“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” Michael Jordan

I have never believed that fate is pre-ordained, no I believe that fate simply falls out of life, supplied under the rules of the chaos theory. It is the luck of the cards that deals your fate from the very instant you are born, from where you are born to whom your parents are, just luck, good or bad some things are simply out of your control. Well both Alison and I were handed the Ace at birth and both of our sets of parents were the good ones, strong, supportive and loving.

I am very aware that as I write this it is just minutes to midnight on New Years Eve and one of the worst times to wax lyrical about the ones you love, especially cringe worthy after a few drinkies. But I have had no drinkies except the Yorkshire brew cup of tea that I am sipping as I write this and my only reason to touch on this sentiment is to highlight how lucky we have been and the thanks that we owe our parents is simply immeasurable.

So we are both only too aware how lucky we have been. Then you need to put your spin on your luck and try to bring the odds onto your side to improve your life's lot. You know, who you choose as friends (and we have been blessed there too) and finally how you 'manage' your working life. I think our philosophy has been to expect nothing, give everything and be as true to ourselves as possible in everything we do. This seems to have paid off and I believe neither of us have any regrets with our career decisions.

There is one last card that I have not mentioned .... Our family. Two children, Stephen & Claire of whom we are immensely proud, and Alison my wife and Bestie! For without a shadow of doubt I, WE, would not be doing what we are doing now if there was not the initial momentum from Alison. It was her drive to satisfy what was both an escape from an inevitable decline in my career as age would creep in and cause me to struggle in later years and a small pipe dream of possibly an enjoyable occupation to take me towards (and perhaps into) my retirement some 15 years hence.

“Some people want it to happen,

some wish it would happen, 

others make it happen.”

 Michael Jordan                                        

 Alison is that "Other" person.

So we sold up our home of 25 years in Sussex and here we are, running a B&B and Holiday Cottage in the heart of Norfolk and I have to say really enjoying it. It is said that it is better to regret something that you did do than to regret something you didn't do and whilst I still had some wits about me it was clear that it was now or never.

The decision made Alison looked for a suitable position within her Bank for a job any where in England and eventually landed a job in East Anglia that covered an area from the Humber in the north down to the Thames in the south and across to the Chilterns in the West. From that vast area we chose to live in North Norfolk to try to start my new venture in a reasonably high tourist area.
From the whole of North Norfolk we could only find one house that looked like it would fit our criteria for a B&B and that we could afford, in a small village in the centre of the region. It was one of those villages that was so in the backwaters that many of the locals never even knew it was there!
So then we put a bid in on this random house called The Old Bakery, because up until the last owner bought it in 1974 it had been a Bakery for about 140 years.
Then my brother recognises the name of the village from way back in the family tree and long story short he identifies that two of my uncles 5 generations back lived next door to the self same property in the 1840's!
THEN he makes the connection, another to generations back, that ties me in as a relative of the guy that actually built the Windmill on this site and turned the building into the Bakery that gives it its name today! (the person was my 7th cousin, 3 times removed).

I don't believe in fate, or maybe I do...? Or not,  errrr well I mean to say, ummm,  mmmphhh. Is that fate? Is that co-incidence? I just don't know now!

Then he finds a photo of this relatives (John Pegg) daughter, her name is Hannah Pegg, my 7th cousin 4 times removed (I think!).

We bought this 260 year old building at random and find that we have a blood connection to a person that owned it about 172 years ago and we even believe that we have his photo on the wall in our dining room....

We believe he is one of the three adults by the cart and now I look again is that Hannah by the horse?

Now as I sit here in my armchair, fire burning in the hearth, I'm sitting behind the window that is behind the horses head in the above photo I have to question my beliefs regarding fate and all I can say is that they are no longer black and white but as is the picture above they too are formed with shades of grey.

Happy New Year everyone.






3,266

Of Cesspits, Septic Tanks and all things unmentionable.......

It's official! The Old Bakery is NOT connected to the Mains Sewerage which is quite contrary to our understanding at the time we bought the place. No one was really sure where our sewerage actually went but the general consensus was that it flowed into a redundant cesspit and out to the mains sewerage that was built in 1984.

However it is now quite clear that it all flows right through our garden into a next door neighbours garden where it enters a small, and I mean small, Septic tank. Remember a septic tank allows the solids to fall into it and the liquids come to the top and then seep out of the tank via an exit pipe. From there the liquids filter out, probably through small holes, into the earth below the next house to his. Gosh I bet they grow big parsnips there!

THERE IS, HOWEVER, A PROBLEM. Once the tank was emptied it became very apparent that it is far too small for the job. It is built from brick and measures just 5' deep, and about 30" square totalling just 31 cubic foot. This has to process several dishwasher loads, showers, clothes washing machine loads, the odd bath full and of course many toilet flushes in any one day. The tank can barely hold two and a half bath fulls!
So where does all that liquid go to? Well that is the big question of course. It is clear that the waste does get to the tank, but only just because the pipes 'fall' is no more than about 3' in 100'. No wonder I've had a few blockages!

It does appear that the Land drainage allows the residue liquid to drain away, but there is also the possibility that the brick work is allowing it to seep out of the tank (my neighbour is concerned at how much moss is growing in his lawn).

Now all we have to do is to monitor the now empty tank and see how it copes with our waste quantities, because if it does not perform we may have to replace it with a normal size tank which is about 5 times bigger, although that only does an average house and in reality for the B&B and the Cottage use we would probably have to think about a lot bigger than that, more like ten times the size. This plus the cost of the extensive earth works and pipe laying could cost in excess of £4k!

So at the moment we are 'monitoring' the situation. I predicted in my blog back in mid-November that this drain issue would turn out to be a bigger problem than it initially seemed. If there is one thing that I have learnt it is that when you buy a 260 year old property there will be problems, the only variable being just how far up the creak it takes you whilst leaving your paddle way back in Timbuktu.

The driver of the tanker that took all my slurry away helped to clarify the situation and unblock the drains and was generally very helpful. I have always considered that all of us give an equal contribution to our society no matter what job we do and so go out of my way to treat everyone with the same respect. In the light of this I thanked him for his trouble and shook him firmly by the hand, the hand that had just loaded all of his dirty pipes onto his wagon after they had been pumping out all of that poo. It didn't matter, I had made my point, I respect you and I respect what you do. I am not too proud to shake your hand after you have done it.

That was yesterday and today I feel like crap! I have got a bug and whilst I'm not naming names or blaming anyone, lets just say that is the last time that I shake a commoners hand! 





3,197

With all my might I lifted the Cow right up into the field from which it had come....

Do you know one of the things that I relish most about giving up my last job to run a small B&B?

NO TRAVELLING TO WORK.

I wake up, go down stairs and that's it.    I'm there.  On goes the kettle and were off! So, so simple and, of course, really economical.

For 30 years I hauled myself out of bed at some ungodly hour, went out into often treacherously poor weather, in the cold dark night to take sometimes a journey of an hour and a half only to do the whole thing in reverse at the end of the shift. By the way when I say 'in reverse' I don't mean that I drove the 90 miles home backwards, in reverse gear, No I mean reverse as in back the way I'd come in the morning.....



Tomorrow morning Alison is doing just that, actually not driving too far but travelling early, leaving at 04:45hrs to drive to Norwich to catch a train to Stratford (London) to then take the tube to the Docklands for a meeting at 08:30hrs. That is the downside of living in such a tranquil land that time forgot....

Don't misunderstand me, at the time I loved it, Out on the road, never knowing what adventure or challenge I was going to come up against next. There was a buzz, out there I was my own boss (until I got to work of course). Nowadays I'm a little, OK, a lot older and my priorities are different, more sedentary, less challenging. The most challenge I get is trying to find my damned spectacles!

