What we saw and didn't

I mentioned quite a while ago in this blog that while we were camping in a place in North London we saw a host of rabbits in the next field. Bunnies everywhere!
In fact, we saw quite a lot of wildlife while we were travelling around: a fox in a churchyard in Kentish Town (a London suburb); plenty of squirrels around the Norfolk lanes and even one in the backyard of my niece’s house in Braintree. He was running along the fence as if he owned the place, stopping when he felt like it, and taking stock of the situation.
We saw a deer one day – apparently they’re quite common in the forest areas on the sides of roads, and there are signs warning motorists to watch out for them in places. I’m told there are some deer in the woods at my great-nephew’s school in Taverham.
Pheasant were common hopping in and out of the hedgerows, and pigeons were everywhere on the country roads. They appeared to have no common sense. One of them flew up in front of us when we driving along one day, and instead of flying to the side, it kept going straight. It didn’t even go higher than the car – just straight. Fortunately at the last minute it swerved, but I thought we were going to make impact at some point.
At my other niece’s house, there were frogs in the garden, and even on the roadside near where she lives. And in the place we stayed in near Bury St Edmunds, there was an infestation of moles – though we never actually saw them, only what they left behind: large mounds in the grass.
Domestic animals were a different matter. We hardly ever saw a cat, though there were plenty of dogs around. Dogs everywhere: held in their owner’s arms, tangling up their owner’s feet; on the buses, on the tube; in the museums, and other public places.
And the only place we ever saw sparrows were in some of the cities. I never saw one in the gardens of the houses I stayed in. Isn’t that strange? I really missed the little critters.

This photo was taken by Tony Northrup; you can see a large version of it on his site, as well as other nature photography.

A little frustration

We decided to go to Alacante today and use up at least some of the remaining money on our Eurail Pass. This meant getting up at 5.45 in order to catch a train at 7 am. (This was Celia’s idea, not mine.) We managed this task, although for some reason (I think I’d eaten too many grapes in one go) I had to get up during the night at least three times, and I had the most incredible dreams which didn’t make me feel as though I’d slept well at all. In fact I actually went to sleep on the train for a half an hour, something I rarely do.
We arrived in Alacante without any hitch and without having to pay any additional supplement on our Pass. The sun wasn’t shining much when we got there and I anticipated a chilly day, but it got hotter and hotter and finally we were shedding stuff in order to survive.
We discovered that there’s a tram system in Alacante and thought we’d take it to one of the beach stops, Costa Blanca. But finding the tram was a major issue. We found the place the main stop was named after - the Mercato, a two-storeyed market with dozens of fish and meat stalls - but couldn’t find the tram. Celia saw a sign for the tourist information - and then we couldn’t find that. But we did come across a small museum dedicated to the artists who are involved in the St John’s Festival time. (Hogueras St Juan is the Spanish name.) Seemingly they elect a Princess (and possibly a Prince sometimes) and they make all these extraordinarily imaginative installations (Celia’s word, and apt) which in some cases stand several metres high - and seemingly at some point they burn them! Now I may have got something wrong here, so don’t quote me on this yet.
Anyway, in the museum were posters, photographs and even better, working models of the installations, mostly done in plaster. At least that’s what I gathered they were: things rescued from oblivion by some interested parties. They were a delight: fantastic and detailed and very creative, done by men who were superb artists and sculptors, men who had great senses of humour and weren’t afraid to be robust in their humour!
After this we found the Information place, and had to walk back up the street (and a short hill) to get to the Tram. Still no sign of it and then we realised it was underground - again. Certainly it is a tram, but it begins its run underground and only gets to look like a tram after about five minutes.
We got to the beach and had lunch and sat and read and probably got burnt a bit, and were greeted with a Buenos Dias by two elderly Spanish ladies, but ignored by the Brits. And finally we decided it was time to come home.
We were going to catch the 15.25 but when I checked I was told it was full. So I booked on the next one at 16.16 and even got a refund on the booking charge we’d had to pay last weekend for our tickets to Madrid. But then the fun started.
You might remember that we had to get a bus from Barcelona Sants to Tarragona last week before we could get on the train. This is still happening, and today it caused a great long delay. The train from Barcelona arrived about 16.35, and because they then had to clean the thing before anyone could board it, no one was allowed on board till well after 17.00. I don’t suppose we were the only frustrated people, but the Spaniards in general kept it hidden from view.
The train shuffled off at 17.25 and meandered its way to Valencia. Instead of taking only about an hour and a half, it took nearly two hours, the same as it had in the morning, when we’d been on a slower train.
Got into Valencia and intended to catch a 5B which goes down our street. 5Bs were few and far between apparently. In the end, (frustrated) we got on an 8, which we’d taken this morning, only to find that the board that allows disabled people to get on the bus wouldn’t retract after a person in a wheelchair was put on. Several people got off, intending to get the next number 8 (they were much more frequent), and then a 5B turned up! We raced for it - even Celia with her sore foot - only to find that the driver refused to accept our tickets. ‘But the ramp was stuck!’ cried Celia, frustrated. The driver hadn’t a clue what she was saying but there was no doubt that he wasn’t going to let us on his bus with another driver’s tickets.
I got off in a little dudgeon. (It wasn’t ‘high’ just moderate.) And we boarded the number 8 again, which had now got itself sorted out (a mechanic had appeared from somewhere). Amazingly they offloaded the person in the wheelchair and left him sitting on the pavement! The ways of the Spanish are beyond the ken of English-speaking people.
Finally got to the famous Towers of Serranos once more and crawled back to the apartment. Which we have to vacate tomorrow morning, so as to move to our next apartment five minutes away.
And then home on Friday. Well, home to Norfolk.

