Clarissa et al.

They have dug up Caistor Market Place.

There is no vehicle access to any part of it.

Usually shopping in Caistor is easy. You drive in, park in the Market Place, visit the bank, Co-Op, pharmacy, paper shop, post office, market stalls etc., get back in your car and drive away. Apart from the hoards of fifth and sixth formers buying sausage rolls and sandwiches nothing could be easier or quicker.

Except that today everybody was left driving around and around the perimeter trying to find a parking space at the old magistrates' court car park, the town hall car park, in the pub car parks, on the streets where it is not so narrow that one car is sufficient to block the entire carriageway.

Once you manage to walk into the Market Place it is almost impossible to cross the road from one shop to another, and when you do you get tar all over your shoes.

I am reminded of a speech exercise my mother remembered from RADA which neither of us has ever had any occasion to use, but which was given to the Sloaney types who went to RADA as an alternative to finishing school in those days. "It's too tiresome of Violet: she's been out for hours and hours and go tar all over the tires driving down Gower Street on the way to the Tower." Apparently the true Sloane did the entire sentence on a single vowel sound "It's too tahsahm of Vahlaht: she been aht for ahs and ahs and got tah all over the tahs driving dahn Gah Street on the way to the Tah" and the trick was to persuade them to differentiate.

AND the Co-Op had no cooking margarine, only the soft stuff which is neither butter nor margarine.

Still I have paid my road tax for the next year, posted a 21st birthday present, and hand-delivered a sixteenth birthday card (by great good chance as I ran into the recipient's mother so it is only five days late instead of the full week it would have been if I had posted it).

And I have found my birthday book. Sorry Jeni - late but on its way.

Anyway, there are notices all over Caistor saying that Lincolnshire County Council apologises for any inconvenience. It had better: I shall have a word with my County Councillor the minute he gets in!

AFTERWORD

At Swallow Bookworms we all took off our shoes on arriavl as we had all been in Caistor at sometime in the day and were frightened of getting tar on Veronica's nice carpet.

Last year I wrote on the fifth Sunday in March

"Today we were congratulated for being in church because
1) It is Low Sunday when traditionally people don't go to church because they went last week.
2) It is Fifth Sunday when traditionally people don't go to church because it doesn't really count.
3) It was the Group Service when traditionally people don't go to church because they say they can never remember what time or where the service is.
4) It's the day when the clocks go forward, we all get an hour's less sleep and traditionally people don't go to church."

Except that, with Easter being later this year, it is Passion Sunday (two before Easter) not Low Sunday (one after Easter), I could write the same today even to the extent of it being a Sunday people don't go to church because last week was Mothering Sunday and they went then.

In the country it is quite hard for people to be regular about their church-going as there are very few churches which have services every week so you have to travel about a bit. My nephew Joe has done this all his life, and one of the churches he goes to is St. Peter's Great Limber (Limber is great only in the sense it is bigger than Little Limber which is a single farm - it is not what one would call a large place). He started going to church there with his primary school, and continued with his grandmother. In his teens he became a bell-ringer, and this year (in the wake of a dozen years success with it in Swallow) he has been asked to organise their contribution to the West Lindsey Churches Festival. When he was sixteen or seventeen he was invited to go on their electoral roll. However, due to an oversight on the part of the electoral roll officer for the church, he was not sent a form the last time the whole roll came up for renewal.

Limber has recently got a new priest-in-charge. She has come from a city parish, she doesn't live in the village, and so far she doesn't really know the people or the parish traditions. When Joe attended a meeting last week to discuss the arrangements for the WLCF the electoral roll officer wanted to regularise Joe's presence at the meeting by giving him a form to put him back on the roll, and the new priest opposed it on the grounds that he does not live in the village and is already on the roll of another parish.

This should not be a problem as the Church of England has quite specific rules in cases like this:

Under the Church Representation Rules any persons are entitled to have their names entered on the roll if they—
1. are baptised and aged 16 or over;
2. have signed a form of application for enrolment;
and either
3. are members of the Church of England or of any Church in communion with the Church of England being resident in the parish or (not being resident in the parish) having habitually attended public worship in the parish during the six months prior to the application for enrolment.

When members of the PCC corrected her on this point she told them that she was right and they were wrong. A few days later, after she had been shown the legislation from which the above quotation comes, she still said that Joe was not entitled as he did not "habitually attended public worship in the parish" and she had never seen him.