But I did enjoy those journeys and many of them were indeed eventful and on occasions tragic too. That is tragic for the poor wild life that seemed to dive at my car with wild abandonment often resulting in nothing but death. I think the death toll is something like many doves, even more pigeons, several Rabbits, Pheasants, a deer, 1 Squirrel, a Blue Tit, a Robin and very, very sadly a cat.
Whilst I know that this makes me appear a very bad driver, you do need to put it into context. I spent a good decade driving across the Ashdown Forest, which many of you will know is the home of Winnie the Pooh (one of the few beings that I hadn't run down.... Ooooh, can you imagine the hoo-har if I'd run him over).
The Ashdown forest is teeming with wildlife and the vast majority of these 'incidents' occurred  there.
There was one particularly infamous trip, it was very early in the morning and the rabbits were playing the same game as the pigeons and doves do. This involves standing absolutely still on the side of the road, a grey Rabbit or Pigeon on a grey tarmac on a grey twilight morning, not even wearing day-glo jackets would you believe! Then, without warning and as if they owned the forest, voom they shoot across the road right under your wheels. The first you are aware is this blur from the kerb side quickly followed by a small bump as the front wheel bounds over the thing, quickly and rather ominously followed by the second bump as the back wheels finish the job.
Still reeling from this shock and literally within 500yards of it, just as I was gathering my thoughts a large Roe Deer belts out from the passenger side of the road, I immediately swerved towards the side he had just come from in an attempt to get behind him and not in his path. As I hit the muddy road-side he decided to stop running leaving me the choice of hitting a tree or a Deer. The Deer lost.
BANG! He bounced to the opposite side of the road and I came to a halt a few yards further on. I looked at the deer, it was standing again but it had a large gash on its haunch. I made a note of the location and when I got to work I called the police who said they would send a warden out to 'deal with it'. Mmmm, Venison in the canteen down the Nick tomorrow, I thought.
When I got to work I realised that the animal had severely damaged the wing of the car and a colleague of mine went out to see the damage for himself. As I was looking at the piteous looking wing of the car he walked around the front and said "Oh man! Where the **** were you driving? On the set of Bambi?" I went around to the front of the car and not only had I killed Thumper and wounded Bambi  but, it appears I had taken out one of the Blue birds for firmly wedged in my front grill, wings fully open as if in mid flight, was a Blue Tit. It hadn't stood a chance.


I feel that I should balance the above incident and record some of the animals that I have saved the life of. For instance one day at the crack of dawn  just outside Tonbridge in Kent I happen to come upon a flock of sheep all revved up with no place to go.Covering the whole width of the road, as sheep do, there must have been about 20 of them, all bleating their little socks off. The vast chasm left by a large 5 bar gate suggested the escape route and this was supported by the several dozen sheep remaining in the field in complete ignorance re; the success of the escape committee.
Just as I was pondering what to do another poor sod arrived at the scene from the opposite carriageway. We got out of our vehicles and approached each other, the sheep separating like the Red Sea as we did so. After a short discussion and realising that there was no obvious Farm building in site we decided with a rather foolish naivety that we would heard them back into the field after all how hard could it be?
VERY HARD, Shep made it look so easy! A quick "come-By", a whistle and a pant and it was all done. Well it was laughable as you went for a biggish group, arms held high and kindly asking them to"go on girls" (I don't know if they were Ewes or not but it seemed the most appropriate gender at the time), "go on girls" I'd shout, but they didn't go on at all. No two went west, three East and the other disappeared behind me, it was as if you had dropped a dozen bouncy balls and they were all flying off at random. Thinking back now it must have been great to watch and I wonder if some mile away across a field there was a farmer with his feet warming in the Aga chortling away whilst looking through his field glasses at our buffoonish attempts to reinstate the sheep with their field. I think we finally managed it when two other drivers joined us and with the last sheep in to the field it was with great relief that we seured the gate.

No such shenanigans here at the Old Bakery B&B, by an equivalent time here I would still be fast asleep in the distant land of Nod!

This was not the only farm animal that I have rescued, oh no! A few years later on a small lane just a mile from my old Village I had to slam on the brakes having come around a sharp corner only to be presented with a very young calf in the middle of the road. Now there was a big embankment on one side, about 15 foot high, but a fairly gentle slope and at the top was a Moo Cow. I don't know much about sheep but I know even less about Cows, however I knew it was a Moo Cow because it was Mooing .....   A lot. To me this looked like it was mummy and I could see the disturbance on the ground where the calf must have fallen through the hedge and slipped down to the road.
This time I knew where the Farm was, or at least a farm, and so I drove the mile back to it and knocked on the door.  

Nothing.

It was 6am, all farmers are up by then, I know this as a matter of fact and as a keen listener to The Archers, I knocked again.

Nothing.

The milking sheds were nearby but there was absolutely no activity going on there and being very concious of the dangerous position that the calf was in I decided to try to get it back to the field my self and set off back down the road.

When I got there mummy was Mooing for England and the Calf was making a poor copy of the same noise. I checked the gate but it was locked so then I started to contemplate getting the animal back into the field the same way it had come out, up the embankment. It looked do-able.
Again, niave.

It was after all a very small calf. So I tried the trusty ye-ha with a slap to its Rump. Clearly it had never seen a Wild West film as it took no notice at all. So then I gave it a push in the right direction and it thanked me with a kick to the shin.
Now I was getting late for work and so desperate measures were needed. I had parked my car back down the road just prior to the bend so any other car would not smash into either of us.
Then I placed my left arm under its neck and my right arm hugged, and I'm not too proud to admit this, around its bottom. I then heaved with all my might and we started the ascent of the embankment. It must have looked very.... intimate and we were about half way there when it dawned on me that cows are not the cleanest of beasts and I was dressed in my stupid work supplied brass buttoned blazer. I took a glance at my right arm, it was not a pretty sight.

The embankment steepened at the top and things came to a standstill then. There we were so close and yet so far, mum mooing and me and the calf on the edge of slipping all the way back down again.
Everything was very precarious to say the least.

Meanwhile back to the future at 6am I'd normally be asleep in the Old Bakery probably not getting up for another hour.....

So as I stood there on the cusp of failure I was suddenly spurred on by an horrific thought, what if the farmer came around that corner now? What would he think was happening? GOD, he might think I was rustling and call the police or even shoot me!

All of a sudden I found a new superhuman strength and with all my might I lifted the Cow right up into the field from which it had come where it then stumbled through the hole and mother and baby were reunited.

Having read this back several times I could quite understand you accusing me of making this up. Why would I go to such trouble, it wasn't my problem, I could have been hurt. All very true and do you know what I cannot answer that. Only to say that I must have had a pathological compulsion over which I had no control where I had to solve the problem before I could leave the scene.
In hind-sight I now see that I was simply NUTS!

NEXT BLOG...... Tales from the Cesspit......








3,197

Much flushing, slopping, and splish, splash sploshing......

On Wednesday we hope to find out a little bit more about our house because it is on that day that, eventually, the pump-out man cometh. As I reported several weeks ago we have trouble brewing! This is with regards to our sewerage in that whilst everyone is more than aware from whence it comes nobody seems to really know where it goes to.
Sorry this is a vulgar subject, I know, but I said that this would be a diary recording the events and issues regarding the setting up of The Old Bakery and however unsavoury this subject is one such occurrence!
The story so far.... Our drains are very slowly backing up, I tried using drain rods to clear the blockage but to no avail and so then following the route of the drains into next doors garden I had to introduce myself to my new neighbour and immediately talk of the pressing matter of the gutters. That is opposed to discussing the Levison enquiry which was strangely enough also talking about the press and the gutters.
He managed to source a basic drains map for his property and after much flushing, slopping, and splish, splash sploshing we were able to establish that there were two receiving tanks, one for each property, and they both appeared very full indeed.

Now I don't actually know if this is technically a cesspit or a septic tank. To be honest never ever having either I'd had no reason to even contemplate that the two things were actually different.

So for the record then....
Septic tanks are used where this is no public sewer available. They work on the principle of breaking down solids by anaerobic bacteria in an enclosed chamber. The final purification of the liquid is in a filter bed. The effluent is sometimes discharged into a humus chamber, which allows the unstable material from the filter to settle. The water resulting from the process then passes into a soakaway. Water from a septic tank should not be discharged into a ditch, stream, river or pond.
Cesspools are used where there is no public sewer available and where the sub soil cannot soak away the liquid from a septic tank, or if there is no suitable stream or river to take the final effluent from a processing plant. They are simply a large enclosed chamber to collect the effluent, which is then removed on a regular basis and taken to a sewerage treatment works. Cesspools are considered to be a last resort for dealing with sewerage. http://www.clearawaydrainage.co.uk/faq.html#n


Now that was all well and good but I still don't know what I have other than his plan shows pipes going to "land drainage" and I can just see a small piece of pipe leading out of my pit in that general direction. So , I think, I have a septic tank. Anyhow a man is coming to give my house a gynaecological clear-out on Wednesday and just hopefully he can diagnose what I've got and how I should 'manage' it. I used to manage nearly 300 staff now it has come to pass that I can barely manage a septic tank and spend my days being harassed by two women and a cat. How the mighty have fallen!




3,177

With... 27 radiators expelling money into the atmosphere we have had to carefully think through our heating strategy.

The Old Bakery has a built in air filtration system. Cutting edge you may say. State of the art you might query. Wow, how sophisticated is that, you might exclaim. Well not very, I'm afraid as the 'system' is actually less of an Air filter unit and more a culmination of poorly fitting windows, doors and general holes allowing the mother of all draughts to build up and whiz past the back of my neck.

In all fairness this is a very old building. Claire and I visited the Norfolk records office recently to find out just how old it is and we managed to find written accounts going back some 260 years. We are sure that it is even older than that but the preceding years were all written in Latin, or as we called it gobbley-gook, so two Dyslexics trying to decipher that was like asking a bossed eyed man to thread a needle on a ship in the North Sea. So then we just gave up.

