A Musical Week

With the the local bush telegraph alive with sightings of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift around the town (give the lad a break he's no doubt come home to see his mum and dad for Christmas) it's appropriate to give the blog a musical theme today.

This week we've had some contrasting musical entertainment within five minutes walk of home. On Wednesday we went along to St Michael's Church to hear local choir The Phoenix Singers perform their seasonal concert. We're not in the slightest bit religious but we like a good tune and enjoyed joining in with the rousing choruses of popular carols. There was a good variety of songs from traditional carols through to White Christmas and The Little Drummer Boy both sung solo beautifully by a young man with a fine tenor voice. The songs were interspersed with festive readings of passages from classics like The Wind In The Willows and Paddington. After the show there were mince pies and tumblers of mulled wine and we blew the caution of our diet to the wind and indulged with one of each. I'll be glad when this diet is over. I've lost almost a stone in the last eight weeks but Christmas is not exactly the best time to be abstemious.

In a completely different musical vein our local,The Crown, hosted local singer songwriter Lucy Sampson and her three man backing group last night for an evening of her own songs plus some great covers thrown in for good measure. Amazingly The Crown didn't charge for admission and it was nice to see a good mix of local people enjoying the performance. We hadn't heard Lucy sing before but she's a very talented musician with a powerful voice - a great night.

Here's a taster.

Welcome Visitors

We had hoped that we would have finished the house before we started to entertain visitors here but at this rate (snow cancelled the gardener again yesterday) it could be Christmas before that happens. So we were really pleased to see our old friends Janet and David Wareing who stopped over here in Framlingham en route (sort of) to a wedding in Hampshire. I used to sit next to Dave at school and we've been firm friends ever since. Although they didn't manage to make it here until well after five we still managed to fit in a quick tour of the town and a beer in The Crown before heading home for a good meal which was made pretty merry by Dave and Janet's housewarming contribution of a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon.

We had a brief look around our fabulous church this morning before heading to Southwold where the conditions could be described as "bracing". We had planned to walk down to the ferry and cross to Walberswick but, despite reports in the Suffolk magazine that the ferry was open today, it was closed and we had to drive to Walberswick where we had an excellent lunch at The Anchor. It was quite an eye opener to make us realise how useful that ferry is. A crossing of no more than perhaps twenty yards was replaced by a drive of maybe six or seven miles.

Dave and Janet had to get back on the road by three but, although they were with is for less than twenty four hours, we crammed a heck of a lot into the time and it was a very enjoyable stay.

In my last blog I was fairly optimistic about the landscape gardening progress - before it started to snow again. The fences are finished and the borders and lawn are being prepared. But the decking is not quite complete and I think that Tony's estimate of everything being done by the end of the month still looks wildly optimistic. He started on January 7th so that means that by Monday he will have been working on the garden for three months and by the time that the front is done it will be four months. 

Boy Do We Have A Church!

It's a pity that we are not religious as we've just discovered that our local church is not only a wonderful historic building but also houses some of the most fabulous religious artifacts we've ever seen. Of course we'd read about the church plenty of times when we were researching where to move to but imagined most of these glowing reports to be tinged with a touch of  exaggeration to attract tourists. We thought that we would save a visit until we were settled in and had some visitors to stay. But with another house full of workers today (two kitchen fitters, the landscape gardener and the men delivering the new garden office (at last)) we felt it best to escape the upheaval and brought our visit forward. We discovered that the reports were far from hyperbole and, if anything, slightly understated.  

We popped into the Lemon Tree for an excellent light lunch (squid and chorizo salad and a veggie burger) before heading across the road to the church. 

St Michael's dates from medieval times.

This is the amazing church organ. My photo doesn't do it justice. It dates from the 1600's and is ornately carved and finely painted.

This fragment of medieval art is more complete than that we saw recently in Rochester Cathedral.

The Duke Of Norfolk's tomb is as spectacular as any you are likely to see anywhere not just in the UK. It is a masterpiece that easily matched some of the works you might find in Renaissance Italy.

And that's just one of several spectacular tombs inside the church. Here is another.

The fourteenth century font is another medieval masterpiece.

And the church interior is of near cathedral proportions.

We didn't have long to explore the building today and I reckon it's somewhere that we can go back to again and again and always discover something new. 

It certainly humbles our own "Grand Design" but, after feeling fed up earlier in the week, we're starting to see some signs of progress.

  

Marion's Southwold Beach Hut potting shed is going up.

And Tony has put the curve into the lawn area and prepared the groundworks for the paths and the small patio outside the office. It almost looks like we're planning go-karting in the garden. 

We still feel a bit like prisoners in our home but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and we've got two weeks in the caravan to look forward to soon. Maybe when we get back we'll be nearly finished and ready to settle properly into our new life here in this wonderful little town.