Thursday 1.

 

The above photo of part of my healthy breakfast this morning is to encourage friend 4Ds in his dietting. The above healthy breakfast was (Ann says) along the lines of the Atkins Diet, and was complemented by a cup of redbush tea and an apple and an orange. 'Very restrained, Michael', I'm sure all my readers will be murmuring. After breakfast walked to St. Mary's where I was doing my weekly two hour stint of Church minding. Fairly busy two hours for once in a way. We've been having problems with the clock bell which is mounted externally, on the steeple. This bell, one of the earliest bells still in use in the country (cast around 1280) has lately developed a distressing habit of going 'g-donk' instead of going boi-oi-oi-oing, as it should. Two horological workmen turned up unannounced and asked for the tower key. A few moments clock-talk (as between fellow antiquarian horologists) soon convinced me that they were the genuine article, and they got on with climbing up to the clock bell on a series of ladders they had bought with them, whilst I got on with locating the tower key (which is not kept in the Church for 'security reasons'). When I'd managed to telephonically locate the Churchwarden (who was underneath his car, which was now in pieces) and he'd tidied himself up, and caught a 'bus into town, I went outside and bellowed the glad tidings up the steeple to the workmen, that the key was on its way. They came down and told me that they'd located and identified the problem with the bell. It turns out that the trouble lies with the pigeons who live in and around the bell. They are foolish birds and never get used to the fact that the bell is going to strike. Or so it seems, in that when it strikes they all say "Coo!!!" simultaneously and very loudly, and fly out of the bell in unison and astonishment. It also transpires that during their many years of residence in and around the bell, they have clogged it up with potential building materials and, of course, pigeon pooh. All of which has interfered unfavourably with the bell's resonance. They (the workmen not the pigeons) were very glad to see the Churchwarden and the tower key. When I left, just after midday, work was progressing favourably on the bell. More blog to follow shortly.