Anyway we would be lying if we said there were no draughts because there are but this is not necessarily a negative as they allow a fantastic up draught for the flues and the fires which kick off with a hearty roar. I say fires because we have just doubled our fire count from one to two. When we moved in we only had an open fire in the living room and we also had a wood burning stove at the opposite end of the room but this was not 'plumbed in'. Although it still had a fire set ready to light inside its tummy, a fire that had probably been laid by the previous owner and that had lain dormant for the best part of 3 years.

With the price of heating oil being so high and having a total of 27 radiators expelling money into the atmosphere we have had to carefully think through our heating strategy. Naturally we turn off all the radiators that we can but even then there must be a mile of pipework assisting the radiators to flitter away our hard earned cash. The furthest radiator from the boiler is some 100 foot away.
So after doing some sums we have realised that wood is comparatively cheap if we used it to heat half the house and the best way was to re-commission the wood burning stove. So I got my friendly builder back in and he discovered that our chimney was already lined and all he had to do was make some connections, expand the hearth and stick a chimney pot with a cowl on our stack. This was particularly fortuitous as whilst up with our chimney he found that the flue to the upstairs fireplace was completely exposed (a hole about 18" square), the heavy rain that we had suffered from this last year would have literally poured down the flue. This would certainly account for the damp at the top of the breast in the room. So he capped that for me with a paving slab from the garden.

Eventually the fire was lit and we stepped back, waiting with baited breath, to see if any smoke should leak out. Nothing, all clear, so then we really fired her up and soon a warmth started to infiltrate the whole area. Job done.


Now we had the final test, how would the stove perform when we lit the open fire at the other end of the room? There is a danger that there would be a conflict of air flows either suffocating one or causing smoke to seep back into the room. However there were no such issues and they both beamed beautifully at me.

There was only one problem, nothing serious but a dilemma none the less. Scribble, the poor thing, could not decide which fire to sit in front of. First she smelt the heat from the new stove (a little warily) then she trotted off down the other end of the room to check out that fire and after an umm and an arrrr she eventually drifted back to the exact centre of the room equidistant from the two fire places and slumped her tiny body down.

After a while she started to fidget and appeared unhappy then, clearly realising that being right in the middle does not give twice the heat, she gets up and returns to the old trusty open fire and balance was once again restored in the cosmos...

3,157

I look back at my school days now in awe at my total lack of awareness, one in which I drifted into a comatosed state for the vast majority of it.

Claire regularly accuses me of being too easily distracted and in so doing I have a habit of forgetting what I was meant to be doing in the first place.
She is, of course, quite correct in that my mind is continuously doing it's own thing whilst the logic side is battling against it to get some specific objective completed. Frankly it literally has a mind of its own.

I'll start off with the objective of making the guests bed up and this requires me to iron the Duvet cover so off I trot to get the broom. Why, you may ask, do I need a broom to do the ironing? Well the Duvet is super-king size and will drag on the floor when I iron it. So I set up the ironing board right next to our very large dining table which enables me to lay the cover right across the table and then over the ironing board. Then I can iron it with some reasonable level of manageability allowing the ironed cover to drape a little onto the floor. So obviously the floor has to be clean and as it is a tiled floor I naturally sweep it first.
The broom is in the porch at the back of the house and whilst in there I notice that the small tub we have for composting items is nearly full and needs emptying so I pick it up and take it out to the compost bins. Now on the way back I go past the wood pile which reminds me that the fire needs making up before the guests arrive and so I collect as many as I can (without the wood basket) and head off to make the fire up. Having got the wood to the fire I realise that I'll need some paper to make up the base and so I dump the wood in front of the fire place and head off to get some.

The paper is in the porch and whilst there (having now completely forgotten about the initial trip to get the broom) I notice that the cat litter tray could do with emptying and so proceed to do so taking the next ten minutes to clear it then hose it down in the back-garden. Whilst I'm hosing it down I happen to look up and observe that the bird feeders are almost empty and so I now head off to get the seeds with an aim to top them up. The seeds are kept in the conservatory (which is, as it happens, where the Duvet cover hangs patiently awaiting it's date with an iron) so totally ignoring the creased duvet cover and as it happens the poor hungry little birds too, I forget all about the seeds because I have just noticed my cross headed screw driver which reminded me that the top tread on the stairs needed screwing down so I pick it up and head off to do the deed.

Having accomplished this little chore I decide to return the screw driver to the tool kit in the garage and off I go with the said tool in me hand. Of course I never get there, no, I need to stop and freshen up the flowers in the vase that are displayed on route. Oh and whilst I'm doing one vase, I might as well do the others and I head up stairs to get the ones out of the guest bedroom. It is somewhere around the point that I am in the room and happen to have a brief look at the bed that I finally remembered that I am supposed to be ironing the duvet cover!

So back down stairs I trek and head off back to the porch to get the broom, again. Well whilst there I couldn't help but notice that the recycling bin needed emptying and so once again off I march.......



You see I just can't concentrate on one thing at a time. They say that women can multi-task and men are really poor at it, well I seem to have landed on the other extreme in which I am multitasking so much that I am utterly clueless as to what the actual objective was in the first place.

This is not an age thing. No I was just as bad as a kid. My mum would walk down the garden path with me to the street where she would wave me off watching me the whole quarter of a mile that I had to walk, as a 9yr old, before I turned the corner heading for my Junior school.
She would see me stop and stroke a cat, then a few yards further I'd stop and stroke another, then another or I might investigate a bush covered in caterpillars, slipping a few into my satchel to play with later.

The point is my mind wanders.

 The hell can start right at the beginning of the day and is normally worse when my conscientiousness is still asleep. For instance getting out of bed switching the night dream into the day dream mode I have picked up the tooth paste and carelessly doused a dollop of it onto my toothbrush only to find (with quite a shock to the system) that it was not toothpaste at all and in actuality it was Savalon that I had squeezed out of the tube, "Urrrgggggggggggg, not nice I can tell you! The flavour not to savour.

I think it is just my inability to concentrate. I look back at my school days now in awe at my total lack of awareness, one in which I drifted into a comatosed state for the vast majority of it. My maths class was by far the worst, situated on the south side of the building the warm summers sun lulling me into a warm cosy dream world as my teachers impossible to understand ethnic accent washed over me like a hypnotic chant I'd frequently slip into another place, a happy place only to be awakened by the thud of my head hitting the desk as I finally nodded off.

They'd often give us pieces of paper with little drawings on and instruct us to answer the questions, you have 10 minutes. Well frankly I could have had 10 hours and I would have been none the wiser. What sillyness was this? There would be 5 similar shapes and it would ask me to tick the odd one out. I hadn't a clue! Why was I doing this? What does it all mean? Well I now know that these were probably IQ tests and I assume that I have on my record "This child has absolutely no IQ what so ever". I would add that this child had not a clue what so ever. I generally coloured them in with my special pen which had 20 different colours - just perfect for such a task.

So I am truly sorry Claire that you have to put up with this lost and wandering mind but I feel that I should be more pitied than scolded.





3,086

The blackened muffin looked up at me with, I sensed, an unhealthy air of mischievousness.

Hi, sorry my blog update has lapsed a little this last week or so. No really excellent reason other than a lot of bits and pieces taking up my time. The idea that I left my Supermarket job to have both less stress and more 'me' time seems at odds just at the moment. Don't get me wrong the 'less stress' bit is a no brainer and much to Claire's annoyance I'm far too happy which, apparently, means I'm a royal pain in the neck more often than not.  But the 'more time' bit is not quite as much as I'd hoped. Well that's not strictly true. It feels like I have not gained more time because I am working at both ends of the day and a little in the middle too.

First thing in the morning we serve breakfasts from a pretty wide choice of menu. Claire helps with this, as she does with just about every aspect of the business, (I'll really have to work hard when she goes I can tell you!). Now Claire will tell you that I lose quite a lot of time at this point as I often end up talking for a good 3/4 of an hour with the guests. Many of you think that I could talk the back legs off a donkey but honestly these chats are normally at the instigation of my guests AND their continuation is also maintained by them too. So even with a breakfast served at 8:30am it is not unusual to finally be clearing the table at 10:15~10:30pm thus the washing up and repairs to the kitchen finished by 11:00am. Suddenly it is only an hour until mid-day!

AND... before we do anything else the room has to be serviced. We then nip out to get any shopping that s required and on return it is well into lunch time.

The afternoon is spent doing the domestic chores, laundry, ironing and stuff then between 3:30 and 5:00pm we can expect the guests to return and depending on how worn out they are it is not unknown for a further half hour chit chat. We are doing light suppers now for those that want them so by then we need to start the cooking process. Table laid, guests served and content, all finished, table un-laid and all of a sudden it is 7:30pm and the day is gone.

