My roofer specialises in both the installation of roofs and the creation of dinosaurs, now that I can tell you is definitely NOT 'Normal for Norfolk'.... or anywhere else!

Hi,

Well I have finally had to do it. Some may say that I left it far too long but in truth it was just too entertaining and only a strong sense of guilt persuaded me to take action and draw a close to the whole sordid affair.....
Sorry I may not be making myself very clear, he said with a twinkle in his eye, well what I talk of is the mirror in the garden and the gay pheasant (or at the very least the self obsessed pheasant).

I was in a shop the other day and flicking through a book written by Edward Enfield (Harry's Dad) called 'Growing to a Ripe Old Age', £6.59 at Amazon (my birthdays in February but please talk to each other 'cause I don't want six of them!) Anyhow he wrote about how he had a Pheasant reside in his garden one year and how it gave his garden some superior status without the ostentatious vulgarity that being in possession of Peacocks brings. Bingo, that hit how I felt right on the head, the fact that this wild creature roosts in the Yew tree at the back of the garden and drops down to live the best part of the day with us feels like a privilege. However I have to be realistic and understand that this Pheasant (Percy), oh and I know that I said that I must be in need of a holiday because I was wittering on about Percy well you just need to read my last blog to see that I am still in need of another holiday to recover from the first!  Where was I, yes, Percy, I fully understand that Percy has only been coming into my garden for the last month because I have a mirror and he has a crush on himself.

Ok so he likes to do a little bit of jiggy, jiggy with himself at the mirror, putting on a show and a dance and stuff, well there's nothing wrong with that is there? For THREE TO FOUR HOURS A DAY! Yes, yes indeedy there is most definitely 'something' not right about that and so I felt that I needed to break his addiction and remove the mirror. There were several Black Birds having their normal biorhythms interfered with too whom also spent many an hour pecking at the thing. (That's pecking at the mirror, not the Pheasant). So reluctantly this afternoon I have withdrawn the item from the garden in the hope that normality may return to the bird life in and around The Old Bakery. The mirror itself is now covered in wing brush marks where Percy had been self abusing....

I believe that I have done the 'right thing'.

Now back to the ongoing problems of every day life of an every day simpleton (me) and this ancient building which is creaking every which way (I'd say that I meant the building was creaking not me, but actually....).

This is a tale of scepticism (not to be confused with Septic tanks) as a while ago it became very apparent that out three year old fibre glass conservatory roof and the one above the office were leaking during heavy downpours.

 The problem seems obvious it is really difficult to connect any roof in a watertight way to cobbly flints without completely dismantling & rebuilding the flints, which was not done. So the long brown roof in the picture above now leaks along the whole length right where it butts up to the wall.

The obvious step was to look at the house sale documents until I could find the guarentee then call the people that installed it. Easy....

BUT....

You see my natural bias with regards to roofers is the same as it is with companies that do driveway tarmacking, Solar Panel installers and Double Glazing companies, I generally bracket them in the 'Cowboy' class. So knowing that I have the 20 year guarantee from the previous owner I naturally assumed that they would either deny all knowledge of the job or that they would have suspiciously gone out of business. My suspicions were immediately aroused when their web-site was no longer in use, "OK here we go", I thought.....

And then, after a bit of a dig around on the web I found their premises on Google Maps, went onto Street View and the business was not there. With all my worst thoughts confirmed I tried to search their name in various forms and then to my amazement, I found them and they are still based in Norwich, AND they have a web-site too.

Having then got the phone number I called them. They were extremely professional, could remember the job and arranged to come out to assess the situation in a few days. Now I am glad that they were so committed and they do seem genuinely really honourable people, especially having now met them, but I was pretty confident that they would be interested in putting my property right. Why? Well take a look at their Web-Site....

http://www.rgwroeandson.co.uk/household.html

Do you see? Eh?

Yep, it's us!

WE ARE THEIR SALES PITCH! It is our conservatory roof that they are holding up as a beacon of their quality.
So yes, I was pretty confident that they would want to help us.

In all fairness one of the main Partners came, was really nice and helpful, totally accepting that the previous owners guarantee was still valid, checked the building and has agreed to put it all to rights. It is worth reading their site as they appear really good at what they do and they do some pretty unusual things. It appears that my roofer specialises in both the installation of roofs and the creation of dinosaurs, now that I can tell you is definitely NOT Normal for Norfolk....   or anywhere else!

