After a comfortable night and picnic breakfast in our hotel room, we walked around and acquainted ourselves with Beaconsfield town centre. It consists mostly of pleasant looking red brick eighteenth century half timbered buildings, and a fine 12 century Parish Church. There seemed to be rather a lot of elite fashion boutiques, few typical high street retail stores and no visible municipal buildings. It had been a village in times past, but nowadays it's a commuter dormitory town from which people travel by car to shop out of town. We bought sandwiches for lunch, and then headed to the suburb to the north of the town where our late John and Elizabeth lived, and attended the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels, where their Memorial Service was going to be held.
Like the housing area in which it is set, the church nave was built 1915-16, with the sanctuary added in 1954-55 and the Lady Chapel in 1963. It faithfully reflects the architecture and style of the 'Arts and Crafts' movement, and the Anglo-Catholic liturgical design ethos associated with the name of Percy Dearmer, simple, light and airy, expensively crafted. It's quite a treasure, and a rather special 20th century Listed Building.
A congregation of about seventy people gathered, and the service was led by Camilla Walton, the recently retired priest in charge of the church. Despite working abroad for much of their life together, Beaconsfield was the place where they made the home to which they returned, so a large number of people in the congregation had known them since well before they retired here twenty years ago. Others had come from far and wide, long standing friends, colleagues from the aviation industry in which John spent his entire working life. The euolgies reflected remarkable friendships they both made, lives spent at the service of progress in world travel. Our lives touched during the eight years we were together in Geneva when John worked for IATA and they both attended Holy Trinity Anglican Church.
John was notorious for his sweet tooth, and in his memory the refreshments served with tea after the service consisted entirely of a huge variety of cakes, beautifully presented, with nothing savoury. For Clare and I it was a matter of looking for the least sweet thing to eat, which in this case fortunately, was scone with jam and cream. After half an hour chatting with their daughters who were hosting the event and other guests, we set off for home, just ahead of the rush hour traffic. It wasn't easy to find the least congested route back to the M4 from there, and I'm still unsure we went the way that Google Maps proposed, as the criss-crossing of major roads in that area easily confuses. Clare drove the full distance, as she did yesterday, as I couldn't settle comfortably in the driving seat again, in spite of my best efforts. It's just like that some times - annoying, but I have to put up with it.
I was good to reach home, as 'The Archers' were finishing, in good time for me to cook supper, glad and relieved to be back in my comfort zone yet again. I took one computer with me to Kenilworth, and returned with three - Kath's broken Acer Aspire laptop to try and fix, and two notebooks, the little Acer I loaned to Kath last year when the bigger Aspire malfunctioned, and Rhiannon's HP. So much for downsizing! The HP I'll keep for the time being, before deciding what to do with it, but the little Acer I installed Linux on. At first I tried my usual Mint edition, but found the trackpad didn't work, so I downloaded and installed Ubuntu, but found the trackpad didn't work with this one also. Is it a mechanical fault or an operating system glitch? It remains to be discovered. Perhaps by trying yet another Linux distro first.
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