Much binding ...

Arrived at Much Hadham (very attractive village and church, be good on film) to great clouds of dust, trillions of godly folk were spring cleaning. A spectacularly friendly bunch who offered me dusty tea and showed me the Reyntiens window - great fun, the lower portion is taken from a Moore etching with just abstract patches of blue above - completely secular. Titled the Tree of Life. It just looks like a tree outside! Only problem is the organ loft which blocks one's view of the entire window from the nave.

Since returning to Kent have succeeded in organising the week 10-14 May where we launch ourselves from Ampleforth and gradually move down the country taking in Southwell, Coventry, Anstey and Much Hadham.

The main job now is to prepare a 5 minute promotional film to show at the Glaziers 'do' 12 April - From Coventry to Cochem. To this end I started trying to transcribe Father Muller (speaking German - him, not me) but couldn't cope. Luckily my sister-in-law Carolyn (she was part of Miscellany, see FBSG!) is a German graduate and in 2 days had transcribed and translated said religious figure for me - noting what a lovely man he was! Not totally sure Graham Jones and Patrick would have agreed - a character maybe, but certainly a man who knows what he wants - and gets it! Like his beautiful windows. Anyway - Carolyn's a real STAR!

Yesterday I transcribed Wilhelm Derix and the Jones/Reyntiens interviews recorded in Cochem and did some research into who exactly bombed Cochem on 5 January 1945 - turns out it was the American 8th Air Force. Might be worth noting the difficulties of transcription. One needs to write down not only every word but also every um and ah and er and every burble. The point being that X might say something extremely interesting but in the middle has a large ER which one wishes to delete - if one cuts the film then there's a jump so you have to know where to cut to other images. When one is putting together a film sequence this can be quite tricky. Yesterday's transcribing session was quite fun because Patrick can be very droll and has wonderful analogies to music and food. Graham Jones was excellent, knew when to listen and when to speak up to stop Patrick going OTT. Graham also talks in a very energetic, enthusiastic way and is incisive - what a joy!

A stop designed by Henry Moore, Much Hadham