28th July 2019

Dear All,

After swimming Monday, Kate and I travelled down to Hutton for serious gardening, mainly in the form of weeding and trimming back overgrown bushes. You could certainly see the difference at the end of the day – the garden looked considerably larger.

The Hutton Chainsaw Massacre!

On Wednesday Ian Gordon and I met up with Ben at Lords to witness the first day of the inaugural Test Match against Ireland. It was rather warm and an incident packed day with England all out for 85 before lunch. It was a bit like watching Over 2^nd XI bat! We met up with Colin Day thanks to Mary-Ann reading his Facebook intention and passing the message to Ben.

Lords

Ian & Ben gently roasting!

Our esteemed walk leader cancelled the Thursday walk having studied the weather forecast for the day. The previous time we walked in a heat wave we were lined up for a serious talk at the start and advised to drink plenty of water, take frequent stops and not walk too fast – then he set off at full steam at his usual pace! Instead I went to the funeral of James French the son of ex NIAB colleagues who had sadly committed suicide. The funeral was at the new Crematorium at Great Chesterford and was packed, one third of the attendees seated, one third standing at the back and one third outside – and it was very hot – not just because it was a crematorium!

We prepared a cricket pitch on Friday only to have the match rained off again yesterday. It seems to have been a dry summer with most of the rain reserved for Saturdays.

Yesterday was our annual chapel outing to the seaside, this time to Walton-on-the Naze instead of the usual Hunstanton. The weather forecast was not too encouraging and it rained most of the way down and most of the way back but was not too bad there. David had kindly arranged the hire of the Martello Road church hall that we had used before on our previous visit in 2009 and we met up with Dave and Jen at the Naze tower just before departing. The weather had been good enough to allow a stroll to the end of the pier and beach games.

Walton Pier

George & Merv

Beach Game

Spectators

When we arrived home Ben was here having biked up for the evening wedding reception of one of his school contemporaries. It had taken him quite a long time as he needed running repairs on the way.

We are off to Ian Gordon’s 80^th celebrations at Granchester Red Lion this lunch time

Love

 Mike & Kate