Tendring Topics…….on line

A Glimpse into the future?

The above news cutting from a German regional newspaper was sent to me by a friend living in the Black Forest area. It shows a ten-years-older (and wiser) German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, commenting in 2020 on the failure of the Copenhagn Climate-Change Conference to come to a satisfactory concluson. It is doubly prophetic since the newspaper is dated 4th December, before he Conference had even begun!

The print of the caption is, I regret, too small to read on this blog. My ability to read German is distinctly limited. However I have managed to work out that it is headed 'Late Repentance' and goes on to say that this is one of the posters that greeted Angel Merkel, and other national leaders when they arrived at Copenhagen airport for the Conference. It was part of a Greenpeace Poster campaign.

I don't really think that Chancellor Angela Merkel (or Prime Minister Gordon Brown) need be repentant about their roles at Copenhagen, except perhaps that, unlike Greenpeace, neither of them had foreseen inevitable failure.

A Lucky Year?

To ethnic Chinese, ‘eight’ is a lucky number. That, so I am told, is why they were so keen to hold the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. Ariel, my elder grandson’s Taiwanese girl-friend was convinced that the year that is coming to an end would be an extremely fortunate one for me. It was the year of my 88th birthday and my house number is also 88!

Myself and Ariel, Grandson Chris’ Taiwanese girlfriend

Actually, I often feel that I have been blest by good luck all my life. No, I have never won the lottery…..but as I have never bought a lottery ticket that is hardly surprising. Over and over again though my life has been punctuated by extraordinary coincidences, and circumstances that seemed to be disasters, but have turned out to be blessings in disguise.

Right -grandson Nick and Romy, his Belgian girlfriend.

2009 isn’t quite over yet, but yes, despite the recession it has so far it has been a good one for me. I had an enjoyable Easter, attending with my daughter-in-law a wonderful Choral Eucharist in Southwark Cathedral that was televised and transmitted on BBC tv. To celebrate my 88 years I visited Brussels with my son and daughter-in-law, to see my grandson Nick who lives and works there. I was introduced to his girl-friend….a charming young lady whose native tongue is French but who also speaks fluent, and virtually unaccented, English. Returning to England for the actual birthday, my son, daughter-in-law and I had a celebratory meal at the very posh Essex pub run by the parents of Jamie Oliver, the well-known tv chef.

Left:Me on my 88th birthday.

Right: Jo

AKA Miss Josephine Hall M.A., B.Sc.

Later in the year my other son and daughter-in-law drove me Sheffield for a weekend to spend time with my granddaughter, an M.A., B.Sc., of whom I am immensely proud. Still in her mid-twenties she works as a social worker attached to the Renal Unit of a large Sheffield Hospital. We drove out into the Peak District and, for the first time in my life, I was able to see traditional Derbyshire ‘well dressing’.

In July I was able to return to Zittau in Germany for my third (and, I think, final) time since the end of World War II. It was to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the town’s restored Lenten Veil (in the 500 year history of which I am believed to have played a tiny part) in its own museum/church of the Holy Cross. Grandson Nick organised the visit and accompanied me. This time I travelled by rail, from London to Brussels by Eurostar and then, with Nick, from Brussels to Dresden with just one change of train at Frankfurt. By booking well in advance we travelled first class at second class prices and, believe me, first class on a German long-distance train really is first class!

Nick drove me from Dresden to Zittau, sixty-odd miles, in a pre-arranged hired car. It was a great pleasure to meet again my friends Dr Volker Dudeck and his wife Julia, and Ingrid Zeibig and her family, including her little niece Maja, now almost three! This time I managed to get to the summit of Mount Oybin, where I had helped take the heavy cases containing the famous Lenten Veil, in February 1945.

From the Left: Ingrid Zeibig, Maja, Ingrid’s mother Frau Ingrid Kulke, Ingrid’s sister-in-law Kornelia (Konnie) and brother Andreas. Konnie’s second baby was born in September; a boy, Tom Friedrich, a brother for Maja.

The view from the summit of Mount Oybin the far distance, swathed in mist, is the town of Zittau.

To my great surprise and pleasure, I was also given by Dr Dudeck proof copies of a long article of mine entitled ‘Return to Zittau’. It had been translated into German and published as a glossy booklet, illustrated with photographs taken locally, and pictures culled from my Flickr web site, www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea More copies of this booklet have since been published and are on sale in the tourist shop at 5€, profits going to the upkeep of the Lenten Veil, which has recently had its 300,000th visitor (an English tourist!) in the ten years that it has been on public display.

Inspired by the German booklet, I am self-publishing a similar booklet entitled ‘Zittau…..and I’ Incorporating my original Return to Zittau’, but with a great deal of additional material and half a dozen or so photographic illustrations. I am having 150 copies printed for family and friends. The typescript has gone to the printer and I hope to have them before the end of January..