Once again the Norfolk builders have stood out above the rest and with the exception of a couple of oddities when I first moved up here I will once again heap praise on all the Artisans that I have had the pleasure to hire.

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It has been such an incredibly warm January this year and really clear skies at night too. The bulbs in the garden are well ahead of last year with the daffodils and crocus popping up left, right and centre. The clear skies have afforded us excellent sunsets along with those very special Norfolk 'Big Skies'. I wanted to get some sunset photos a few weeks back but missed timed my leaving the house and quickly realised that I would not get to my original destination in time and so pulled off the road by a field to turn around when I realised that I needed to look no further. For there right in front of me was this 200 year old oak (perhaps) with a wonderful sky behind it. Sometimes fortune takes over events. I have taken absolutely hundreds of sunsets because they are just wonderful. I used to have a colleague at work who had a flat that looked over the fields near Reigate and I remember her telling me how she and her husband loved to watch the sunsets and always took photos of them. Too many people carry on with their everyday lives and don't stop and think which street do I have to walk up to see this sunset properly. I admire anyone who goes out of their way to enjoy a good sunset for those are the people who know how to appreciate the wonder of life itself.

3,461

Everything we do we do too fast, too hard and too much.

We have had a really full on year since November 2010 when we moved in to The Old Bakery and after an intense spell of re-decorating, then loads of guests whilst continuing to renovate the annex, with B&B guests right up to the New Year. In all that time we had no time for a holiday for ourselves and it is fair to say that the cracks were beginning to show. We love going away and have always strived to make use of every weeks holiday from our respective jobs by going orfff somewhere and so this extended period without a holiday was totally against the grain.

You could tell that I was in need of a holiday by my last blog which for the most part I seemed to be waffling on about a Pheasant that I had named Percy! Claire was getting irritable with me too as apparently I had taken to singing along with everything that I did, whether it be filling the Dish washer to the lyrics of Car Wash or shouting the lyrics of the Stones Get off my cloud. If I was feeling a bit blue I might have a stab at On My Own from Les Mis, but there's the rub you see because whilst I nobly mention that I would sing the lyrics the truth is that I don't sing the lyrics at all.
No, what seems to wind Claire up so is that I do have a habit of deviating from what are, on the whole, some very well written lyrics because I simply can't remember them or indeed and as I understand it even more annoyingly I am wholeheartedly singing what I believe are the lyrics but which apparently bear no relation to them at all.
For example What A Wonderful World comes out thus...

I see trees of green, red, yellow and blue,

and I look at yoooouuuuuuu, (I find stretching a word fills in missing bars quite adequately)

and I say to myself, What a Wonderful world.

I can't help my inability to get the correct lyrics and this is one of my favourite songs!....

This annoyance is, I gather, further enhanced by the skilful way that I put my Tone Deafness into the mix. It is true that my singing has been compared to the quality of Madame Edith's in 'Allo 'Allo and not in a good way!
I have always known that I was no Bing Crosby and can remember just minutes before my wedding ceremony and just as Alison was making her big entrance at the Church door one of my friends suddenly thrust a Dictaphone recorder into my hand, instructing me to put it into my breast pocket. As you can imagine it was not the best time to give me something else to think about and not knowing what else to do with the thing I obediently slipped it into the said pocket. It was only as the ceremony started and the vicar called for hymn 249 to be sung that I realised what a mistake I had made in accepting the stupid thing (that's the Dictaphone NOT Alison's hand in marriage, of course) and so I had no other option but to mime throughout. Luckily the Vicar was clearly quite deaf and so his voice BOOMED into my face at a decibel that would put any self respecting Fog Horn to shame and my mimed singing went unnoticed.