But all of this is at my home, which if I do have to do strange hours / shifts is better than having to travel up to an hour to get to a place where I do a solid 11 hour day before heading into the madness that is the Home Counties traffic.
Yeah, on the whole I'd rather be here.

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I set the fire alarm off today. It wasn't a drill, no, it was a muffin that I had placed under a very hot grill and forgotten for the briefest of moments. The kitchen fire alarm was the first to detect it then this was closely followed by a Tsunami of fire alarms sounding in room after room. For all my alarms are inter-connected to ensure every one in every part of the house is aware that I have burnt a muffin.
The Tsunami first 'took out' the cat as she run straight into the cat flap. This was not a good thing as the flap was locked at the time! Now if this was me I'd have stopped and tried to look cool saying something like,"yeah, I knew that was locked, I'm fine.... No worries I'll just saunter out through the living room" then in a slow calm un-flustered looking way I'd sidle slowly out past the raging, penetrating, painful fire alarm screeching.

Not the cat though.  VOOOooooooooom. She about turned in a blink of an eye lid. No checking if I was injured (she'd have run across my dead body if it was in her way), no trying to save face that she had lost by crashing into the closed cat-flap. Definitely none of this leaving in an orderly fashion, no way did she give a toss about any of us, no it was in her opinion strictly every cat for herself and off she shot on the flow of the tidal wave of fire alarms which seemed to follow the poor thing through every room that she bolted through.

When the Tsunami reached our guests that cat came bouncing through with it much as Dorothy and Toto did in the tornado. It was the kind guests that opened the door to the garden for the cat, after peeling her from her Garfield like stance on the window of the door. The sound wave then crashed out of this house and smashed, without any by-your-leave into the cottage where our guests from the local show were sleeping a late night off. Not for long! Wallop, the ear-piercing sirens knocked them out of bed and they were eventually met by Claire as they stood next to the door of the house ready to jump ship at the first sight of a flicker of a flame.

I could not see any smoke and so could not work out why the alarm was even going off, then suddenly I remembered the muffin under the grill. Thinking "I must shut this thing up" I opened all of the windows and grabbed a single oven glove. I pulled out the smoking gun and realising that I had to get it out of the house I carried the tray to the porch where my hand (and I blame the oven glove for this too) couldn't hold onto the grill pan any longer and as it started to fall I made a superb catch with the other hand. I don't know why I did this because it had no oven glove on and the next thing I did was squeal like a piglet and drop the bloody thing closely followed by what would only have looked like a rain dance. This was quickly punctuated by the sound of metal crashing into enamel floor tiles.

Then there was silence as the sound wave ceased and I stood there in a daze with a chunk of ice firmly pushed against a burnt finger. The blackened muffin looked up at me with, I sensed, an unhealthy air of mischievousness.


I apologised to the guests announcing that breakfast will be just a few  minutes more.....

The cat is now safe and sound and back to her initial routine, which mainly involves curling up in to a furry ball and sleeping.. The cat flap seems un-damaged and we have bought a big box of Jellie Babies for our cottage dwellers.

So all is well that ends well, I think.




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Whilst I'm sure Bob Harris is a jolly good fellow it is quite unnerving to think he is sitting on your windowsill.

I was sitting alone, fairly close to the witching hour, in our 300 year old house and had been staring at the blank page just mulling over how I would start today's blog when a sudden loud whooo-hoooo came from just behind me startling me into a spasm like jolt. Although I knew what it was (an Owl) I was unprepared for it to be perched at the end of the room, which of course it wasn't. No it had clearly perched on top of my chimney and the haunting sound of it's call reverberated down the flue and straight into my living room sending a cold shiver down my spine. Then after another call I heard a second owl across the road call back. After that, the mischievous deed done, my owl must have left to go and spook some other poor soul.

We do get a lot of visits from Tawny owls both in our garden and often on our chimneys and ordinarily I love it. I certainly prefer them to the screeching Barn owls.


The owl incident is the second time that I jumped as a result of an alarm going off today which is quite ironic as this morning my actual alarm did not go off at all, instead it reset itself to the factory default of 12:00. The second incident was an annoying beep, beep, beep coming from the conservatory. When I finally found the source it was a small portable radio. Now this radio is the worst designed radio, ever. It has lots of buttons for FM, AM, volume, tuning, memory, memory set, blah, blah, blah and including an alarm button. Unfortunately, not being a big radio, the alarm button is positioned in such a place that every time you move the 'portable' radio you cannot help but touch this particular button unwittingly setting into motion a course of events which eventually some hours later ends in the bloody thing going off. Sometimes it will startle you by just switching the radio on when you least expect it and you find that you have the dulcet tones of Bob Harris whispering to you from behind the herb plants on the windowsill at half past 10 at night. Whilst I'm sure Bob Harris is a jolly good fellow it is quite unnerving to think he is sitting on your windowsill.
I am frequently staggered (and voice this frustration just as frequently to my poor daughter) on how anything in this 'day and age' can be designed so poorly. I mean we have been making radios since the early 1900's, so why can't we get it right now? How can anyone let a design go backwards? Oh I can think of loads of examples of such nonsense like our new kettle which has a lid that is designed to be opened in such a way that you cannot help but accidentally turn the thing on in the process. All of a sudden you find that the empty kettle is hissing as it tries to boil nothing but air. Who designed this? who tested this? who gave a damn? Why didn't they just stick to an old design that is proven to work?

Now you see I'm on a Grumpy old man roll....... The problem is everyone seems to want to re-invent the wheel. We are paying too many people to try to improve the already perfect design. Take the humble Coffee shop Tea pot, been in use since the year dot and at some time the spout was perfected on that little silver teapot that they all use. Hoorahhhh! no more drips because someone finally worked out that you need a certain length of spout with a 'just so' pointy pouring bit at the end. No more drips! Well done everyone, now could we just let it lie please. Could we heck? And so today I still find that I sit in a Cafe, pour a cup of tea only to watch an irritating dribble of failure trickle back on the underside of the spout down the body of the teapot until it can go no further but to drip onto the saucer or table, or both. Then every time you lift your cup to sip on it you receive a warm brown splodge on your white T shirt. WHY, WHY, WHY are these things still sold and more importantly bought by cafes?
I simply do not understand why we still have to put up with such a basic stupidity.


How did I get onto this? Oh that was it, poorly designed radio/alarm. Then designers try to hide the function of something by making it look like something quite different. Many years ago I was on a canal holiday with some friends and during the evening I noticed one of them had a compact camera. Now being very much into photography I naturally picked it up and had a look at it.It seemed to be closed and I tried to open it by pressing a couple of buttons on the side but to no avail so I gave up and put it down promising myself that I would ask her to show me it in the morning. The next morning my friend was a tad grumpy, tired and clearly in no mood to show me her camera, so I did not mention it. However it turn out that she was annoyed and tired because "Some joker" had set her alarm to go off at 2 o'clock in the morning! Holding the alarm up as evidence I feel she saw the guilt on my face for clearly the camera was not a camera but an alarm. Poor design I say! (Shirley take this as a confession).

My last example of poor designed alarms (as I seem to have strayed on to this subject from the prompt of one brief visit from a Tawny owl) was at a cafe near Dover port. Alison, Myself and the two kids, when they were younger, were all having breakfast in this small Cafe before catching a ferry to France.
Some minutes after being served we started to hear a high pitched alarm which seemed to be close to us and probably coming from the front door. I called the waitress who couldn't find where the sound came from and as the noise was quite penetrating she went away returning shortly with the Manager. Now the Manager was perplexed and she too fully inspected the front door,opening it, looking around it and standing upon a chair to look on top of it. NOTHING.
I asked if it could be the burglar alarm, but it appeared that the alarm was a lot louder than that. She went outside to see if it was coming from there but there was no sign of the alarm, it was definitely coming from within . She spent a good ten minutes trying to establish the source until it seemed to slowly dim into silence and it was no more. Everyone was perplexed but The waitress went back to waiteressing, the Manager went back to phone her boss (to get an engineer out) and having finished our breakfast we put on our coats and headed to the car.
It was as I put my hand into my pockets to grab my keys that I felt an icy cold sensation on my finger tips and all of a sudden the penny dropped as to where the alarm was emanating from... you guessed it, Me!
For I was working in our Brighton Store and at the time it was a particularly violent branch to work in so as an aid I had been issued with a personal attack alarm. Well I had this in my pocket and it was the aerosol type. I can only assume that when I took my coat off in the Cafe it knocked the nozzle a little loose, not enough to give the full blown screech of a personal attack alarm but more like pinching the nozzle of a balloon letting a slow, continuous whining alarm seep out for some 15 minutes. The aerosol can was covered in ice as the propellant had totally leaked out. I was too embarrassed to to go back and confess, and anyway we'd be late for our ferry.