Yes, it has been a good year, though I don’t think that ‘all the eights’ has had a great deal to do with it. Those who read this blog a year ago may remember that my New Year Resolution was to ‘count my blessings, count them one by one’. Two thousand-and-nine certainly gave me many to count. As, in two thousand-and-ten I shall, if I am still around, be entering my ninetieth year, I ought perhaps to hope that it will be a little less action-packed!

‘Incapable of running a bath!’……..yet the best in Essex!

It was, of course, our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell who claimed that the previous ‘Clacton First’, non-Conservative coalition administration of Tendring Council, was incapable of running a bath. Not everyone however regards him as the greatest living authority on local and world affairs. Rather more reliable is the Government’s Independent Audit Commission which awarded the Council three out of four for performance, and declared it not only to be the best local authority in Essex, but in the top twenty-five of the two hundred plus local authorities in the country! I wonder what Mr Carswell, who is perhaps best known as a climate change sceptic, and for his purchase (at public expense) of ‘a love seat’ and a £60 kettle for his second home in Thorpe-le-Soken, has to say about all the other Essex authorities. Unlike Tendring Council, several of them invested their tax-payers’ money in high-interest-earning banks in Iceland…..and are now regretting it!

Most of the data on which the Audit Commission’s report was based was garnered during the previous non-Conservative administration of which Mr Carswell was so scathing. Possibly that is why the reaction of the present Council leader, Mr Neil Stock has been distinctly low-key. He praises the Council’s staff (not the Council!) for their hard work but says that the Audit Commission has given a loud and clear message that they still have some serious concerns. The report had pointed out that the council’s public image was poor, with less than half of local people surveyed expressing satisfaction with the way it ran things.

He added encouragingly that the report said that Tendring had ‘a firm foundation for future improvement’ (under Mr Stock’s new Conservative administration of course!)

There are, of course, several reasons why Tendring Council has a poor public image. The current in-fighting between the two, almost equal, opposing Parties doesn’t help. Then again many people imagine that all public services are the responsibility of the district council. Mobility scooter users like myself for instance, are particularly conscious of the atrocious state of many of the pavements away from the town centre. How many, I wonder, realize that these are the responsibility of the Conservative County Council (who received only an ‘adequate’ rating from the Audit Commission) to whom the greater part of our Council Tax is paid. I think that many of Tendring Council’s services, including, for instance the refuse collection and recycling collection services and the street cleansing service, that are second to none.

Then again, for both the local and national press, local government disasters provide much more attractive stories than local government triumphs. The news story about the Audit Commission’s findings is to be found only at the bottom of Page 7 of the Clacton Gazette of 17th December, with the headline, ‘Council staff earn a pat on the back’. I suggest that had Tendring been rated the worst, instead of the best, local authority in Essex, the story would have been on the front page with some such headline as ‘Tendring First’ Council comes Last! and a story about how the new administration was doing its best to clear up the mess left by its predecessor.

Week 33.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

A trip to Sheffield!

I spent the first weekend of August in Sheffield, with my son and daughter-in-law Andy and Marilyn, visiting my only granddaughter who lives and works there. To me, a southerner by birth and an East Anglian by adoption, a trip ‘up north’ is a major expedition, scarcely less adventurous than my visit, a few weeks earlier, to Zittau on the German/Polish/Czech frontiers.
I had been there once before. Last October Andy and Marilyn drove me to Sheffield for a similar weekend. Regular blog readers may remember that on that occasion I took the opportunity to photograph the water feature outside Sheffield Town Hall, apparently identical with the one that in Clacton, has been fenced off ‘to comply with health and safety’ requirements.

No town (not even sunny Clacton-on-Sea!) looks at its best in late October/early November. The beginning of August was more promising. Yes – there were some showers but we didn’t let them bother us. It was warm. There was quite a lot of sunshine too and on the Sunday we were able to lunch in an outdoor forecourt café at Barlow, a small village in the Peak District a few miles south of Sheffield.

Left - Marilyn lunches al freso in Barlow. Beside her is Andy

Right - in Rossi's. Left to Right; Jo, Andy, Siabhan, Marilyn

I saw more of Sheffield itself than I had on my previous visit. On our arrival on the Friday evening we met up with Jo, my granddaughter, and her friend Siobhan, and dined in style in Rossi's Italian restaurant. It was rainy but that didn’t really affect us. The following evening the sun came out. After dining at the Café Rouge, very obviously named with the famous Moulin Rouge in mind, an easy walk (even for me!) from the Novhotel where we were staying, we strolled round Sheffield’s compact and very attractive city centre.

The imposing City Hall dominates a landscaped pedestrianised area containing the water feature and surrounded by attractive buildings. Nearby is ‘Sheffield’s Wheel’, Yorkshire’s answer to the London Eye. Not as enormous as the ‘Eye’ it is arguably better sited than the latter, in the administrative centre of Sheffield. We found it to be an object of grace and beauty, illuminated as it was in the twilight of the dying day.

Left - The Glass House of the Botanical Gardens.

