Normal for Norfolk..........: 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...