Day 12 – Back In Time

I felt very low today with no enthusiasm to do anything much. It was nice to hear of the first Spring migrants turning up today with the first Wheatears arriving at Weybourne and Titchwell RSPB, along with Little Ringed Plover and White Wagtail also at Titchwell.

I took four VHS videos to be converted into DVD's at 'Wolfy's Video & Photography' shop in Hunstanton. I've been meaning to do this for ages. Two of them are old films that my Father made, one is of Father on TV and one is of my wedding in 1992 – I only want to watch this because of my family on there, not to reminisce about my wedding! It's not a cheap thing to do, as I expected: £20 each for 2 hours footage, if the footage is longer than 2 hours, then it goes up to £30.00 – one of the reasons I have never got this done, but I want one of my Father's films in time for the wake/funeral. As the lady handed me my receipt, she said 'they will be ready to collect in about a month'!!! I requested for the one I wanted urgently to be done asap if possible, she said she would try, but couldn't guarantee this, as they had a huge back log of videos to convert. I will keep my fingers crossed.

At Mother's house I spend a good while searching through tons of my Father's old photographs. I was looking for old photos of him for the wake/funeral. I found some fascinating pictures amongst all the bird photos – there were some really cute pics of him as a baby on a beach, toddler pics with his mother and father, feeding some pigeons in a park and so on. I also found an old photo postcard titled Holme Bird Observatory, which was of the Firs House – this of course was HBO headquarters at the time and where my parents lived. There were some very fat, smiley baby pictures of me including an amusing one of me laying on my front and smiling up at the camera on a bed in the Firs House. Several pics of us sisters as youngsters and some lovely pictures of my mother, including one of her sitting amongst gannets on the Farne Islands.

We had a lovely phone call from dear Joan Ramsey (wife of the late Mick Ramsey who was on the NOA committee and regular sea-watcher from Hunstanton Cliffs and also my headmaster at Holme CP Primary School) – she phoned to say how sorry she was to have read of Father's death. She sounded in a bad way herself and she explained that she has been housebound for the last two years, she must the same age if not older than Father was. It was so nice to hear from her. Joan was a Matron in her younger days and came out to assist with my birth, mother told me!!!