JR'S ANNUAL LETTER : 2004

WINTER

During the course of my many visits I am some times well rewarded by a good story. Mr Clarkson, who is 95 and learned to plough with horses, reminisced about his early days in Moulton when Jolly Jewell was an important landowner and horse breeder. One day Jolly, out walking with his shooting stick, shot a rabbit. He put it into his pocket and carried on until he came across the poorest man in the parish - a mere assistant to the roadman. On being asked if he would like a rabbit the roadman replied, "Yes sir! Yes sir! Make more gravy than a tatey." The very next day, as we returned from a men's meeting at Wetherden, Peter Chaffey recalled some boyhood incidents. One old fellow was singularly unimpressed with a new muck spreader - "Ain't no good bor. It throw the muck up so far it niver come down."

The day before Christmas my computer monitor blew up. It went bang and a cloud of blue smoke issued from the back. It couldn't have happened at a worse time. I was without the use of my computer for a fortnight. I usually work on it for several hours each day and so the loss was hard to bear. With the arrival of a new monitor I continued with my Christian expositions and started a series of slope evolution simulations for my website. I am indebted to my nephew Michael for some helpful advice but I still had to learn how to use Paint Shop Pro something I did not find easy.

I had a very enjoyable Christmas with my brother Philip and his family. It was good to share the day with two friends of Philip and Sandra, Simon and Janet, both of whom I taught with limited success. The meals and wine were excellent. On a still, mild afternoon our game of football was remarkable for a dynamic, three-minute spell from Simon before his lungs packed up. I am afraid, that in the absence of Isaac who was basking in Australian sunshine, nephew Joe dominated proceedings. How I wished that I was 30 years younger and could clobber him or that we were playing hockey and I could chop him. In the afternoon we watched a video of Brockley C.C. playing Sugar Beet in 1988. Joe found my violent "hoicks" to leg amusing - but I did score 51 not out!

I spent New Eve with my friends Richard and Carolyn. I usually see the Old Year out with John and Janet Eley but on this occasion Janet was very poorly. It has been a very worrying year for them both and I hope 2005 will prove a happier one. I had a jolly time with Richard and Carolyn who have often been very kind to me. We laughed a lot playing a game akin to trivial pursuit, but sillier, and saw the New Year in with toasts, kisses and Auld Lang Syne.

Tommy Bamber and I had several memorable days bird watching in the winter months. Four hundred barnacle geese and a colourful flock of snow bunting at Benacre Mere and two long-eared owls in a small oak at Lower Holbrook were, perhaps, the high lights. However, Tommy experienced his greatest adrenaline rush in the West Stow Country Park café. We sat next to a plump lady and a rather seedy teenage boy. It didn't take Tom long to establish that the boy had been expelled from the County Upper School for punching one of our former colleagues. While I sat and admired the social worker's super abundance of flesh Tom proceeded to play his favourite game of winding up a delinquent. He was lucky to escape without a punching!

In February I could stand the little patch of black mould on my kitchen ceiling no longer. I knew it was a sign that something was wrong but I kept pretending it wasn't there. Finally I pulled up a floorboard in my bedroom and discovered the tiniest of leaks from a central heating pipe. The British Gas engineer who came to fix it said, "I was having a good day till now." There is a moral in the story for any one interested in morals. See my website!

One of my happiest winter moments occurred in a Bury bookshop. A little girl sat astride a rocking horse. As she moved gently up and down she smiled serenely to herself. She was in heaven!

SPRING.

In early March I saw my first live badger as I drove home from a cricket club meeting at the Whepstead White Horse. My car headlights picked it out trundling beside the road. It looked strong in the shoulders - just like a few of the Brockley Cricketers.

I attended two funerals in early spring. I shall miss both Hugh Bishop who preached regularly at the chapel and Stanley Knight who was a friend from my Pioneer Camp days. I didn't see Stanley often but I felt he cared about me and prayed for me. I travelled by train to his funeral at Walthamstow. On the train I sat next to a very elegant woman with a lovely voice. I know she had a lovely voice, not because she talked to me, but because she held one conversation after another on her mobile phone. Think what she missed! Stanley's nephew gave a very touching and humorous appreciation of his uncle's life while his pastor reminded us of the Christian's hope. On the way home I was surrounded by a group of 16-year-old girls from Norwich High School. They spent most of the journey fantasising about marriage to someone fantastically rich and having a sumptuous wedding. I suppose I should have been glad that they were at least contemplating marriage! I was amazed at how mercenary they were! One dark-haired girl was moving to Japan when she left school. I tried to engage her in conversation - being interested in Japan - but got the brush off. I suppose I fell into the category of funny men not to talk to in railway carriages.

