Two hectic days

Two full-on days. We drove back down to Northampton yesterday, aiming to arrive for lunch at 12.30 but were already running late by the time we left, and finally got there at 12.45, which was pretty good considering that there’d been delays on the road. Nothing like the last time we went, though.
It was my oldest sister-in-law’s birthday, and Celia had made her a birthday cake, and bought a bunch of food to take. Far too much food, of course, but that’s always the way with any Crowl celebration. We stayed with my other sister-in-law and her husband, again, and I finally remembered to return the key we’d borrowed last time. It was a blisteringly hot day - the hottest we’ve had since we’ve been here perhaps - and major change after all the rain.
The birthday party went off well, though most of them had to retreat in out of the sun because it was too hot. It wasn’t much cooler inside, however. At the end of the day we offered to take my nephew back home to Milton Keynes. This set up a chorus of ways we should gon to take him there (he doesn’t have his own car at present), and we had to leave in the end, and rely on our Sat Nav as there would have been no consensus from the other four. We went via a back road rather than the M11, and that was much more pleasant, and quicker!
Came home to our hosts and watched Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s first outing as director. More of that on my other blog.
Slept in this morning, and finally got away about ten. Arrived home at Wicklewood some ten hours later!
We wanted to take a quieter route than the one we’d come down on, and also see some other places. Headed to Wellingborough, which was a pleasant town, with op shops, a church with a spire in the Market Square, and a market in progress. In the church there are a number of new stained-glass windows - new in the sense that they were made in the 20th century. The creator of a couple was John Piper, and these are startlingly beautiful in a modern way, when the sun is shining through them. The woman who greeted us and talked to us about the place said that the minister who’d been there for some forty years (if I remember rightly) had had a way with getting people to part with their money and help improve the church. Consequently it has a mural over one altar painted by a Dutchman called Hans Feibusch (the woman said she’d never got to like it, even though she’d been longer than it has), the several stained-glass windows and several other modern works. Unfortunately the church is in a bad way outside, with the stonework deteriorating rapidly.
We went on to Oundle - don’t ask me how to pronounce it - where all the houses and buildings seemed to made of the same light-grey stone. There was such a uniformity about the colour that it almost didn’t seem real. Probably a very pleasant place, but that stage it was very hot again, and we didn’t stay long. Another church with a spire. (The Norman and Saxon towers aren’t much in evidence around here.)
We were going to go to Peterborough, but didn’t make it due to the fact that we decided to look up my cousin who, with another woman, runs a Christmas tree business. She also works at a full-time job. It took us two or three attempts to get to the place: for some reason our Sat Nav took us to a completely wrong place, recommending we pull into a private driveway where three houses were situated. Two little dogs gave a sort of effort to warn me off, but it was too hot for them to be really bothered. The man gave me fairly clear instructions, and we allowed Malvina to offer to put us on the right road as well, and eventually we got to the place - after first driving up a farm road that ran straight into a field.
My cousin wasn’t home when we arrived, so we walked around the house - and found a photo of one of my NZ uncles was up on the wall, which confirmed that we had the right place at least. And then, after we’d had a cup of coffee, my cousin suddenly turned up as we were about to leave, telling us my NZ uncle was coming along behind with the other woman - on bikes. He’s only 82.
Finally, after this, we headed straight home. It was a couple of hours of travel, and finished up taking us back down the road we’d come from King’s Lynn on Thursday.

Out in the Rain

We finally ventured out today in spite of the ongoing rain. (It’s been raining for four days solid - drizzling rather than raining, and more unpleasant for it.) One of the main reasons we got out of the house was because I’d rung a woman called Amanda Jennings at Anglian Worms, and she was happy for me to come and look at her worm farm. More about this visit on one of my other blogs. After we’d been to the worm farm we backtracked a little to Langham Glass, which, like Anglian Worms, is out in what I’d call the middle of nowhere, on an industrial estate. Be that as it may, we checked out the place, which was very busy, in spite of its isolation. Celia wanted to have a look at the people doing glass-blowing, but since this is England, and they charge for everything here, she baulked in the end at paying highly for the privilege. (Particularly since, in Nelson, in New Zealand, we’d seen the same thing for free.) Langham Glass produces some lovely work, however, and we bought some marbles - which Celia almost lost as soon as she got home. Again, in spite of the rain, we carried on to King’s Lynn, which apparently used to be called Bishop’s Lynn because it belonged to a Bishop. (It was a little smaller then.) A lynn is a pool, I‘ve discovered. King’s Lynn would have been better without the rain and overcastness, but it was a pleasant surprise. Five op shops at least, which kept us busy, but also a bustling shopping centre spreading out in several directions. In fact, we got lost at least twice by turning a corner than was curved rather than straight. We wore ourselves out in the end and didn’t get to the church in the town with two towers; another time perhaps. However on the way home we dropped into Narborough, where my brother-in-law had built a house in the past, and had lived there for about eight years. The house has been built up around now, but it still has some distinction - and beach stones set in the walls. Narborough also has a trout fishing place which was set in a delightful park area with pools and streams. And it has an old mill next door, with a rushing waterfall. Since we’d missed out on the King’s Lynn church, we went into the Narborough one. It’s smaller, of course, but quite light inside, as the big window over the altar isn’t stained glass, but almost clear. There was one other person there - also taking photographs. He turned out to be one Mr Spellman, and was taking photographs of the tombs of his ancestors. It seems the Spilmans (as they were called then) were prominent people in the Narborough/Norfolk area, and the church is riddled with their monuments and gravestones. He told us how one ancestor there, a woman, had married into the Spilman family back in the 13th century. Another had been a Recorder, and was buried ‘standing up’ in a large square block. It has his statue on top of it. He insisted on this (before he died, of course) because he’d never been ‘stood on’ during his life and wasn’t going to be after he died. However, as these things turn out, his body was disinterred at some point and is now stuck under the stones beneath one of the pews. So much for dignity. In the picture on the left, the statues of two of the ancestors lie on their sides, leaning on their hands. These are the parents of the Recorder. In the second picture, Mr Spellman isn't praying to one of his ancestors, he's trying to take a photo. Celia, in the wet raincoat, supervises.