All I can say in my defence is....... POOR DESIGN!



Anyway back to the blog.....

I have not had the opportunity to show the neighbours the delights of our joint sewerage as they both work during daylight hours and so this is to be done next weekend. The situation went into panic mode a few days back when I went out into the back-garden to smell the familiar vile stench of pooh again.I immediately run around the garden checking all the 'flash point' manhole covers only to find that they had not become totally blocked. This was a conundrum as the smell was overpowering. I gathered the family and invited them all out to come and sniff for a sewerage smell. Frankly I thought that they showed a great lack of enthusiasm with Stephen coming out for 20 seconds confirming that my garden stank and returning back to the safety of the hall. This was better than Alison who barely stuck her head out of the door, but who clarified that it was a bit smelly. Now I knew it was strong because Alison has practically no sense of smell so for her nasal receptors to pick up anything is to know it is several times worse. Troubled I went to the front of the house and I could still smell it, then I went to the middle of the road and it was still stinking. Well now I was feeling a little embarrassed and I walked down the road some distance only to find that the smell was not diminishing and I must have gone about a hundred yards before it dawned on me that this was probably as a result of muck spreading on the nearby fields.
Now that, I thought, is a sewerage problem!






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A genius, AND IN NORFOLK, who knew!

I wish to dedicate this blog to an amazing artist whose latest exhibition we visited in our nearest town of Holt. As we looked at these oil painting, water paintings and also pastels we were gob smacked at how good they were, if I could I'd have bought one but the cheapest was £1,500. They went up to £12,000 and more....
Why, you may ask, do I speak of this artist in particular? Well firstly he is a local lad and secondly he is a lad, that is he is just nine years old.
Now we all know that people hype these sort of stories up, but having seen an exhibition of Turners life's work and his ability at 9 years, well this kid is something else. He will never be a Turner but then Turner could never have been a Williamson.

Have a look at a few You Tube news stories..........

The August exhibition sold out in 11 minutes and raised over £150k, meanwhile the lad can be seen cycling his bike around town, because at the end of the day he is just a boy that draws and paints, but with a very remarkable gift.

I want to be jealous of his skill but I (actually all of us) just felt in awe of such a young talent and a privilage to be able to witness the beginnings of another master who we all think will be there with the greats.

Watch out for the name of Kieron Williamson.

So I headed off to the cesspits with an unhealthy keenness....

I hadn't met these neighbours yet, they had only moved in about 6 months ago and so, feeling a little guilty at not introducing myself previously, I headed off to talk dirty to them. The dirty part being, of course, the blocking of the drains. As I explained in my previous blog (and if you haven't read that one yet may I suggest you do so now) our drains were slowly drowning in their own excrement and for want of a better phrase, 'Trouble was brewing'.

I made a point of NOT being in my chemical warfare suit with my face mask on and carrying my drain rods in their case (which looks a little like a rifle case) as I went to see the neighbours. It may have sent out mixed messages and have been a little unnerving for them when they answered the door I felt.

Anyway, I knocked on their door and introduced myself, I explained the situation and that I was quite willing to try to clear the drains in their manholes. This appeared to be greeted with some appreciation and so I arranged to do it the next day whilst they were out, so as not to turn them too green.

The next day I dressed myself up in the kit, I had that look that could kill, or at least the look of a nutter in camouflage and I headed for the street. We are a one horse town and I did not meet anyone on the way to the neighbours, either there was no one out there or they were all diving for cover before I saw them.

When I got to the neighbours garden I could see 4 manhole covers, two of which I guessed were the redundant Cesspits. Up to the 1980's the house sewerage went through our pipes and into next doors cesspit where the fee for emptying them was shared. Then in 1984, or thereabouts, our village gained it's very own sewerage system Oooooooooo!  So it appears that this was connected by taking a pipe from the cesspits out to the street and away.

So all was grand as no one had to empty any cesspits anymore. Well that is as we understand it. The two manholes that I expected to be part of my problem were, when I lifted them, just 2' deep and clearly only belonged to the neighbours house. My system had to have been at least 5' deep at this point but there were no other manholes, so I headed off to the cesspits with an unhealthy keenness, thinking that I may be able to clear mine directly from one of them.

For those of you that have seen Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they lifted the lid of the Ark and with a little hiss the demons from hell were released, well you'd relate to this experience. I was very glad that I had my face mask on but it was fighting a losing battle against a stale pungent mephitic air (my New Word of the Day).  I flung the cast iron lid back to reveal a glutinous black semi solid sludge with a small stream of something ungodly running through it. The Dictionary defines....

slurry [ˈslʌrɪ]n pl -ries (Chemistry) a suspension of solid particles in a liquid, as in a mixture of cement, clay, coal dust, manure, meat, etc. with water

Yep, that about describes what I was looking at and it was barely 18" below the lawn. This did not look like it was intending to drain away, in fact I rather expected a blobby bubble to slowly develop  and then pop like one of those I had seen in the volcanic fields of Iceland.
Or a creature slowly rise from the murky dark depths just like a black & white Doctor Who episodes monster. That said if anything is alive in there then I'm a Monkeys Uncle.
There was nothing more that I could do so I moved onto the next one.

Again, I lifted the lid, Eeeewwwwwy. And again there was an unwelcome slurry in a tank that appears to be split into two. All the pits are bricked lined and must be very old. There was, and is, nothing further that I can do and so I reluctantly (ha,ha) replaced all the covers and made a tactical withdrawal.

I have found a local company that have quoted £150 per 1,000 litres pumped, what a lovely thought eh? I do hope that you're not a 'breakfast time' reader or you really won't thank me for this will you?

An average pit holds about a 1.000litres of ....   stuff! So this may cost £300 BUT they tell me they will flush-out all the drains too so that should surprise a few rats hopefully.
Now I have to go back to my lovely neighbours and discuss.

As I said on the previous blog I feel this may be the beginning of a long drawn out, expensive saga or who knows the neighbour may agree to half of the cost, the guy will come on time and deal with all the problems. Maybe.... just maybe.




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Without any acknowledgements from any dignitaries we came to the realisation that we had rediscovered the long lost Caterham Bourne

I am loathe to start this blog as at the moment the issue that I am about to record has only really just been flagged up as a possible problem. I know that as sure as eggs are eggs by writing about the issue as early as this the whole thing will build up to a massive problem and I'll be spitting blood as I update the situation day by day and week by week.

The issue? The drains again, but this time I smell a rat (that doesn't actually mean that I have smelt a rat from the drains, in all honesty you'd NEVER be able to distinguish the smell of a rat in our drains, I can tell you, No I mean that I sense that something is not quite right down there). Now it sounds like someone talking to their gynaecologist!

So I was raking up the leaves that had settled on the lawn when I got a slight whiff of something none to pleasant. Having done the customary checks, first the left sole then the right one... You can never hide that check from anyone can you? The wobbly check for poo on the sole of the shoe I mean. It is such a specific stance that you have to take isn't it. Using something to support you (I used the rake) you lift first one foot putting it an angle that you never have to do under any other circumstances and if you're lucky enough not to end up doing a silly little re-balancing hop you'll put that foot down and do the same with the other one. At the same time trying to subtlety sniff as near to the shoe as you can, but you can't because we don't really bend that way do we, so you try to ensure that your nose is directionally perfect from its position 2' away.
I'd be able to spot the silhouette of a person that was 'taking the test' from a hundred yards away and whilst you are doing this you know that you have lost the fight to be inconspicuous and that you should have really just stopped the next person in the street and simply asked them have I got any shit on my shoe?

Anyway, that issue eliminated and seeing no 'deposits' anywhere around, my suspicions drew me to the underworld of our drains....

I don't like drains, they are just nasty. I cautiously lifted the man hole cover nearest the house, mmmmmm not too bad. Then I went to the next manhole cover in the middle of the lawn and lifted it.  Eeeewwwwwww! Not nice or as Blue Peter would say "here's one that I ........." I think you know where I'm going with that.

The good news, so I thought, was that I had got it early. It had not backed up to the previous manhole nor had it filled the 4' deep hole, but it had started to rise and was already higher than the soil pipes. There was no movement, no flow, no....   Go!

Once again I donned Stephens chemical warfare suit (see the previous drain related blog),   squeezed my hands and feet in to their appropriate rubber-ware and muzzled my mouth with a face mask. I could not see where the drain left the manhole and so some work was involved in finding it. At this point I will spare you the detail, you don't need to know and I don't want to remember so instead we shall have a short interlude.........

INTERLUDE

(fade out to the sound of dreamy music, fading back to the image of Mike in the Caterham Supermarket some 9 years ago (in sepia if you like)...

