averilburystedmunds: Wedding weekend and a visit.

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!

Part of the 17th century barn, ready for
the ceremony.

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 17^th 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

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

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.