The chalky white milestone has no interest in how far London is from Norfolk

Despite the full on workload I notice from the photos on my camera that there have been some breaks in the period of July and August. A morning here or an afternoon there that have enabled us to slow down to the infamous 'Norfolk time' and let the delights of the area gently wash over us, sometimes literally.

My old favourites the poppy fields started to pop up (if you'll kindly excuse the pun) all around. There was no singularly spectacular field but many corners and half fields that captured the romantics heart. On our route into Holt there was a lovely little tableau, a timeless little scene that could have looked just as much in place a hundred years ago as it does now.
It represents the spirit and soul of Norfolk in such a succinct way. In the background an insignificant road slips over the brow of an insignificant hill and trickles down past a small pond of poppies. Sunken amongst the poppies a large white washed, sun washed milestone stands strong and firm it's roots well imbedded into the verge.
And behind the scene white cotton wool puffs of cloud hang on a fictitious blue sky, there is a feeling of drowsiness in the air. The chalky white milestone  has no interest in how far it is to London, it is of no importance. For why would any one want to know how near they are getting to London?

No it's statement is far more reassuring than that as it simple tells us that we are "122 Miles from London" with a subtext mumbling "and praise be to that!"

More of our recreation later......



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I don't know much... but it is safe to say that I knows me onionssss!

It is late on a Friday night or to be totally correct early on a Saturday morning and I am eeking out the day to quickly fit in a blog update. Time has been at a premium recently and if I don't make time to add to the blog it is likely to be another two weeks before I do so.

Just two months ago we were concerned that bookings seemed to be drying up but that was clearly the lull before the storm as July into August has been probably our busiest period todate. Having added Laterooms.com to our associated sites we have received some extra bookings and this along with a general pick up has led us to have both rooms booked for a significant period of time.

As a result we have had very little time to enjoy that Norfolk sunshine or indeed to get out and enjoy those beaches. We are not complaining, far from it as clearly in our line of business we need to take as much money as we can whilst the going is good.

However I am getting a little frustrated that all the hard work that I literally ploughed into the allotment may well be wasted as I struggle to find even half an hour free time to get down there. Throughout the day I watch the combine harvesters and tractors trundle along our road as they are busy pulling in the harvest of potatoes, peas, barley and wheat. Mean while my beautiful sweet broadbeans that I was eating raw from the pod are growing ever bigger, my cabbages are exploding with size and my courgettes are quickly becoming marrows.
Today went a little like this;-

07:00hrs Got up, fed the cat and started to prep the breakfast (Alison helped before going off to work).
08:15hrs first couple arrived for their breakfast.
08:30hrs The electrician arrives to fit a new bilge pump for my front yard (very urgent, stops flooding).
08:45hrs second couple arrived for breakfast.
09:15hrs first couple finish breaky.
09:30hrs first couple go out for the day.
At this stage having served 4 first courses (3 types) and 4 breakfasts (4 different choices) along with the croissants, tea and toasts my kitchen was somewhat beyond a 'working mess'.
09:45hrs whilst collecting dirty plates, get talking to guests,  a process which gets more involved on each return. They show interest in my photos so I show them my 'collection' book. We talk about their travels and other things and before we know it....... it is .....
11:15hrs They get ready to go out whilst I check the tide times and availability of the boat trips to see the seals at Blakeney Point.
11:30hrs second guestsgo out for the day.
11:40hrs I had breakfast and sit down.
12:00hrs Cleared breakfast table.
               set up dishwasher, washing machine and spin drier.
               Ironed sheets for tomorrows change over of B&B rooms.
13:10hrs vacuumed living room.
13:30hrs Put 'smalls' into wash (life goes on don't you know!)
13:50hrs Carried out room service on the two rooms.
14:30hrs went shopping for top up breakfast items (far more cooked breakfasts than normal).
15:40hrs put shopping away and reloaded washing machines.
16:15hrs went to allotment for first time in two weeks and sythed down the weeds then mowed the paths, oh and weeded the flower bed.
17:50hrs phoned home and asked Alison if she would cook dinner for me.
17:30hrs got back home and helped Alison to clear up the kitchen.
19:30hrs had dinner and then tidied living room as guest wanted to talk quilting to Alison.
20:30hrs more washing and more drying.
21:00hrs met up with second guests that wanted to talk quilting to Alison
22:45hrs second guests go to bed.
24:00hrs first set of guests get home and go to bed.
24:10hrs lay the table for tomorrows breakfast.
24:30 start blog.


