Remembering three deaths

Trees of Dunwich join the lost city

We visited the lost city of Dunwich last week, now a small village but once the capital of East Anglia and in size rivalling London in the 14th century, until the sea claimed it. The shoreline continues to erode inwards, now exposing the roots of the cliff-top trees, until the dead lumbar slides down the cliff toward the lost city.

The shingle beach carries on for miles here, exposed and raw, and we walked the dogs on Sizewell beach under the twin shadows of the new, clean, white dome reactor of Sizewell B, and the old concrete corpse monstrosity of Sizewell A, looking derelict and unwanted as it awaits decommissioning. The villages round about are peppered with notices protesting the coming of a third reactor, Sizewell C. I am sure it will be safe enough, but it will bring massive new roads and car parks and general disruption.

Today was the funeral of John, the brother of my sister-in-law (see a week of mixed fortunes). We stayed with Chris and Richard overnight before an early start for the chapel service. The cortege then moved at slow pace to the large cemetery in Coventry where my own mother and father are buried. John was the youngest of our generation, only 65, yet went before us. I was surprised when Richard told me today that John was a keen reader of this blog; I did not know he knew about it, but it seems he loved to read of real events, and certainly nothing is more real than the events I relate, including now his own demise!