Many,many years later (and ago too) I used to do talks to local WI groups on behalf of Safeway Supermarkets on a subject that I was fairly interested in at that time, Queer Gear. Now that may sound a little questionable in this day and age but remember it was the WI and the term Queer Gear was used by the fruit & Veg sellers at Covent Garden to describe the more unique and exotic fruits like Dragon fruits, Paw paw, Mooli etc. The title came from a book of the same name and I just tried checking it out in Google, what could go wrong with searching "Queer Gear Fruit book"! So anyway I started off giving the talk and demonstration to local WI's then I started to get a bit of a reputation and was asked to speak to two groups at a time, then three or four, eventually I turned up to do a talk to an audience of well over 140!
I was quite used to the fact that they always started the meetings with a hearty rendition of Jerusalem and finished with the National Anthem and I always managed to mime to the words, not too convincingly but with a little more aplomb than John Redwood did when trying to sing the Welsh National Anthem. However the leader of this particular pack, whom reminded me very much of Joyce Grenfell, approached me just as the piano banged out the opening chords to Jerusalem and demanded "We expect all our guests to join in you know my dear, Oooo it'll be so nice to hear a deep baritone for a change". Oh dear, little do you know, I thought. So, cornered, I had no other option but to sing along, I knew most of the words and what I didn't know I just sang a second late after they had all uttered them.
I can't say that I noticed any uncomfortable silence at the conclusion of the tune and my talk was met with great interest.

However I was NOT asked to join them on the National Anthem!

So anyway, Claire was getting grumpy about me being me, and we were all getting a little on edge. A holiday was long over due. We could not afford the time for a two week holiday so Alison had the brainwave of booking 4 nights at Center Parcs, I could exercise my leg and hopefully we could all get a little bit fitter. So off we tootled.
Now we have done several Center Parc holidays before and we really should have learnt from previous experiences, but we didn't. Claire and Alison tend to do things at a somewhat leisurely pace, you know, like whilst playing badminton they really don't see the need to run for the shuttlecock after all what's the worst that can happen? It'll just fall to the ground. The culmination of their intensive fitness regime is the three hours that they spend wandering around the different steam rooms of the Spa.
Stephen and I however are foolishly driven by something that I can only describe as Gusto! Everything we do we do too fast, too hard and too much. Whilst Alison and Claire don't have a bead of perspiration on them Stephen and I are dripping with sweat having run a mini marathon around the courts desperate to win the point.
Then there is the sub tropical pool. Claire and Alison bob around aimlessly enjoying the gentle movement emanating from the wave machine. Stephen and I however, very aware that our time here is limited, are using every second of every minute to enjoy the flumes and water slides. SPLASH into the pool then we're out of it and back up the steps to do it again.I must have climbed those steps so many times that it probably equated to climbing Kilimanjaro.
Then there was the out door flumes. They are vicious, I was walking back up the steps when a young man stopped me to enquire if I knew that I was bleeding from the elbow? I did not know that I was. Then on another day whilst Stephen and I were being tumble washed by the flume he was suddenly spun around by the water and in an attempt to steady himself his elbow smashed into the bridge of my nose followed by a very distinctive 'CRACK'. I am sure it is broken or at least fractured!
We just do everything with too much vigour! Even when I cycled I felt my carpal tunnel return and my hand went a little blue probably because I was holding on too tight up the hills.

So we went away to get rested and to become a bit fitter and returned with aching legs, bruises, bumps and totally knackered. Tomorrow  I am going to try to get an appointment to see the quack and I have so many things to get checked (five in total) that I've had to write myself a list in-case I forget one of them!

So thanks for the holiday Alison, but perhaps now I can get back to work and have a rest!

And a little singsong to myself....

I see trees of green, red, yellow and blue..............



3,431

Round these parts for entertainment watching a Pheasant called Percy flirting with a mirror is second only to guessing how many Sugar Beets there are piled up in a field.

At the moment I am trying to get on top of all those jobs that I couldn't do whilst I had guests as we are now well and truly in the 'fallow months' as far as business goes. With no money coming in I plan to take a leaf out of my sons book from when times were hard at University and make this Offal month...   Liver & onions, Liver& Kidney (a variation on Steak & Kidney but not so steaky), Stuffed Heart, Tripe & Onions, Tripe and no Onions (you may know this as just Tripe.), Steak and Liver Turbego (which is a dish made from Steak, sausages and Liver, except this one will have no Steak........ or sausages......  just the Liver then!).  But don't feel sorry for us as I have saved up and I plan to suprise everyone this weekend with fried gizzard and chips!

I really need to write a list, room by room, of every job that needs doing but for the moment I have been ploughing into the urgent tasks like insulating a small loft over the guests bedroom and some temporary repairs to gutters etc. I think I shall start this list tomorrow, I know it is going to be massive but at least I can prioritise the tasks then.