It was pouring with rain, I mean torrential, if you were in Madagascar in the rainy season you may just possibly get a feel for this storm. Now the funny thing about the town of Caterham is that it is at the bottom of a deepish valley and yet there is no river. Clearly there must have been one once, however with all the building and urbanisation well it has just been devoured by the general sewer system I guess, because wherever it has gone you sure as hell can no longer see it now.
So I'm standing at the checkouts and like everyone else I am looking out of the large windows at the front of the store watching the rain pounding off the pavement. As I stood there I heard a very deep rumbling sound which didn't sound normal. It was like the sound of a heavy goods train but slow and deliberate.
As it seemed to be getting louder and maybe nearer I started to think that the mud bank behind the store was collapsing and yet it became more and more evident that the sound was emminating from below the ground and still it was getting nearer - and faster.

All of a sudden and without any more clues or warnings whhoomphhh!  Then right next to me from all four edges of the largest double manhole cover water shot upwards, fountain like, some 6" and started to flood all over the floor. The pressure was such that it was getting through an airtight manhole cover. The covers never failed, thank god, or I could easily have been hit by the shrapnel. But the high pressure lifted them enough to release 100's of gallons in a constant flood that lasted for just 1-2 minutes before the pressure allowed the covers to seal themselves again.
In that short time the main shop floor had been covered by easily 30% (some 6,000sqft) to a depth of about an inch. As we started the clear up we were gob-smacked at the amount of water that had appeared in such a small amount of time.
Without any acknowledgements from any dignitaries we came to the realisation that we had rediscovered the long lost Caterham Bourne of which Wkikipedia has to say, "Further up the catchment the river is culverted. Two seasonal streams, the Coulsdon Bourne and the Caterham Bourne, run in wet winters".
Yep and we took 12 members of staff an hour to mop it back out of the front doors!
As a short term measure I placed a pallet of Granulated Sugar on top of the manhole covers, just in case it tried the same trick again.

Now some 2 months later and I'm standing at the checkouts and once again there is a sudden heavy downpour, then I hear that self same ominous rumble from deep in the belly of Caterham. Next to me is standing a (Graduate) Management trainee, I told her to get a pallet of sugar here NOW because I think that the manhole cover is about to give and the store would flood!
She looked at me in complete disbelief and simply asked, "Why? will the sugar soak it all up?".

And then Whhoomphhh! 

"Too late", I muttered.



INTERLUDE Fin


Back to 2011 and after much splish, splash, plopping (particularly plopping) with my drain rods I managed to obtain a flow, of a sort. But it is not completely clear and it soon became apparent that I needed to go to the neighbours garden and try from their manholes.

And that is where the next episode begins........




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Only 20 miles from here is my slice of heaven

It won't take a moment as you read this to realise that this blog isn't being written by Mike. Today I've had a day of annual leave and having spent previous day's leave decorating or preparing to get the B&B ready it was a chance to relax and do something enjoyable. So what do you do on a damp and grey November day in Norfolk?

The answer is you go where two and a half million people go every year and visit The Forum in Norwich. Because that is where you'll find the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library and the Millennium Library.

The 2nd Air Division Memorial Library is, to quote their website "a unique "living memorial" to nearly 7000 American airmen of the 2nd Air Division of the United States Army Air Force who were killed while stationed in East Anglia during World War Two." Intended as "an educational and friendship bridge between the two nations", it seemed a fitting place to visit on Armistice Day and to reflect on all of those lost lives.

As well as lots of information about the planes, the airfields and the servicemen who flew and maintained them there is a huge selection of books about various aspects of American life; history, politics, culture and my favourites - travel, cooking and quilting. The memorial library is based within the public library which is within the Forum building, which also hosts the Tourist Information office (another place I like to visit), BBC Norfolk, an exhibition centre and several restaurants.

As a connoisseur of libraries and someone who has spent many hours, well probably if you added them up, months or even years in libraries I have to say that Norwich Millennium library is without doubt the finest public library of it's kind. Open until 8pm or even 9pm it's a massive building on three floors and on the top floor, the icing on the cake, is a separate business library; it will take me years to read all of those management books - in fact I could be retired before I've exhausted the supply!

Fortunately Norfolk County Council seem to understand that libraries are a really important part of the community and although they've recently reviewed library hours across the county, according to the website, www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk who are campaigning to stop library closures, there aren't any closures planned or threatened. Not even King's Lynn library. As one of Norfolk's largest towns you wouldn't expect a library there to be under threat but last year we were in the audience for a recording of Have I Got News For You and one of the questions that was asked was about the King's Lynn library and the fact they have had to employ bouncers to control the unruly residents. Having just agreed to rent a house near King's Lynn whilst we moved, I had a hard job persuading Mike and Claire that it was a safe place to live, even temporarily.

So an enjoyable hour was spent there, next time I'll go on my own as Mike and Claire don't have the same desire to spend many hours there (!), as there's rows and row's of books I've not even looked at yet.

I cannot describe how much I enjoyed telling the children how ugly they were and this was with their parent standing right in front of me....... The parents even thanked me...

Claire has found a great idea for an autumnal flower display which I intend to use every year. You need to visit her Craft Blog to see it and how she created it. The thing gives a real autumn feel to the place, which of course is where we are at already.

We have had a slow trickle of guests, as you'd expect going into winter but we are fortunate to be just 6 miles down the road from one of the busiest winter Christmas theatrical shows in the country. It is called the Thursford Christmas Spectacular and has an audience during its 7 week run of over 130,000. So we are still receiving bookings for November and December which is great as B&B's tend to shut down over winter. We have also advertised on an internet Bird Watchers site but have had no guests from there as yet. Still the peak time for the bird watchers is December through to March as so many birds rest on our coastal marshes during migration. So there is still hope there.

Having checked out a lot of red tape in the early months of our business it became apparent that we would probably have to apply for planning permission to use our Annex as a holiday cottage. I had started to prepare the application and was starting to revisit the paperwork when I came across the fee of the application, some £335 and that is just the application cost. If your application is turned down then you would have to re-submit and incur another £335 fee for the privilege! So this sort of gave me the prompt to see if we could weedle any way out of having to make the application. I gave the planning office a call and gave a full explanation of our plans and the current set up of the building. She was non-committal and I feared the worst but she said she would look into our case and come back to us the next day.
When we spoke next she had a few supplementary questions and was still holding her cards close to her chest. Having established the exact part of the building concerned she explained to me that the previous owner had made a request to turn the annex into a residence from being a 'bakehouse' and that this was passed in 1974 specifically stating that the permission had no restrictions and was unconditional. She gave me the official application number and the good news which is that as a result we do not have to apply for any permission to let this building out as a holiday cottage. We warm more and more to our houses' previous owner



Back to Halloween......

I love it. Actually more accurately I love Pumpkin soup, totally my favourite soup of all time. Mmmmmmmmm..

So that gives me a perfect excuse to carve out pumpkins and as I had relatives coming to stay just prior to Halloween then I had an excuse to have a Pumpkin carving competition. I felt sure that my Sister-in-Law, Jane would be up for the challenge and sure enough I was right. It turned out that she had never carved a pumpkin, EVER! Now whilst this should be truly shocking I soon started to realise that many other relatives and friend have not taken a little time out to have done this in the past.

IT'S A SIN.  I sometimes feel that I am the only person around that knows his inner child and nurtures it throughout adult life. IF YOU HAVE NEVER CARVED A PUMPKIN OR ASSISTED YOUR CHILDREN, NEPHEWS OR ANYONE THEN YOU MUST GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO DO SO.

NO ONE SEEMS TO JUST WANT TO HAVE A LITTLE CHILDISH FUN IN THEIR LIVES ANY MORE.

Too many people are too busy being serious. Serious about shopping (until they are dropping), serious about their exercise (2 hours indoors in the gym walking on a treadmill whilst the sun is shining outside in the park), too serious about watching the Soaps (until they talk to each other more about the fictitious characters lives than their actual own REAL lives), Too serious about their jobs (where they are so concerned about self image they sacrifice the chance and ergo the humanity of making fools of themselves) and, of course, Football. A game where everyone can take a step from Sunderland's game and go out of their way to avoid taking it seriously!

My point is we are just all too 'grown up' and we need to find time to 'grow down' a little, lose face on occasions, feel the sense of humility without fear of the stench of failure. Life is too short to to be Mr (or Mrs) Dull.....
For goodness sake do something frivolous and the perfect thing to help you is to carve a pumpkin.

So here is a photo of 4 adults making time to waste time, making silly creations so they could sit on the wall and go mouldy (that's the pumpkins NOT the 4 adults).


Although..... It does appear that my son Stephen  is carrying out some sort of forensic experiment on the force of a knife plunged into a head from above, but that could just be my wild and rather strange imagination.


