Page 69 - Through a glass brightly

From Ruth at 09.51
From Val M. at 11.05
Tuesday, 5th May
Dear Vulnerable 75-year-old!
Many thanks for this treat, taking us out of our houses and into the glorious Welsh countryside. Am so impressed by your powerful walking, careful route planning and presentation skills in managing to put it all together on this way. Congrats to you and Val both for accomplishing such an exciting week’s activity!
How many miles was it altogether, I wonder.
I know an elderly man who walks 11 miles a day here with his walking poles. We see him quite regularly as he walks past our allotment. He reckons he’s done a few hundred miles since this CV19 all started. Cyclists do more, but they can’t see as much detail in the countryside, can they?
Long may you both keep up such a health-giving habit!
From Judy at 10.11
Thanks for the ‘walk’, Glenda. A most interesting account of your and Val’s journey, with lovely photos. I couldn’t make it turn pages like a book but will have another go.
Sorry, Janet, now you remind me, I realise you are the one who lived next to Hank Marvin and you telling me about it. What a lot of famous people lived in your neck of the woods! Maybe I’m wrong about Val G’s Dad introducing her to Cliff Richard, but she can confirm.
Thanks for your info about Kingsley Amis & Elizabeth Jane Howard, Mag (Peart). Did you actually know them? If so, what were they like?! Amis sounds a pretty awful person, but was a good writer. So was she but had much less recognition, of course.
From Ruth at 12.24
Thank you, Jenny, for the list of names. The first name was Janet Hooker, by the way, not Hooper. Her father, Rev. Kenneth Hooker was vicar at Christchurch Cockfosters and she came to us in the upper Vth when she moved from a boarding school up north somewhere when her family moved down here. Her sister still lives in Cambridge. She and I went to Paris once while in the sixth form - also to Germany and Lake Constance where we attended a beer festival and visited her nanny (a previous au pair, I think) who showed us how to make us proper bircher muesli. (You have to soak it overnight.) We became great friends and she visited us here in Wheathampstead once or twice.
I went to her funeral in Bath a couple of years ago. She had been coping with a cancer, but was so glad to live to see the arrival of a new baby grand daughter. The church was packed. I learnt that she had been very mischievous in her previous school climbing out of windows and setting up all sorts of pranks. She loved horses and she and her partner had a proper old (horse drawn type) caravan in the garden. She had two boys, one of whom rowed around GB in aid of the big water aid charity.
Fond memories. I miss her.
From Judy at 12.55
Sorry, I forgot to mention that other famous person who lived in Totteridge and was known to us all, at least by name: Jen and Gillian’s father, Dai Rees. Sorry, Jen!
Wednesday, 6th May
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