I've also been dealing with more engineers as the brand new immersion heater had developed a leak and today the company that actually manufactured it sent out a guy to repair the thing. Luckily it was a very slow leak and one of my guests happened to spot an odd drip of water. I have also started a deep clean in my kitchen so I am totally ready for next season, the cooker is next.... Yuk!

So I may have no guests at present but I am very busy thank you very much. That said we have already started getting bookings for next November! Of course the great thing about working here is the house itself and the garden. As I work in the kitchen I can look out to the garden which means I get to see a lot of what's happening out there and this week alone I have seen two birds that I have never ever seen before, Bramblings and Redwings both of which are coming in to feed on the food that I have put out for them. Oh and as it is me I obviously try to photograph them......

Bramblings

Redwing feasting on an Old Bakery apple

Then there's that pesky Pheasant whom, it seems, cannot get enough of himself in my garden mirror. He returns every day to check it out, the bird appears obsessed by the thing! He always enters over the same bit of wall and one day I was sitting on the swing seat near the spot when I heard him rustling through the dried Clematis leaves , if I hadn't have moved in time I swear that I would have gained myself a hat fit for Ascot.

He then goes and has a feed and spends a good couple of hours in the garden of which AT LEAST half the time is in front of my mirror! He does a lot of looking then starts to wander off and just as he leaves the mirror he quickly doubles back to see if that other Pheasant has gone, which of course it hasn't because surprise, surprise the other bird has done EXACTLY the same manoeuvre. 
Then once in a rare while he will get spooked by the image and suddenly jump up as if someone had said BOO to him or he will have a little go at the other bird with a small display of ruffled feathers. Then off he will trot back to the food and have another snack before returning to the mirror for another session.
Naturally I am concerned that the cat may get him but he does have the advantage in that at least he can see what is sneaking up from behind him as he has a blinking big mirror to help him. That said he has had two encounters with cats the first being with the large Tabby mouser that lives in the B&B across the road. You may remember me mentioning him as once whilst sitting in our lounge we observed him wandering back to his owners B&B with the biggest Rat that I have ever seen hanging from his mouth. Can you imagine the scene as the guests sit down to breakfast and that walks into your dining room!
Well we saw him in the garden at the same time as the Pheasant, whom we shall now call Percy as it is quicker to type than 'Pheasant', and he starts to nonchalantly walk towards him. We are all thinking that this is going to be a blood bath, but no, for Percy just took a couple of paces out of his way and he strides straight past Percy, clearly he was not to the cats taste. My cat however, well I think she would try to take on a Grizzly given half the chance. Scribble (our cat) must have been sitting close to the house and Percy drifted a little too close because just as I was about to open the door to the garden there was this terrible commotion and hoo-haa and Percy comes shooting past me closely followed by Scribble. Percy flew up and over the wall and was gone. That was yesterday and I haven't seen him today so I do hope he wasn't offended.

Percy is not the only one with an interest in the mirror, as several blackbirds like to spend an hour at a time chasing their rivals. I say several but it may be just one bird making repeat visits, I cannot say for sure as, well... they really do all look the same to me!

The other day Percy was in front of the mirror for a good two hours and when he left a blackbird took over and was fuffing around off and on for another two hours.  I really don't get it, because just yards away several other Blackbirds are all eating food that I have put on the lawn without any territorial nonsense going on. Then after the Blackbird came our stupid pussy cat who also got pulled into trying to workout whom the cat was on the other side of the window.




Perhaps I should think about moving it but just for the moment it is simply too intriguing to get rid of it. You see round these parts for entertainment watching a Pheasant called Percy flirting with a mirror is second only to guessing how many Sugar Beets there are piled up in a field.





3,355

I may just have the only gay pheasant in the village!

It is an absolutely beautiful night tonight, there's not a cloud in the sky and the full moon is illuminating the garden with a silky silent lightning white brightness that is quite magical. No sign of the Milky way as it is far too bright a night to perceive such fine detail but I can see every plank on the roof of the windmill behind our garden which is probably a thousand yards away. There is an added stillness in the air too making it really very quiet indeed, the sort of silence that comes with newly fallen snow, so much so that I feel I should be able to hear a cacophony of snoring villagers, but yet there is nothing other than a harmonious peace and it sounds delightful!

