I do try to vary my subject matter from the serious to the light-hearted as life is a mixture of the serious and the light-hearted. Sometimes we need a lift but at other times we need to be amused.
When I have a specific writing project to undertake, I tend to get up very early and such was the case yesterday when I was out of bed well before 6 am.
It all came following a lovely visit on Thursday to see the Wooltorton family in Hellesdon (just around the corner from where I grew up). Myself and fellow Le Paradis Commemoration Group member John Head were off to do an interview with another family touched by the massacre.
When we had the special service around our new memorial in Norwich Cathedral Close, I was asked by the Princess Royal where the material for our Hell in Paradis website came from and I told her that it was often from people finding old boxes of memorabilia in lofts.
"You wouldn't believe how much historic treasure there is in lofts," I said. And that's very true. So when Charles Wooltorton was clearing out his loft to move house he came across a number of documents relating to his father (also called Charles but generally known as Charlie) and his war service in Northern France with particular reference to Le Paradis.
Charlie Senior served there with the Royal Norfolk Regiment and it was another piece in our ever-expanding jigsaw. This was a sad, a poignant but a joyful visit (thus once again proving that some contacts and subjects can go from the sad to the poignant to the joyful in just one afternoon).
What we had amongst Charlie Seniors papers was another string to our bow - another slice of history that had laid unseen for many years.
So yesterday morning very early I started to sort through and make some sense of the paperwork and the photographs with a view to adding a tribute page to our website. That essentially is the nuts and blots of our visit but it was so much more than that. The humanity and the love of the family shone through and we spent a wonderful hour and a half chatting with Charlie's son Charles, his grandson Ian and wife Jo and their two girls - Clara and Etta who must have wondered what these two very strange men were doing in their house. I can tell you at times that tears weren't far away from some people and they really made us welcome.
And the wonderful thing is that the meeting and information has come just in time before I get our book off to the publishers at the end of the month. So I can include a little bit of it. I thought you might like a photo of the Wooltorton family with this blog and also a few of Charlie Senior.
If you want to read the full story go to www.leparadismassacr.com/wooltorton but give it a couple of days to ensure we have everything up and running.
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One of my pet hates is the price of petrol and I'm certainly not alone in that. I have mentioned before that I get my petrol from an area of Norwich known as Earlham Fiveways. That's because it is the cheapest in the immediate area. I don't like the garage as it is on a major roundabout and gets very busy and cramped. I have a much more convenient and much pleasanter garage at Thickthorn Services.
But up to now I have avoided them because they have on average been 10p a litre more expensive and that works out at a lot more money. I have always said that I would go to Thickthorn out of choice if only the price of their fuel was competitive and now suddenly it is. But the reasons are not what I expected.
I suspected that Shell and Thickthorn had at last realised that their fuel was too expensive and that, by dropping the price, they would bring in additional custom (people like me). But not a bit of it. Thickthorn has suddenly become competitive because the supermarket stations are playing what is commonly known as "silly buggers."
I haven't been able to establish this definitely (perhaps some of my readers can enlighten me) but there is a suggestion that supermarkets are supressing a drop in petrol prices in order to keep their profits up. They could drop the price but are unwilling to do so. If this is the case it's pretty disgusting but, as I say, I'm not entirely certain that is the case.