uses the fact that the school is in a poor area as an excuse for expecting nothing from the children, and therefore doing nothing himself. Suffice to say that nothing could be further from the truth in the case of this school, or - indeed - of the other Grimsby school I visited earlier in the week.

I have today received an email from Katy, the daughter of one of my cousins, about researching the family tree.

Among other things she wants to know about her great-grandfather. She is very lucky as she has good sources of memories of Grandad and Nan. For proper memories she could go to her two older aunts who would have been, I think, 7 and rising 9 when he died and should have some good substantial memories. Even better she can ask her grandparents while they are still there to ask - on a good day they should both have plenty to say.

However most interestingly to me her own mother Patsy - just one year my senior, and thus 2 when grandad died - has virtually identical memories to mine of being pushed in her pram, but set identifiably in her childhood hometown of Kingston-on-Thames. On the other hand, from the point of view of adding to her knowledge of family history, I don't suppose the news that her great-grandfather was inclined to take his baby grand-daughters out in their prams will set either the Thames or the Humber on fire.

I'm not a telephone user. I don't know why, because I'm really fond of conversation, but I don't initiate phone calls on the whole.

I have been a phone answerer all my life. By the time I was five or six I was politely giving the number and asking if I could help. A few years later I was taking messages rather than simply fetching the grown-up requested. So it isn't a phobia or anything like that, and I'm certainly not shy.

BUT I am so much not a phonecall maker that I find that I even have to look up my work number, and I can remember without prompting the number of just one of my close friends. Even in the village where I just have to remember the final three figures there are only about four numbers I have memorised (including my sister - the only family member whose number I don't have to look up). And no, it's not a memory problem either - I can remember things (including those numerically rather than verbally based) much more complicated than phone numbers.

My mobile remains off and in my car used only for "I'm late, don't worry" or "I'm in Morrisons/Tesco/Asda - is there anything you need?" There is no signal at home and I won't have it on when driving or at work.

Even when I do phone my calls tend to be short and businesslike rather than chatty.

Of course the fact that my father has always had a tendency to wander into the room tapping his watch and shaking his head, even when it was the person at the other end who initiated the call, may have something to do with this. He still does it even now we are on a scheme where evening annd weekend calls are free. He's great on turning off lights too, but so am I.

What brought this on? I wanted to phone one of my closest relatives, and I could only find the number from the address they left around ten years ago! So I emailed instead.

In a recent blog I wrote about my memories of being five years old. Some people find being able to remember in detail that far back amazing, so I thought I would go back a bit further.

It is dark, and I am carried out into a starkly black and white snow covered landscape. In the lamplight I see close to me the details of twigs coated in white frost or snow. I am handed down by the starchy one into the arms of the one who smells right.

The doors close and the car moves off. Lying on my back I can see when we move from the dark into a street in which there are pools of light from each shop. There are canopies in front of many of them with things stacked under them. The light is less vivid, and less all enveloping than that of the shopping streets we now know. The colours are muted. We move into dimmer light again, and the memory ends.

I asked my mother about this memory, and there is only one occasion that fits: I was six days old and being taken home from the maternity home.

There was hard, settled, frozen snow the February I was born.

My father's vehicle in those days was a fish lorry, but grandad lent him his car to take home his first grandchild, so this is the only time before I was a sitting up child that I travelled in a car. I must have travelled on my mother's lap many times in the lorry (children did in those days) but the angle of my view in this memory is completely wrong for that.

The logical route from the Croft Baker Maternity Home at the top end of Mill Road to our home in Prince's Road would have been down Trinity Road/Beacon Avenue past the cemetery and the Girls' Grammar School and on to Clee Road, but my memory shows Mill Road to St. Peter's Avenue with all its shops. Apparently not all of the obvious route was metalled road in those days, and - although my memory includes nothing of this and neither of my parents could recall either - we may have stopped to introduce me to Grandad, Nothernan, Uncle Steve and Auntie Clare who lived at the bottom end of Mill Road.

