Dear All,
Stephen and Margaret Jessup called in for lunch on Friday en route
from visiting their son in Peterborough to home in Maidstone.
The novelty of several dry days got me excited enough to plant broad
beans, onion sets, shallots and garlic. Probably a bit early but I got carried
away at the sight of sunshine!
On Monday we went swimming at 7.15am as the pool was operating half
term timings – it is a good way of making your life seem longer. In the
afternoon, we had a briefing on our next walking holiday in the Lake District
leaving 16th March. Our leader has a time share at Langdale and they
have developed a smart new hotel on the site. As usual his briefing was very
thorough – “where will you be eating on Tuesday night and at what time?”
“Eat, Drink etc” covered topics such as “Evolution and the brain”,
Food Preparation” and “Food Supplies” and the U3A film was “Aguirre The Wrath
of God” a Werner Herzog production about a Spanish expedition in South America
seeking El Dorado.
Esther came up to Cambridge on Wednesday to redeem a 40th
present of “Tea and Cakes” at a posh restaurant with Kate and Kate Foster. I
attended a funeral for John Morley an old NIAB colleague at Stretham.
Our Thursday walk started at Monk Street near Thaxted and took in
Little Cambridge and Tilty. It was muddy and adventurous as the deputed leader
had not carried out a recce, so we were not always where we should have been
including being on the wrong side of a stream where the bridge had been washed
away and replaced by a temporary affair with loose planks. This worried some of
our number and one even crawled across.
John leading?
A bridge too far?
Pat’s solution!
Tilty church
The subject of this week’s Biography was “Lady Charlotte Guest”. She
was high borne, the daughter of the Earl of Lyndsey and married a wealthy Welsh
iron and steel manufacturer. Atypically for the times she helped in the
business keeping the books and acting as secretary and running the business
when her husband died. She had a gift for languages teaching herself German,
French and Spanish before she was 16 then later Greek, Persian and Welsh. She
started a school for employees and locals spending £20,000 on a new school
which was more than the entire English education budget that year 1847. She
found time to have 10 children, all of which survived to adulthood and 9 out
lived her when she died aged 82. When her eldest was old enough to run the
business she took up collecting porcelain, then fans and playing cards each
time becoming a national expert. But her greatest achievement was translating
the “Mabinogion” an ancient collection of Welsh poetry and legends into
English. I am not sure what she did in her spare time!
Over played their first game for a month and were very rusty losing
1 v 0 to Eaton Socon.
Love Mike & Kate
No comments:
Post a Comment