Back to Britain – October 2025 (Month 7)

Welcome to a very short (for me) blog post as not all that much has happened this month – apart from a visit from two friends from Germany. And something big didn’t happen.

Rambling

Polstead

But first… I enjoyed a visit to a church before we did a ramble at Polstead.

The church was open so we had a look inside.

As the ramble began we walked up a hill and looked back on the church.

This bit of Essex was quite hilly!

What was really nice on this walk was I got chatting to a lady, Ching, who I thought initially was a student at Essex Uni but she turned out to be way older (she had teenage children) and had joined the ramblers as she was currently job hunting and had some spare time. We had a good chat and she said she would like to walk near Bury so we agreed we’d find a suitable date and we could do a walk together. It was good to get to know her.

We stopped for a tea break at Great Henny church where there was a labyrinth.

I loved this memorial plaque too:

Here lyeth byried the body of George…

Foes count him feirce, he had a tender hart
Soon movd and melted at each poor mans smart
Eyes, eares and hands still open to their plaint
Thus lyving dyde he, no he lyves a Saint

Ramble with Ching

Ching and I arranged our walk at Bury which started at Nowton Park. She wanted to do five miles or less so I arranged a route which turned out to have rather more walking on country lanes than I had hoped (fields are nicer!) but it was well organised in that we stopped halfway round at the Rushbrooke Arms pub for lunch.,

We enjoyed walking together and will do it again soon.

Lion Walk Ramble

Once a month my old church Lion Walk do a walk and when I got the email about this months it was in Polstead. So naturally I invited Ching and she said she would come along too. In the end she brought her 14 year old son with her (it was half term) and he was great – really friendly and communicative and without his nose in a phone the whole time.

We did a very nice walk and had a good chat. We finished the walk and had lunch together in the village pub. Pie and mash of course.

First parkrun

Another good start was I did my first ever Parkrun… in Bury St Edmunds. I was slow of course but I wasn’t the slowest and it was great to see friend Tim from choir at the event (he was volunteering). I’ll try and do the parkruns when it works out time-wise.

Repairs to Mum’s house

My late Mum’s house, which has been up for sale for a year and a half, really needed some maintenance – which included renewal of the lime plastering on the gable end as it was too thin. Rather than trying to repair it piecemeal we decided to get it properly replaced. This will cost us the best part of £15,000 but we need to look after this house – after all, it’s stood for 450 years or so.

I found a very good local craftsman who was a lime rendering specialist for historic buildings and he made a very good start.

And a few days later he had placed the new savolit board base onto which he will lime plaster.

And some days later he had completed the lime plastering.

He was waiting for better weather before doing the lime wash and paint (he will do the whole house with the lime washing and painting, not just the gable end). It’s looking really good.

We have had lots of viewings and people all seem to love the house but we still haven’t got a confirmed buyer who is in a position to proceed. We suspect now we might be out of luck until next year, so we have filled the oil tank and are making sure the house is well heated throughout the winter to keep it in good condition.

The visit of Oliver and Iris

Klaus has known Oliver since his days as a student and we had visited them together a few times. They arranged with us to stay here for four nights and then go to London for three nights.

I collected them from Stansted and we headed home, stopping off at the chippie for them to have proper English Fish ‘n chips. Klaus had a pickled egg too, of course!

The next day we headed off to Long Melford for a good long walk – Klaus and I did the walk we had previously done, which was 6 miles or so. It was a big cloudy but didn’t rain and it was a nice walk up past Kentwell Hall and then around some fields and past the posh house near the old watermill.

We then went to Melford Hall, a National Trust place, for lunch in the tea room (I had scones of course).

Klaus and I decided to join the National Trust as we had been thinking about it anyway.

We had a really good look around the place and the volunteers were once again really keen on giving us the history of the place. There are links with Beatrix Potter but unfortunately none of my companions had ever heard of her!

After this we went back to Bury and had a meal in the Dog & Partridge in Bury St Edmunds which they liked.

The next day was our trip to Aldeburgh via Mum’s house (to check on the progress of the lime plastering as we were virtually going past the front door) and then we headed to Snape for a look around. From Snape we went to Aldeburgh where we had lunch in the Two Magpies café, after spending some time looking at the sea and having a tour of the lifeboat station.