We placed the finished articles on our front wall and we then started having the trick or treaters arrive. This was particularly rewarding for two reasons. Firstly all of their parents were saying how brilliant the pumpkins looked. Well I assume they thought that children made them, because for kids they were very good but for adults, well we probably could have done better.

Secondly I cannot describe how much I enjoyed telling the children how ugly they were and this was with their parent standing right in front of me. The kids would appear at the door with their gruesome make up on, some of them were no higher than my waist. I would say, "Right then, who's the ugliest little boy or girl here then", they would all snigger and shuffle their feet a little. I then picked on which ever child took my fancy and say to him or her, "My goodness you're ugly, yep you're definitely the ugliest child here!" The said child then gathered a smile of glee that went from ear to ear, proud to be declared, by this complete stranger, the ugliest child in the group. One 12 year old actually thanked me with an enthusiastic "Awww Fanks...."
The parents even thanked me as they moved on to the next house.

We don't have to be bad people to enjoy our lives but there is nothing wrong with being just a little bit naughty.


Here are some photos of our attempt at carving pumpkins for you perusal...

Jane's to the left and Mine to the right

Jane's, Stephen's, Mine, Claire's

Self Portrait

Jane's masterpiece

Claire's

The Old Bakery

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They both inspected every lot with interest and every now and then his badger would give a little squeak of approval.

I have a slight problem brewing in the newly refurbished Annex bathroom......

Dampness.

Yes,yes, I know showers, sinks and toilets are always damp and showers create steam which creates dampness.This, however is more insidious than that unfortunately. As we decorated we found that the plaster behind the old shower position had become damp and so I had to dry it out before we could carry on. Well having now completed the work and having no symptoms for over a month this dampness has reared  its ugly head again. Small droplets of water appear to form through the ceiling paint as if by osmosis then they fall to the ground. There are not many, perhaps a dozen or two and they form very slowly over days not minutes. I think that it is probable that the damp course is either damaged or insufficient, or non existent and that this moisture is rising from the ground. Although there is also the possibility that it is dampness coming from the bell tower which appears to have some damaged slats.
Anyhow what ever it is one thing is for sure that at some point this will cost more money and work.
I will try to put a couple of air bricks into the wall and see if they cure the problem then take it from there.


Today we went to the auctions to soak up that nutty Norfolk quaintness and to see if we could pick-up any more bargains. It was half term and the place was crawling with screaming, shouting short folk. Absolute mayhem. I wanted to look at several sets of chairs but whenever I tried to do so there seemed to be either an old couple sitting in them for lunch munching on their sandwiches or children, who 'believed' that they were too tired to keep standing. So instead they all made a point of getting in my way.


Claire and I fought our way through the crowd to see what might tickle our fancies, but all we found was an old Singer Sewing machine. At this point I have to confess to becoming a Singer-holic having bought 3 machines as both decoration for my three front Georgian window sills and as a useful tool for the Quilting classes that Alison hopes to chair. Today there was the perfect little table top machine with all it's bits and bobs I was willing to pay upto £30 but managed to finally secure it with just £22. So now I own four Singer Sewing machines and with just three windows to display them in.one of them is surplus to requirements. I may EBay it.

Only one person seriously bid against me and she was knitting as she bid. Not only that she was knitting with four needles at once. I know women can multi-task but really, four knitting needles at once. She looked like a Ninja waving the needles around in wild abandonment. Then in a very NFN (Normal for Norfolk) moment we saw, through the thick pony-tailed gathering of men one individual, one lost soul in a world of his own.

The man was in his sixties, dressed in a green wax jacket he weaved in and out through the crowd  and on his right hand (also taking a keen interest in activities) was a Badger.
Of course it wasn't, silly, it was a puppet, a badger puppet and despite having no really good reason to sport such a puppet glove he was enjoying sharing the moment with his puppet Badger. They both inspected every lot with interest and every now and then his badger would give a little squeak of approval. Claire and I were amazed to see his wife join him and walk alongside him as his badger puppet pontificated over the different lots.
We were both dying to see if his puppet would bid for something, would the auctioneer see its tiny little paws? Or would he have to shake his whole booty?

And then if his bid was successful and he was asked to give his name, would the badger simply give a little squeak?

But alas we had things to do, time was against us and so we left him in his own little world. Quite, quite mad!

For all the world it was like a scene from Roger Rabbit!

There is something about a log fire that evokes a sense of reminiscence and reflection on times past and an 'all's well with the World' ambiance. It is quite fake of course, those good memories of toasting bread on my Grandmothers open coal fire then spreading thick dollops of dripping on it and gulping them down with glee are just that, good memories. Roasting Chestnuts that I had collected with my Dad, falling asleep at my Grandparents in the reassuringly cosy warm after glow of a dying fire are all good memories. My Uncle playing the piano in a darkened room with just a candle to light the music and the dancing shadows of the flames from the fire being the only other light in the room. The whole family gathered together, closely huddled around the coal fire, for once all as one, a comforting close nit family playing 'Snakes and Ladders'. Those were my childhood memories, my happy childhood memories, my comfort blanket of memories if you will, memories that make me yearn to return to the uncomplicated days when all was well with the world.


Well of course that was absolute nonsense, all was very much not well with the world and those halcyon days were a fallacy. We were all gathered around the open fire and eating anything that we could cook on the fire because for the third time that week we were thrown into a blackout as the miners were on strike along with just about every other Tom Dick and Harry in a Union. We had no TV so we had to play Snakes and bloody Ladders, again, whilst Uncle John tried to deaden the silence by banging out some tunes on the old Joanna (Piano).  We were all 'gathered' around the fire because we were bleeding freezing. There were no street lights as the power cuts simply knocked out great swathes of London, no traffic lights, nothing but chaos and mayhem.


How many of you have recalled those memories any time in the last 20 years? Not many I would venture. No, the memories we pluck out of the bosom of our breast fed ageing memories are the comforting ones, the recollections that represent security and that we stumble upon by serendipity.
We may be thinking of one thing and out of the blue a memory suddenly discloses itself slipping out like a dollop of Mayo oozing from the other side of a burger landing squarely on your lap you think where the hell did that come from? But you actually know where it seeped from and actually you were caught off guard as you were not really expecting it just there and then.


Last week I was in a shop in Norwich and I went into a lift, pressed the button and prepared for lift off when suddenly a little nipper run in just as the doors were closing. As we stood there staring at the stainless steel doors, in the customary silence that we have all come to take for granted, a wry smile developed almost involuntary as one of those dollops of mayo squeezed out all over my respectability.

Now I have to tell you at this point that this very story has caused me to interrupt the tale as another recollection has spiked itself into my easily led mind! I saw a great experiment carried out in a lift once that thoroughly intrigued me. It was set up to show the immense power of peer pressure.
     A man joined a group of people who were already in a lift. As is the norm (I mean by that, the usual thing to do, not that his name was Norm, although of course it may have been but that is not important right now), he turned and faced the inside of the lift's doors as were the rest of the crowd.
The lift started on it's way skywards and very subtlety the crowd (all of which were 'in' on the experiment) slowly turned clockwise and faced the side wall leaving the guy in social terms the 'odd' one out. His discomfort was tangible and a few seconds later, just as subtlety and just as slowly he too turned to face the same wall. As soon as he had joined them they again did the same manoeuvre with the same result of him following suit. They eventually ended up by completing a full 360 degree turn just as the doors opened and managed to make this guy follow them at every turn, just by peer presure and not a word was said throughout. Just brilliant!


So anyway back to my other drop of mayo. The circumstances of me and this child being in the lift reminded me of an incident many years ago in a Supermarket in Brighton. We were raising money for children in need or some such foolishness and as such we had gotten dressed up in fancy dress. The entire Management Team had agreed to all dress as hippies with long flowing wigs, sun glasses (so no one could see the embarrassment in our souls) vivaciously coloured flouncy shirts and flared trousers that could have covered Big Ben.

What we didn't consider was the frequency with which we had to deal with drunk (and druggy) shoplifters. We were on the 'Dark Side' of the A23 in Kemp Town and everyday we would be sitting on top of some violent shoplifter, if not two or more in a day. However, Brighton is as a 'Cosmopolitan' a City as you could get and even in our Bell Bottoms we really did not look out of place as we run down the street like exaggerated Laurence Llewelyn Bowens chasing some guy with a scar slashed across his face clinging on to a bottle of Jack Daniels for all he was worth. Just three more hippies in a City full of such attention seekers, honestly no one seemed to batten an eye lid!

Well one shoplifter made a bolt for the lift with his ill gotten gains and the lift doors just closed when I got there. I immediately pressed the button for the other lift as there were no stairs to go up. A second or two later my butchery Manager and his Supervisor joined me. They were dressed as Fred and Barney from the Flintstones and had really good shop bought masks which were very accurate likenesses indeed. The lift opened and we piled in, turned to face the doors and to continue on this Keystone Cops farcical chase.

