Fun In Worcester

Continuing with my visit to Worcester. . . The next day, Saturday, we all went into the centre of Worcester to visit The Tudor House, a house, as the name suggests, built and lived in during the reign of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. It was lived in by various people and used as dental surgery and somehow connected to the local Home Guard in the Second World War. The Tudor House is now run as a museum but isn't open every day of the week. There were people there doing displays and talks on various topics connected with The Tudor period, and we spent some time listening to these talks and looking at items related to that period. 

We had tea from the teashop and sat in the yard behind the museum to drink it. Then we left to go to Clark's shoe shop. I was somewhat stunned by the fact it was so crowded, with parents and children. We were going to get the children new shoes, ready for the new school year, and it was obvious that this was what all the other parents and children were doing. Staff measured each of the three boys' feet and a selection of shoes were tried on. I think two came away with shoes which fitted correctly, but one, I think George, the eldest, didn't have shoes because the shop didn't have his size. An expensive afternoon, as each pair cost at least £45.

We left the shoe shop and walked through the town centre, and Chloe took a photograph of me and the three grandchildren seated near a statue of Edward Elgar, who happens to be one of my favourite composers. He had lived in Worcester and, I believe, was an organist at Worcester cathedral.

In the afternoon, Steve bought out the tent he had gone to collect from Lincolnshire. It wasn't what I was expecting, not the traditional tent, with tent poles and all that goes with the construction of that type of tent. It arrived as a large bundle, wrapped up in a zipped cover, and it weighed a considerable amount and took two people to lift it. The bundle was unpacked in the garden and the contents drawn out. I was somewhat surprised at the size of the thing, even though it wasn't assembled at this point. It was designed to be pumped up with pumps, rather like used to inflate lilos and beach balls and so on. It had a series of tubes built into its fabric which you connected to the pumps and when these are inflated, these inflated tubes hold up the tent construction. Unfortunately, at one point, Steve was over-enthusiastic with his pump and the inner tube burst, which will now have to be replaced, he did put some sticky tape over the puncture, but it didn't hold.

Chloe and Steve did manage to partly inflate the tent, but there wasn't really enough space in the garden to extend it completely. This was a second-hand tent and had some mould in it's fabric, no doubt because the previous owners had put it away before it was totally dry. 

In the evening we had a barbecue and sat outside at the picnic table to eat, burgers, sausages and all the trimmings, with Steve using the newly acquired gas barbecue, which seemed very efficient and not difficult to cook with compared with a barbecue which uses charcoal and can take some time to get up to the correct temperature to cook any food which is put on it.