18^th February 2018

Dear All,

It was a long day yesterday as we began with a walk recce for a route we are leading on Thursday, then I planted a few things in pots in the greenhouse followed by watching football in the afternoon (while Kate continued painting), then Street Pastors in the evening/night. It was a fairly quiet night with just a couple of fights and no serious vomitting!

We have just returned from Addenbrookes visiting Mervyn Howard who was admitted with what turned out to be pneumonia on Tuesday night. He was severely dehydrated and in a bad way earlier in the week but is rallying pumped full of antibiotics.

We were in Hove on Monday and Tuesday helping while Albert had his pre op which was a bit of an anti-climax – mainly weighing and chat, in preparation for the next stage tomorrow. We walked to the beach on Monday and it was distinctly bracing leading up to a wet and windy Tuesday. Mary-Ann was under the weather when we left but Amélie starred by clearing up after we had left. It was a difficult return journey taking 3.5 hours instead of 2.25 due to constipation on the M25 and Bar Hill suffering gridlock due to the A14 improvements. I had a Garden Club talk at Harston in the evening.

Hove Beach

Amelie looking for treasure

Albert pre op

I missed “The Silk Road”  due to the Hove trip and “Biographies” due to the funeral of an ex NIAB colleague Liz Shelbourne.

We walked from Great Chishill on Thursday and were again blessed with sunshine (on the righteous?) but slippery underfoot. Highlight was encountering a herd of 42 Fallow Deer.

Great Chishill pond

Chrishall

Looking back to Chrishall church

Fallow Deer

Love

Mike & Kate

11^th February 2018

Dear All,

Not too much to report this week. This has been our last week looking after the hens at no. 63 trying to keep them above the mud and interested in eating a new delivery of wheat. I know chickens are not blessed with much brain but these I think would fail their exams at every level!

We managed a little gardening this week – Kate has been pruning and I have sown peas in gutters for transplanting and pricked out a few seed samples.

The “Silk Road” concentrated on the goods that travelled the road: from China, silk, laquer ware, ceramics, paper, gunpowder; to China, horses, amber, gold and silver, glass, dyes, fur, grapes, frankincense and chariots.

Decorating is still ongoing and this necessitated another trip to B & Q to replenish resources on Wednesday. Upstairs is almost complete – just the stairs and downstairs to go!

We had to miss the walk on Thursday as we had been invited to give a talk on Street Pastors to a lunch club at March. They were quite appreciative but not too many volunteer recruits I fear! On the way back we stopped at Delfland Nurseries at Doddington and purchased a bowl of primulas as illustrated.

The “Biography” subject this week was “Karen Blixen” author and subject of “Out of Africa”. She spent 20 years as a cattle and coffee farmer in Kenya and was a very accomplished author and artist.

Karen Blixen

Ben has been in America all week including Arizona and the Grand Canyon. Esther has been troubled by asthma and Albert has completed a week at nursery and seems to be growing into the experience. He has the next stage of his operation on the 19^th and Mary-Ann and the children are travelling over today for his pre op tomorrow. Kate and I are due to go down to help tomorrow and Andy travels over on Thursday.

Love

Mike & Kate

4^th February 2018

Dear All,

It has been a fairly routine week plus painting! After swimming on Monday I tried to sort some of the church events we had planned the previous week: a museum visit, the Botanic Gardens and RSPB at Fen Drayton. None of them was straightforward so progress was slow. The museum is closed for cleaning, the Botanic Gardens charge the normal entrance fee (£6 or £5.50) plus £10 per head for an evening tour and the RSPB visit comes under different management from the one we are used to dealing with. My printer started chewing up the paper last week so I purchased a new one this time a Canon Pixma TS5050, going up market a little and it seems pretty good so far (as long as we can afford the ink cartridges!). As things worked out I had a stock of ink for the old printer so if anyone has an Epsom which takes BB-T2996 cartridges let me know.

This week’s “Silk Road” was better concentrating on the Chinese end and illustrated with a few photos. I had to rush from that to the U3A Garden group as they had requested a talk on “Oriental Vegetables”. On the way back I called at Oakington Garden Center to stock up on seed potatoes and onion sets plus a few extra raspberry canes. In groups that evening we talked about “Families” so perhaps your ears were burning? – actually they didn’t get round to us this week!