And so it goes.

I did manage to harvest some food several weeks back and laid it all nicely out to display for this blogg.................

Onions, Red onions and shallots...... yeppp, I know me onions.

Cabbage, Curly Kale, courgettes, Broad beans, beetroot, cauilflower, new pots, rhubarb etc.

Ok, it is now 01:15hrs and I'm beginning to nod off so I shall have to catch you all again soon.

Tomorrow is a busy day with all of the above plus both B&B rooms needing a change over for new guests and the cottage also requires cleaning, bed linen changed (x 4) .....

I love it but I really want to get out there and take some photos like this sunset at Wells...

Good night.




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A rude absence.............

Not only does it seem like a month but it very nearly is a month since I last wrote a blog and my only excuse is how busy we have been. For the last month the weeks shot by, one minute it was Tuesday and the next it was Saturday, the 1st of July became the 10th in a blink of an eye lid and before I knew it the end of the month was hovering over the horizon.

This is, of course, a good thing as in general busy means income although the allotment has contributed to the workload in quite some fashion. The irony is that July was looking very soft with regards to B&B bookings and so having been putting off joining a 'late rooms' type site we finally got our selves on to one (LateRooms.com). We had researched this previously but had held off because of the admin time that was required to keep the bookings database updated and also because of the commission fees. But as July looked bleak we put our foot in the water and gave it a go.

Alison finalised the massive database set-up and on Thursday a few weeks back and before the day had finished we had received  bookings for both the Friday night and the Saturday too. Subsequently we have received a further three to four bookings via them. At the same time the sun put his shiny hat on and everyone has come out to play and so consequently we have been run off our feet. That along with the self catering cottage being booked up for all of June and most of July it has been a real hive of activity in The Old Bakery.



Several weeks back I had the sad journey back down to Sussex to attend my Aunt Margaret's funeral (see previous entry). Well a couple of weeks ago in amongst this chaos I lost an uncle too. He was one of those very special people that made up a core part of my early childhood memories and as such a tiny part of me felt like it had gone too. My Uncle Dick had lived a full life and apart from being my Uncle I knew him as a loving kindly person, a musician and a Saville Row tailor. He would tease us all, but that is an uncles job isn't it? My overwhelming memory is watching him sit up at the piano to just start playing the most beautiful music without any sheet music in front of him, he could play really complicated tunes but all by ear, as they say, that is he couldn't read a note of sheet music. This fascinated me and still does, Jamie Cullum is the same and I just marvel at how these guys brains must work, extraordinary.

I think the sadness was enhanced when I realised that I hadn't talked or should I say listened to him enough and as a result I found out more about his life at his funeral than I did from the man himself.
I had been told a few years ago by my mother (Uncle Dick's baby sister) that Dick had measured and made suits for all of the Apollo 11 crew, ie the first Guys to land on the moon, Buzz, Neil oh and the other guy who watched them Michael Collins.  At the funeral we heard how he made costumes for a lady called Belita who was a British Olympic figure skater a 1940's film actress and a dancer.
I visited his Tailors shop once with Alison, many decades ago, and he gave us a tour around the building. They had every pattern for every garment that they had ever made stored there and there were rows and rows of military uniforms, it was truly fascinating.

He himself had volunteered to join the Army in the war and no doubt my Grandparents prayed for his safety every single night .

He followed his fathers (my grandfathers) footsteps into tailoring and it was only when my mother was talking about the moon landing 'clients', that we found out that my grandfather was measuring General Montgomery for a uniform during WW2 whilst he (Monty) and Churchill drew up a battle plan on the tailor room's wooden floorboards with his tailors chalk.

Dick had a similar incident in 1976 when he had the chief negotiator from the IMF (International Monitory Fund) strike a deal with the Labour Government in the actual room and whilst Dick measured the guy for three suits. Dick ever the professional told no one and kept the information to himself and Britain received the funds that were needed. Click this link for an article regarding this...

