History Repeating Itself?

Before I come to my 'headline story', let me record that this has been a good week for me, work-wise.  Work these days, of course, isn't of the employed kind, but nevertheless does see me tied to the desk for a large part of the time.  Monday morning, though, found me crawling on the floor - playing, almost - as I cleansed all the personal data from a number of digital devices in readiness for their being donated to a worthy cause ... and being more useful than at any time in the past number of years stashed away in my sideboard!

Desk-bound successes have included drafting two editions of my 'other blog', ready for publication in mid-March and at Easter-time.  You can find this (as the note alongside here tells you) at https://gospelaroundus.com/.  In doing this, I spent some while discovering how I can blend two pictures into one in order to illustrate one of these posts.   As is often the case, by the time you've achieved something, you realise that you've travelled three sides of the field, when to have gone along the fourth side would have been far quicker ... and you'll know which way to go next time!

I've also managed to upload my family history record to my mobile phone.  It's perhaps typical of so-called 'phone use' these days that, in the two weeks I've had this instrument, I've yet to actually make a call on it ... and yet it has been very useful in so many other ways.

So, does history repeat itself?  In my working life, as longer-term readers of this blog will recall, I certainly claimed that it did: what I used to refer to as the 'repeating genie'.  Reflecting this morning on the events of the week I realised that, albeit with a very different overcoat, they had followed a pattern that had been my good fortune over twenty years ago.

My employer, a tax avoidance consultant, had planned for me to join him on a visit to one of our contacts in mid-Europe.  It was essentially a meet-and-greet visit, during which I might be able to resolve a few minor queries with a member of his staff.  The appointment was made and flights and accommodation had been arranged when, two or three days before I was due to depart, an emergency unfolded which made it necessary for my boss to grab the slot that I was to fill in my European host's diary, in order to resolve our client's problems.

Knowing how much I had been looking forward to the trip, he suggested that my wife and I might like a break so, since all the arrangements had been made, why not make use of them for a few days away anyway?  Naturally, we were only too willing to take advantage of this, and enjoy the autumn sunshine in a foreign land.

Back in the present, plans had been made for a meeting yesterday afternoon with one of our churchwardens to discuss some work she wanted me to undertake.  On Wednesday, however, I had a message asking me if I'd mind putting this off until next week because something more urgent had come up that needed her full attention.  Hence, at the last minute, I now had a free day.  Instead of lounging about at home, I decided to plan a day out, and selected a couple of properties from the National Trust handbook which would make a convenient triangular itinerary.

The first was a bit of a mistake, through not reading the entry as thoroughly as perhaps I should have.  I arrived to find that only the gardens and grounds were open, and not the hall, to which a guided tour would have been available on any other weekday!  I decided to find somewhere for a snack and then move on to my second venue which, since it has no roof, I had anticipated being something of an anti-climax.  After the disappointment at my first stop, an anticlimax would have been difficult!

Lyveden New Bield

And so it turned out.  It was certainly cold, and I didn't hang about to wander in the grounds, but the building I found was - to me, at any rate, although I realise not everyone would be so enthralled - absolutely fascinating.  This treasure is Lyveden, not far from Oundle in Northamptonshire. 

The ornate frieze featuring a sequence
of 7 designs relating to the Crucifixion

The Tudor worthy Sir Thomas Tresham had decided to build a garden lodge and develop an ornamental garden between it and his manor house.  Ten years into the project, Sir Thomas died and, when his son was arraigned shortly afterwards as part of the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the workmen realised that they wouldn't be getting paid any more, they downed tools and left the property just as it is today: an ornate, superbly constructed shell.

The carvings and ornamentation are not only of the finest quality, but are most absorbing; indeed the whole building is a celebration of Catholic symbolism ... down to the fact that the overall width of the structure is 243 feet.  This being the fifth power of three, it was so determined in order to pay tribute to the Holy Trinity and also the five wounds of Christ on the Cross!  The rest I will leave my readers to find out for themselves should they decide to visit.