Missing Rora

Thanks to Mike Coles I can listen to New Life Radio even here. Feeling my age though when the first speaker is Johnny Keegan and there is music supplied by Phil Clare. I can remember him being born! I'm thinking of getting a few folks together and having a sitting room meeting to listen sometime this week.

More Godincidences

We are still working our way through the old slides, scanning and labelling and throwing some, quite a lot, away afterwards. I had heard of someone locally who goes out on holiday to St Helena where my parents lived nearly 4o years ago. So I rang her to ask if she knew anyone out there who would be interested in the old slides. 'My parents used to live there', I told her. 'Yes, she said, what were their names?' And when I told her, she said 'Oh yes I remember them'. What a small world.

HoF Sanctifies Devil's Chair

After a 7 mile cycle around the block, we drove to Minsterley, had a huge piece of cake in a cafe in an area known as 'The Bog', and climbed up and along the Stiperstones to the 'Devil's Chair' (mentioned in Malcolm Saville's famous 'Lone Pine' series). HoF expected to have to skip this activity having been told following his broken heel that walking on uneven ground would be painful at best. In the event he managed to get to the top complete with metal-enhanced foot, and with no serious effects a day later! Miss P is saddle-sore from the bike ride though. Absolutely gorgeous view from the top of the Stiperstones. 'For the Beauty of the Earth' was running through my mind.

Isle of Man continued

Well, we are fully involved in Ancient History now. Because I went to the Isle of Man, and because there is a little museum now in the village where I lived, I am transcribing my father's diary of 1968 and we are going through old slides. Not just of there either because once you start a job like that it becomes a mammoth task. As I type HoF has just discovered ones from our wedding and is trying to identify the people shown. Then there is the problem of which ones to keep and scan and which to chuck. Just how ruthless should we be? I threw away most of my father's diaries and regretted it, will we regret getting rid of slides or are we doing the next generation a favour?
Anyway, back to the present task and here are two boaty ones. The boat from Liverpool to Douglas on which we used to arrive before we took to the skies, and the sailing boat my father kept in Peel Harbour. It was called 'Joker, but we didn't find it much of a joke because we were usually seasick.


How young we were!

Its not a bad task for rainy days and we've had a few of those. In between we had the help of old friend John the Forester to prune a prunus. And then after choir on Monday night we went to the pub and found three men from the Isle of Man supping there who are about to open a restaurant in the area! Coincidence or Godincidence, depending on your world view. 'Brau, brau', we said. (Manx for 'well,well')

More pics

Don't know why they wouldn't upload before - gremlins. This is the one looking down on the village from above and our house in the middle.

The castle at Peel

A favourite glen, Glen Maye, green and jungly without any steamy heat.

The Old VIcarage

Isle of Man

While the cat's away....................... well HoF has gone for an African spree , and not being able to face the original plan of a weekend in London with a forecast of 30 degrees, another plan emerged. I have long wanted to go back to the Isle of Man where I lived, in vacation time anyway, for four years once upon a time. Hard to believe that was forty years ago. So, with amazing boldness and independence after the same number of years of marriage, I booked plane, B&B and car, and went there for four nights. This photo isn't very good but the white house in the middle is the first sight I had of my old home, as I drove the hired Fiesta (only 600 miles on the clock) over the hills.

The B&B was in the same village where I'd lived, although where the house stands was a grassy field back then. This was the view from my window.

And this was my home, now known as the 'Old' Vicarage. ironic really that vicars have declined as the village population has increased.

And this was the parish church where my father was the incumbent. The car park used to be a graveyard, I think. The village now has a museum and I have a commission to come back and hunt through old photos for memorabilia. There was still one person alive who remembered my parents.