Catching up

I took a long drive yesterday evening (it's light until nearly nine o'clock) up to Diss, Norfolk by way of the A12 and A140, across the A1066 to Thetford (lost again for a little while) then followed the roads down to Bury St Edmunds (roads all different again) to Sudbury (Ah! no changes to the roads or traffic flow for forty years) The road from Sudbury to Halstead and thence to Braintree is just as hairy (i.e. dangerous!) as when I used to cycle it back in the days when I did a lot of cycling. Many stretches of those roads now have limits of 40 and 50 miles per hour and I obeyed the 30mph limits through villages

I roused myself up this morning wondering what to do and chatted with Anthea; William is on 'lates' this week and lay in bed watching the telly most of the morning. I read and edited yesterday's blog adding a few more pictures. I pondered the things I have not done: the folk festivals I did not get to; the open ringing days I missed; the steam days at railway preservation sites like the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel, Essex (Blur's first gig in 1989 I learned from a local paper). I know I'll take this video of the other pond and the top of the garden. The pond contains a variety of fishes: ghost koi, green tench, leather carp and a couple more that I won't attempt to spell.

After lunch I nipped down to Kelvedon to buy tickets for the first night of Kelvedon Players' production of Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves. The 'nip' turned into another wander around the village and a visit with Carol and Eva, old friends of Anthea. Carol took me round his collection of Great War and WW2 memorabilia of everyday life displayed in a Quonset hut which used to be on the Rivenhall airfield. Many Americans who served in the bomb groups stationed there have visited, and contributed to, Carol's collections. Off ringing again tonight . . .