Sari Time

I first met Peter in 1989 during Cursillo 3 in Edinburgh diocese. He and Cynthia became good friends. Peter was part of our team who took Cursillo to India in 1997 and he also joined the Tirunelvelli CLW team as one of the clergy team in 2002. I have wonderful memories of shared times in India including a particularly hairy video which he took while travelling pillion on a motorbike in Bangalore. He had a wonderful sense of humour and will be greatly missed.

HEBDEN Peter Passed away on 9th November 2009 aged 66 years. Much loved Husband to Cynthia, Dad to Jacqueline, Richard, Keith and Rod, Father in Law and Grandpa. Peter's funeral service will take place on Tuesday 17th November 2009 at 11.00am at St. Botolph's Church, Shepshed. Family flowers only please. Donations will be shared between the churches and the British Lung Foundation. Please make cheques payable to the PCC of Shepshed & Oaks in Charnwood. All enquiries to Shepshed & District Funeral Service

A friend told me about this which was spotted this morning near to St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh's West End! I know the tram works are causing problems but this is ridiculous!

Joyce and I were down at Freddie's again over the weekend and we are gradually getting things organised there. No small thanks to Freddie's wonderful friends. One thing though which has caused me some concern is her pond. There have been problems with the pump valve blocking and pumping the water out onto the grass rather than back into the pond resulting... obviously in a drained pond and some very unhappy fish.... fortunately someone has spotted the problem in time and mass fishicide has been avoided.
Well, on Saturday Jim and I drained the pond and checked out the pump and filter again. Thanks Jim, it was not a fun job - the water was freezing and the mud stank and the frogs - who had begun to hibernate at the bottom of the pond - were VERY unimpressed at being netted in error and showed just how well they could jump out of the net and back into the mud.
I've worked out what was wrong with the pump but have decided to leave it switched off for the winter period anyway. I did however decide I would not be able to live with myself if I was the cause of Freddie's fish all dying... so yesterday I rescued four.
I had a crate in the boot of my car, containing a bucket 1/3rd full of water containing the fish and covered with a poly bag tied with an elastic and a ribbon.... couldn't find string so a ribbon it had to be! Most fetching! Joyce gave me an old camping water bottle full of water just in case of further leaks and I set off up the A68. I don't know how well you know the A68 between Durham and Edinburgh, but a combination of the Cheviots, the mining country and everything else means that it has more ups and downs than any other road I know, and not just wee gentle ups and downs but amazing crowns and crests and blind summits where you can fly the car rather than drive it... crests they call them on the road signs and crest we did. After the joys of Carter Bar, I stopped for some refreshment at the Jedburgh Woollen Mill and to my surprise bumped into D&V there on their way back from a wedding. Nice to have some company! I shot away from them though and got back on the road and up and over Soutra, the views over the Forth were fabulous, clear cold evening skies a beautiful sunset and winter colours.
Somehow, eventually, I managed to get to Edinburgh with fish intact and very little water in the boot! I've now moved them into my pond with the 6 fish that are already there. I'm sure that being hardy northerners they'll be able to hold their own against my wee Scottish beasts! Hopefully the cold will make them so drowsy that they'll all just go into winter shutdown and by the time they all wake up in the spring they'll be so used to each otehr that they won't even notice that there are more than there were before. It was certainly cold last night -3 on my window thermometer when I checked it this morning before going to work. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. It is a nice wee pond though I'm quite chuffed with it.

We're all trying very hard to move on from our sadness of the past year, it's been quite a roller-coaster beginning with the death of our aunt in February, Stepmother in March, Dad in May and now of course Freddie. I've told my remaining wee sister Joyce quite sternly that she had better look after herself or I shall have to have severe words with her!
We've been up and down to Durham over the past few weeks trying to do some sorting and sifting and doing a lot of reminiscing. Freddie had a great bunch of friends and their support has been just fantastic. Come to that our own friends have been really supportive and helped us incredibly to get through things. There were only 9 weeks between Freddie's diagnosis and death, so we really have been, and remain, in shock.
To try to get a rest from things here, Colin and I had a trip to Marrakesh in the October holiday sadly the weather was not brilliant so we had to do a lot of drinking coffee and shopping! Tough but someone has to do it. If you want a nice place to stay have a look at the Riad Linda's website. Very comfy and owned by Edinburgh friends of ours.
Had a couple of visits to a Hamman... a Morroccan version of a Turkish bath, starts with a thorough steaming then a wash down by the attendant followed by a thorough ex-foliation all over, next is a warm shower and finally a full body massage, takes about an hour and you feel great after. The building itself is worth a visit. Men and women are kept very separate and the clouds of steam are so thick that the odd roll of flesh goes un-noticed.

We were amazed when we came across lots of men taking part in what amounts to a fairground fishing game, except they were fishing for Coca Cola, Spright and Fanta with wooden fishing rods with loops of wire on the ends. Alcohol was available, but not within sight of mosques and it was nice to be in a sober environment!

It was wonderful to walk around the main square of the Medina - La Place El Fna by night, there were orange juice sellers, snake charmers, restaurants which set up each evening and were gone by morning, monkey handlers, fortune tellers and medicine men as well as musicians and thousands of people local and tourists.

It's a very clean town and we had no concerns about food etc which was nice. My school girl french had a good testing and it was quite reasssuring just how much of higher french 1971 I have retained. Archie Gilogley would be proud of me!