It is easy to stagnate and not make the effort to visit family or to talk to them for many months and yet everybody has something of interest to recall. It is far better to hear the stories from the horses mouth rather than as part of a funeral service where the time to converse has sadly come to an end.

Well done to his two children Melinda and Luisa who represented their father with all the dignity that he would have had.

Dedicated to

Richard George McSweeney

1920~ 2013

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Trying to spare some 'allotted' time.......

Over the last few weeks I have been weeding the allotment as if it were my full time job and tonight I'm sitting watching TV whilst busily scratching away at the many tiny bites incurred.
The trouble with such a large allotment is that whilst your head down plucking weeds out of the cabbage bed there are others sneaking up behind you in amongst the Asparagus.

The allotment takes priority because if I get behind on that then I will simply lose the plot (if you pardon the pun). As a result the garden has a few more weeds than I would want but it is manageable and so I am tolerating it.

It is an odd thing that the weeds are so prolific when there has been practically no rainfall for the last 4 to 5 months. On average we only had 1.6" of rain per month and April only had 7mm (less than a third of an inch) whereas last year the figure was 4". I'm surprised that there is not a drought order on us especially as we had one this time last year. All through the winter everyone else seemed to be getting a soaking, especially Wales but by the time the clouds reached Norfolk they were empty.


Most of the farmers have had to hold back the setting and sowing by many weeks because it was both so cold and so dry and the yields are expected to be a fair bit lower as a result.
So that sets up my excuse for a poor crop in my allotment then.

That said we have already harvested 12lb's of Asparagus and 25lb's of Rhubarb, which is pretty good I suppose. We have eaten, or posted  (see previous blog), most of the Asparagus and mostly frozen the rhubarb so we can use it in our winter crumbles.

I originally broke my veg plots into 3 for a three year rotation but quickly realised that I much prefer the root crops and so used two beds for these thus screwing everything up before I even started.

 Here is the original root crop bed. I know it looks bare but it is very full indeed. In the foreground are about 100 seedling leeks then 2 rows of beetroots.

To be honest I don't 'get' beetroot at all. Alison loves them in a sandwich with cheese.  I'd rather have acupuncture performed on me by a newbie student, with rusty pins.... who was blind than have to eat that concoction.
I use to hate the things when I worked in the Supermarket because they were so messy when they leaked. The fresh ones in the veg dept. simply dripped their blood on all the other shelves and customers clothing more often than not an expensive white jacket. The real bummer was when a jar of pickled beetroot smashed on the floor. Within seconds the vinegar would strip the polish off the floor and then instantly the beetroot would for reasons I have never fully understood stain the floor blue. I know..... what must it do to your gut?
 So I have grown these for love and there can be few more noble reasons than that.


Behind the Beetroot there are two rows of carrots, four rows of Parsnips (a bit thin as I lost some to a mixture of weeds and too little rainfall) and behind them 16 rows of onions. These are made up of white, red and shallots. I have lost several of these down Alice in Wonderland like holes which have been created by troublesome moles. I'll try to replant them and as I push down to firm the earth the onion, the mud and my fingers all suddenly disappear into the ground without a by your leave.

 Ahhh, the potato patch. I bought a couple of bags of 1st earlies, 2 of second earlies and 2 of Main crop potatoes. Concidering they were meant to all be in the previous bed it is all the more frustrating that the next bed was completely filled up before I even touched the Main crop spuds.
Still as you can see these are nearly ready for harvesting and the few that I have pulled have been smashing.

I have never been very successful with brassicas but so far this years crop is coming on great guns.
In this bed
  I have Broad Beans, Sprouts, Round cabbage, Savoy cabbage, Kale, Courgettes, Sprouting Broccoli and bloody poppies everywhere.

At the far end of the brassicas my runner beans lurk.
 I have used the Hazelnut branches that with the help of some friends we coppiced from the trees in our back-garden.


Yes there are some weeds here and yes I'll get round tuit!

The nearest small bed here has Butternut Squash in the foreground and Maize. There is also a weedy piece of Purple Asparagus which I assume is only in it's second year. I will look after this plant for another year or two when it will then be able to be harvested.

