Wonderful wonderful Normanton

The sun has been shining all day, and I've been feeling very happy as a result. I spent much of my time in Leicestershire with my mother. We bumped into some old friends in Melton Mowbray. It was lovely to see them, and they looked very well. Melton Mowbray is a particularly dull place, although as we drove there, through the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, my Mother reminded me that the town was the original home of my Great Grandmother, who started a pork pie business there, after her husband had drunk them out of house and home!

I chatted to my brother, Tim on the phone, who'd just taken his driving test in Bangor of all places. That's Bangor in Wales, which is, I assume, the place where they had the lovely in the song. Sadly, Tim forgot to take the paperwork with him which proved he'd passed his practical test, so the whole thing was rendered null and void. More frustratingly, it seems the test was near perfect, and he would have passed with flying colours! Now he has to wait a full month until he can take another one! Poor bloke.

We went home via Rutland Water, which looked utterly serene underneath the cornflower blue sky. We walked to the strange little church at Normanton, which sits at the end of a causeway which juts out into the reservoir. The church used to belong to a village, which was flooded to make way for the lake. When there's a drought, I'm told you can sometimes see the roofs of scores of drowned houses. It's all a bit spooky, but it's one of the most magical places I've ever visited.

The sand stone they use in Rutland is almost white and it shimmers and glows when the sun shines. The reflection of the church on the water was utterly insane, and really quite moving. It looked like an Italianate version of the old Thames TV logo!

...But which is which?

There was a slight glitch in my blog yesterday. I wrote about Pepys' activities on March 7th, 1661, so today I will write about what he was doing on March 6th 1661, which wasn't much, as it happens! There had been a lot of rain, and a huge amount of flooding. Lady Sandwich had tried to follow her husband into the country, but been prevented by the waters, which were very high.

Pepys and Elizabeth ate a good “Lenten” dinner with Sir William Batten. In the evening, Pepys contemplated asking the Battens back to his house to share a “wigg” – a sort of early sandwich that was particularly popular in Lent, but Lady Jemima’s sudden return to the City put paid to the idea.

My Mummy