After our lunch we walked towards the Martello tower and then a little bit inland towards the Ore and Alde where I saw a rather dilapidated catamaran which was a Prout 34 – many years ago my first husband James and I had one of these.

It caused me to google our old catamaran, which was previously named Chellers (it was renamed after we sold it) and it is currently up for sale but looking in great need of some TLC.

That evening we went out for a curry at the nice new curry house we have discovered (Valley Connection) and then went to the Rising Sun pub for some post-dinner drink.

Klaus and Oliver both had a pint of “From the Depths” as it is from Leigh on Sea (5 miles from where I grew up) but the 6.8% had quite an effect on them and they were very jolly.

The second pint was cider of course.

Their third full day with us was spending time in Bury St Edmunds. We visited the cathedral, some of the shops. we had lunch in Procopio’s Pantry and a bit later on tea/coffee at cake at Harriets.

They both liked Bury very much.

Klaus did a barbecue in the evening. The next morning I dropped them off at the railway station in Bury as they headed into London for three days. They sent us lots of photos in London – they did loads of visits and experiences.

It was great to be able to spend time with them. It was also nice for Klaus to be able to speak German a lot again. I was relieved that my German hadn’t deteriorated as much as I had feared but it was tiring doing everything in German again. I have become lazy being in the UK.

The big thing that didn’t happen

We were supposed to be heading to Germany the Thursday night after Oliver and Iris left. We had arranged to stay at a hotel on the Rhine near Bacharach on the Friday evening, then to visit Klaus’s father in Mannheim on Saturday (Lara would get the train and meet us there), spend the night in Kempen on Saturday evening and then visit Gudula and Frank on Sunday for cake and for collecting a large parcel of low carb pizza bases, pasta and Laugenbrötchen that I had ordered and had been delivered (they don’t deliver to the UK because of Brexit).

Klaus’s visa application for a spouse visa was lodged on the Tuesday afternoon. This is to switch from Skilled Worker to Spouse as it’s a bit more secure under a spouse visa (if he lost his job or something happened to the company he would have to leave the UK on a Skilled Worker visa). Although it was quite a high cost (partly as we also used immigration lawyers to make sure everything was in order) it is worth it for the peace of mind.

After the application was lodged Klaus had to arrange to have his biometrics taken (fingerprints) and this would be done in Norwich two weeks later. I sent a message to the lawyer letting them know we would be travelling to Germany the next day and she replied immediately to say that Klaus isn’t allowed to leave the UK during his visa process! We hadn’t known this at all. So we had to instantly cancel our holiday. Luckily it was more than 24 hours beforehand so I could cancel the ferry, and the hotels also allowed us to cancel without paying anything. It was a real disappointment not to be able to see Klaus’s father but Lara ended up going anyway which was great.

We didn’t know how long the spouse visa would take – after Klaus had done the biometrics we were told the decision would be made by 2nd December. So this meant we might not be visiting Germany for more than a month.

The low carb food I had ordered has a fairly short shelf life (it goes in the freezer when it gets here) so I was a bit nervous that it would expire before we could pick it up – and it was 170€ worth of food (some of which was more shelf stable, the pasta items).

In the end I organised with Frank that he opened the parcel, took out the pasta, resealed the parcel which was now under 10kg and under the value of £135 (so we would probably not have to pay customs on it) and I arranged the shipping label with all the customs forms and declarations and Frank took the parcel to the post office. I wasn’t sure if there would be customs to pay as the whole system is so complex and Brexit has added all these uncertainties but after three days it arrived without any extra payments (the shipping had been 30€).

The expiry date on the pizza bases (all 20 of them!) was 3rd November so it was a really good thing we did get the box shipped. This is also useful to know for the future as I can potentially place the order so that it’s under the value and weight requirement and Frank can just take it straight to the post office to get it forwarded here, without having to open the box. I’ll have to pay him in packets of Kettle Chips when we next visit (he likes them a lot!)

For Klaus, not being allowed to leave the UK was a really weird feeling. Like being trapped. We will know for the visa renewal that this is the case and can pay an extra £500 to have the decision made in five days – which might be worth it. You never know if something will happen that means he has to rush to Germany and that not being a possibility at the moment is weird. (Just to clarify, he can indeed leave the UK but then his visa application will be cancelled and he won’t get the money refunded – total costs to him with the lawyer has been about £3,500 so that’s a big loss, actual Visa cost was £1,600ish I think).