I also find the concentration of light and the muted colours of my memories interesting. I have since learned that babies are supposed only to see in monochrome at first. Most of my early memories are in glorious technicolor, and here they are not truly monochrome but more like an interim stage on one of those fades on a film from black and white to colour.

This is the earliest thing I can remember. I have several distinct memories of my maternal grandfather which must date from my first year as grandad died when I was fourteen months old.

I am in my pram and he is pushing me down Isaac's Hill on the far side from Princes' Road. As we turn to cross the road I can see the boards round the site where in a very few years time the Memorial Hall will be built.

I am in my pram again, and we are in the Dolphin Gardens to see the clock. My cousins Shelagh, Jackie and Richard, but not I think Patsy, are with us.
My memory gives no details of the clock beyond the fact that it was a clock although in my mind I have substituted a Hickory Dickory Dock clock from the Cleethorpes seafront illuminations. I am told that it was the Emmett Clock which on tour had reached Cleethorpes four years after its first appearance at the Festival of Britain. Unlike other memories here, this one is reinforced by a photograph.

I am in Nan's arms and she has carried me to the corner of Princes' Road to see the clock on the Electricity Showroom.
I have this memory from a toddling point of view as well, and I believe this little excursion was oft repeated. the clock is still there and the art deco building is now grade 2 listed.

I am in Nan's arms and she is holding the roses on the tall bushes in the garden for me to smell.
This too is oft repeated and reinforced by a photograph.

The house in Princes' Road - now in a sorry state of disrepair and with an overgrown hedge replacing Nan's roses.

I am toddling up Isaac's Hill beside Nan on the way to the library. I hold up my arms to be carried and she tells me that she can't carry me any more now she is an old lady of sixty-one.
Nan was sixty years and five days older than I, which means that any memories of being carried by her date to my first year and maybe a few months into my second.

I am with my cousins playing on a board floor in one room (a bedroom, I think) Jackie is trying hard with Patsy and me and entertaining us with a glove puppet monkey. Shelagh is reading a book. Richard is playing there too. The grown-ups are in another room on the other side of the front door. Everyone is sad and quiet.
I think that the location must be my uncle's and aunt's house (a plotlands timber building) on a field by the Thames with views (which I don't remember) of Hampton Court, and the occasion must be just before or after my grandfather's funeral.

My other memories of babyhood are mainly of scents and feelings. I can still remember the feeling of terry-towelling between my legs and the smell of urine mingled with Johnson's Baby Powder as the nappy is removed - a strange smell for nostalgia.

Talking about Johnson's Baby Powder reminds me of another repeated early memory: I am lying on my back on a flannelette sheet in big basket scales looking up at ranks of brown varnished shelves stacked with the goods of a chemist's shop and surrounded by a plethora of fascinating smells.
The shop I am pretty certain must be Broadburn’s at the top of St. Peter's Avenue, although my more conscious memories are of the expanded and modernised shop over the last fifty years.

By this time I am very much a walking talking baby, so I'll move on from babyhood to toddlerdom in a later blog.

In 'Anniversaries' a couple of blogs back I mentioned that my Uncle Peter was very ill in hospital.

Peter, after a career spent as a consultant physician, has a deep dislike of hospitals, and just a week later he is well enough to be released and is going home to be looked after by family.

As Uncle Peter (wearing his other hat as a poet) might say:
Old boots are tough,
But Peter is tougher;
Illness is rough,
But hospital's rougher.
I put this less than deathless verse in an email to Mary (my cousin Robbie's wife) who has been keeping me updated, and she has printed it up as a 'Welcome Home' banner.
Overnight Update from Mary Uncle Peter is home and loved the verse.

Auntie Barbara who was also in hospital was released earlier this week and may even let herself be looked after, breaking an exhausting lifetime habit of being the one doing the caring (which was probably the root of her problem in the first place).

They don't really do computers beyond word processing so won't see this, but love and best wishes to both of them.

This news was the climax of a really good day doing the Florence Nightingale workshop for the three year 2 classes at Signhills Infant School in Cleethorpes, where it seems that everybody from the smallest pupil to the head-teacher is happy, motivated and busy. This was my third visit, and I am always pleased to go back there.