KEV67

I took Adrian to a different church this morning, the Bridge Community Church in Bury St Edmunds. I think it is an independent church. It had a band with a drummer, and a guitarist, maybe a keyboard player. One of the nursery nurses from Adrian's nursery was a backing singer. She was his primary carer last year, and he particularly likes her. Adrian seemed to like the place. There were lots of families and young children. It was difficult restraining him from running off. After 20 minutes the small children were taken upstairs where there was a play room. I left him there and went back downstairs. The modern hymns were quite good. There church used white screens. There was a video clip of a zoom call between the preacher and two former parishoners who had moved to Turin. The main sermon was about how Jesus used to preach at synagogues, particularly when he preached at Capernaum in Galilee. The preacher said Capernaum was about the tenth the size of Bury St Edmunds, but still quite an important place. It was a centre of religious learning. They wanted him to stay, but Jesus insisted in going into isolation, then going to preach around the synagogues in Judea. So the preacher talked about retreating from and extending into the community. He said he would be taking his seclusion the Abbey Gardens, but would be happy to meet people there. I was going to put £10 in the collection, but the preacher said it cost £4,500 a week to run the place, so I put in £20. I reckoned there were about 25-30 in my wing, probably a similar number in the other wing and maybe double that in the central section. By my maths all the adults would have to give £40 a week, but maybe they have other sources of income. Then I went to get Adrian back down, and it was difficult to stop him running around again. I came up against the preacher, who looked about 6'5" tall. During the sermon he said he'd been a semi-professional footballer, and had gone around the world, spreading the word via his football contacts. He must have been a goalkeeper, or possibly a centre half. I did quite like the service. The people were friendly enough. Adrian certainly seemed to like it.

My son has a new favourite called 'There's a Bear in your Book' by Tom Fletcher. This book is unusual in that it is quite interactive. You have to shake the book, flap the book, rock the book, and imagine sheep, all in order to get the bear ready for bed and off to sleep. I alsk bought him another Julia Donaldson book called The Highway Rat. It reminds me of a poem, but I cannot remember which. Maybe it is The Owl and the Pussycat.

I took Adrian to the Unitarians' meeting this afternoon. He was as good as gold. The old women liked him. I let him run about after the service. I sometimes wonder whether the pastor is studying an Open University course. The topic of the sermon was the Third Disruptor. He told about how a Victorian doctor used the application of logic to track down a source of cholera to a water pump in a London street. Then I wondered, from what he was saying, whether a third disruptor was akin to a third body in a three body system, which is chaotic and unpredictable. Then he mentioned climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, and said Unitarians should be active in it. Horlicks to that I thought, or something similar. If the Unitarians have no religious doctrine I am not signing up to any political one. I think Heraclitus was mentioned, who established that change was inevitable. I am unfamiliar with Heraclitus, but I will look him up. Edit: Third Attractor, not Disruptor.

I have to admit there are lots of nuggets of information in this book. For instance, I just read that Peugeot cars always have a '0' in the middle of their model number, because that was where the hole for the crank lever was on the early models. They were going to name one of their early cars '21', which was something to do with horse power, but they put the 2 and the 1 either side of the crank lever socket.

No, but I bought my mother two books. One was about a walk that commemorates Queen Eleanor, who was Richard the Lionheart's and King John's mother. I also bought her a book about a queen or duchess who was highly involved in the War of the Roses, but I cannot remember her name or which side. Then I bought Little Adrian four books, all by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet.

This book is about the Rolls Royce Merlin, which powered Spitfires, Huricanes, Mosquitos, Lancasters, P51 Mustangs and numerous other aircraft. Definitely the most important aircraft engine produced in Britain during WW2. I am about half way through. It is a bit different to what I was expecting. I thought it would be about superchargers, carburettors, high octane fuels and compressor ratios, rare metals, coolant temperatures, etc, etc. Instead, it started off with gliders, the development of the internal combustion and the early days of flight. Then it recounts how Henry Royce met Charles Rolls who formed the company, Rolls Royce. Then it proceeds through WW1, the interwar years, and then WW2, which I am getting to now. The book is not so much about the engineering, but the pretty wide characters that got involved along the way. For example, there is a chapter on Lady Lucy Houston, who started off as a chorus dancer in Paris and monkey branched her way into the British aristocracy. She put up the money for Britain's Scheider Cup entry for flying boats after the Labour government pulled its funding in 1931. So far my favourite character is Henry Royce himself. He started off as a humble apprentice. He would look at at a piece of engineering someone else had done and find a way of improving it. These days Rolls Royce cars are about opulence, but back in the early days, Rolls Royce cars gained the reputation for reliability and smoothness. Henry Royce was a perfectionist. He insisted that his engineers get their designs right on the draught board, before going to the next stage and attempting to fix it then. I used to be a computer programmer, and on the software engineering course I attended, we were taught to get the specifications right, before the high level design, and then the high level design before the detailed design, and then the code. It was very difficult to do. Henry Royce reminded me a bit of some of the very clever engineers I met. He could just do things and think of solutions. Apparently Royce said he did not invent things; investors went broke. He just improved things. Stylistically, I find the author's asides jar. For example, he breaks off to say he closed off some apparently redundant exhausts on a Ferrari to find the engine did not sound as musical. On another aside, he says he talked to a survivor of the Guernica bombing. The Nazis were testing their bombers on ordinary citizens. It was nothing directly to do with the Merlin.

