Royal wedding

This morning at Church, I bumped into my lovely friend Chris Tagg. She stayed up last night until 2am reading the blog and I promised her a new post today about my Royal Wedding Day out a couple of Fridays ago. Here we are Chris, this ones for you....
I went to the village of Banham which is close by as they were having a party on the green. By the time I got to my friends' Kate and David's house at about 10.30, I was really excited. On the way over, I'd been listening to BBC radio 2 and they had had great music playing, culminating in the fabulous wedding anthem by that raucous soul belter, Yvonne Fair 'It should have been me'.
I'd been singing along so loudly that I didn't realise until I got out of the car that all six bells at Banham Church were ringing. (You'll just have to imagine the sound ... actually if you listen here you might be able to hear something similar). This is Banham Church where our friend David Hill is Rector.This is David with his son Cuthbert... Bertie has inherited his Father's love of dressing up.This is his beautiful wife Kate, standing with Cuthbert and I resplendant in our matching Union-Jack-tea-towel aprons. Banham had put on a wonderful show and this is what greeted us as we walked over to the Green.People had gone to a lot of trouble to dress up. There was a wonderful Queen Elizabeth the First, as well as this woman dressed as Emmeline Pankhurst who stayed in the role all day shouting "Votes for women" at frequent intervals.
Kate had gone to a lot of trouble to make a picnic with roast beef sandwiches and strawberries & cream. We drank champagne (it had its inevitable results of giving me an instant headache.)
Then back to the green for races. There weren't enough grown-ups to compete in the wheelbarrow races so this clown juggled instead!winning by a narrow margin...
Although the judge had imbibed a lot of Champagne by then!
The lovely Owen had organised his horse Kahn and cart (yes it's the one we had for Richard's funeral)
A grand day out indeed. It seems to have lifted everone's spirits to have some sunshine and a wedding.

NYE

Well, well, well it's New Years Eve already, gosh before we know it, it will be Christmas again.
We had a great time this New years eve. We had a party to go to at friends nearby and the theme was a Space Oddity. I was coming down with a cold and lacked enthusiasm of any sort, but Ricardo the Magnificent had ideas of going as Flash Gordon! How could I let him out do me? So we spent the day making pairs of matching yellow velvet hot pants and mantle things for our super powered shoulders. Richard even bleached his hair but it ended up looking a little reddish rather than the platinum it said on the box. We had such fun making those outfits. As you can see by the photos my shorts were a lot tighter than his! When he tried his on over the top of his long underwear, all I could think of was some sort of cartoon character, maybe Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse. I thought even if the party is a dud, we will have had a ball anyway.

I've got no idea how I got my hair to stay so poofy! Here we are ready for anything.

The party was great. At 11.30 we ditched it though and raced along quiet country roads to a Church nearby to join our more sober friends for midnight bell-ringing activities.

Jeremy made sure we did the whole thing according to bellringing protocol. At first we rang for 10 or 15 minutes with bells half muffled (Muffles are leather pads fitted to a bell's clapper to reduce the volume. They attenuate the bell's strike note whilst retaining the hum. By only muffling the clapper on one side you get an 'echo' effect as blows are alternately loud and soft. Bells fitted with muffles in this way are said to be half-muffled). Then as 12 midnight approached Jeremy raced up the stone spiral stairs and took off the muffles. Richard then rang the heaviest bell (the Tenor) for 12 strokes before we all kicked in to ring out that glorious sound all through the quiet village of Great Ellingham. Here we are flushed with success and a little bubbly. If you look closely you can see my yellow shorts! Hair slightly less poofy now though.

Happy New Year to you all, my blogger Buddies.

Bellringing outing

Yesterday was a Bank holiday here in the UK and our Norwich Diocesan Association of Bellringers (the southern branch mind you) went on a coach outing to some weird and wonderful Churches in North Norfolk. Don't you just love the dagginess of a coach where you can see for miles over the hedges and sit up the back with your buddy for hours on end without the worry of driving.
The first of the five Churches we visited was at Beetley. Here's a picture of it's graveyardwith a beautiful flowering cherry. Lush, green and bloody freezing. It's been warm for a week and we're all unused to it being cold again.
I leapt in to ring here and found I was in over my head as they were 8 tiny bells and hard to hold up.
Next it was off to Walsingham where there was a procession going on. You don't get to see this kind of occurence very often, even in the back blocks of Norfolk.We had lunch in Walsingham and then moved on to Wighton, a tiny village near the sea approached by narrow hedge lined lanes. One winter night in 1965, the bell tower collapsed in a storm and you can see the tide mark where new stone replaces old.This pretty doorway was surrounded by wallflowers which smelled like Chanel no 5.There were lots of lambs all in amongst the grave stones. A great way of keeping the grass down in your local Church.
There was a rather lovely altar cloth here with frayed, padded gold work. I'm not quite sure what this fantasy flower is.
Great headstones, the skull and cross bones usually denotes death by plague.
Wells-next-the-sea was next. It had this beautiful plaque on the wall.

...and a comedy eagle.Next and last came Holkham church St Withburga's!!! In magnificent surroundings, here's Ricardo looking over the fence at Holkham Hall.
There's a famous tomb here where the relief shows the nine daughters and six sons of the woman within!

Got to publish this now, even though there's heaps more I could tell you. Work is calling.

More wedding bells

Before I go I just thought I'd show you what it's like here in this neck of the woods.
Last weekend we rang the bells at a tiny church in a place called Shropham. The bells are notoriously bad & we get a perverse pleasure out of ringing them (evry stroke is different and you have to pull like crazy to make sure your bell stays up).
It was absolutely freezing & yet the bride & all the poor little bridesmaids had strapless dresses on, by the end of the service the brides arms were blue. What a crazy waste of an opportunity to wear the fabulous fur trimmed velvet gown.

There are snow drops out though.
On the way home we drove past snowy fields with LOTS of pheasants. If you click on the picture it will come up bigger & you can just see them scurrying about in the snow saying "Hey guys my feet are kind of cold".

The bells , the bells.

I just realised I could blog this from New Years Eve.

The AGM of the NDAB (southern Branch)

Yes that fascinating club that I'm sure you all want to be a member of had it's Annual General Meeting last weekend. The Southern Branch of the Norwich Diocesan Association of Bellringers. Watching paint dry has nothing on this event. If it hadn't been so bloody cold in the Church, I would have been asleep in seconds.
We did however have a lot of fun in the lead up. Note Richard's cute hairdo!making cheese sconesLamingtons (here the preparation thereof)
Cheese and pickle sandwiches (crustless of course)

and Coronation chicken sandwiches The best thing about these quarterly meetings is the amazing tea you get to eat for £2.50 a head. The other photos of the tea didn't quite work out but here's a short movie of all the fun you're missing.

Richard's post

You may not know that Ricardo the Magnificent is a keen Bellringer.

He passed a milestone recently at the huge Church at North Lopham built in 1526. A quarter peal is kind of like your first public performance in the Bell ringing world. It usually goes for around 45 minutes and takes a lot of skill and concentration. He rang on what's called an "inside" bell.

Dawn Pullan, the Ringing Master of the Southern Branch of the Norwich Diocesan association of bellringers (to give you her full title) said he was like a dog with 2 tails afterwards.

He's also been very busy making a kitchen for friends who live nearby. The photos are taken on his mobile and are unfortunately pretty bad. But you get the jist. The bechtops are all made of Iroko and very glamorous indeed. I'd kill for a kitchen like this.

Before.....with the new old oak beam that had to be put in above the stove opening.

And after...complete with flowers