Right - Andy and myself in the Glass House

Another striking Sheffield feature to which we paid a visit on the Sunday was the Royal Botanical Gardens. Sheffield’s hilly terrain adds grandeur to the Gardens’ landscaping, and the enormous glasshouse, with its tropical and sub-tropical plants and trees, rivals those at Kew and Wisley.

But of course if you tire of the urban landscape, a little more than half an hour’s drive from Sheffield will take you into Derbyshire and the spectacular vistas of the Derbyshire Peaks. And that is where Andy drove us on the Saturday of our visit.

The other Bradwell

Everyone in Essex knows Bradwell. It’s a coastal village lying south of Clacton, long famous (or perhaps infamous) for its nuclear power station. This is now out of action but powerful forces would like to see it brought back into nuclear life. It’s a long way from Clacton by road but as the crow flies (or the nuclear fall-out cloud might drift!) it is much nearer, clearly visible across the water from Jaywick. Bradwell is also famous, among those interested in such things, for St. Peter’s on the Wall, one of England’s very oldest Saxon chapels, built by St Cedd centuries before the Norman Conquest. It is now a place of pilgrimage.

Above - we were well prepared for rain but

we experienced only showers

Below - the rood screen of Bradwell parish church

During my visit to Sheffield I was introduced to another Bradwell, in Derbyshire, about as different from our Bradwell as it could possibly be. While the Essex Bradwell lies beside the sea on the flat Essex coastal plain, its Derbyshire namesake nestles in a high valley among the Peaks and there’s not a nuclear power station, or any other industrial plant, in sight. Its church is a living place of worship that is also central to the life of the village community. This Bradwell is famous for its well dressing, a practice originating in pagan times, but taken over and successfully perpetuated as a very visible Christian witness.

Left - Well dressing with the theme Christ the healer.

Right - The Children's well dressing depicting Jacob's dream with the angels ascending and descending to an from Heaven. Children's art work surround the dressing

We arrived on Carnival Day. The weather hd effectively dampened the carnival pocession and

the fair on the village green. Our hearts ached for those whose hours of preparation had been spoiled by the weather. The rain was only fitful though and was no more than an inconvenience to us. The dressed wells were there for us to see and in the nave of the village church a fascinating arts and crafts exhibition had been arranged. Where church bells are concerned I enjoy traditional English change ringing. I have to say though that to hear those bells peeling out familiar and well-loved hymn tunes was an inspiring experience. I recall that I climbed the steep ascent to the site of the well that had been dressed by the village children, to the tune of, ‘Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father….’

A Profitless Prophecy!

Why ever did the Met. Office forecast that we were going to have a ‘barbecue summer’, thereby inducing the popular press to persuade us all that we’d have wall to wall sunshine for week after week, and that our main summer worry would be whether the supplies of sun-cream would run out? It hasn’t been quite like that. Sensational pictures of downpours and floods (though not in our corner of north-east Essex) have accompanied press denunciations of the Meteorological Office and all its works.

In the outrage it seems to have been overlooked that we are having quite a good, if not spectacular, summer. The first few days of Clacton’s Carnival Week for instance were not only infinitely better than those of the previous two years but were, for sunshine and warmth, better than any similar consecutive days that I can recall during the past two summers. We don’t, of course, yet know what weather the late August Bank Holiday will bring but, so far, even 2009’s Bank Holidays haven’t lived up to their reputation for misery! In our corner of north-east Essex, temperatures have been above average. We’ve had plenty of sunshine. What rain we have had has been mostly in quite brief storms…. and we’ve had far fewer of those than practically anywhere else in England! If I were still an enthusiastic gardener I’d be praying for rain.

Luckily, our holiday coast’s visitors seem to have noticed the improvement even if we haven’t. Council income from beach hut hire from April to June was up by £31,000 and income received from that source in the first quarter was more than had been expected for the whole year. Tendring Council’s off-street parking income was also up by a massive £66,000. Bookings are up at our many holiday caravan sites and Clacton’s newly opened Travelodge Hotel reports that it is already well booked. The Council’s beach patrol teams report that there are many more holidaymakers on the beaches than in previous years. It would be astonishing if all this extra activity hasn’t meant merrily ringing tills in our shops, cafes and restaurants.

Last week the Clacton Gazette carried the headline 'Holiday boom at the beach……but what if the weather turns bad?'

Cheer up! Our weather isn’t ever all that much worse than ‘abroad’. There can be forest fires in France and Spain, earthquakes in Italy and Greece, avalanches in the Alps, sandstorms in Morocco, typhoons and tsunamis in the Far East and hurricanes in the Caribbean and in Florida.....and it has been known to rain in all of them! What’s more, I’d bet that the holiday resorts on Croatia’s lovely but stony Adriatic coast, would give anything for sandy tide-washed beaches like those of Clacton, Frinton and Walton!

Oh yes, and much as I enjoyed every minute of my excursions ‘up North’ and to Belgium and Germany, I’m glad to be home again in sunny Clacton-on-Sea!