AU34/21/7/16/18

Letter from R P S Waddy

5 November 1977

From: 1977 To: 1977

A handwritten letter from R P S Waddy (former Rector of St Andrew's, Ampthill) on headed paper from St. Fursey, in Ditchingham, Bungay to Honora Grimmer: "Dear Nora, Thank you once again for Church and Town: it seems a good moment to enclose my donation to Her Majesty's postal service. And thank you too for the news of your sister's death - good news really, to wake up on the other side without pain. I have written a note for Andrew. What I look forward to is hearing Beethoven's Tenth Symphony (That very dull man E.M. Forster has only one quotation in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotes - 'Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.' But he should have said Even Yet.) There were five in our family, not counting a baby brother who died; and we are all going fairly strong, widely scattered but in a curious way growing closer together. We have a struggle here with girls at school, who don't want to 'write home' because it is so much nicer to ring up. But - never to learn the art of writing letters, or the joy of reading them, what a deprivation! Christopher has been at Nassau in the Bahamas for six months now, and it is a spur to share news and comment with him as we never did so regularly when he was four miles away in Suffolk. He is establishing a development bank for the Common Market Aid Fund, and learning to 'ponder' and gear progress to the Bahamian pace of life. It was a delight when the Queen, reading 'her' speech to 'her' Parliament, announced that she was going ahead with it! Now that his wife, with Drusilla just four, and Daniel, six months, are with him, he is truly happy. Judy and Havana (5 1/2) spent August in Dubai and then Bombay, but her architect husband is now back in London, Havana loving school, and Judy teaching 'Communication' at the London College of Printing and doing occasional programmes for the BBC. Havana actually appeared on Horizon, chatting to a resurrected Charles Darwin at the zoo: but alas the chat was cut, and we waited eighty minutes just to glimpse her. At least I learnt a little more about genes and molecules. Ann Grimmer seems to be very happy at Leicester University. She got 3 good A'levels, spent part of the holidays at a 'dig' (my idea of purgatory!) and is reading Archeology and History (I think). I don't know much more than that, but it has been good to watch her flower. We have another Christmas play of her for this year. She is not in digs, but in the University hall of residence, of which our headmistress was warden for twenty years before she came to All Hallows. It is thirty years at the end of this month since I was instituted at Ampthill by Philip Loyd - on a foggy Friday night just after the Queen's wedding. I can remember the sermon in the Conservative hall, and losing my voice; and being dragged off later to the Wingfield Club. We were younger then! Yours ever gratefully, Pat Stacy Waddy"

item

Grimmer, Honora Patricia Annie,
Waddy, Richard Patteson Stacy,
Stacy Marking, Havana,
Stacy Waddy, Drusilla,
Stacy Waddy, Daniel,
Waddy, Christopher,
Stacy Marking, Judith,
Grimmer, Ann,
Underwood, Andrew,
Underwood, Ena Mary,
Loyd, Philip,
Elizabeth II,
Forster, E.M.,
Beethoven,
British Broadcasting Corporation,
BBC,
London College of Printing

CORRESPONDENCE, convents, chaplain, teacher, teaching, parish magazines, churches, Christmas, nativity plays, TV, programmes, Director, travel, University, banking, banker, Common Market, deaths, Wingfield Club, AMPTHILL, All Hallows, Ditchingham, Bungay, Suffolk, Norfolk, Dorset, Bahamas, Nassau, Bombay