I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you about the fireworks at Oulton Broad.  There was a week-long Regatta in the summer, with yacht races every day and amusements on the park.  Our house was right opposite the park, on the other side of the Broad.  On the Thursday and the next Monday, which was the Bank Holiday, firework displays were held, and the bottom of our garden was the ideal place for them to be staged.

It was also, of course, the ideal excuse for a party, and so my parents held one every year.  In due course, I might as well say now, the Thursday firework display was discontinued on grounds of cost, but I expect the Monday one still takes place, though I don’t know the arrangements nowadays.

On that Monday evening, to celebrate the end of the Regatta, there was the burning of the Golden Galleon, and this event caused me some nervousness for a few years in my childhood.  You see, once someone told me that the way the Golden Galleon was selected was that they looked for the scruffiest boat on the river and chose that to burn.  We had a rather dilapidated boat at the time, and I was sure it would be picked.  We did lose that boat in the end, in fact, during a storm it broke loose from its moorings and was swept down to the lock gates where it crashed and sank.  I don’t know if it was insured, let’s hope so.

Of course, the Golden Galleon was actually a raft piled with wood, a floating bonfire, and I suppose it was towed down the river once it was aflame, but it was quite a spectacular sight.

I can’t at this moment remember the name of the firework company, but the man who set up the display and let them off was called Fred Faithfull.  He came with a colleague, not necessarily the same one each year, but it was always Fred and he and my parents were quite friendly and exchanged Christmas cards.

It was a spectacular display, back in the old days.  There were two or three set pieces, one was Golden Rain, where there was a wire set up between two poles and the sparkles dropped like rain.  I know, a slightly different connotation nowadays, perhaps? – it was a more innocent time.  The final display, on the Thursday, said “GOOD NIGHT” and on the Monday, “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN” – which I very much doubt is the case now.

My mother held coffee mornings and garden parties for charity, they were quite big events.  The garden was big enough for lots of stalls and games.  I usually, at these garden parties, got roped in to do something when I was little, which I didn’t care for at all, being terribly shy.  Winsome little girls were either sent out with baskets of posies to sell or else had lots of handkerchiefs pinned to their dress, which the ladies could buy and unpin.  I remember twins a year younger than I who were always up for this sort of thing, which was a good job because, although I was generally quite biddable, I’d do nothing at all as a sales pitch and buyers had to search me out.

I’ve mentioned before how hard my mother worked, but she didn’t do it all on her own.  On the day before the event, or sometimes on the same day, a group of her friends would come along and get stuck in and help finish the preparations.  It was known as ‘the party to get ready for the party.’  It was a lot of fun, you know.  I’m still not entirely sure whether these memories are making me happy or melancholy for what’s long gone.

It’s the first day of the new school year, for the high school pupils, anyway.  So I spent half the morning in school, first at staff briefing – there are a good many extra staff and the room was quite crowded – and then at the whole-school assembly, which took place in the sports hall.

With the closure of the middle schools and the country running out of money, we gained several hundred more pupils but were not able to do any building to accommodate them.  So we took on our town’s middle school and have turned it into a sixth form college (still part of the school with the same teachers) and took the younger pupils in to the main school building.  We’re still overcrowded though.  Not only are there more children in school but they all are being taught for every lesson, whereas the sixth formers have a lot more study periods.  The meetings rooms are going to have to be used as classrooms quite often and we’ll have governors’ meetings at the sixth form centre.

Standing there in the hall looking at them all was quite something.  They fitted in quite well at the end of last year (they joined the school for the last two weeks of term) but some of them have grown during the summer.  It’ll be very crowded by next July.  I felt a twinge of pride, I admit, not that I can take any credit – but then, there have been enough people saying how proud they’ve felt during the Olympics who were armchair viewers, so plenty of you know what I mean.  “You didn’t sign up for this,” I murmured to the Head – there were about 950 pupils when he started here, now it’s around 1,300.

I’m going to be busy this year.  That is very good for me.  I need a spur, things in my diary, deadlines, a feeling that I’m useful.  My mother used to say, in her later years, that she missed feeling useful, although by then she had neither the health nor the inclination to take on voluntary work any more.  I suppose that will come to me too, if I live as long as she did (which was 79, far longer than anyone else in the family, so odds are against).