What is habitual? In a town parish it might be - say - two weeks out of three. In the Swallow Group of Parishes there is one church which holds services only once in every two months: maybe two attendances out the three in six months would be 'habitual'? So with churches such as that in Great Limber which have monthly services maybe four attendances in the last six months would count as habitual, which would in fact be more than either of the churchwardens there (both of whom live in the village). As it happens Joe has been more often than that as the other church (in the Swallow Group which Limber isn't) he is likely to attend on the fourth Sunday in the month has been closed for repairs since before Christmas so he has gone to Limber more frequently than he would otherwise and he has also attended a couple of special services - Harvest Festival and the Carol Service at Christmas. Could the reason the new priest didn't see him be that at the beginning of the service he was in the ringing chamber?

Before I finish my rant I will add that, as well as being on the electoral roll at Swallow, he is on the electoral roll at other churches in the group where he rings the bells and/or pumps the organ, and has been invited by the rector there to go on the electoral roll at Walesby, not because he goes to the village church regularly, but because he goes to the occasional services held at the old church (The Ramblers' Church, as it is known) where he takes his turn pumping the organ in a building with no electric power.

Like Joe I go to church every week (we generally go together) although I normally don't go outside the Swallow Group and am on only the one electoral roll in Swallow itself, although I have been asked at a couple of the other churches I attend. For Joe inclusion on the roll represents a validation of the work he does in those churches beyond simply attending worship and gives him a sense of belonging, and it matters very much to him that the priest-in-charge at Great Limber seems to wish to exclude him.

I have always thought that one of the great beauties of the Church of England is that it is so inclusive; I find a member of the clergy behaving in this way very strange indeed.

My father plans to go to a funeral next Friday. It is at St. Mary's church in Barton.

"Do you know where it is?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "it's the new church."

The 'new' church, St. Mary's, is over 800 years old, while the 'old' church, St. Peter's, is Anglo-Saxon and well over 1,000 years old.

I like the idea of 800 years old being new.

I remember Liz telling me that when in America you quickly get used to the mind set of "Over 100 years old! Wow! That's ancient!" while in Egypt you become quite blase with "Roman? Quite modern really? Hardly worth considering."

This lunchtime a hen blackbird flew hard into the patio doors and knocked herself out. Beyond keeping the cat indoors, there wasn't much I could do for her other than leave her to recover.

After a while she got her head up and started to look somewhat dazedly around, at which point a cock bird joined her. He cavorted around her for a while, then started to make little headlong runs at her, pushing at her with his beak, whereon she would flutter a few feet and then settle back into her torpor. This went on for some time until she was at last able to fly away with him, or - possibly - from him.

I couldn't quite interpret this behaviour:

- Was he a concerned husband doing his best to rouse his wife sufficiently to get her away to a safe place?

- Was he a domestic bully smacking the missis until she got back to nest-building duties?

- Or was he a rampant male who, seeing an available female, needed to display all his fine masculinity, unable to accept that "Not now, I've got a headache" was in this case the literal truth?

Anyway, she has taken her splitting headache away from our patio doors, and I hope she finds time and peace to recover in safety.

My birthday book has gone walkabout and there is a whole heap of family and godchild birthdays at the end of March, but I can't remember whose is when!!! Help!!!

Unusually I was at work on Saturday - "A Grand Day Out" at the museum as part of the "Hands On History" Exhibition with lots of free activities for children based on all sorts of artefacts from different periods. We had around 300 through the museum, many of whom chose to do my particular activity which was making Anglo-Saxon design brooches or fridge magnets. (Tell me about these Anglo-Saxon fridges?) Of course it was the design which mattered not whether they stuck a safety pin or a magnet on the back of it, and they had some photographs of genuine Anglo-Saxon brooches to inspire them as well as (by the time we got going after a slow start) a whole selection of examples made by yours truly. Great fun was had by all, and my only gripe was being indoors in a windowless room on what appears to have been the last of the really nice days for a while.

On Sunday I decided to cook something different for lunch and, mainly because I had got two rump steaks for what turned out to be three people, I decided on Beef Stroganoff. Strange though it may seem I have eaten this dish only twice in my life - once at Isabel's many years ago when she aged about fifteen decided to give her first dinner party for her parents and two of her teachers (myself and Anne MacDonald) thus embarking on what has become almost a vocation with her as she has become an excellent and indefatigable hostess. She made, as I recall, a very good start and I enjoyed it all including the main course. More recently I had Beef Stroganoff for lunch with Pam, where I again enjoyed the dish, although I must admit that on both occasions I was so enjoying the conversation that the food was only secondary.

