There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination. William Godwin

From the time that David Cameron proclaimed to the world and it's daughter that a petrol strike was imminent and then right through the weeks of drenching showers that started the day prior to the official drought announcement our business just disappeared.

Sure we had one or two bookings for the Self Catering cottage (which was to be our only salvation) but as far as driving to Norfolk for a few days and staying in a B&B, well you could forget it. So I had to concentrate on getting the deeper cleaning and maintenance tasks completed. I desperately needed to work in the garden too but the falling rain and rising water table made that very difficult indeed.

Well now the rain has fizzled out a little and the phone started to ring again. I say 'ring' but in truth I am alerted to an incoming call by the wafting tones of a bit of Caribbean calypso as in the darkest thunderous miserable dull days I changed the ring-tone to something a bit sunnier to try to lift the drowning soul. To my surprise it does indeed invoke a little rise in my morale especially as each call seems to be another booking, this week we have had a spell of 9 days out of 10 with guests. Wow, I guess that we could use that.... "9 out of 10 guests prefer The Old Bakery to a tent in the rain!" Not the best endorsement but It'll have to do. That said we have had our 4th Trip Advisor review in, well er ummm.... in, errr     well 6 months actually. This has been frustrating because the Visitors book is full of glowing praise and the comments at the end of the stay have been really generous. It is likely that many of our guests have not been of the computer generation and only use it for basics like finding a place to stay. Logging on to Trip Advisor and registering etcetera, probably seems quite a task to some. Still we are proud of our 5 reviews (4 on Trip Advisor and 1 on the AA site) and even more so knowing that none of them are 'set up' i.e. not friends or relatives.

The garden is once again coming into its own as spring starts to weave her magic spell causing the small, sticky buds on the Cherry and Apple trees to explode into colour. As I sit, in the evening light, on a chair on the rusty roof red coloured patio tiles with the hard stone cold flints of the house walls behind me I find myself cogitating and reflecting on the garden panorama that is laid out before me.

Immediately in front is the shingle bedded path meandering away as if it had once been a small river bed now dried up leaving, in it's wake, the only evidence of it's existence, a layer of gravel which in the after glow of the recent showers, each stone appeared to have been individual varnished but in truth simply enhanced by the light bouncing of it's dew damp coating.

However the sun has once again returned to warm our miserable chilled to the bone bodies and Summer looks like it may actually grace us with her presence. To my left a Fig tree is starting to develop its unique leaf each of which the sun illuminates with a vibrancy the like of which is only ever seen within the confines of an old village church as the light that filters though a stained glass window and rests upon a pew.

The summer house still full of cobwebs made by spiders whom had sought a rest-bite from the winters stark chill. It's doors thrown open to allow the stale musty scent to dissipate and to let in the warm fresh late spring air freshening up every corner of the structure. It was built by the previous resident, a retired vicar, for his wife whom he had been married to for as long as they could both remember. He built it as a present to show his love and devotion to her and he was well into his eighties when he did so. Then tragically the next year she was gone and he was in grief and from his grief he started to build a wall. He had built several walls around this garden but this wall was to be both a boundary and yet at the same time a release, for he put his very soul into its construction and in so doing all of his pain and sadness too. The wall is a beautiful one, excellent in its construction and the pointing precise, you can see that he used every ounce of his concentration on the wall. He was looking for perfection and salvation from his loss and in the wall he found both.

The garden tool shed and store is built into the main house and there is a stable door from the garden. Just in front of the door is some wild mint and every time I walk into the store room my shoes brush against it generating a burst of mint freshness which hangs in the still air for a minute or so before it is diluted away. Inside the shed I still have all the old vicars gardening tools hanging on the wall. Many are blunt and all are rusty but each has had a bespoke fitting created from wooden blocks made to match the exact curvature of each spade, hoe or fork handle. Hours of precision work to look after his garden tools. His son said I could keep the tools if I wasn't going to throw them away and I assured him that I would look after them. I could rip all these unique fittings off the wall and replace everything with all singing and all dancing state of the art storage but it wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be fitting. No, they may be blunt and rusty, they may be of a lost generation, but that is the point they represent the care and love that Percy (to whom the tools belonged) put into this garden. It is quite, quite beautiful and he toiled to make it so with those tools, to remove them would to remove the continuity and the respect that we have for all that Percy achieved in the 30 years that he spent in retirement on his garden.

The boughs of an unidentified apple tree bend low in front of the summer house and full of blossom it seems probable that another bumper crop of apples will soon be weighing them down even further. In contrast the Cox's apple tree further along the wall is struggling with the ravages of cankerous branches, it's time limited it has been throwing out a last dying effort to produce an abundance of small fruits. I will have to radically thin them to achieve any kind of a decent crop.

