The Easter Holiday
As so often happens, in London at least (and I doubt if it was very different in Clacton!) Easter was overcast, drizzly and chilly until the afternoon of Bank Holiday Monday when, just for a few hours, we basked in warm spring sunshine.
However I had a very enjoyable and active break. My grandson Nick was home from Brussels for Easter, and granddaughter Jo was also home from Sheffield with my younger son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn. They live just a mile or two from my elder son and daughter-in-law, with whom I was staying. It was therefore an opportunity for a family get-together.
On Sunday morning Pete drove Arlene and myself to Southwark Cathedral where we attended and took part in an Easter Choral Eucharist. It was a really special occasion as it was televised live for BBC 1. Every seat in the Cathedral was occupied and there were over forty in the choir! If you watched it on tv you’ll know that it was a very splendid and a very happy event.
Afterwards we watched the service on BBC i-player. Arlene and I were able to spot ourselves in the congregation, but we did of course, know where to look.
Left -Magnolia in Bloom in the gardens at Wisley
Then, on Bank Holiday Monday, Pete drove us to the Royal Horticultural Society’s HQ and gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The sun came out while we were there and it was lovely to see the spring flowers and the blossoming trees and shrubs in the spring sunshine. There was a fascinating selection of plants in the enormous glass house where, thanks to clever design, plants from dry and temperate parts of the world are able to live and flourish under the same glass roof as those from tropical rain forests.
It was a lovely break and I enjoyed every moment of it. It's nice to be home in Clacton again though!
Right - a woodland path at Wisley
The Lovely Stour Valley
A new exhibition of John Constable’s work displaying his portraits rather than his already well-known landscapes*, a new biography ‘Constable in Love’, featuring his seven-year long courtship of Maria Bicknell, the girl he was to marry, and a National Trust Tour ‘Early Summer in the Stour Valley’** starting on Saturday 23rd May, brought back memories of my own of the lovely Stour Valley and, in particular, the ‘Constable country’ centred on Flatford and Dedham.
I was a keen fresh-water angler in my teenage years and sometimes on a Saturday or during the school holidays, I would seek a change from the familiar reaches of the River Gipping. I would get my mother to make me a packed lunch and carrying all my fishing gear on my bicycle, peddle my way along the London Road from Ipswich to East Bergholt and then on to Flatford for a day’s angling in pastures new.
Below - B
ridge Cottage, once owned by John Constable’s father, and now a welcoming restaurant, is the first sight that the visiting motorist or cyclist sees in Flatford.
That was not my only experience of Flatford. Mr Alfred Morris, the headmaster of Ipswich’s Northgate Secondary School for Boys (there was a separate girls’ school) was strongly opposed to last minute swotting for exams. Accordingly, he had established a tradition that the day before the annual London University School Leaving Exam began, all the candidates would spend a day on the river.
A new exhibition of John Constable’s work displaying his portraits rather than his already well-known landscapes*, a new biography ‘Constable in Love’, featuring his seven-year long courtship of Maria Bicknell, the girl he was to marry, and a National Trust Tour ‘Early Summer in the Stour Valley’** starting on Saturday 23rd May, brought back memories of my own of the lovely Stour Valley and, in particular, the ‘Constable country’ centred on Flatford and Dedham.
I was a keen fresh-water angler in my teenage years and sometimes on a Saturday or during the school holidays, I would seek a change from the familiar reaches of the River Gipping. I would get my mother to make me a packed lunch and carrying all my fishing gear on my bicycle, peddle my way along the London Road from Ipswich to East Bergholt and then on to Flatford for a day’s angling in pastures new.
Below - B
ridge Cottage, once owned by John Constable’s father, and now a welcoming restaurant, is the first sight that the visiting motorist or cyclist sees in Flatford.That was not my only experience of Flatford. Mr Alfred Morris, the headmaster of Ipswich’s Northgate Secondary School for Boys (there was a separate girls’ school) was strongly opposed to last minute swotting for exams. Accordingly, he had established a tradition that the day before the annual London University School Leaving Exam began, all the candidates would spend a day on the river.
We turned up at school as usual on our bikes (we were nearly all cyclists in those days) but bringing with us packed lunches. We then cycled en masse to Flatford. Here we clambered into skiffs hired by the school and spent an enjoyable day rowing (and some of us swimming) on the Stour between Flatford and Dedham. Those, of course, were the days before everybody became obsessed with ‘health and safety’!
By about 4.00 p.m. we all made our way up river to Dedham, where a lavish tea was provided for us in one of the village’s restaurants. The tea, like the hire of the skiffs, was paid for by the school. Replete, we rowed back to Flatford for the long cycle ride home. Many of us sat the exam the next day with aching backs and limbs and blistered hands but, on the whole, I think that our results justified the headmaster’s obsession.
I have been back to Flatford many times since and on one occasion hired a skiff and rowed some visiting American friends from Flatford to Dedham and back again. It still retains the charm that it exerted in the mid-1930s. Age however has brought a greater appreciation of Flatford and the River Stour as the inspiration and subject of Constable’s best-known works, together with the historical interest of Dedham’s cathedral-like parish church. Just opposite is Sherman House, the ancestral home of the Federal General who marched his victorious army through Georgia ‘from Atlanta to the sea’, during the American Civil War
By about 4.00 p.m. we all made our way up river to Dedham, where a lavish tea was provided for us in one of the village’s restaurants. The tea, like the hire of the skiffs, was paid for by the school. Replete, we rowed back to Flatford for the long cycle ride home. Many of us sat the exam the next day with aching backs and limbs and blistered hands but, on the whole, I think that our results justified the headmaster’s obsession.