A few weeks ago a friend mentioned that she had been to one of the area's top restaurants and had been very disappointed in the Beef Stroganoff which seemed to be just a beef stew with sour cream stirred in, so when I found myself with not quite enough steak for three, some mushrooms and a pot of soured cream I decided that I would make a proper Beef Stroganoff as at Issy's and at Pam's.

So I did, and as Beef Stroganoff it was fine. I liked it. The only trouble was that father didn't care for it at all - my daddy, the man who eats everything and never leaves a mucky plate, didn't finish his helping! Admittedly he wasn't feeling very well and later in the day refused both a cup of tea and a toasted teacake, but he said that he didn't like the sour taste. And Joe, the man who if hungry would eat his own socks, was also pretty luke-warm about it, although today he happily ate up the cold left-overs for lunch. (One thing you can guarantee here - nothing is ever wasted as long as my ever-hungry nephews are around.) So that's it: no more Beef Stroganoff in the Turner house.

Earlier in the day Joe and I had both been separately to church - I to Nettleton and he to Limber. He, as a bell ringer, had gone to the children's service, and it turned out it was a good thing he hadn't come with me as we sang "He's got the whole world in His hands" and clapped, which would certainly have brought out the Mrs. Beamish in him, although I believe the children's services at Limber are pretty happy-clappy. Anyway we both came away with bunches of Mothering Sunday flowers which we put on my mother's grave.

Of course it is terribly sad when the mother of two young boys dies - or, indeed, when anybody dies before they reach old age.

It is sad for the family. Heatbreaking to lose a husband or wife or for any parent to see their child die, and worst of all for children to have to grow up without their much-loved mother.

However, beyond the John Donne perception that "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." it is not a personal grief for the rest of us, and turning death into a three ring circus can surely not help the families, and most especially the children.

Jade Goody chose the course of living her life in the public eye: she craved celebrity which is why she went on Big Brother in the first place, and she felt that by selling her story wherever she could she was providing for her boys' future. Her decision: my feeling is that in providing for them materially, she may have harmed them by putting them so much into the public eye.

The Princess of Wales, who was largely responsible for all this 'touchy-feely' stuff also courted the press, though to my way of thinking the national outpourings of grief and the piles of decaying flowers at her death were distasteful in the extreme and, even without all the nasty speculation which surrounded its circumstances, terribly bad for her sons.

Natasha Richardson was as private a person as her trade as an actor allowed, and her family members, especially her sons, deserve to be left alone to their grief.

My grandfather left Ireland aged 11 months in 1894, and spoke impeccable middle-class English: he died when I was a baby. Yet I am as likely to say "Will I be getting you a cup of tay?" as "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Odd.

It can't be the entire gender, so maybe it's just the ones I am related to . . .?

Saturday, my uncle Steve rings up to say he's popping in to see us, and do we want anything picked up at the shops on the way? Yes, please, I reply, could he get us a pound - two packs - of Morrisons' own brand English butter.

So he turns up with some soya spread called Willow. He's obviously not sure because he asks if it is OK. No it's not.

Butter - churned milk with nothing added except possibly some salt.
Spread - a chemist's shop of emulsifiers and stabilisers mixed with non-dairy fats.
NOT THE SAME THING!

He says he asked a young man in the shop if it was English butter and was told 'yes': I'm not surprised - someone told my father it was butter when he bought some in ASDA a couple of years back. It's not too bad in pastry, but I wouldn't spread it on bread. There are healthy olive oil spreads which are perfectly palatable, but Willow isn't one of them.

Of course the world is full of people who offer you juice and give you squash which, in my opinion, is about as logical as saying 'I had a packet of bacon flavour crisps for lunch' is the same as saying 'I ate meat and a veg for lunch'.

Then after lunch on Sunday - proper Sunday lunch of roast beef with all the trims much enjoyed by my nephew - I said to Joe 'You clear and wipe the table while I stack the dishwasher': not a difficult proposition, but plainly incomprehensible to him so I ended up doing both.

A couple of hours later he decides to cook himself sausages for tea! (Church was at 11.30, so we didn't have lunch till mid afternoon) If he wanted sausages why didn't he cook them at home? And how could he want sausages anyway? The answer is that he is a creature of habit and is used to a cooked tea at around 6 o'clock, and we are talking about the man who ate three Christmas dinners (as did his brothers) - oh, and he's broken his own grill.

Now (despite the insult of his requiring a second cooked meal) I wouldn't have minded the cooking so much if he had cleared up properly afterwards as he promised he would, but finding before I go to bed a sink full of plates (including the drip dish from the George Foreman grill) soaking in cold water with a thick layer of grease floating on top is not my idea of a happy end to a Sunday evening! Apparently he thought he had done all that was needful by wiping out the George - and leaving my dishcloth brown and thick with grease - and putting the dishes in the sink!!!!

