Friends are often the family you wished you could have had. Now that 3 of my 4 brothers have unsportingly died before I was considering the possibility of it for myself, friends have become our surrogate family. They knew us better than the brothers; they managed to forgive us for unintended gaffes which the brothers would never have let go unremarked, and every time we sat down to talk about this, that and the other with Carla and Jeremy, we found that they were possessed of a rich seam of further treasures. Who needs brothers when one has friends like this ?
One of their daughters was of an age that she was put into kindergarten in Germany where the family had moved for a couple of years, without a word of German. Her teacher said that the language would come when she was good and ready, so not to fret if she seemed to be mute in German surroundings. Approaching six months, they voiced concern that the child had not started saying anything in German, but her teacher said that the time would come when she was ready. It came a week or two later when she appeared to be following a conversation in the classroom when the teacher asked her what she thought ?
One of their daughters was of an age that she was put into kindergarten in Germany where the family had moved for a couple of years, without a word of German. Her teacher said that the language would come when she was good and ready, so not to fret if she seemed to be mute in German surroundings. Approaching six months, they voiced concern that the child had not started saying anything in German, but her teacher said that the time would come when she was ready. It came a week or two later when she appeared to be following a conversation in the classroom when the teacher asked her what she thought ?
If one would have expected that she might have produced a single sentence in German, you’d have been wrong. She produced a whole paragraph of grammatically accurate German, well pronounced which all the other children accepted as something entirely normal.
To this day, she travels to Germany periodically to keep up with the friends she made during that time. This ‘child’ now heads up the biology department at a major college while bringing up four children of her own who seem to have become our de-facto godchildren. Lively is the first thing that comes to mind when they visit us. One time they discovered that Mary kept a dressing-up box and they asked if they could try everything on ? The result was scenes from the film ‘Tea with Mussolini’. . . . . .
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Carla and Jeremy had moved home to Masham in Yorkshire (UK) where you look at the weather forecast before deciding on a visit as one can be stranded when the snow really sets in. It was summer and Jeremy, the gardener in the family, was looking for some additional labour to harvest and eat the new vegetables, so we accepted and arrived ready to harvest and eat a good range of veg. While this was going on, Jeremy mentioned that the clock in the local church on the square – St Mary the Virgin – had a working Harrison clock – would I like to see it ?
For those who are not sailors, the name Harrison may be meaningless, but to sailors, they stand in awe of his achievements. It was he who designed and made a series of chronometers which were sufficiently accurate that one could determine one’s longitude with accuracy using them. He claimed the prize of £ 20,000 for designing and building H4, the fourth in a series of increasingly accurate chronometers, but because the prize was voted by parliament, he never actually received the full amount.* Politicians were as devious in those days as they remain today.
The Masham clock was not made by John Harrison but by a grandson of James Harrison as is described here:
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Carla and Jeremy made a wise investment as the family increased in size. They bought a tiny cottage in the Lake District called High Hollin in Seathwaite, so that family members could have a place where they could go on holiday at a reasonable cost. We stayed in that cottage twice from memory – but when you went to the cottage, you were captive labour.
PS Can anyone find exactly how much was paid and when might stir someone to lay out a precise amount which was paid, and the reasons why it was withheld? Boris Johnson follows in well trod paths, it seems.
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Carla and Jeremy had moved home to Masham in Yorkshire (UK) where you look at the weather forecast before deciding on a visit as one can be stranded when the snow really sets in. It was summer and Jeremy, the gardener in the family, was looking for some additional labour to harvest and eat the new vegetables, so we accepted and arrived ready to harvest and eat a good range of veg. While this was going on, Jeremy mentioned that the clock in the local church on the square – St Mary the Virgin – had a working Harrison clock – would I like to see it ?
For those who are not sailors, the name Harrison may be meaningless, but to sailors, they stand in awe of his achievements. It was he who designed and made a series of chronometers which were sufficiently accurate that one could determine one’s longitude with accuracy using them. He claimed the prize of £ 20,000 for designing and building H4, the fourth in a series of increasingly accurate chronometers, but because the prize was voted by parliament, he never actually received the full amount.* Politicians were as devious in those days as they remain today.
The Masham clock was not made by John Harrison but by a grandson of James Harrison as is described here:
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*****
Carla and Jeremy made a wise investment as the family increased in size. They bought a tiny cottage in the Lake District called High Hollin in Seathwaite, so that family members could have a place where they could go on holiday at a reasonable cost. We stayed in that cottage twice from memory – but when you went to the cottage, you were captive labour.
Many were the stories that came from High Hollin - the one that still appeals the most to me is of a group of uni-cyclists who stopped beside the cottage to ask for directions to Coniston Water. They were asked if they wanted the direct route or the easy route ? “Definitely the direct route” they said as they didn’t have any time to waste. They got the directions which basically were straight up about 500 metres then straight down the other side by the same amount to Coniston Water. Happily they were well prepared with elbow and knee pads and crash helmets for when they fell off. Apparently, they managed without any serious injuries. Rather them than me. . . .
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So between clocks and uni-cyclists, we’ve seen some interesting sights. . . .courtesy of our friends Carla and Jeremy and their family.
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* The sequence was that Harrison designed and built increasingly accurate chronometers; he tried to claim the prize but was frustrated for years by the unwillingness of those MPs (who had voted for both the prize and its size) to pay what was due according to the Parliamentary Act. It is very difficult to determine precisely how much of the prize was eventually paid because it appears to have been paid in instalments which never approached what had been voted for it.
PS Can anyone find exactly how much was paid and when might stir someone to lay out a precise amount which was paid, and the reasons why it was withheld? Boris Johnson follows in well trod paths, it seems.
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