Here are a couple of photos showing R.B. at his best. One in Venice, which we visited together in 1985 (I think it was) and another beside Stopham green with him carrying an enormous tin bath for the children to use in the garden. It had been hanging on the wall of one of the coach houses at Stopham House for as long as anyone could remember.
Dowlish Wake revisited.
Yesterday we went on a sentimental journey to our old Wednesday haunts, stopping off at Dowlish Wake where there is a memorial to John Hanning Speke, the famous Victorian explorer. We had visited the church at least twice with R.B. and I looked through the visitors' book to see if he'd written the date and signed his name. Sure enough there was a ghostly signature, much fainter than it would have been ten years before. It prompted me to look up my diary entry for that day: Wednesday 4 July 2018 Just back from a visit to Barp on this damp, warm afternoon. We took him a small record player bought in the charity shop – and he seems delighted, having put on an ancient L.P. Crack crack crack it went.... perfect. Went into Ilminster ('I have a letter to post to Australia') and then back to Dowlish Wake to have a look in the church for the Speke memorial which was worth seeing. A very Victorian church in a very English setting. Then we visited Perry's, the cider pla...


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