Then today he blocked the loo with paper so that it overflowed, didn't have the courage to admit what he had done, and instead acused my father and/or the cat - both gentlementn of impeccable domestic manners - of weeing on the floor!

I am not a happy bunny!

The reason I haven't blogged all week is that I have had nothing to blog about, and I have been feeling grotty. I hauled myself out long enough to pick up a prescription and grab some stuff from Tesco in Brigg. I felt guilty about this because it was Thursday and just a few yards away there was the market with lots of lovely fresh local stuff, but Tesco was so much easier and they provide these useful little trolleys for people whose legs feel like jelly, brains like cabbages and lungs like drowning - people who moreover go around barking like a seal with croup.

So, I have finished the Bookworms' choice Hunting Unicorns by Bella Pollen, which I can't say that I enjoyed much. It struck me as a terribly superficial book which was pretending to be deep - lots of character building background, and absolutely no personality.

Almost equally superficial, but far more enjoyable was Katie Fforde's Wedding Season (one of four paperbacks grabbed in Tesco). Normally I really enjoy Katie Fforde's books (and I did enjoy this one) but she seemed to be working on autopilot here with the mixture as usual, but no 'surprise' about faces when Mr. Reliable turns out to have feet of clay while Mr. Arrogant turns out to have a heart of gold. Three couples were set up at one wedding and by the next they had become three couples. Wow! But the characters were hardly developed, while minor accidents to a couple of characters and some flowers introduced for that purpose and that purpose alone plus one helicopter ride don't exactly constitute edge of the seat drama. Katie Fforde is a lovely fluid writer with a pleasant sense of humour, but this was a very long way from Katie Fforde at her best.

Let's hope Joanna Trollope is on form.

I have bronchitis and am feeling grotty, and when I feel grotty I start doing maths just to check my brain still works. On weekdays Countdown will usually suffice, but at the weekend I must make my own amusement, so I worked out how often I have said the Lord's Prayer. Mind you my Sudoku has got muddled two days in succession, so my mind isn't up to much at the moment.

At school that's four years of junior school every weekday for 40 weeks a year = 200 a year, 800 in all
plus
at Infant school where we said a lot of little rhyming prayers so I'm going to assume that the Lord's Prayer was said just once a week = 120
plus
at Grammar school we had daily assemblies for the first two years after which it changed to three assemblies in a week when there were two Junior and two Senior assembles in the week and one whole school assembly on Friday, plus classroom prayers on the other two days which will have included the Lord's Prayer 50% of the time so 2 years x 200 = 400, and 5 years x 160 = 800

Every night from about the age of three, so 365 x 51 = 18,615, and yes, I do mean every night - I have never missed although on occasions it may have been muddled by tiredness and said rather than prayed.

Sunday, I have through my life become a steadily more regular church-goer. I didn't like Sunday School so that's probably only 12 to 20 times a year from three to 8 - so about 80 times, then I joined the Brownies which gave my parents an incentive to attend church on Church Parade Sundays (getting my parents out of their slack ways religiously was my main motivation for becoming a Brownie). Let's say that adding in special feast days that's 20 times a year from 9 to 12 (I continued my good habits into Guides) = 80.

At a couple of weeks short of my twelfth birthday I was confirmed - and so was my mother who had somehow missed out during the war - which, with Guides, will have brought church-going up to around 25 - 30 times a year for the rest of my teens = 200.

Then came a period of weekly attendance = 250 followed by a reduction to about 3 times a month from 1980 but, with half the services BCP with its repetition of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the servicce and again later on, that means I will have joined in the Lord's Prayer about 5 times a month to 1995 and since then weekly but less BCP so roughly speaking 30 x 60 = 1,800

So that makes 23,395 times, or maybe a few more, as I haven't included the at least half-dozen repetitions driving down a snowy hill one midnight, or the weddings, or the funerals and the days and weeks preceding those of close family.

That's quite a lot, when you consider that I have been on this planet a mere 19,743 days.

Calculating how often I have cleaned my teeth is a doddle compared with that: 3 x 19,000 = 57,000 (for the first couple of years my mother cleaned them for me, once I had any to clean).

I admit it. I'm an addict. I just love Sunday evening drama series - Lovejoy, Pie in the Sky, All Creatures Great and Small . . . I love them all. But even I think that ITV 3 is overdoing it with Heartbeat, Ballykissangel, Monarch of the Glen and Kingdom in succession on one evening!