Of course, I found out all about the Bonfires Festival on the Net after I'd written the stuff above. Check it out here.

Different links

We went to the local Attleborough Anglican church this morning. Think I’ve mentioned visiting it before, though I can’t find the post at the moment. (It has the grand title of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the way, but I think is called St Mary's, locally.)

It’s full of history, as so many Norfolk churches are, and there is evidence everywhere of the many Christians who’ve gone before, from the faded paintings on the reredos to the almost as faded paintings high up on the wall above the altar; from the stones showing where people are buried beneath the stone floor to the extraordinary design of the ‘other’ pulpit (the one that was nicked from another local church, if I remember rightly).

There’s something about worshipping in a place that’s been inhabited by Christian brethren for centuries.

The other good thing about the Norfolk churches is that all seem to be open all the time; further north we found churches were more likely to be closed to the general public.

And, while I think about it, there’s the way England and NZ are so inextricably linked: everywhere you go you find someone who’s got a relative in NZ (think I’ve mentioned this before too). We were at the 30^th birthday party of our niece last night, and Celia spoke to at least three people who had relatives in NZ. This morning, after the service, we had coffee with a couple who’d travelled throughout NZ, and then met another group who all had connections, including one couple who’s son had studied at the Otago Medical School.

Potter Heigham

Yesterday we went to Potter Heigham, which is famous for two things. Firstly, it’s on the Norfolk Broads, so that makes it special to Celia, and secondly, there’s a bridge over the River Thurne at Potter Heigham beside which Celia fell in the water when she was a schoolgirl. (We have a photo of this bridge, but on the laptop, and I can’t upload from there at the moment. However, the link I've just given has a very good picture of the bridge on it.)

Why did she fall in the water? She was on a week’s boating experience with her school, and when you get to the bridge at PH (there are now two of them, in fact) you have to lower the mast on your boat because the bridge isn’t very high above the water. In lowering her mast she knocked herself into the water. Historic.

Potter Heigham isn’t pronounced Potter Heigham, by the way. Try something along the lines of Potterhyam? I put the question mark there because Celia always gives it a kind of upward lift at the end of the word.

It was packed with people having a day out yesterday, (although not so much as Wroxham, which is further along the road). We went for a walk along the bank of the particular arm of the Broads that comes into the village, and walked, and walked – and walked. Our intention was eventually to cross a bridge and walk back on the other side, but the bridge proved to be over yet another arm of the Broads, and there was a considerable body of water between us and the other bank, so we didn’t try to cross it. In the distance we could see the boats sailing through what appeared to be fields, with cows munching away. It’s an odd visual thing because it’s only as you get up close to some of the waterways that you can see they’re there. If it wasn’t for the boats on them you wouldn’t realize they existed.

Our long walk took us past a now disused (and dis-sailed) windmill, one of about half a dozen in the vicinity, past the backs of dozens of little holiday houses (virtually cribs or baches as we’d call them at home) parked right on the bank of the water, past marshes and smelling ditches where the water had become green and stagnant, past odours whose origins we didn’t want to think about, past brambles and stinging nettles and reeds and, best of all, wild blackberries. Which were ready to pick and exceptionally delicious. One of my great regrets in New Zealand is that the blackberry is considered noxious; here it grows where it pleases and passersby can pick as they please.

Most of the holiday homes were for rent, I presume, or were owned by people who came year after year. One of them was up for sale: £120,000 was the asking price. £120,000! The building was in a pleasant spot, but it was also run-down, and would need repairs to the walls, the roof, and probably things we couldn't see. The notice on the window did admit it needed a bit of a sorting out. That didn't apparently stop them asking what seems to me to be a phenomenal amount of money for what would be a crib back home.