The Head and I took a stroll round the school and came across a member of staff on her own in a room folding curtains to take to another room.  She is over 7 months pregnant with her first baby.  “You aren’t going to hang those, are you?” asked the Head suspiciously.  “No, of course not.  Well, not while anyone’s watching.”  He eyed her, hoping she was joking.  “Are you still running?”  “Yes, not far, only about 4 miles a day.”  This is the woman who (and I’m sure I blogged it) took part in a charity marathon a few years ago.  When she got to the end of the course, she still had a fair bit of energy left, so she went and jogged round it again.  

I know, darlings, you thought the Royal Mail had cancelled the second daily post.  Well, I’m not royal and I’m not male, so it doesn’t apply to me.

And here is a picture of Martina’s standard poodle pup, Kipper, named after Kipper Catchpole, brother of Huckleberry and beloved dog of my childhood.  Isn’t she adorable?  Martina sent another couple of pictures too, one with a toy and one looking very puppyish and cute.  I’ve added them to my folder of desktop photos, which changes randomly every 15 minutes and which gives me a lot of pleasure.  I have far too short an attention span to have just one background photo.

And here, to remind you, is the original hound, holding a bone and being cuddled by my mum.

About 50 years separates the two pictures.

And since a couple of you seem to see a resemblance between my mum and me, I’ve just taken a picture of myself on my phone.  I’m a lot older now than she was then, of course, some 20 years.

Okay, I’m making excuses.

Oh, and I see some of you have already read the previous post.  I’ve added a link to the Birth of Ro.  Not gory, honestly.

The Sage was giving a talk on L0west0ft Ch1na in the town of the same name this morning, so we drove over fairly early, to allow us time to find the venue.  We both used to live there and knew it extremely well, but in the last 25 years they have done so much road building, and made so many streets one-way or cul de sacs that it can be quite tricky to find your way about.

As the club members started to arrive, we saw several people we knew from way back, which was an unexpected bonus.  Then a woman introduced herself to me and said that she had been the midwife when my daughter was born.  A few checkings of dates and I corrected her to son, which she queried (honestly, Ro, you’ve been a boy since day one), but I was so pleased to see her.

I wonder if I’ve described the day Ro was born?  I’ll have to look*.  Don’t worry, I don’t do gory details unless I’m having my hip bone removed.  Ooh, that reminds me, I’m having an operation before too long, I hope.  Not on my hip.  I’ll tell you about it in due course, no problems at all, quite trivial.

Anyway, I said that, although I hadn’t recognised her face, I did remember her and her colleague clearly because they were both so lovely and made the occasion such an unstressful one.  I said I was so glad that I’d had two midwives and not seen a doctor at all – doctors do think that childbirth is a medical matter when a straightforward birth is not really any such thing.

The Sage quite wanted me to stay and I felt rude in leaving – well, I suppose I was – but I had a very unsettled night, awake for 5 1/2 hours and catnapped either side, the room was not small exactly but rather boxy, with a lowish ceiling, no curtains or anything to absorb sound and a lot of chatter was going on, and I felt too hot and a bit claustrophobic, so I said I’d be back in an hour.

So I pottered around Low’stoft for a bit and bought cherries, Victoria plums (I doubt they were English, the crop has been poor this year and these were large and luscious) and the first Kent cobnuts of the season.  Woo-hoo!  I know plums and cobs mean autumn, but in a good way.

The success story of the summer, by the way, has been the new flowerbed by The Wall.  Thanks to the rain, I’ve hardly watered it at all and the chickens have largely kept the weeds at bay apart from nettles. I’m enjoying having flowers, having grown vegetables almost exclusively for a number of years, and I’m wondering if it’s worth the bother of growing many veggies next year when I’ve got such a good greengrocer in town.  This hasn’t been a good year of course, but I’ve lost heart anyway and don’t enjoy it any more.  I love having the flowers to look at out of my study window, though.  I must be getting soft in my old age.  Though slightly too soft in one way.  I weeded it thoroughly yesterday and, although I wore gloves (I rarely wear gardening gloves, I’m the down and dirty type), I had a lot of nettle stings.  Anthisan cream doesn’t work on nettle stings, by the way.  I’m still a bit tingly.