As we stood there and just as the doors were closing a small boy managed to squeeze into the lift too.
He immediately turned to face the doors as well and there we all stood in total silence, me at the back dressed as the most way out of all hippies, Fred Flintstone to the left of the little boy and on his right Barney Rubble both of which were brandishing a cave man's plastic club. All staring at the doors, waiting in anticipation for them to open, I can honestly say that I don't think I have ever been in such a surreal situation in my life. In his haste to catch the lift the boy had clearly not picked up on this oddity and it was not until we were about half way up that the poor kid realised what he had walked into, for all the world it was like a scene from Roger Rabbit!
   It was so funny to see him slowly turn his head to the left and continue to look up to see Fred Flinstone followed by a glance at Barney Rubble to his right. He said nothing and returned his stare to the doors once more, probably preying for them to open. The two butchers stood motionless and a few more seconds passed, we were nearly at the upper floor now. Then just as the lift was settling Fred Flintstone suddenly turned, without any warning, brandishing his toy club he took a giant step in front of the boy and shouted "Ha!"
 The Boy jumped, Barney jumped and even I jumped.
The doors opened and the poor little lad run out of them as a Hare from the greyhound. VOOM.... and he was gone.

I hope and prey that he has successfully suppressed that memory and that it is not to be his blob of mayo many years hence.

Oh and no Fred, Barney and the old Hippie never did catch the shoplifter.







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Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth...... but her claws would rip your mouth to shreds!

The last year has been a constant frenzy of planning, decorating, and deadlines complicated further by the need to start having paying guests as soon as was possible.  In this 'frenzy' of activity some work load had to be put on hold and one of the major losers in this regard was the dreaded 'Paper~work'. This workload was building and building and the more it grew,tiddly pom, the more it went on, tiddly pom, tiddly pom, growing!

Well inevitably you end up missing important things when you don't keep up with the paperwork and as a result of just such an issue Alison started to plough through the paperwork piled up in the office on Sunday and I provided a form of back~up on Monday by gathering any paperwork I could find dotted around the house. I plonked the pile on our very large dinning room table, sat back and watched a slow landslide start to form as the sheets of paper on the top of the pile started to slide down, picking up momentum (and many other sheets too) the landslide turned into an avalanche and as the sudden out pouring and eventual collapse of the 'Bumf Mountain' subsided, I watched a single sheet of A5 slide off the table and waft gently down to the hard stone floor.

I looked at the dysfunctional pile of paperwork spread across the table then I looked down at the sheet that had fallen to the floor. It, in turn, looked right back up at me and the only word that I could read on it was... 

RELAX!, 

written in a loud bold font. I looked back at the pile on the table with an eye of irony knowing that this was not even the half of it. Picking up the leaflet from the floor, noticing it was actually the guarantee for the new washer/dryer, I placed it on the table thus starting the first of many different piles as I sorted out this ramshackled chaos.


As I started each new pile I assigned a piece of Paper with a heading such as 'TO ACTION', or 'TO FILE', you get the idea, and eventually I had a good dozen or so piles dotted around the table to which I would add every time I selected a piece of paper from my game of paper Kerplunk.


I DID NOT, HOWEVER, prepare any safety measure to protect my system from a cat. Actually not just a cat but a bored and restless cat (Scribble) who had decided that I had neglected her for too long and whom wanted to play a game. The game was called "Guess the pile" and the objective was quite clear, I (the player known as 'The Victim') had to select a piece of paper from the pile in the centre of the table (called the 'Pile~o~crap') read it, decide which pile it should be placed onto and if required make a note on a bit of paper (called 'The To Do List).

Scribble the cat (known as 'The pesky player') then had to second guess which pile I would next have to gain access to and get over to it before I could, ensuring that she is sat firmly and squarely in the centre of the pile so that absolutely nothing else can be added. She could gain extra points if she could go and sit on the right pile JUST before 'The Victim' (me) actually pulled the next piece of paper from the 'Pile~o~crap'. More points for vexation could be added by clever use of sauntering, ie if she could successfully get up and walk to another pile in such a way that she managed to scatter several other piles on route AND was able to wag her tail into my mouth, eyes or facial areas as she did so. The bonus points came when she found that she could go and spread out on my To Do list every time that I wished to add something to it.

And so the game continued, me reaching out to delve in to the lucky dip of fate whilst the cat was already starting her tour of the table somewhat like a ball in a roulette wheel deciding where she should park her bottom and seemingly choosing the most appropriate pile most times. As I put all my money on Red it seemed to frequently land on black. I have no idea how she managed to be quite so accurate and indeed so vexatious, a talent in the household that I have always considered more my domain!

After I had given up, Scribble realising that I had conceded then followed me into the next room and even as I sit here now she has been nudging my hands as I try to type this and has also made me remove the laptop from the afore said 'Lap' so that I have to twist sidewards to write this blog whilst she is left sitting pretty in my lap with out a care in the world.

 Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth......     but her claws would rip your mouth to shreds!

Somewhere there is a parallel universe out there in deepest Pennsylvania....

We achieved the completion of the annex certainly because we have good friends and relatives but also because the Electrician, Plumber and Builder all bought in to the project. They fully took on board our vision of the end result and also the time constraints that we were under. However finding them all was an experience, you may recall the plumber that I talked of in my first Blog where he appeared to have decided to tell his wife that he was retiring whilst I was on hold on the phone!
See http://theoldbakery.blogspot.com/2010/12/day-plumber-retired.html

We also had several trades in to quote for a job who never ever got back to us despite our continual nudging and requesting of the quotes. We could not believe so many people would bother to turn up to the house to give us a quote for work and then simply disappear again. Perhaps the challenge was just too great,

Claire was tripping across the worlds cyber-space searching for any other blogs relating to refurbishing a building to create a B&B when she found this blog;-
http://makingbandb.blogspot.com/2008/09/being-busy-does-not-always-mean-real.html
 These people are basically doing much the same as us but in Pennsylvania USA and low and behold in one of their first blogs they describe the self same frustration regarding getting an electrician;

 "Tim is trying to find a good electrician. Getting the electrical system dealt with is the last "big issue" we have before we can start the remodeling and renovations. We did have an electrician come to the house, but he hasn't returned any of Tim's calls for the last two months. Time to find a new one."

So this does not seem to be one of those NFN (Normal for Norfolk) issues after all but appears to be the same the world over. Do not despair however as the NFN factor is still alive and well out here in deepest Norfolk.

Last week we wanted a Chinese take-away and so contacted the local restaurant. Well it is not really a restaurant as it only does delivery and trying to obtain a leaflet with its menu on was a challenge from the word go. It is run from a shop in the next village, just two miles away, and whilst the shop has the appearance of a Chinese take away from the outside (red and yellow signs an' all) it is no more than a kitchen inside. I  opened the door to get a menu from the place and to my surprise there was no Chinese girl, no restauranty style bar from which the non-existing Chinese girl could barely see over and no paper strips forming themselves into a Chinese year calander.  There was just an oriental chappy sitting with his back to me talking Mandarin down the phone. The room was completely empty except for the cases of bulk Chinese ingredients dotted around the floor, the man, his chair, the phone and the table it sat upon. In the back room I could just make out the kitchen. The lights in the room were all off. This, I thought, does not look like a Chinese Take-Away. The guy had not realised that I was standing right behind him and continued to rant on. I sidled backwards out of the door carefully latching it closed. How, I mused, do I obtain a leaflet with a menu on it?

A few days later I was near the Take-away and saw two Chinese women leave the building so I asked how I could get a menu. Not a word of reply came back, she simply turned back into the mystery building re-appearing with a menu, handed it to me in silence then got into a car and drove off.

So disregarding all my obvious concerns and all the above 'red flags' I went ahead and placed an order. You see I like my Chinese food and my brain is somewhat like a White board with all its 'stuff' written in Dry Marker pens frequently having any memories that act as a boundary wiped clean away.

I know that there are many women out there thinking yeah, that is so typical of a man but I believe women have the ultimate skill in wiping off painful experiences from their memories, how else could they ever go through child birth more than once!    

So I phone up Mr Woo Wing Wang Wong (Name adjusted to protect the guilty) and placed my order at his fast food chain, after all we are close enough to get their FREE delivery service. The order was duly placed, my address was taken, so far so good....... "OK it will be with you in one hour" and as I digest this speedy delivery time the phone was down and the deal done.

FAST FOOD in Norfolk is not fast, actually the word FAST when used in Norfolk about any thing is an oxymoron, things cannot both be in Norfolk and be Fast, it's just not going to happen.

One wonders how the Jets stay up in the sky without stalling and it becomes more obvious as there are no fast trains, not a single Motorway in the County, I haven't seen a running track and I am bloody sure that the only thing that the speed cameras ever take a photo of is me!!!












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