Sizzling Times In Framlingham

Rio has its carnival, Edinburgh its tattoo, Munich its beerfest and Siena its Palio but in Framlingham we can go one better with our annual and unique Sausage Festival. Yesterday's event drew in huge crowds and the town was packed with residents and visitors following the sausage trail from Market Hill up to the castle and down to John Grose. At each of the twelve venues we tasted a sausage before voting on our favourites back at the market. In addition to sausage tasting there were street dance displays, buskers and other street entertainment. My favourite sausages were from our local butcher Hall Farm but they were pipped to the first prize by Mills and Son of Southwold. It was a great event in glorious autumn sunshine.

After a drink at The Station and completing our sausage trail Marion headed back home and I walked up to Baddingham Road to watch The Castlemen play in a local derby against Wickham Market. I missed the first half hour in which Framlingham took a 1-0 lead but enjoyed the rest of the game as Fram went on to increase their lead with a well taken header by Mayhew from a free kick. The match was played in a good atmosphere in front of over a hundred fans and ended up a 2-0 home win.  

After stuffing ourselves with sausages during the day we decided on a lighter evening meal and I made this paella with lobster, prawns and mussels from Darren on the market.

I mentioned on my last blog that I had done a bit of detecting again this week but was waiting for the new iPhone before taking photos. The phone duly arrived yesterday so I had a go at photographing the finds from the two sessions I had.

I've been searching a field that appears to have either been used as tip or has possibly been the site of a wartime aeroplane crash (I haven't found any record of this) as there are areas of the field that are littered with scrap metal. This is the scrap from today's couple of hours.

This is the scrap lead that turned up. I always keep this and promise myself that one day I will take it to the scrap dealers and cash it in. Having been detecting for almost thirty years now there's an awful lot of lead - maybe I'll donate it to a favourite charity.

Despite the scores of scrap signals there were plenty of decent finds too. As these were often in the "scrappy" areas it meant that I couldn't ignore any signals.

This small medieval buckle is rare in that it is complete with both its pin and the strap fitting.

There was the usual selection of musket and pistol balls.

And some more nice, early buckles.

Although these look like scrap they are a bronze vessel fragment and a medieval strap fitting.

This long shanked button probably dates to the 16th century.

I am not sure of this piece but it is possibly a bronze medieval vessel foot.

This is a lead alnage or bag seal from around the 17th century.

I find a lot of pre-decimal coppers but they are not usually in such good condition as this Victorian penny.

Most detectorists love finding hammered coins as they are tiny and difficult to find. I managed to find seven in these two visits but, as you can see, their condition leaves something to be desired. 

This tiny farthing is from the realm of Edward 1 - Edward III. I am not sure which yet but it dates from the 13th to 14th century. 

Reverse

This Elizabeth groat dates towards the end of the 16th century

Elizabeth Half Groat Reverse

A Cut Half Voided Long Cross Penny c 1247-1279

Reverse

As yet unidentified cut half

Reverse

Rose Farthing Charles I

Rose farthing Charles I

Unidentified Silver Penny

A Groat or Half Groat Minted in York (Civitas Eboraci)

Obverse Possibly Edward III

This looked to be just another lead weight or disc until I turned it over.

It turned out to be a medieval personal seal matrix.

Here's an impression of the seal. My interpretation of its legend is ROGER DE GRAVE. I was delighted to find this as it is the first I've found in years of searching. Now I need to see if I can find out who Roger De Grave was.

We Get Around

To quote a favourite Beach Boys song we certainly do get around in our retirement. This week was no exception and on Sunday I joined our son Paul at Wembley to watch the New York Jets play the Miami Dolphins in the NFL. Paul has been a Jets fan since we went on a family holiday to New York before he got married and he's been following them ever since. 

After the ticket fiasco I wrote about in my last blog, everything went smoothly with the replacement tickets from Ticketmaster.

After the overpriced tickets from another agency failed to materialise, we managed to get these tickets right on the half way line for face price plus £10 booking fee - a saving of £250 and better seats to boot. As the event was a sell out with a crowd of almost 84,000 this was a stroke of good luck. The game itself was brilliant entertainment. Along with glamorous dancing cheerleaders, we had heavy rock music interludes accompanied by acrobats on spring laden stilts, big screen kiss cams, dance cams and any other type of cam you care to mention. The hour long match lasted for three and a half hours when all the time-outs, advertising breaks and regular breaks in play were taken into account. It was a good performance from the Jets who won convincingly after a tense final quarter in which Miami attempted to get back into the game. I had a great day. I asked Paul if he would like to go to another of the NFL games at Wembley but, as they don't involve the Jets, he declined my offer.

Paul was working at MIP TV (the big TV industry event in Cannes) this week so, after the game at Wembley, we went to Rochester and helped out with the child care. We had a great time with our Kent family and got to know our new grandson a little better. We managed a trip to London with the family on Tuesday and enjoyed another balmy October day.

We really have had a fabulous Indian summer this year. This was the sky when we got back home to Suffolk later yesterday afternoon.

We were greeted by this fabulous bouquet of flowers sent to us by our daughter-in-law as a thank you for our childcare help.

The family bought me a super Persian cookery book (amongst other things) for my birthday and tonight we tried one of the recipes. It was a pork loin in a pomegranate marinade and was absolutely delicious.

We caught up with our housework today. After I finished my share (Marion did much more) I had a couple of hours out with the metal detector. It was a good session and, amazingly, warm enough to walk around the fields in a t-shirt - a first for October. I will post photos of the finds on the next blog as I'm getting a new iPhone 6s tomorrow and want to try the camera.