I have been back to Flatford many times since and on one occasion hired a skiff and rowed some visiting American friends from Flatford to Dedham and back again. It still retains the charm that it exerted in the mid-1930s. Age however has brought a greater appreciation of Flatford and the River Stour as the inspiration and subject of Constable’s best-known works, together with the historical interest of Dedham’s cathedral-like parish church. Just opposite is Sherman House, the ancestral home of the Federal General who marched his victorious army through Georgia ‘from Atlanta to the sea’, during the American Civil War
Left -Sherman House, Dedham. Above Dedham Parish Church
It has been forecast that, thanks to the economic down-turn an extra £5 million will this year be spent on holidays in England. I certainly hope that our Essex Holiday Coast gets its fair share of it. The fact that we are little more than half an hour’s drive from the lovely Stour Valley, with its natural beauty and its artistic and historical associations, should attract the many discriminating visitors who want a little more from their holiday than sun, sea and sand.
*‘Constable Portraits; The Painter and his Circle’, National Portrait Gallery until 14 June.
** First tour begins at 10.30 a.m., cost £5 per person. For details phone 01206 298260
It has been forecast that, thanks to the economic down-turn an extra £5 million will this year be spent on holidays in England. I certainly hope that our Essex Holiday Coast gets its fair share of it. The fact that we are little more than half an hour’s drive from the lovely Stour Valley, with its natural beauty and its artistic and historical associations, should attract the many discriminating visitors who want a little more from their holiday than sun, sea and sand.
*‘Constable Portraits; The Painter and his Circle’, National Portrait Gallery until 14 June.
** First tour begins at 10.30 a.m., cost £5 per person. For details phone 01206 298260
MPs’ Expenses
I have found the unfolding revelations about MPs’ expenses depressing rather than (or perhaps as well as) outrageous. I don’t find the continual excuse and justification that not a thing has been done that is against the rules, in the least reassuring. Yes, of course the rules need a thorough overhaul but somehow in my innocence I had imagined that MPs weren’t in the business for their personal profit but to serve their fellow men and women; ‘to make a difference’ as they say these days.
Surely that doesn’t include making a close study of the rule book to find out exactly how much money you can extract from the public purse in ‘expenses’ without risking expulsion from Parliament or having to ‘assist the Police with their enquiries’. Our parliamentary representatives continually refer to each other as ‘honourable members’. I would have thought that it was thoroughly dishonourable, even if not illegal, to claim for expenses that were unjustifiable or clearly need not have been incurred.
Could it be because our representatives are no longer conviction politicians with a cause that they find themselves compelled to promote at whatever personal cost? Nowadays are they simply men and women who have chosen politics as a career? Many would find it a very attractive one and it is one for which there is never a shortage of applicants. MPs enjoy a generous salary and (at the moment anyway) almost unlimited expenses, together with a certain local and possibly even national and international celebrity. Provided that they keep on the right side of the Party whips they can expect occasional luxurious ‘fact finding’ trips abroad at the national expense plus, if they can manage to get re-elected often enough, a very comfortable pension, and possibly a knighthood or a life peerage, at the end
I have, in the past, been highly suspicious of burning-eyed, honey-tongued (or vitriol tongued!) zealots, ‘who will not cease from mental fight, nor will their swords sleep in their hands’ till they have built their own particular version of New Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’. Experience suggests that they are every bit as likely to lead us to disaster. I have to say though that I can’t imagine Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Tony Benn or Eric Skinner considering, even for one moment, the possibility of ‘fiddling their expenses’.
I have found the unfolding revelations about MPs’ expenses depressing rather than (or perhaps as well as) outrageous. I don’t find the continual excuse and justification that not a thing has been done that is against the rules, in the least reassuring. Yes, of course the rules need a thorough overhaul but somehow in my innocence I had imagined that MPs weren’t in the business for their personal profit but to serve their fellow men and women; ‘to make a difference’ as they say these days.
Surely that doesn’t include making a close study of the rule book to find out exactly how much money you can extract from the public purse in ‘expenses’ without risking expulsion from Parliament or having to ‘assist the Police with their enquiries’. Our parliamentary representatives continually refer to each other as ‘honourable members’. I would have thought that it was thoroughly dishonourable, even if not illegal, to claim for expenses that were unjustifiable or clearly need not have been incurred.
Could it be because our representatives are no longer conviction politicians with a cause that they find themselves compelled to promote at whatever personal cost? Nowadays are they simply men and women who have chosen politics as a career? Many would find it a very attractive one and it is one for which there is never a shortage of applicants. MPs enjoy a generous salary and (at the moment anyway) almost unlimited expenses, together with a certain local and possibly even national and international celebrity. Provided that they keep on the right side of the Party whips they can expect occasional luxurious ‘fact finding’ trips abroad at the national expense plus, if they can manage to get re-elected often enough, a very comfortable pension, and possibly a knighthood or a life peerage, at the end
I have, in the past, been highly suspicious of burning-eyed, honey-tongued (or vitriol tongued!) zealots, ‘who will not cease from mental fight, nor will their swords sleep in their hands’ till they have built their own particular version of New Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’. Experience suggests that they are every bit as likely to lead us to disaster. I have to say though that I can’t imagine Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Tony Benn or Eric Skinner considering, even for one moment, the possibility of ‘fiddling their expenses’.
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