Plenty of scrap paper and notebooks which are always useful but then there they were - a drawer full of photographs and old slides. Looking at them they must have been from over 40 years ago. I had a small viewer (and when I say small I mean small) and in the bright sunlight could detect that they went back to a trip to Russia (or I believe it was still the USSR in those days).
Anyway that's where myself and Anne met and here we are some 45 years later having been married for 44 years this July. So you could say that visit to the USSR sealed my fate (only joking) or it could have been a case of From Russia With Love.
Amongst the scenic views of what were obviously a number of trips abroad there were copious family weddings and christenings, lots of slides that were mainly blank and which time hasn't been kind to and also a few of us and people that we know. I was delighted to find one of my two grandmothers photographed together - something I cannot remember ever seeing. One slide in particular struck me. It must have been just after myself and Anne met. I am sitting with two other people - Peter who I shared a room with in Russia and Kathryn who was Anne's friend. First thing I noticed was my drooping moustache and long hair - most of which has now gone south as they say.
Then in another batch of slides I found one of Kathryn's parents - Charles and Freda Blackburne. I was delighted to find this as I got to know them both in the years after the Russian (USSR) visit and Freda, in particular, has played a significant part in my life over the past few years despite no longer being with us.
Charles and Freda were a remarkable couple. Charles was blinded in an industrial accident and met Freda Laycock in hospital. Freda was a nurse. Charles became a top sports physiotherapist, looking after many top sports stars including players from Leeds United Football Club and players from the sport of Rugby League. He also played blind bowls for England. I still vividly remember him sitting by his fireside listening intently to the football scores.
After Freda died I worked with Kathryn to set up a memorial website for her mother who was a nursing sister during the war. Freda had served in Sierra Leone in Africa and was one of the first nurses to liberate the prisoner of war camp at Sandbostel.
I recently moved and improved the site and if you are interested in reading more just go to www.freda-laycock.weebly.com. There is a link to send comments from the site and I know that Kathryn would be delighted to hear from you.
The drawers also gave up a few more hidden secrets like back copies of the Hethersett Mercury. Who remembers the Hethersett Mercury? The publication was an offshoot of the weekly Wymondham Mercury which still exists. Hethersett Mercury was a smaller and glossier version of the Wymondham Mercury and was published initially by Eastern Counties Newspapers and then Archant when they took the former over in early 2002.
The first edition I have is dated April 2001 and the last one November 2002. It shows how your memory can play tricks as I thought it was a very short lived publication. It does appear to have come out monthly so it does mean there were a minimum of 20 editions. Would love to hear from anyone else who has kept any of them.
I'm sure I will dip into their content in coming blogs but I was intrigued to read columns by a certain Douglas Gowing whose articles included not only his own name but also Opus. I have no idea why he needed a pen name as well as his own. Anyway somewhere in the mists of my memory I seem to recall that Mr Gowing was American and he certainly did write about the USA a lot.
In the July/August 2002 edition he wrote an article under the heading "A Village or not a village?". It caused quite a stir as it was seen to be anti-Hethersett in certain circles. He had this to say:
"Many consider that Hethersett ceases to exist as a village beyond the turn to Jaguar Road, opposite to the Village Hall on Churchfields.
"Steepletower they say is just a dormitory or a transient hotel for Norwich and it has nothing to do with the village itself."
He goes on to attack the parish council for not supporting the idea of a car park on Great Melton Road, for their refusal to acknowledge that speeding is a problem on Churchfields, for the lack of Jubilee celebrations when he claims the village hall looked "notably drab," and for a decision to spend £300,000 on a new pavilion on the Memorial Playing Field "at a time when the existing area is subject to increasing vandalism.
He also attacked Hethersett Cricket Club for turning down his offer to umpire and help coach youngsters and then gives a blatant plug for an insurance company with a business close to the Memorial Field.
I will give a flavour of the responses in my next blog. Suffice it to say here that Mr Gowan seemed unaware that the village hall is in Back Lane and not Churchfields.
The garage drawer also gave up a number of prints of Hethersett from the past and brought back memories of many businessed no longer in existance such as the newsagents and then Grinders coffee shop at the corner of Great Melton and Henstead Road (now the PACT charity shop). There was also one of the post office when it was a large shop at the junction of where Queen's Road becomes Great Melton Road.
I also mentioned in a previous blog that there are four people buried in St Remigius Churchyard who could well have been killed on active service in the Second World War. Three of them are not commemorated on the village war memorial. I will share what little details I have on these men in a future blog.
Is it me or is the coronavirus just easing off a little? It certainly feels as if we have at last turned the corner. Still a long way to go but maybe the green shoots are just beginning to peek through.