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Part of the group on May 14th; many
more pics available! |
More or less recovered energy after a weekend of celebration, family
fun, inspiring ceremony, exhaustion, followed by Bletchley Park
outing and more fatigue after a long day!
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Part of the 17th century barn, ready for
the ceremony. |
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Guest place setting for
David who skis. |
Eldest
grand-daughter got married at Elms Barn near Beccles in Norfolk, at a
superbly-organised event last weekend. [Gay Day was May 14]
The happy pair had had plenty of time to organise, courtesy of Covid
et al, but even so, the whole weekend was so amazingly organised with
attention to detail and individual attendees’ personal interests
and characteristics, that everyone was kept in
a state of delight and amazement. The actual venue was stunning;
Queen Anne house with later farm buildings, cottages and outhouses of
impressive proportions providing great accommodation about which
there was but one moan. Mine. My room was chiefly wi-fi free and to
my bemusement, could only be accessed by propping open the door! A
solution discovered by techie son-in-law with a Google degree! How
did that work? Who knows but it did allow me to enjoy Netflix in bed
as usual!! Must alert the manager to the need for an extra router!
But I
have yet to mention, nay, eulogise, the exceptional 17th
century barn, magnificent in its ancient glory with beams to die for
and wonderful brickwork. This barn hosted the wedding ceremony and
later the feast, though much of the post-meal music was outside the
huge, fixed marquee, on a patio leading to the extensive and
beautiful gardens. Somehow, the girls had found a great singer whom I
want to
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| Some of the beautiful gardens. |
grace my Celebration of Life when it occurs after my
departure!! I should add that, somehow, the warm sunny day extended
to late evening and to the many oft-repeated tributes to A Perfect
Day. One of my grandsons, when asked to define
his perfect
day, answered that this was it; everyone having a super time, family
and friends in a complete, spontaneous and joyful harmony. I really
liked that, and hugged myself in delight when I heard it.
Only
three days later as I resumed normal power, I was able to join [late
cancellation] a U3A trip to Bletchley Park which I have long wanted
to visit. I was unsure if the declining energy was equal to the nine
or ten hours involved and it somehow was, just! But it was a
privilege to be there. We joined a previously-booked guided tour
which turned out to be not only informative but fun and really
interesting. The guide had reached a high-level ability to keep minds
interested, entertained, educated
and wanting more; no mean achievement.
Bletchley
Park is an English country house and estate near Milton Keynes; the
actual grand house is a bemusing mixture of Victorian Gothic, mock
Tudor and Dutch Baroque and, externally, lacks coherence and beauty.
However, architecture was not a prime consideration when Bletchley
Park was selected to become the principal centre of Allied
code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was
constructed during the years following 1882 for the financier and
politician Sir Herbert Leon and was
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| Ambulance used at Bletchley between 1938-1945.. |
Polish Lorenz machine.chosen for its reasonable
proximity to access to London and the infrastructure necessary for
the growing telecommunications traffic. During World War II the
estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School which regularly
penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most
importantly, eventually, the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. The
war work, a prolonged intellectual de-coding hunt, was of huge
importance in the war effort and the first appointees tended to be
from academe, numbering initially around 200, though by 1945 there
were almost 9,000 people burrowing there. Two friends, sisters, who
lived in the same village as I in the Eighties and Nineties, had been
plucked from their Sixth Forms in turn to work at Bletchley and, like
everyone else, were bound by the Official Secrets Act; each chose not
to tell the other what they did at Bletchley for around fifty years!!
My
greatest thrill on the visit, was to enter Alan Turing’s rather
mundane office. A polymath, he had been the brightest of Bletchley
recruits and was definitely the most eccentric. His work was pivotal
to the successful Cracking of the Code; indeed, he is known as the
man who broke Enigma. He is described as a mathematician, computer
scientist, logician, philosopher, cryptanalyst, and theoretical
biologist. He was the Father/Founder of computer science and would
have done SO much more for Britain’s web-world had he lived beyond
41. He committed suicide after suffering chemical castration
following a public order conviction. His crime had been to be gay in
a less enlightened period; he committed suicide two years after his
conviction and ‘treatment’. A huge loss of an immense talent.
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| Alan Turing's office., |
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| Alan Turing. |
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Distant view of the house; the all-important
wartime Bletchley Park. |
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Grandson popping the cork; perhaps
at the barbecue the night before! |
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