At the end of March I enjoyed an afternoon with a mixed group of ladies from my brother Paul's church at Clapham. I spent a couple of hours cleaning cutlery and crockery in anticipation of their visit. I earned my reward - getting clasped to bosoms of varying dimensions. It was a very happy episode on a glorious sunny day.

I had another treat in April when I attended my old pupil, Katy Style's, wedding. Katy was radiant and bubbling with fun. Her father and brother gave dry, droll speeches at the reception in the best traditions of the Suffolk farming fraternity. It was very pleasant to meet with several old pupils and hear a few titbits of news. I was amused to hear that David Langdon, who once famously called me a bitch, a singularly inappropriate term, got so annoyed with a lady teacher at Northgate High School that he said, "I'd like to kill your cat." He got suspended for a week for threatening to kill a teacher's cat. Nobody would have blinked an eyelid if he had threatened to kill the teacher!

In April a very depressing hockey season ended with a 12 - 1 thrashing by Ipswich. Bury veterans have all got old together and can't keep up with the opposition. The new season has been no better. We had to wait until mid-November for our first victory. I am so tired after playing hockey I sleep all Sunday afternoon! Cricket is not much better. After the first game of the season on April 24th my thighs were still aching two days later. In May I made a rare appearance for the first team and hit the only six of the game. Such hints of former glory get few and further between.

It was good to get out for some walks in the spring. John Skull, his wife Marion and I had a great ramble in the Glemham area of East Suffolk. We spent most of the walk in the Alde valley. It is a very unusual, picturesque part of the county with so many meadows and small woods. The oxslips, bluebells and ransoms were out. At one point we needed to cross a field in which a huge, longhorn bull was grazing. My two intrepid companions said, "You go first, Bonzo. If it doesn't chase you we will follow." Spring is a fine time to go and visit Mr Peter Webb and inspect all the plants bursting into life in his large garden. His stories make me smile. One day when working in a factory in Haverhill he gave an old boy a menthol sweet. When he offered him another the following morning the reply was: "If its one a' they menthol ones - no thank ya. The one yar give me yisterday nearly got the better on me."

SUMMER.

In early June I went with my brother Philip to see his daughter Beccy's exhibition of paintings at Loughborough University. We went for lunch to a pub frequented by students. It is rare for me these days to be in the company of so many young people. It brought back memories of my own time as an undergraduate. We walked through a little park to the exhibition stopping to climb a tall tower, a memorial to the Great War, which gave us panoramic views of the town. I cannot say that I found most of the student's work inspirational but I spent a happy few minutes in a blacked out cubicle with a very sweet girl. She was so enthusiastic about her creation, a concrete chair that glowed in the dark, that I felt constrained to admire it. Beccy did very well and obtained a first class degree. At the end of June I camped at Blandford Forum in Dorset. The journeys there and back were a nightmare. I was close to death twice! Dorset is a very varied, charming county. I revisited some old haunts - Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove. I had an exciting walk along the Kimmeridge Ledges - cliffs in black Jurassic shale inter-bedded with thin limestones and flags. There were magnificent views from Swyre Head westward to Portland Bill and north to Corfe Castle and Poole harbour. I walked every day for 9 days and there was much to enjoy: two Dartford warblers on Winfrith Heath, the delicate chalk-water crowfoot in the fast running river Cerne, a small boy with a huge newly caught trout, an old Roman road a blaze with wild flowers and the wonderful view in the softest early morning light of the Vale of Blackmore's misty meadows.

I attended the Anglican Church in Blandford on my Sunday in Dorset. The speaker at the evening service was more rabidly evangelical than me. He was one of those rather well fed vicars who wear a dog collar over a rugby shirt. I sat next to an intense woman who danced in a half-hearted sort of fashion and said, "Hallelujah" a couple of times. After the service she made a beeline for the trendy vicar. I profited from the morning service that was not quite so 'triumphalist.'

Back at home I was out and about quite a lot during the summer. It was a pleasure to see the graceful, strongly scented fragrant orchid growing on Market Weston Fen and the woolly thistle along the old railway line in Lavenham. My bird watching jaunts are not usually fraught with danger but in a hide on the Trimley Marshes I dropped a wooden shutter on my friend Tommy Bamber's nose. I quickly tore a strip off my handkerchief to staunch the flow but Tommy preferred to bleed to death rather than get his bare flesh anywhere near my handkerchief. I offered him my shirttail but this just made him shudder.