It was a great end to the week as, after an hour over coffee in glorious sunshine at The Dancing Goat here in Framlingham,  I went to Carley Hill for a haircut and Emma, who manages things there, told me she had read my novel on holiday and loved it. The only thing that pleases an author more than to know that someone has taken time to read their book is to know that someone has taken time to read it and loved it.   

A Sunny Birthday Week

I can't believe that a week has passed since I blogged about our trip to the Aldeburgh Food Festival at Snape Maltings although so much has happened it should really be no surprise. On Sunday I did something I've never done before and attended a metal detecting rally. Those who are familiar with my blog know that detecting is on of my hobbies but I've always felt that there's little point in travelling miles to join hundreds of others detecting in a field when I've got plenty of fields that I can walk to and search on my own. But the Worlingworth rally was local, in support of their Local History Society and my gardener is friendly with the organiser and asked me if I'd like to join in.

So, on a perfect Sunday morning I found myself in a huge field with about a hundred and thirty other enthusiasts. My celebrity as a local detectorist resulted in me being asked to judge the best find of the day. Sadly, there were only in the region of eighty finds on the table at the end of the rally so the judging was not overly difficult and I selected a beautiful and rare coin from the short realm of Queen Mary. Like most of the others, I found very little, with a musket ball, a button and a Victorian penny being the highlights of my day. However, I did meet a few nice blokes and enjoyed their conversation and some excellent bacon and sausage butties from Framlingham favourites Friends Farm.

I've started searching a new field that turns out to be full of rubbish and could well have been the site of an old rubbish dump. However, amongst this trash (over 140 signals) there were four hammered silver coins ranging from Medieval through to Queen Elizabeth.

 This was the nicest one. A penny from the realm of Edward II - over seven hundred years old.

It was my birthday on Tuesday and we decided to explore some areas of our new home county that we haven't visited yet. We headed to Dedham Vale which is classed as "Constable Country".

Here, like millions before us, we had a look at the site of The Haywain.

The painting was painted here at Flatford Mill. We were blessed with glorious weather as our Indian Summer continued through the week.

From Flatford we drove to East Bergholt and visited a fabulous plant centre and arboretum where we bought a few plants for our garden before driving to our hotel for the night, Maison Talbooth (above), back in Dedham Vale.

On arrival we were pleasantly surprised to be greeted with an iced bottle of champagne courtesy of our daughter Sarah and her partner Duncan. It was an unexpected birthday treat that ended the afternoon nicely.

After the champagne I got dressed up for dinner (following Robert Peston's tieless style), although the other diners in the restaurant were dressed quite casually. It was a very good meal although service was a bit slow and, after downing half a bottle of champagne each before heading to the restaurant, we could have done with the food arriving a bit faster. That's the only criticism as the room was excellent,  the food, including the breakfast, was great and the staff were all extremely welcoming.

After leaving the hotel we drove to Saffron Walden and visited Audley End House. It's a fantastic old building jam packed with art and interesting artefacts with a fabulous garden and decent tea room. Well worth a visit.

We got home in time to join fellow Framlingham wine lovers at Framlingham Wine Shop for another monthly tasting. Once again we enjoyed half a dozen decent wines, some nice cheese and good company - a very pleasant evening.

Thursday evening found us at FramSoc's book club where we discussed The Free by Willy Vlautin. Centring around a solider injured in Iraq, this American novel was loved by all the members for its warm and upbeat characters despite the dire circumstances they found themselves in. It's highly original and interspersed with comatose Leroy's Sci-Fi dreams along with the difficult lives of his carers. We had a great discussion and will be sorry to miss the next event in November.

I spent hours on Thursday trying to resolve a problem with some tickets we bought at hugely inflated prices for our son and me to go to see New York Jets play Miami Dolphins at Wembley. The agents, Viagogo advised us at the last minute that the tickets were not available and offered us inferior seats with a small credit note. This was a huge upset and, due to the lack of a telephone help desk, we had to resort to Twitter to finally get in touch with someone from Viagogo. We ended up cancelling the purchase. All credit to the employee I dealt with as they gave us a refund plus a £200 credit note but that doesn't make up for the disappointment of my son's birthday present ruined. The match is sold out but I was determined to get him tickets. Somehow, at the final hour, two turned up on Ticketmaster. They were better than the original seats and were at face value plus £10 booking fee each (the originals were at least double face value). We have to pick them up from Wembley but, if all turns out well, we are £230 in pocket, have a £200 credit with Viagogo and better seats - result (I hope).

In other news my 89 year-old Mum's modelling career continues to flourish as she turned up in some higher education promotional material this week. 

And I had a stroke of luck when my copy of More Letters Of Note turned up. It's a wonderful book funded by crowd sourcing publisher Unbound. We bought four copies of the first book for ourselves and for Christmas presents and the new edition is equally beautiful. What's more, I was lucky enough to find one of only 50 Golden Tickets with an additional letter. You really should consider this book for a present. It's full of brilliant facsimiles of letters from the great and the good - one to dip into again and again.

Today we've been to the excellent Farm Cafe on the A12 at Marlesford for breakfast. We like to have a cooked breakfast on a Saturday accompanied by The Times Jumbo Crossword. This is our second outing to Farm Cafe and, I have to say, it's the best local breakfast I have eaten in a long time - we'll be back.

Better finish now. Got a couple of great lobsters from Darren at Framlingham market this morning. We could have eaten them watching X Factor but it's not on due to the ****** rugby. Now I know how Marion feels when the Football World Cup is on.