An old garden wall, a remnant of a previous garden boundary, juts out as a 30' interruption splitting the garden into almost two separate gardens. It affords the chance to have an herbaceous boarder extend with the length of the wall on both sides, Forget-me-nots fill the voids with a mist of blue as Peony's, Camellias, Poppies and Love lies bleeding colourise the middle ground and the remainder blanketed with a smorgasbord of ground covering plants. Above these several Clematis and honeysuckles drip nonchalanty down in a lazy carefree Norfolk way.



In a diametrical contrast just a glance away another massive clematis cascades from the top of the back wall in a loud out pouring of colour and form, splashing down the rocky flint wall towards a fizzling yellow pool of Japonica and Hypericum. There has been a lot of long term planning in this garden and it is us whom are reaping the rewards of the vicars journey.

Just to the edge of this babbling brook of plants a bed of Bluebells and lilly of the Valley shade, as if on the bank of a stream under the coppiced Hazelnut tree, the blue once again enhanced by a light scattering of more Forget-me-nots.

We are now looking to the far right of the panorama and the eye is drawn to our contribution the fruit garden. Still in her infancy it looks bare and unfinished. A tall trellis some 18 feet long carries the first full years growth of three Loganberry plants. The plan is that in years to come the trellis will only be visible in the winter months. Blackberries adorn the back wall of the garden which is also the wall of the house next door. It used to be the stables and barn in which the miller kept his horses and carts, now it is for sale, I'd love to be able to afford it as it would make a magnificent holiday cottage and there is an ancient bricked up gate in our garden wall that used to connect the two properties in days gone by.

The remainder of our fruit garden consists of several Gooseberries, Redcurrants, Blueberries and even cranberries with Raspberries on the outer walls. In the centre sits my greenhouse home to many seedlings and several Strawberry plants. Tomorrow is a Red Letter day as the first strawberry looks like it will be ready to eat. If the slugs don't get there first I might treat the guests to it!

To the far western boundary a Lilac tree is in full colour and indeed scent and next to it the church door style garden gate makes for a formidable entrance with an old railway sign reminding wrong doers of the 40/- (shilling) fine should they leave the gate unfastened. A sign 'obtained' sometime post the removal of the village railway. Across this entire panorama there is a sea of green grass with a little moss and a few daisies bobbing along within it.

Immediately in the foreground are a few smaller beds with roses and a red cob nut tree which compliments both the terracotta red roof tiles of the house and the patio tiles. A lone Blackbird sings it's heart out from the apex of the roof to the east whilst some Great Tit fledglings are being coerced into flying by their mother and Father. On the gable end of the cottage on the west a pair of Blue Tits are frantically flying too and fro as they appear to be feeding their chicks in a bird box that we placed there last year. An odd bat flys past as the evening draws in and in the large woods behind the village some half a mile away a Cuckoo is punctuating the air. Despite this bird song there is a peace, a tranquillity.... a calmness. I sip my tea and take in this private heaven, the cat slopes past me making a point to rub my leg with her long slinky body.

There is much to thank Percy the retired Vicar for, a garden needs foresight and imagination, he had both and this garden is his legacy and this blog is in tribute to all that he achieved here.

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.

William Godwin.

Oh by the way William Godwin was a political writer and a great friend of Wordsworth. He was also Mary Shelley's father (author of "Frankenstein"). He went to school in this village and his teacher and mentor was a Mr Ackers whose father owned The Old Bakery many years before it actually became a Bakery. There is so much more history to this place before us and that in itself is humbling too.

Thank you for sticking with such a long blog!

Sometimes it is time to paddle your own canoe....

When you have been around for more than half a century (to be precise, in my case, half a century and two days) you begin to get a sense that you have seen it all before. The cynic in me feels inclined to agree with Caius Petronius who, in 66AD said: "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation."And when you begin to get a bit cynical about the fact that you have not only seen it all before but have experienced it all before then it is time to take matters into your own hands and ensure a different ending.

True, that I am again displaced, but had I wanted to stay I would have moved into a less vulnerable role months ago. In previous re-organisations I have always ended up with something better and this time will be no different. I've been researching what else is out there for some months and I'm confident I will be able to find a combination of jobs that will bring a balance to Mike's and my life in deepest Norfolk. So in a few months I will leave the cynics behind and let the optimist in me find a new direction.

Which brings me to the challenge of reaching that half century day. For months the thought of turning 50 was not something I was looking forward to but it has been made much easier with the knowledge that in a few months when my time in the company comes to an end, I can claim my pension, if I wish. The stubborn part of me thinks that as a matter of principle I shouldn't because I don't want to be labelled a pensioner but I will swallow my pride and choose the right financial option.

The family gathered together this weekend to celebrate the event (or to take the opportunity to rub it in!) and surprised me (and some of them!) with a collective present from them all - a two person canoe that Mike and I can use to explore the North Norfolk coast and the Broads, when it eventually stops raining. Thank you all.

So, in every sense, in the last few days and weeks, it has become clear that it is now time for me (with Mike) to paddle my own canoe.