I'm not sure if it is because I am getting older or if this area (Norfolk) creates the 'magical moments', or indeed as a result that my life balance has come of age, whichever it is I am finding that I appreciate the everyday things in life with so much more awe.

A few days ago I was driving through country lanes with the objective of getting to Wells to photograph a high tide in unison with the sunset. However a black cloud was moving in from the West and with every mile I went the possibility of a sunset diminished further. Then I got stuck behind a big lorry and so life slowed down to the standard Norfolk time. As I got nearer the coast a large flock of some 150 plus geese flew, in formation, right over the car then less than a mile later a slightly bigger flock followed them, right over my sun roof, FANTASTIC! Moving my head back down, swiftly, to the driving position I saw a Barn Owl fly straight into the path of the lorry ahead of me. The Owl hurriedly swerved and niftily dodged the vehicle shooting off to the right at a rate of knots, it darted over a tall hedge on the other side of the road and seemingly still trying to regain its composure it appeared to flip over the moon as if doing a frosby flop swooping back to an upright position it then flew parallel to me on the other side of the hedge for several hundred yards before I took a corner and lost sight of it.
That whole episode was just so brilliant, a mere 5 minutes of nothing very much to most people was simply priceless to me. When I got to Wells-Next-The-Sea the sunset was a damp squib but it really didn't matter the journey was already worth the time and anything else would have been a bonus.

Curlew

The most productive times to take photographs are at dawn and dusk as the light is so much more interesting casting abstract shadows and creating really unique colours especially in the sky. So I drifted up to Cley to try to capture a sunrise behind the windmill there and was lucky enough to be treated to a stunning sunrise. It was bitterly cold as I found my position out on the sea defence wall. There was only a slight breeze but it bit with a vengeance and as I stood waiting for the day to break, my fingers stinging with pins and needles, all around me came a dawn chorus from the salt marshes of many, many birds not least led by the highly distinctive Curlew. Again despite the cold it was one of those magical moments.

My chosen position was bang on and eventually the sky became golden with the early sun filtered by the earth's thick atmosphere and the broken dark clouds gave an added dimension to the view. The windmill is a really lovely one architecturally and  is currently used as a B&B, it has many windows and I managed to catch the rising sun as it shone in through one window and back out at me through another. A little later I saw the silhouette of a guest at the window looking at me looking at them.

Cley Windmill

As I stood looking at this scene a Barn Owl flew right across the reed beds looking for its breakfast.
Getting a little too cold I headed back towards the road where I saw what I first thought was some ones small dog only to suddenly realise it was actually a massive Hare. Sadly I was too far away to photograph it.
Nearer the road the sun was behind me lighting the reed bed and the windmill, it could have been a hundred years ago as it just seemed to be a timeless panorama.

Cley Windmill

The skies are truly magnificent, especially by the coast below is a picture taken from the marshes at Blakeney, once again beneath this blue ceiling hundreds of waders are filtering their food from the mud in the estuaries.

Blakeney

I need to finish by telling you a short story of trickery and mischief making on my part. Whilst refurbishing the Annex I had to remove a large mirror as it had a small chip in it. Rather than waste it I thought I would copy an idea that I had first seen on Ground Force and I placed it in the garden against a wall, behind the trunks of my Clematis. Well it had a great illusion of looking like there was a massive hole in the wall as it simply reflected my gardens lawn.
The very next morning two of my guests had to ask when I had knocked the hole in the wall?
As time went by I 'allowed' both friends and relatives to discover this new hole for themselves and took great delight in watching them slowly bend down to take a peek into next doors garden only to be presented with their own face staring right back at them!
Very mean I know, but you know that given the opportunity you would have done the same.

Well the twist is that I am now fooling the animals. Firstly our cat, fairly amusing, then we started to notice that Black birds were putting on unusual flight dances and it quickly became apparent that they were challenging a rival that looked just like them and who was challenging them right back with EXACTLY the same moves! These challenges can go on for up to 20 minutes!

Just recently we have had a regular visit from a Pheasant who is continually attracted to the mirror. Originally he too felt he was being challenged and the photo below shows him facing off the other bird (him).

