Saturday, 20 July 2019

Soixante-neuf and counting

A sad but in a way happy event on Tuesday.  Cousin Gill, of whose existence we’ve only known for a little over six years, succumbed a couple of weeks ago to a metastatic ovarian cancer.  She chose to ease the burden of the family by deciding to spend her last days in a hospice in Bury St Edmunds where, by all accounts, she was very well looked after.  Her funeral was held in the rather lavish late perpendicular church of Sts Peter and Paul in Lavenham, a Suffolk town enriched by the wool trade in the later Middle Ages.  The church was not full, but the congregation would have stretched most ordinary village churches.  Gill’s husband Chris gave two readings, followed by a cheerful tribute full of anecdotes.  Daughters Penny and Fran followed with a nice double act tribute, equally entertaining.  Penny and Amanda joined the choir in a rendering of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, and their brother David was one of the pallbearers.  So Gill had the happy funeral she’d asked for, involving lots of the family.

I have to say that the rendering at the end of the service of the toccata from Charles-Marie Widor’s fifth organ symphony was the second worst I’ve ever heard.  It’s a pop piece, sure, but it still needs rehearsing.  The organist played it infinitely better than I could, of course, but loud discords held while he tried to work out where the devil he was in the score did nothing for his reputation.  (The worst ever, by the way, was in the Tower ballroom in Brighton, where the organist plainly had a train to catch.  One-way, I hope.)

Back here at Forges-l’Evêque we’ve just about got the house back to normal after the redecorating, and are content with the results, if a little cross at having had to do the finishing touches ourselves.  We’ll brief our man in more detail if we use him again.  The sitooterie looks a lot better (a) for a fresh  lick of pale grey paint and (b) the absence of the corner cupboards.  My parents acquired the cupboards from ‘Auntie’ Phyllis several decades ago, when they were already past their best, and I had them at Smith Towers before we moved them here.  They moved to the sitooterie to make space for Martyn’s piano, and the harsh environment did them no favours.  So off they went, freecycled to someone who’s going to paint them grey and flog them.  The downstairs hüüsli is also looking much tidier, and Martyn’s study too is transformed.  Time for me to bite the bullet and sort out my study.  Mañana.  Talvez.

Last night’s storms (though which I slept) filled the big water butt by the kitchen door overnight.  They also brought down a lot of rudbeckias, so I’ve been out with stakes and string, attempting to restore a bit of order.  The rain played havoc with the roses, so I filled a big bucket with dead-headings this morning.

Birthday supper of Wiener Schnitzel tonight with vegetables from the garden.  So I’d better go and beat nine bells out of the pork fillet.

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