May 13th - 14th: Strangers and Cousins

Click for photos for May 13th
Click for photos for May 14th

May 13th: Strangers’ Hall and Kemps’ Leap
We visited Strangers Hall, a lovely Tudor house from the 13th century, and home to many former persons of prestige in the life of the City. This time we checked the schedules and went when it was open! That always helps! The original ‘strangers’ were Dutch, Walloon and Flemish refugee weavers fleeing religious persecution. It’s odd to contemplate, given the politics surrounding refugees throughout the world today. Strangers hall appears small from the outside, but it is deceptive. Rooms lead into other rooms and each time we thought we had seen it all, another room or floor presented itself to us. The views of the garden were beautiful. We walked back past the maddermarket theatre which is a permanent recreation of an Elizabethan Theatre, and stopped at the wall which William Kemp leaped over at the end of his nine day morris dance from London to Norwich in 1599. Thankfully, there’s a plaque commemorating this event, otherwise unsuspecting non dancers might not understand its significance!

May 14th: Catching up with cousins
A quiet day at home, washing windows, laundry - all the mundane stuff, and trying to reach a decision about where, or even whether, to watch the Royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Our options were the Cathedral - with organ accompaniment, or the pub. But which pub? None seemed to be advertising anything special, and we really didn’t want to watch it at home as neither us could be considered a royalist. But, we did want to celebrate with people who want to celebrate joyous occasions in life - and a wedding qualifies.

We took a walk down to the Cathedral to see what exactly they were offering, as we weren’t sure if we could take a picnic into the nave, and we were really hesitant about the organ accompaniment. Our fears about the later were confirmed; we were told about it with a grimace and a shudder.

While at the Cathedral we sought out Edith Cavell’s graves, yes it appears she has two as well as a couple of monuments, and Nelson’s monument. I do like the quote inscribed on one of Edith Cavell's monuments; "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone."

A few days earlier I had decided to call my cousin Kookee and let him know I was in the country. Surprisingly, he was working in Norwich all week. In fact, just around the corner! So we arranged to meet up for dinner. It was fabulous. It had been such a long time since I’d seen either Kooke or his wife Larraine. We had so much fun over drinks, walking past the fully laden wisteria at St. Giles church, and settling in for a rather delicious Indian meal.