Saturday 27 March

Saturday morning saw me walking alone as the ladies wanted a sleep-in.

After the walk I met up with Mark Custerson, Sue's husband and were off to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire (pronounced Wisbeach??) for a plant and vegetable auction. If the greenhouses or farmers have plants of veg surplus to their needs they send that surplus to the auction house on Wisbech. There were rows and rows of flowering plants, herbs, ornamental bushes and even 6-foot high olive trees that went for £9 ($13.80) each!!
There were also many varieties of potatoes in 25 kilo sacks, bags of onions, boxes of kale and parsnips and catons of apples. Mark cautioned me not to bid on any item as this would just result in eventually paying a higher price. Most of the items put up for bid were in multiples, flats of flowers, pots of bushes or bags of vegetables. The winning bidder, usually the only bidder unless there were trades people there, was asked how many they wanted and if there were any left over they were offered at the same price. I was able to get purchse a 25 kilo bag of potatoes for £3 ($4.60), two large bags of onions for £1.75 ($2.70) each, and Mark and I split a bag of huge carrots (great for soups). I shall try to have the family go through thses vegetables quickly so I can attend another auction before I travel back to Canada
Unfortunately I forgot to bring spare batteries so I was unable to take any pictures.

Following the auction Mark took me around to some of his favourite charity shops, smaller versions of our Value Village or Salvation Army stores. Each store supported a different charity so there were a few in Wisbech. Mark is an avid record collector and periodically he searches out rare finds at these charity shops. Unfortunately there were no finds that day.

We had finished with the shops when I received a call from Louise reminding me that we were to leave for Northampton at 1:45pm. Now previously I had heard 2:30pm as out setting out time, but wisely I chose not to argue with Louise. So we raced home and made it with minutes to spare. I did take to time to grab a fresh set of batteries.

I believe I 'spoke' earlier of the young man, Bradley Giles, who died late last year of bone cancer. We had agreed to join a team of bucket shakers to collect spare change for the Bone Cancer Research Trust. We stationed ourselves at the entrances to the GPW Recruitment Stadium, home of the Saints Rugby Team.
We were supposed to shake the buckets with the spare change but I found that most annoying so I tried to catch a person eye and ask them directly for any spare change. Most would respond with some change or the excuse that they did have any change; to those who gave the excuse of no change I instructed them to buy a beer and come back and see me. Surprisingly a few did come back and showed me their beer and tossed in a few coins; none brought me a beer back.
Now I did mention that I had fresh batteries for the camera, but alas I had forgotten to put the memory card back into the camera, so again not pictures.
After most of the fans had entered (I was surprised to see that about a third of the fans were women) Jeff and I raced to the beer tent, came away with a couple of pints of Guinness each, and found our seats. Now football (a.k.a. soccer) is a simple game, easy to follow, and noisy, very noisy. Rugby, for me is complicated. I understand what they are trying to do, but not how; penalties, scrums, off-sides, they are all confusing to me.
There is one amazing thing - when either team tries to kick the ball trough the uprights all 15,000 fans are silent, absolutely silent. All that can be heard are a few people shushing noisy fans - unbelievable.
The final total for the Bone Cancer Research Trust was over £1700 ($2600.00) - not bad for spare change.

A fun day all around.