Double disaster!

Double Disaster this week!  

1. It’s been hot and there is an almighty pong coming from the septic tank. Tried to ignore it but one of the wretched visitors (masses milling around daily at the moment) reported it to Health and Safety who immediately visited. Result is complete overhaul of septic tank and drainage system needed and in the meantime ….. Shut Down! Only the gardens can be open. Portoloos installed in the shrubbery. They have to be DEALT with! Ghastly! I suggested putting up a notice asking people if at all possible to WAIT until they got home. Notice immediately vetoed by Deirdre. More portaloos ordered for stable yard. When they arrive café, gift shop, visitor centre can re-open. What a farce!

Audley End (image by Ron Porter from Pixabay)

2. Mummy has decided Boadicea not interesting as she is long dead and therefore not important.

P.S. All not lost! Further research on Audley End Mansion shows it has a walled garden and organic kitchen garden. Relayed this to Mummy who is interested again! She phoned Sidney Stiggins to see if he and his Rent a Van are available. Sidney phoned me to check if Mummy had lost marbles or was this kosher? Told Sidney that sadly it was kosher. He is deciding if he is available or not. I expect it depends on how much he would be getting.

May 20

Damien our publisher suggested Mummy might like to hear about Queen Boadicea an Ancient British Queen based in EAST ANGLIA who stood up to the Romans and won battles against them. He said he thought they had much in common. Found a picture of the statue of her (Boadicea) on Westminster Bridge in War Chariot. Deirdre said she thought Mummy would not approve lack of clothes but anyway took it over to show her. She reported back that Mummy has now come up with the idea that if she does go to Saffron Walden she would like to make it a sort of Royal Progress with car followed by Sidney Stiggins driving his Rent A Van carrying her mobility scooter. She does of course always like to travel in convoy. She spent a long time looking at the picture of the statue which unfortunately shows knives on B’s chariot wheels. She seemed fascinated by the knives, D says. Maybe she is hatching a plot to have her mobility scooter customised! Nightmare!

May 11

Mummy was over at The Towers this week supervising some bedding plants going in. She reels off the Latin names and I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about. I was at work but Deirdre (my wife) was there and Mummy wanted to see some more pictures of Saffron Walden. Deirdre found that there’s actually a Jacobean (is this before or after Tudor?) Mansion very near called Audley End House. Only about a mile out of the town. She says Mummy was obviously quite impressed, though she pretended not to be, and asked how many rooms it had. Deirdre couldn’t find out.

Talked to my mate Jeremy Fenning Ottway on the train up to town. We’ve been pals ever since Eton. Jeremy’s got a couple of brain cells to rub together. Well, a couple more than I have anyway. He says he thinks Saffron Walden is quite near Cambridge, so nearly IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE. Not really Essex at all! He went to Cambridge for an interview. If you’ve been to Eton and have a double-barrelled name apparently they’re quite interested in you. He didn’t get in though. He says Mummy would probably enjoy going for a boat ride on the River Cam. He said he thought floating along on Cleopatra’s barge would probably appeal to her. I said did he have an email for this Cleopatra? Does she rent her barge out? Anything to lure Mummy into EAST ANGLIA. He said he didn’t think she was around much any more and certainly not in England. He was laughing. He does try to wind me up at times. (Must Google Cleopatra.)

May 4th

This is Henry Fawcett Dodds again. It’s only thanks to my son Henry Junior that I’m able to do this blogging. I know about it of course but had no idea what you did. However, being twelve years old it’s a doddle for him. I just hope he isn’t pulling my leg and this really is reaching somebody. Well, I went to see Mummy with bouquet, hat in hand, etc. Picked up some eclairs along the way. Her favourite. Giving up my usual Sunday afternoon snooze on the sofa watching rubbish TV was a big wrench but there you go. It’s important we sell this book as the proceeds are needed to fix the drains. And that can’t come a moment too soon as the gardens, café and visitor centre at The Towers have just opened and the situation could be decidedly dodgy if Health and Safety come sniffing round.

To Suffering Wall Din and beyond!

Mummy's book, launching June 6

27^th April

Hello. This is Henry Fawcett Dodds writing. Damien, our publisher, left a message on my answerphone which I could hardly hear. Where he was I’ve no idea. It sounded like the House of Commons at PMs questions time, but with music. Honestly I don’t believe it! He seems to be leaving us to do all the publicity for the book of Mummy’s book Not Going Quietly! while he effs off to the Costa del Sol! He says Mummy has to blog and go to a booklaunch somewhere in the wilds of East Anglia!!!  It sounded like Suffering Wall Din. Could there be such a place? I know there are some odd names around but I’m not sure this place actually exists. Must Google it. Well, fat chance! Mummy doesn’t set foot outside Bartlesham these days. She’s waiting for her hip replacement op too, of course, so isn’t in the best of moods. I shall have to buy a large bouquet and go and try and talk her round. OMG! 

She's Not Going Quietly!

I’m introducing a guest blogger in this new blog, Henry Fawcett Dodds, son of Mabel Fawcett Dodds.  He has been told that blogging, tweeting and facebooking is a good way to promote the publication of his mother’s new book Not Going Quietly! The secret recorded diary of Mabel Fawcett Dodds, which is officially launched in June 2019.

Ok, you may have guessed that neither Mabel nor Henry is a real person.  It was a few weeks after I first got to know Angela Howard, that she revealed her not-so-secret alter ego, the marvellously ghastly Mabel Fawcett Dodds. Mabel is living in a retirement home and supposed to be writing her memoirs with the help of a digital recorder. 

Initially, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like her creation. I need not have been.  Mabel is a slow burn, one of those characters you find funnier the more you know about them, and I loved Angela’s monologues as the dreadful Mrs Fawcett Dodds, with her Queenly voice and Machiavellian plots.

As a fan of her work, I wanted to help Angela with the launch of her new project, a book ostensibly written by Mrs Fawcett Dodds herself, and illustrated by Rebecca Lee.  As a friend and knowing my parlous financial state, Angela insists on paying me for the work I do. 

Angela would like me to tell you that as she was born in the year World War II broke out she is not really at home in the modern screen-gazing, button-pushing world, and is really grateful for the help of someone like myself to help her connect with the digital age. So, I am being paid to help Angela with the launch of the book – but with my hand on my heart I can tell you I wouldn’t say anything as a paid employee, I would not say otherwise.

We are agreed that Mabel Fawcett Dodds would never cope with a computer – she barely copes with a digital voice recorder.  So her son, Henry Fawcett Dodds will be the blogger, written by Angela, posted by me, Fee Berry.

This blog will chart the progress of the project, up to launch day – and beyond.