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.

Some things I meant to mention

Policeman’s Loke. We’ve passed a sign with this on it twice now, and wondered what on earth a Loke is. Finally checked it out: it’s a private path or road; also, the wicket or hatch of a door. Presumably in this case it’s the former. The origin of the word seems to be a local dialect version of the word, lock.
Secondly, I keep meaning to say about the number of churches in Norfolk and Suffolk that have made their own hassocks. In some churches they commemorate occasions, in others they have all sorts of designs on them depending on who made them, in others they may be only a couple of designs spread throughout the church, and in others such as the one we were in today at Hingham, each hassock is a memorial for a person who’s been in the church, at some time over the last several centuries. And in Bury St Edmunds we came across a woman measuring out the correct distance between each hassock as it sat waiting for a user on the pew back and putting them closer or further apart as the need arose. There were at least thirty rows, with six or so hassocks in each. A time-consuming job! Those hassocks each had a different design on them, commemorating all the different parishes within the diocese.
Thirdly, in every National Trust place we’ve gone so far, they’ve had a secondhand bookshop. Very tempting, and I don’t think we’ve managed to get out of one yet without a purchase.

In the country

Just been for a walk round a little of the village we‘re staying in. We‘re on the outer perimeter, I think, so that the line of houses on one side is contrasted with wide open fields on the other. Everywhere we’ve been lately the farmers have been cutting the wheat and then gathering the hay into large round bales. The dusty smell lingers in the air.
At the end of our Close is another of the innumerable old churches that dot the Norfolk/Suffolk countryside. This one has a square tower which makes it Norman, if I remember rightly. Inside it’s quite cramped compared to many of the old churches, and seems to have little to differentiate it from dozens of others. There is a turnstile at the gate, however.
Outside the grass is growing up amongst the older graves, some of which are on a lean, and will soon fall to the ground. Most gravestones only seem to go back to the late 18th century; perhaps the earth has swallowed up earlier ones, as it seems to be threatening to do to later ones, or perhaps gravestones weren’t large in the earlier days and the graves of the old saints are well and truly hidden from sight.

Mundesley

Celia and I went out to Mundesley this morning. Mundesley is another seaside town along the North Norfolk coast, about seven miles from Cromer.
It was a lovely sunny morning, but the wind off the sea was very sharp. Consequently a lot of the people on the beach at Mundesley had their wind breaks up, and were sitting in jackets and jerseys. But at least they were on the beach!
Celia used to work in Mundesley, some forty years ago, as a residential child care worker. She wasn’t there long - maybe a few months - but she thought she might try and find the house where she’d worked. So of course she asked the first person she met in the street where we parked the car, and of course that woman knew exactly what she was talking about, where the house was - and told her that her sister-in-law had been cook there for 25 years. Mundesley isn’t that small a place.
So we found the house, which is now a bed and breakfast, and Celia was even granted a quick look inside. She also spoke to the old lady who’d cooked. The lady didn’t remember her - not surprising! - but it was nice to have a link to the past.

Broads, Cripps, Roys

Don’t think I’ve mentioned that we went to Wroxham - by accident. We were intending to go to Riverside in Norwich, and put in Riverside Shopping Centre on our GPS only to discover that Malvina (as we’ve named her - after a famous NZ opera singer) thought we meant the RSC in Wroxham. That was okay, as Wroxham is on ‘The Broads’ as the many waterways around Norfolk are called, and Celia wanted to go back and check them out. She’d sailed on them as a schoolgirl. They are lovely: houses built right down to the water’s edge, and boats galore. We debated hiring a boat for a week and exploring them, but that’s still up in the air at this stage, as it’s quite costly.
Anyway, the other interesting thing about Wroxham is that in the distant past a small corner shop named Roy’s once existed. Roy must have made a great deal of money as his name is now on a dozen shops, all within spitting distance of each other. The Riverside Shopping Centre is part of it, and there’s a DIY, a garden centre, a food hall, and you name it. All of them have “Roy’s” plastered over them. Obviously Roy was pretty canny with his money - and his buying up of properties. Anyway it gives Wroxham a very prosperous feel.
Roade has had a similar thing. Sir Humphrey Cripps began his working life as a very much underpaid factory worker. Over the course of his career he was able to buy out the Pianoforte Supplies business, which was at the time a very large company in Roade, and later took to making metal car parts when the piano scene quietened down. He owned an island in the Caribbean; he bought up Waterford Crystal in Ireland, and he owned companies in Canada and elsewhere. All in all he was a very wealthy man, He was also a very generous man. He built an entire secondary school; funded umpteen things at universities, old churches and the like (including doing a good deal of restoration work at the Roade Anglican Church: St Mary Virgin). There’s an old people’s home with his name on it up the road from where we’re staying, and no doubt there are dozens of other things that he paid for. The great blessing of a truly wealthy man is that he can give most of his wealth away.

