pumpkinstrokemarrow

So we have another flu scare to keep us occupied for a little while. Absolute godsend for the proprietors of newspapers and the purveyors of face masks. Now while it is true that first time around a very large number of people died, it is not so clear that this is likely to be the case this time, so I wonder if we are not getting a bit over excited. Two interesting snippets from the media miasma.

First, according to the DT anyway, if you organise an event you have to have insurance. This insurance covers, inter alia, the putter on of the event against the risk that someone at the event catches an infectious disease. Now, on the qt, insurers have struck out the bit of the policy which does infectious diseases, with the consequence that the putters on of events are being obliged to pull the events. This strikes me as rather silly. How have we got ourselves in a position where I can sue the owner of a pub because I catch a cold in his or her pub? Is it all part of the judicial creep which is making lots of jobs for all the legal boys and girls?

Second, according to another part of the DT, large pig farms are veritable tropic rain forests when it comes to the breeding and mutating of bugs. Thousands of pigs in a hot confined space for the bugs to play with. Not like the good old days when sturdy cottagers had just one or two pigs, with each one or two pigs far too far away from the next one or two pigs for the bugs to jump from one to the other. But do we believe the stories of lots of ill people around the offending Mexican pig farm? Are great lakes of untreated pig waste water really a bad thing? What about all those evil corporations able to suppress inconvenient truths?

Various religious events to report arising from the visit to Ely. First a visit to St Mary's Fowlmere, a notable flint faced church with a big entry in google. Mainly notable to me for the ancient door with a very large lock - from 1270 according to Mr G. A big church but with rather a cold feel. Inside rather dominated by the 18th century monument to the local worthies. Maybe not too many customers. Then onto St Lawrence's Foxton, another flint faced church. Access denied. But it was next to a handsome newish primary school which makes our own Stamford Green Primary School look very scruffy. Somehow Cambridge people seem to do rather well with new buildings. They don't get it right all the time, but they do get it right more often than the rest of us. Pass 'Our Lady and the English Martyrs' on the way into town, but not convenient to stop, parking in Cambridge being a major swine fever. A pity as the interior is impressive. But then, the next day, via the very convenient park and ride at Milton, onto Great St Mary's, a large and impressive church in the centre of Cambridge. Proud owner of two organs and the railings serve as a bill board for the many musical events on the go. Then onto the Round Church. The roundness being fairly unusual although there is one at Jerusalem and another at Islay, the latter being rather newer. The one at Cambridge dates from about a century before the lock at Fowlmere and certainly looks very Norman. Columns just like those at Durham. Outer regions the haunt of winos, who did not look too happy that we had colonised their bench.

And so to picnic on Jesus Green, a very suitable place for such an activity. Followed by the first punt trip for some years. I must be losing the knack a bit because, while I managed neither to crash nor to fall in, I did find it harder to keep the thing in a straight line than I ought to have done. Perhaps it is not like a bicycle; your muscles do forget how to do it. But the echo under Silver Street bridge every bit as good as I remembered it.

Back in Epsom, we move onto the next chapter of the water lilly saga. Having achieved concensus that the lilly was not going to move, it was moved into a bucket and, armed with the carefully preserved receipt for £18, off to Chessington Garden Centre to claim a replacement. Which was provided without any fuss. With two leaves and one shoot. Then ensued big palaver about whether or not to have bricks under the pot. It turns out that lots of people have views about this sort of thing, but the general idea seems to be to have the thing fairly close to the surface to start with, to give the good old photosynthesis a chance to get going, and then, by degrees, to lower the thing to the bottom of the pond. So we have started with two bricks which means that both the leaves are able to float on the surface. The newts seems very happy about playing with the new plant; hopefully they are not vegetarians.

And finally, we forge a link between horsey Epsom and the ecclesiastical affairs, having learnt by chance that the original Saint Leger was a 7th century bishop in France who was martyred in a rather messy way and is now the patron saint of those with challenged sight. Relics kept in Autun - which we must have missed when we visited some years ago. Must go again. A rather later leger came across with William the Bastard and one presumes a sprig from that tree invented the famous horse race. But the tree appears to have snuffed it, or at least to have gone down in the world, as no legers feature in Burke's Peerage.