*I looked.  Of course I did!

One thing that’s always been a plus is that every dog we’ve ever had has been completely trustworthy around children – all people, in fact, but they all loved children and were very good with them.  When we lived at the Old Rectory we were very close to the sea and, although dogs weren’t allowed on the beach in the summer season, Simon loved a run on the beach during the rest of the year.  I remember him running ahead, dashing down the path – it was a broad slope suitable for maintenance vehicles that we usually used, although there were steeper steps down from the cliff too – and running along by the water’s edge.  There were often fishermen and you had to keep an eye on him so that he didn’t annoy them by running into their line, rummaging in their bait-box  – or worse, finding a stray hook with some bait on it.

It was lovely to have a dog again, I’d really missed it.  Having always had dogs sleeping on my bed before I got married, however, I wasn’t going to have that happen again, I put my husband first!  Simon had a bed (a dog bed, darlings, not a full-size one) downstairs.

He was always very good when we were out, didn’t misbehave … that we knew of.  However, one day I got up late for some reason, maybe I wasn’t well, and the rest of the family went off out in the car.  I heard a howling sound and got up and peered round the stairs.  There was a half-landing with a big window into the porch five stairs up and Simon was sitting on it, looking out of the window and singing.  Yowling.  “Ahem,” I said and he jumped and looked extremely embarrassed.

He was very pleased when Ro was born, enjoying having a baby in the house.  He must have been at least ten years old by then, maybe twelve and we moved to this house two years later and so there were no problems with him wanting to run off across the fields chasing rabbits, old boy that he was.  I don’t think he lived more than about another year here though, as he developed prostate problems and eventually we had to call the vet in.  The Sage and I both cried when he died, and I remember apologising to the vet for bothering him, oddly enough.

The Sage didn’t want another dog.  He said that it was so painful when you lost him.  I pointed out the benefits of the ten or fifteen years in between, that it was no argument against having a pet that one day it would die.  You could say that about any relationship.  But it took four years for him to give in and agree.  Well, three and a half.  And then I put the word about that I was looking for a puppy and waited for Fate to call at my door.  As it were.

Before I move on, I’ve just remembered something I meant to say about Cleo, which was that she was allergic to fleas.  The dogs rarely caught fleas actually, only Simon and Huck went out of the garden except on a lead and the only animals in the garden with fleas were hedgehogs.  I remember one time opening the window to let Huck in and he seemed to have a football in his mouth.  It turned out to be a huge hedgehog covered in fleas which he put down on the rug.  One of us had to go and find a box, it was rolled in using the poker and shovel and taken right back out again.  Then we had to de-flea Huck.

Anyway, Cleo had some irritated-looking (yes, they frowned and gnashed their teeth) lumps on her stomach and we took her to the vet, and it was a flea allergy.  We were given a powder to put on her to soothe them which had to be mixed into a paste with water.  And then there was a bottle of Gentian Violet to paint on her too – fortunately, she was a black dog so it didn’t look too awful.

A year or so later, she started to show signs of another attack, so we went to the chemist for the Gentian Violet and dabbed it on her.  She got up and had a good shake and it went everywhere – all over the floor and the kitchen cabinets.  A drawer of the dresser was partly open and it covered everything in there.  We wiped it all up of course, but we carried on finding spots of violet for several years.  In the end, she didn’t get better and we had to take her back to the vet and it turned out that there was something else in with the Gentian Violet to do the good.

As I said before, several of the dogs had died by the time my mother sold Seaview, the house in the photo, but five still seemed too many.  We took Simon (the second Simon, that is) and Wink took Sam and my mother and stepfather moved to Wrentham with Muldoon, Bassington and Izzy – Isobel, that is, who was blind.

So at last the Sage and I had a dog of our own.  We lived in a lovely house then.  I first saw it soon after Al was born and we were staying with my mother and stepfather.  The Sage suggested a short outing to see a house he was selling at auction the next day.  I walked in the door and staggered slightly.  “Can we buy it?” I said.  So we did.