My brother Philip and I played several games of cricket for Brockley Third team. How the mighty have fallen! Philip was peeved in the course of scoring lots of runs to hear the total incompetents amongst the opposition accuse him of hitting it to cow corner. I was even less well pleased when members of my own team started to tell me how to keep wicket. It is humbling to grow old. One of the best moments of the season came in a friendly match. Tristan, a very small lad of seven, had fielded for his father's team for 40 overs without losing concentration. So, when it was my turn to go in I let Tristan bat instead. He had been wearing his tiny pads for about 20 overs in anticipation of getting in. He faced 6 balls. When he walked back to the pavilion I heard him say, "This is the best day of my life." It was his first innings in a proper cricket match! At Kedington I played against a side containing an archetypal country girl - she had rough hands!

In mid August I paid my annual visit to Joseph and Elizabeth Hewitt. Joe and I walked along the sea front from Walton on the Naze to Holland on Sea. The tide was up and waves were boisterous. One giant wave broke over the sea wall and nearly drowned us to the vast amusement of a large woman and her daughter who were just waiting for it to happen. However, neither of us got as wet as those who later in the day walked through a cloud burst while we watched from the safety of a shelter. It was an entertainment to watch bedraggled, woe-begotten figures walk dripping past.

AUTUMN

On September 12th we had uplifting Harvest Thanksgiving Services. In the morning Pastor Ward told us that his father always used to thank God for his bed! In the evening Peter Chaffey said that Maurice Wright, the farmer who employed him for most of his working life, would remove his hat after each field was combined to offer a prayer of thanks for another crop safely gathered in.

At the end of the month I went to stay with Paul and Ruth in Clapham for a few days. There were so many things I enjoyed about the holiday - the still, dark waters of the river Thames at Teddington Lock, discussing religion in a riverside hostelry with my cousin Andrew, the sight of two beautiful young teachers sitting on the pavement outside a preparatory school by Clapham Common, a walk with my brother over Hampstead Heath, the view over the city from Primrose Hill, the button factory in Rivington Street, Brick Lane with its Bangladeshi restaurants, the joggers on the Ornamental canal between St Katherines dock and Shadwell dock and a large canal pool covered with water lilies. I watched a mother pushing her little boy as he screamed with delight into the pigeons in Regents Park where Paul and I were served refreshments by a beaming Portuguese lady. In the Natural History Museum I observed a toddler eating grapes with the relish of a connoisseur. As I trudged the mean streets of Battersea two black girls returning home from school with their substantial mum made my spirit soar. They were swinging on the railings and singing - happy as young larks in springtime. I have read many books during the year but few I enjoyed as much as Rudyard Kipling's, 'Jungle Book.' I was prompted to read these charming stories, which I somehow missed as a lad, after being given a biography of Kipling. My brother Paul introduced me to the works of the Christian author, Philip Yancey, and I have since read three of his titles with profit.

I was pleased to be invited to the commemorative assembly at Debenham High School to celebrate forty years of the school's history. It was nice to get a few hugs and kisses. I had a friendly chat with the headmaster who is literally half the man he was. My two old friends Miss Arnall and Mrs Sibley had organised a very interesting display that included the reminiscences of old pupils. One girl wrote that her handwriting improved beyond recognition after Mr Reed wrote at the bottom of an inky exercise: "This book looks as if it has been shaken up in a sack with a ferret." I enjoyed talking to a few recent school leavers who retained some affection for their bad tempered teacher - although it took me several minutes to shuffle through my memories and place them.

On October 24th the Grace Baptist Meetings were at the Friends House in the Euston Rd, London. In the afternoon I strolled around some of my old haunts - Gower St, Bedford Sq, Russell Sq and Bloomsbury Sq. I found St Georges Gardens very atmospheric with its old tombs and ancient elm and plain trees. My former college was in this part of London. So I looked into the Geography Department of UCL to see if Prof Caroline Harrison was in. We were undergraduates together. She was in - looking very youthful. Initially she stared very disapprovingly at the elderly hobo in a trilby who had walked in off the street. But eventually the light dawned! It find it sad that Caroline is only the second of the fifty Geography students in my year I have seen since I left.

At the end of 2003 I wrote in my diary: 'I must count my blessings. I just wish the church was better supported, I had a bit more feedback on my website and that I experienced more love.' I am pleased to report that a few new folk have joined the chapel and we have restarted our evening service. I have had some nice e-mails about my web site. But I can't say that I have had more love! Hannah at Barton Mills was asked by her five-year-old niece to guess how much she loved her. Hannah couldn't say. So Poppy told her: "71". It was the biggest number she knew! She couldn't love her aunt any more than that. At this season of the year it is as well to remember that God loves us '71'. Or to put it another way: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Love, John.

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