The photo was taken at Horning, along the road from Wroxham - we forgot to get our camera out in the latter town.

Roade

We arrived in Roade today, after a much lengthier trip than we expected due to spending almost half an hour moving at a snail's pace in an enormous queue of traffic. The cause of the delay was an accident on one of the turn-offs - the one we wanted to go on, naturally. And while we were crawling along yet another one of the current series of thunderstorms struck, pelting hailstones down on the cars, and sending lightning streaking across the sky overhead. We didn't much enjoy driving on the A roads (they're a step down from the M roads). Even though the traffic isn't going full bore, there are usually three lanes of it, with dozens of immense trucks roaring along beside you.
I'm not sure why anyone would call a place Roade; it's a bit like calling a village Streete, or Footpath. Be that as it may, Roade is pleasant little town (it's rather more than a village, as it has at least two pubs), and I went for a walking survey of it this afternoon. After my comments about bricks everywhere in Norfolk yesterday, it was interesting to see that here in Roade they use bricks still, but much softer in colour; they're rather more sandy than red, though often red ones are mixed in with the lighter colours to produce a mottled effect. And they use flat stones (I'm not sure if it's slate) in the same way the people in Sheringham use beach stones. The town is a real mix of modern housing and old ones restored. But interestingly enough, while in Attleborough (where we've been for the last week) there's a real uniformity of design (to my eye, anyway) with lots of fairly square two-storey homes, often joined to at least one other, here in Roade, the more modern houses have a variety to them. There's the same basic brick structure, but there are interesting things done within the mold.
The Anglican church is well cared for, and has a modern hall built onto the back end. Obviously people still go to church in Roade. (Norfolk is packed with churches, with a mixture of square Norman towers and round Saxon towers. Many of them are in a bad way - having survived nearly a thousand years.) There's a street called Tithe Lane that leads down to the church - a nice reminder of one's duties! - and the usual bunch of Roads that have identical names with Closes. We're in Hyde Close, and originally went to Hyde Road (next door) where we knocked on the door of the house we thought belonged to our rellies, only to get some poor woman out of bed.
As I was walking around, I kept hearing what I thought were trains. I was right, as I discovered in due course. Running through the middle of Roade is a four-track railway system, and electric trains go speeding past with great frequency. I stood on an old stone bridge and watched them zipping their way beneath me.
I don't know how easy it's going to be for me to keep up my blogs for the next week or two: I'm having to use the laptop without any access to wireless or broadband. Still, one of the pubs is supposed to have wireless available, so I may have to sit there and type away, and drink the local ale!

Royal Norfolk

Long day today. Didn’t even sleep in as we have been because our hosts were having a dinner party tonight, and we needed to help get things moving. Not that I contributed much, but Celia made two quiches in record time, and generally organized other things in advance of the meal tonight.

But we also had to be out by 8.45 because our niece and her husband were taking us to the Royal Norfolk Show. This event has been going in some form since the mid 1800s, and has occupied it present space of some 375 acres. There are a number of permanent buildings, but today the place was loaded with tents and marquees and open-air rings (the largest would be two or three acres on its own, I suppose).

I had in mind that it would be like the A&P show that we have in Dunedin, which is a bit of a dud these days, as far as most people are concerned. Not so this show. Over 105,000 people attended last year, and judging by the number of people there today – wall-to-wall they were – that figure would have been surpassed. The weather was great, for a start, and though it threatened to rain at one point, it never did. Apparently last year the people selling raincoats made a killing!

Of course there were farm animals galore, including great hulking bulls and their cows and calves; a bunch of geese being herded by a sheepdog around several groups of schoolchildren and up and over a bridge; huge pigs; owls, ferrets, and you name it.

Everybody and his uncle was there selling stuff, and in the food building they were giving away samples of food in a way I’ve never seen at any of the shows in Dunedin. You could have had a taste of practically everything that was on display – we tried out quite a bit ourselves.

Our relatives paid for us to have an excellent meal presented by the Catering School, and we sat at a table which included one of the vice-presidents of the Royal Norfolk, his wife and son.