I took Adrian back to the United Reformed Church in Bury St Edmunds. I waa going to tell them I had decided to look for another church more able to cater for little people. As it happened, Adrian behaved well this time and people seemed glad to see him again. So, I didn't tell them that. The main thing I remember from the service was one of the elders telling a story about a Comanchee girl called 'She Who Sits Alone' because she was an orphan. There was a drought, and, I can't remember exactly, but someone went up a mountainside and received a message from the Spirit in the Sky that He'd been watering the earth, but what had he been getting back? Nada, that's what. Therefore, if they wanted rain they have to sacrifice their most valuable possesions. However, the brave did not want to put his best bow on the fire. He needed it to hunt with so tribe would not starve. The squaw did not want to burn her blanket. Without it her children might freeze. The medicine man did not want to give up his bag of remedies, because he needed them to treat people when they became sick. 'She Who Sits Alone' decided she must cast her treasured doll, which she had received from her parents, of the sacrificial pyre. When she did that it started raining so she was renamed 'She Who Saved Her People'. I am not sure why I didn't like that story.

I liked some things about the book. I liked the Quilp, Swiveller and the Marchioness characters. I think Dickens was still refining his trade, because his later books were better. The humour was good. With the exception of Dick Swiveller, the fun characters were evil and the good characters were boring.

About three more chapters to go. Poor Nell is going to join the angels. Looks like she has consumption. Tuberculosis is an odd diesease. Would she have succumbed to it if she had not been forced to leave home and roam around the country? TB is an infectious diesease, but nobody seems to worry about being in her company. Mayve it is one of those dieseases that everyone is exposed to. I don't think much of the ending. I am not convinced Sampson Brass would have broken down like that. The first reason is that there is no real evidence against him, just the word of a servant girl. The second reason is whether he refeives immunity from prosecution he would be a ruined man if he confessed. I doubt those lawyer friends of Kit could have offered immunity from prosecution. I also doubt they could have got Kit's guilty verdict overturned. The other thing I did not like was the massive coincidende of one of the lawyers' brothers living in the quiet country village the other side of Birmingham where Nell and her grandfather fetched up. I wondered how they would track her down. If the single gentleman had hired some sort of detective I might have believed it.

I have been enjoying the section with Dick Swiveller, the Marchioness, and Kit's trial. I have been wondering whether this part of the plot is plausible. I would have thought that notwithstanding any extra information that came to light, once Kit had been found guilty that was it. I seem to remember it was very difficult to get a retrial or a verdict reversed. There was a programme called Rough Justice that used to bring attention to miscarriages of justice. One would think it would be even more difficult to get a verdict set aside in the Victorian era. Even if you could get a retrial, it would be the Marchioness' word against a solicitor's. I think Charles Dickens was an articled clerk, so one would have thought he would know. Dickens was not particularly keen on lawyers. He criticised them in The Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and, now, The Old Curiosity Shop.

I have finished. The last three letters were on Scotland. I thought he must have been quite bold to tour around some parts of the Highlands, because it was after the first uprising for the Old Pretender. He said that he was not in much danger, because he had got permission from the lords, who were always hospitable. That was in one place in the letter. In another, he said hardly anyone spoke English, and it was as well to let people think you were French. I wondered what he was up to. Whether all these tours were business or pleasure, or a mix of the two. Pity he never got to Ireland. He would have had to have been bolder still.

Dickens is foreshadowing Nell's death a bit thick. I am looking forward to getting back to Dick Swivener.

I saw Sophie Kinsella had died. I never read any of her books, but shocked at her age. I have not read any Joanna Trollope neither. I wondered if she was related to Anthony Trollope, which I supposed she must have been asked once or twice in her life.

Stanley Baxter, that's a blast from the past. I'd have thought he was about the same age as Dick Emery.

About another 50 pages to go. It is alright. I would say it is more fantasy than science fiction and not as good as his best graphic novel work. That is my opinion anyway. It is not as intellectual or as thought-provoking as the best sci-fi. It is more of a sci-fi / fantasy / esoteric yarn. It does have engaging characters. This looks like the first of a series.