Teapots and Coffee pots

This morning we went to church at St. Thomas Church in West Hyde. This is the church I wrote about in my very first post. It was such a great experience! My cousin Margaret came with us. The service was short, less than an hour, with Communion. I would say there were perhaps 50 people at Worship, most of them little old ladies. We actually prayed for more sick people than there were people in the church this morning! The building was built in 1845 and the outside walls are made of flint. Inside, the pews are a step up from the aisle and very old, with needlepointed kneelers. The vicar was a supply pastor as their vicar was on holiday, but he was such a nice elderly gentlemen who gave quite a nice sermon. He talked about their new message board out in front of the church and how everyone should be like a shiny new message board and go out and do good in the world. He said there are two types of people, the teapots and the coffee pots. The teapots are round, friendly and very happy and find joy in meeting and helping others, and the coffee pots are tall, thin, rather stuffy and keep to themselves and don't try to get to know others. I am definitely a teapot! I told him after the service and he laughed. I know these descriptions will come home with me!

After the service, John came to meet us and we had a walk through the graveyard. Our great grandparents are buried there but their graves are unmarked. The water table is very high there as well, and many of the graves have been displaced. The back of the graveyard was built higher so the coffins wouldn't rise out of the ground!!

After this, we went for a visit with my Aunt Olive. Her husband was my Dad's brother. She hasn't been well, but I thought she was remarkly good considering her last fews weeks. She is as sharp as a tack and filled in a lot of gaps in the family history for John and I. From here, we went back to cousin David's for lunch and more family chatter.


The last stop of the afternoon was to see Uncle Sam whose wife, Win, was my Dad's sister. They never had any children and we try to visit him whenever we go to England. Today Jim and I, and Margaret and her son Peter visited him at his home. We had a lovely time with him, and then we had to say goodbye to Margaret and Peter who were heading back to Wales tonight. Jim and I came back to the hotel where I'm posting this and Jim is, what else? Having a little nap! Tonight we're having dinner with Joan, my cousin Michael's widow, and her children Nicolas and Nina and Nina's fiance, Adrian. A photo and more about that later on. So now I should get ready to go out and eat another meal. Goodness, I do think I've eaten more in the last 24 hours than I have in the last two weeks!!

I hope this family stuff hasn't been too dull, but I know there are a few of you out there who will be interested to see the family photos. And, I'll leave you with this question: are you a teapot of a coffee pot? Can you think of people who fall into both categories?