Mirror, mirror on the wall.......

However he now has a habit of eating some bread that I leave out then going over and having a good look at himself in the mirror. Either he is checking his beak for any embarrassing crumbs or I may just have the only gay pheasant in the village!

Interestingly and by another one of our strange co-incidents whilst trying to sort out our sewerage issue last month I happened to notice that in the exact self same position on the neighbours side of the wall they too have an even larger mirror placed. Is it just me or is that a bit weird?




 3,333
 

Out with the old and in with the new

Our last guests of the year have just left and it finally feels like the end of the season. Most B&Bs probably wind down in October but we are blessed with being on the doorstep of the Thursford Christmas Spectacular and so we have just had our busiest month so far - 16 nights of stays with 10 separate sets of guests. Which meant lots of changes of sheets and piles of ironing for Mike and dozens of home-made Mince Pies by Claire. Oh and most guests also had our pre-show supper menu so Claire has cooked numerous Cottage Pies and Fish Pies and lots of varieties of crumble all using our home-grown or foraged fruit. One week in December we had the surplus cottage pie and plum crumble three times. Part of our planning for the next Thursford season will involve a re-think of the supper menu so that we produce equally tasty home-cooked food which is a bit less labour intensive.

Planning for Christmas starts early - tickets for the 2012 have already gone on sale and we had our first booking for next November a couple of days ago.

Today we've had a board meeting and have taken the time to think about our first season as a B&B and to look ahead at what we need to do for 2012. Most of our bookings have come from the Glaven Valley website - I'm sure hardly anyone has heard of the Glaven Valley - the Glaven is a tiny river nearby nestled in amongst what count for hills in Norfolk. But it is right up at the top of the google searches for 'North Norfolk B&B' and that's what counts. The vast majority of our bookings over the last two months have come from the Thursford site - so that's been a really worthwhile investment.

In total we've had guests for 55 nights in the last 5 months with December and then August and November being our busiest months. That makes well over 100 breakfasts served - the most popular being the 'Full Norfolk' - the traditional cooked breakfast with locally sourced sausages, bacon and eggs. Next most popular is Mike's invention 'The Great Snoring Breakfast' made with quail eggs from the farm in Great Snoring just a few miles from here. Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and pancakes with fruit compote have also been chosen quite a few times but no-one has chosen the Sausage Platter so that will now leave the menu. Only a few takers for Kippers and Crab cakes so time for a re-think on these items too.

Selling our (or should I say Claire's) home-made Mincemeat and jams proved profitable in December so this year we'll plan what we make and what jam pots it goes into through the summer. We had to take Plum jam off sale as we're in danger of running out (and at one time we had over 30 jars of it!).

So after our first (albeit shortened) season what have we learnt?

• That we clearly appeal to a certain demographic, all of whom have been lovely people to share our home with.
• That Alison sees the big picture (strategy and forward planning) and Mike does detail. (I've been trained on how to lay the breakfast table - what angle the teaspoons have to be placed at in the saucers, how to fold the napkins and where they should be placed on the side plates etc).
• That it may have taken a few months more than anticipated before we opened but the attention to detail meant that we had great reviews from the outset.
• The best way to peel quail eggs is under running water.
• That Claire makes really great cakes and has been fantastic help since we started.
• It takes two people about an hour to prepare, make and be ready to serve breakfast. With only one person doing breakfast you can't be as chatty to the guests as the breakfast will burn.
• One of the perks in making lovely breakfasts is that you get to eat the surplus; fruit salad is a great option, croissants are as tasty but not quite so good for you on a regular basis. We love the guests who have pancakes as there is always spare pancake mix which just has to be used up.
• That we have the friendliest butchers around who make the tastiest sausages we've ever eaten and our guests have loved both the sausages and the butchers too.
• That we need to buy better biscuits.
• That the speciality teas (peppermint, camomile, green and lemon) have hardly been touched.
• That our best bargain of the year were the two armchairs from the Auction and the two pots of blue dye to transform the loose covers - total cost £17.
• That nobody sat in the summer house - not sure why, maybe with a better summer this will be more used.
• That attention to detail is really important but that having 'Mr Hospitality' as the host is what makes the difference.

Time now to relax and regroup and hit the massive winter to-do list ready for lots more guests in the spring.