There are several entrances to the grounds, each of them leading to a car park connected to one of several main roads in the area, so that you can come in from Dereham, or Wymondham, or Norwich itself. The car parks were expertly handled by a large team of mostly young people. You wouldn’t want to forget where you parked your car, however. The car park we were in would have held a couple of thousand cars, I’d think.

There are a few photos of the facilities here.

Locked In!

One thing that has changed here in Britain since I was last here, I think, is the sense of being security-conscious. When we were in London, during a very muggy spell, there were never any windows opened, and even the door to the outside, which was actually slightly below the street (so it wasn’t particularly obvious to a passerby), was kept shut. Here in Norfolk, all the houses we’ve been in so far have locks on the windows – we haven’t been able to find the keys to the windows in the place we’re staying at just now – and there are keys and bolts and safety chains everywhere. Even the car we’ve bought has got a security code on it that won’t let you start it up until it’s entered.
Coming from NZ where we now lock doors after years of never bothering (even the daughter we stayed with before left, and her partner, are still casual about locking doors overnight), it gives a bit of a sense not so much of security as claustrophobia. I know that London has suffered a number of nasty shocks since I left, in terms of terrorism particularly, but I wouldn’t have thought that Norfolk was quite as badly off.

Sheringham...at last!

We made it to Sheringham today, the place my wife has most wanted to come back to. It’s where she grew up, and she has a great fondness for it. Consequently I got a running commentary on everything we passed, things that were still there and things that weren’t (such as one of the hotels near the beach), things that had changed (like houses on Beeston Bump) and things that had improved (the way the lifeboats go in and out), people who’d lived in certain spots (like the boy who wet his bed – hopefully he doesn’t still after forty something years), and who’d married who.
She met up with at least five women who knew her or other members of the family, from the two elderly ladies who lived in the same ‘Close’ as her family, to a woman selling crab meat from a stall, to the librarian who at first claimed vehemently that there had never been a Methodist church on the corner near the library and then had to admit defeat when Celia found it in one of the library books, to a woman in a pet shop who had worked under Celia’s big sister.
The houses in Sheringham have been greatly improved over the last few decades: everywhere you find solid plastic window frames (instead of aluminium ones), and plastic decoration around the doors and so on. The picturesque feature of these houses (it’s common throughout the coastal area of Norfolk, I think) is that the houses have brick corners but the central area of the outside walls are made of beach stones set in concrete. Nearly all the houses are two storeys, and many of them are attached to other houses. Brick is everywhere. Those houses that aren’t built with the stones, are all brick. Brick, with tile roofs, so there’s an overwhelming red brick feel to all the housing. (The beach stones make a nice contrast).
I must say I liked the place – and didn’t remember anything about it at all, even though I have been there once before with Celia, thirty-odd years ago. The beach isn’t my style of beach, with it’s heavy pebbles and stones before you reach the sand – and the sand is more orange than white, and more gritty underfoot. But the buildings around the beach area are delightful, all squashed together, with little yards and alleys running between them. It’s all very clean, and it looks as though the place is prospering. Certainly it was busy, even though it’s not the ‘season’ yet.
Just while I remember: a curious piece of Norfolk speech is that they say things like, ‘Come round to ours,’ or, ‘we’re going round to his,’ the ours and the his referring to the person’s house in each case. We’d say, ‘come round to our place,’ but the place gets lost in Norfolk.

All Saints' Anglican Church, Gresham, Norfolk

Our plans for today shifted a bit as a result of visiting some of my wife's relations. Instead of going to Sheringham, the town she calls home, we finished up going about six miles inland, to Gresham, where at least one of her brothers was born, and where her mother and father are buried in a churchyard, along with several other relations.

Part of the church is 1000 years old, dating from Saxon days, according to my brother-in-law. There's a large round tower, and at least two sections to the church, where an extension has been put on at a later date. Even the extension is very old.

While we were there, some workmen were doing repairs. This is an ongoing job, apparently, as the church requires some extensive renovation. However, it's still being used, and that's a plus in itself.

You can read about it in more detail here, especially about the octagonal baptismal font, which has renditions of the seven sacraments, plus Jesus' Baptism.

The graveyard had recently been mowed, mostly, and wet grass was everywhere, sticking to the soles of our shoes. The oldest gravestones seem to be from Victorian times, but that may only mean that earlier ones have vanished into the earth, or have been removed, or never existed in the first place. There are a number of recent headstones, since people still have connections with the place, and presumably they have family plots.

Such antiquity brings a sense of awe to people visiting, but awe of a different kind occurred when I rubbed my hand against some of the ancient beach stones that made up the round tower, and half of one fell out. Oh, dear. Celia picked it up and claimed it: a family heirloom, perhaps?