I continued my battle with HSBC this week trying to find out how much we have in the CEEM account: “we cannot tell you unless you quote your overdraft limit from the last statement”, “but I haven’t got a statement – that is the point” etc.

On Thursday we started walking from Brockley Green near Haverhill and took in part of the “Stour Valley Path”, it was again sunny overhead and slippery underfoot. I attempted the longer walk this week so did not move far in the evening!

Roost End

River Stour

“Biographies” topic this week was “Max Perutz” born an Austrian Jew who ended up at Cambridge and won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of haemoglobin. He started the Molecular Biology unit on the Addenbrooke’s site together with three other Nobel laureates: Sanger, Crick and Kendrew and since three others have won Nobel prizes: Brenner, Klug and Milstein. Kate of course knew three of these when she worked in the Immunology labs!

Max Perutz

Yesterday we had a “Christians Against Poverty” (CAP) seminar at church. They do a remarkable job lifting people out of debt and poverty running Debt Centres, Job Clubs, Release Groups for those with addictions and Life Skills training, It is a much bigger organisation than I imagined with a turnover of £11 million last year and after starting in 1996 is now run out of 600 churches in the UK.

The afternoon match was West Wratting 2 v 1 Cambridge University Press!

Albert started nursery this week with mum in attendance so was a bit clingy but by the second session had settled better and has already found a mate – and it’s clearly affecting his appetite!.

 

Love

Mike & Kate

28th January 2018

Dear All,

‘Tis the time of year when a young (?) woman’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of DECORATING! I dutifully passed the cold I was suffering from last week on to Kate, but it did not deter her from the above – this time the dreaded Hall, Stairs & Landing. She has been IC preparation and I am entrusted with final application – it could be a long job but the upstairs corridor is more or less complete.

Kate opted out of swimming on Monday but was well enough to go to her “Osteoporosis” class (keep taking you vitamin D in the wintertime). As spring was in the air I assembled the heated propagator and this week have started 40 germination tests.

Tuesday was a busy day, I attended a new class on “The Silk Road” – however it was rather disappointing as the lecturer has spent 2 weeks talking about ancient Greek and Persian dynasties and does not have a captivating delivery style. I’ll give it another week! Kate and I then attended a lecture by Ottoline Leyser, the director of the new Sainsbury Research Centre based at the Botanic Gardens entitled “Thinking like Vegetables” – it was all about hormones (mostly Auxins) which control plant growth and it was a very good example of how to put a technical subject over to a non-expert audience. After this we joined up with some of our walking colleagues for a Polish meal. There were 14 of us all told and the meals were interesting – some were more enthusiastic than others but most were very happy.

On Wednesday we hosted a chapel “Events Committee” which started with a meal to make it more enjoyable, painting got underway the we watched “The French Connection” on DVD (for the first time).

Thursdays walk started at Gravesend near Furneux Pelham south of Saffron Walden and Buntingford. It was a long journey as the A14/M11 are always clogged these days and the last 8 miles were narrow twisty lanes (a bit like Devon). However the sun shone throughout and despite being wet underfoot it was an enjoyable walk sighting a herd of deer and avoiding most muddy fields.

The Catherine Wheel, Gravesend

Briefing

Patmore Heath

Park Hall Water Tower

Green Hall Farm, East End

“Biographies” this week featured “Barbara Bodichon” a 19^th century educationalist, artist, feminist and joint founder of Girton College.

Barbara Bodichon

We had a church “Awayday” yesterday but stayed in Over! to discuss the vision for the future with the age profile creeping ever upwards. If this seems familiar it was the topic last time Graham led the discussions about 10 years ago!

Love

Mike & Kate

21st January 2018

Dear All,

It was a chilly night on Street Pastors last night which meant there were not huge numbers of people about. As usual, it started quietly until midnight, then livened up a little after that but was not too busy: a fight or friends subduing a violent mate?, a very intoxicated young man who persistently propositioned Kate (it was dark!), summoned to Revolution to check two drunk girls who declined help, several chats to street dwellers and distributing a few pairs of flip flops for the inappropriately shod.