We are waiting to hear when he gets his visa and as soon as this is awarded we will rearrange the Germany trip.

Back to the flute

When I was young I played the flute a lot. I got Grade 6 but then once I went to Uni I focussed more on the piano and the flute barely got used.

Someone in the Bach Choir advertised the Dust It Off orchestra where you meet to play for fun. They had just moved the venue to The Thomas Clarkson Centre which is 10 minutes walk away. I decided to give it a go.

So I dusted off my flute, noticing that it had shocking amounts of tarnish all over it, plus some pitting where the silver plate has given up, but that it still played well (even if I didn’t).

I went to a session and really enjoyed it. there was another flute, two clarinets, lots of brass instruments (including five saxophones) and two bassoons, both of which were played by ladies, and both ladies were named Frances. Random.

Anyway, it was good fun and I know my flute playing will improve. I’ll keep going to this orchestra.

Weihnachtsoratorium

The Bury Bach Choir were putting on a “come and sing” for the Christmas Oratorio part 4. Originally I didn’t put my name down for this because I would be in Germany but one silver lining of the trip being postponed was that I could come to this event.

It was very enjoyable, I love singing Bach – and we had agreat selection of cakes to enjoy in the break.

Klaus walked over to listen to us “performing” it although the acoustics in the school hall where we practice aren’t great.

We had about 30 guest singers so the hope is that some of them may join our choir. We will sing this piece properly in December at a concert, along with some Christmas carols, so will have some more practices after our current project, African Sanctus, has been performed in mid-November. That is a very difficult piece and I am quite nervous about it – let’s hope it comes right on the night!

National Trust visits

As Klaus and I are now NT members we now have something to do when at a loose end. On a spare Saturday morning we visited Lavenham Guildhall which was really interesting. There was a chap giving us the history of the place and he was very informative and made it all really interesting. It was definitely worth a visit.

After that visit we had lunch in Lavenham Blue tea room.

On another occasion we went to Anglesey Abbey, unfortunately at a time when the house was closed. We were able to walk around the grounds which were lovely.

The tea room was a bit mega busy and loud so we decided to find one on the way home somewhere and stopped at a lovely café near Newmarket and had some lunch cake.

Squirrels again

Yes, I know I write about our squirrels a lot, but they are great value for money (although the nut costs are increasing).

We have Mama, Papa and Baby. Mama now tends to turn up on her own and she uses the easy-access nuts on the pole on the right hand side as we look out of our kitchen window.

Papa and Baby have still not really discovered the easy access nuts so they take the nuts from the incorrectly-named squirrel-proof bird feeder on the left hand side pole.

But Papa is now at the stage where he is regularly driving Baby away from the nuts. There was one afternoon where I had twenty minutes watching Papa frightening Baby off, Baby would run away for a minute and then return and have another go. He keeps at it, very impressive.

I took a couple of short videos. In the first one below Papa is at the top and Baby is climbing the greasy pole. After a staring contest Papa drives him away!

In the video below Papa is already in the squirrel-proof feeder and Baby is minding his own business but Papa decides to give Baby a punch.

It’s good fun watching them, and we also get a lot of blue tits and great tits and occasional wrens, dunnocks and bullfinches.

Miscellaneous

And a random bit of language information. From a Facebook post:

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife, but if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. A brown big cat. A blue old attractive vase. An electric red lawn mower.

So, a bit bitty this month. Klaus also got a new company car (he had been using a Skoda Octavia that a former colleague had used) and had ordered a Mazda MX-30 hybrid. Then another colleague left and this one already had a MX-30 so Klaus took it over. He likes it so far, even though he had an issue on the first day because he couldn’t put petrol in it, the pump kept clicking off (and he tried two different petrol stations). It turns out, after reading the manual, that you have to press and hold a button inside the car until the display tells you “ready for fuelling” and then you can put fuel in the car. It did indeed work, but what a random feature!

Hopefully next month’s blog will have good news about Klaus’s visa and maybe we might even be able to visit Germany… Watch this space.