I had a quiet start to the week as I was suffering from a heavy cold so missed my first U3A “Silk Road” class and a church meeting. Kate started a new class on “Osteoporosis” on Monday. I used the downtime to back up my computer and write another garden column.

On Wednesday Kate used up one of her Birthday gifts – an afternoon tea at the Anchor at Sutton Gault. She invited Dave & Ellie – walking friends, to accompany us.

The Anchor

Balanced Diet!

The Anchor, Sutton Gault

Kate joined the U3A walk on Thursday starting at Woodditton but I did my own thing with a more gentle hike round Over Fen.

Over Fen

Overcote, Pike & Eel

I went to “Biographies” on Friday where the subject was “Ansel Adams” an American landscape photographer and environmentalist. He left school at 12 and initially became a musician but family trips to Yosemite hatched a love for the great outdoors and he was described as Americas greatest ever landscape photographer. One print earned him $25m!

We are still looking after John & Sally’s chickens and house and on Friday Kate discovered that half the power in the house was down, including the deep freeze. In the end we had to pull the very tight fitting freezer out and connect to live electricity via an extension cable.

In the evening we were guests at the Day Centre meal for volunteers qualifying due to presenting a fund raising quiz each year. They have lost a lot of local government funding but seem to have weathered the storm.

There was another Lego Event at chapel yesterday and these seem to be going well. I managed to watch a top of the table clash at Brampton v Great Shelford in the afternoon – again a rather chilly experience!

Love

Mike & Kate

14^th January 2018

Dear All,

In the week after New Year Kate and I visited the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge where there were several exhibitions including Degas, Desboutin and Daumier – all were free so good value!

On Thursday I took part in the walk starting at Everton but Kate rested as she was not 100% and Stockholm was on the horizon. Everton is near Sandy on light, well drained soil but we still found some mud. The walk included part of the “Greensand Ridge walk” and “Gibralter Barn” the centre for secret war time operations from nearby Tempsford air base.

Sandy Gravel Pit

Occasional Mud!

Gibralter Barn

On Friday we drove down to Hove to spend the night before flying to Stockholm from Gatwick early Saturday with Mary-Ann, Amélie and Albert – Andy having returned to work earlier in the week. The temperature was -3°C on arrival and never rose above freezing dropping to -8°C with wind chill one day.

Sunday was cold and sunny and we caught the ferry from Gamla Stan to Djurgarden amd walked round Skansen to Rosendala garden and back along Djurgardsbrunnsviken to their flat which is on Sodermalm. As we found before if you are dressed right the temperature is no problem.

Gamla Stan

On Monday we walked round the south of Sodermalm taking in two parks and duck feeding in Arstaviken. Later Kate and I visited Katorina church which has a congregation of 500 and works with recovering alcoholics.

Duck Feeding

We caught a bus to the City Centre on Tuesday and walked from near the Central station around the Observatory Park and back to Sture plan taking in McDonalds and another park. Back on Sodermalm Mary-Ann and Amélie took to the ice on an open air rink.

The Observatory

On Wednesday we explored the north of Sodermalm with fantastic views of the city across the water before a nasty fog descended completely changing the atmosphere. We walked on to Gamla Stan and later Kate and I did another walk in NW Sodermalm.

Gondolen

So we saw a good chunk of Stockholm, the weather was chilly but bearable and it was good to spend time with the family. Their flat is large and on the third floor accessed by a rather ancient and cramped lift with the buggy. It is obviously taking time for them to adapt to a foreign city with a cold climate and short hours of day light but hopefully once spring arrives and they get to know a few people things will improve.

We arrived back Thursday night after a good flight the journey back from Gatwick was busy and messy with persistent drizzle. Back in Over we had the church New Year social on Saturday and Kate was in charge of catering for 45 and I did a review. Meanwhile David our pastor was laid low with flu so I had to speak this morning so it has been a bust few hours!

Love

Mike & Kate