The bed behind is the prolific Asparagus plot and then behind that the Rhubarb patch and the orchard.



Right at the back are two strawberry beds which I planted and we have had about 250g of strawberries so far. We are the only plot where strawberries are ripe already, Mmmmmmmmm!

So that's the status of the Plot at this moment in time. One of the mates of the previous allotment tenant keeps taking photos of the plot to show him how much I have done with his old weed bed. I think it might be an unsolicited service!


I'll leave you with a couple of slightly blurred photos that I took of the many Barn owls that are frequently to be seen around us.

They are a magnificent bird and whilst these pictures were taken at dusk most sightings of them are made around mid to late afternoon. Last year Alison & I watched two adults hunting and taking mice and voles to a barn to feed their young, it was just stonkingly brilliant.





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Marsh Harriers at Cley.....

Over the Spring months I have enjoyed watching the Marsh Harriers at The Norfolk Wildlife Trust near Cley. Every year there are breeding pairs at Cley which feed on the small mammals and young wild fowl chicks that abound in these salt and fresh water marshes.
   We are only about 10 miles from the nature reserve which means I can pop up there any time in the day to watch these fascinating raptors.

The Male

Despite the quantity breeding at Cley these birds are recorded as an Amber risk on the endangered species and so it is a real treat to be able to watch them so close.

Whilst there are really good bird hides available the best way to watch them is simply from the paths through the reeds. Sadly my camera is getting old, a little like me, as it struggles to focus on things that are far away, near, oh and right in front of it. So whilst these pictures are not the cracking ones you'll see on Google Images I am still really pleased with them.

The Female

The male is a fair bit smaller than the female and it appears to me that she is very much the 'boss' of the two. (I know the feeling).
Most of our Harriers migrate to Africa each winter but I believe the ones in the RSPB reserve in Elmley near Sheerness in Kent are resident all year.


They nest in amongst the reeds on the marsh and having established where the nest was I could watch them come and go.

Here the female is about to drop down into the reeds with a twig for the nest as she builds it up. I watched them for sometime collecting nesting material from the side of the lake and bringing them back to the nest site.



I also watched as they hunted but to my shame I have no photographs with any prey in their talons. Still they are feeding their young now and so I still have time to go back and try.



Here the male has his eyes on something tasty whilst below the female is making the strike.

The two of them would also play in the air with each other. Male Harriers like to drop their catches in midair as gifts for the partner to catch and they seemed to be playing this game but without the prey.
They were very acrobatic and more often than not the female would be beneath the male with her head twisted at 180 degrees looking up at him as in the photo below.

The V shape of the wings is a classic pose of a Marsh Harrier. The following are a few more pictures of this courtship 'play'.

Then they would breakaway from this play and go looking for lunch. Lunch ideally being one of the small duck, goose or waders chicks way below on the marsh. However it is not that easy and most parents put up a good fight to protect their young. The most determined of these are the seemingly delicate Avocetes whom in a one to one fight I would lay odds that the Harriers would win. The Avocetes however are tenacious in their drive to protect their fledglings so much so that they take the fight to the Harrier mobbing it continuously until it steps down and moves further along the marsh.

Once again an amazing site to watch and here are a few of my photos of the battles....

A sorte of three Avocetes mob a harrier in the late evening.

You'd think that one beat of the Harriers wing and the Avocete would have been gone!

Eventually they chase the Harrier off.

However the Marsh Harrier strikes elsewhere where resistance is not so debilitating....

So there you have it my whistle stop tour of the Marsh Harriers at Cley. They are still there and will be until late September (probably) so if you can then come up and see them sometime ;)





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Blackbirds

Blackbirds

They came to us one April day,

a pair of love birds looking for a place to stay.

ending their search and ending their roam,

Somewhere they could weave their nested home.

She in her clean coat of leather brown

prim and proper with a chest of fluffy down

spritely, sharp, determined and free,

fit as a fiddle a mother to be.

He an out cast, a shabby oily black,

from the wrong side of town, on the wrong track

missing his lower beak with feathers awry

been through the wars and refusing to die

This strange couple seemingly mismatched,

he from the ghetto a fighter as soon as he hatched.

she from the city and so strong that she thrives

They entered our garden and they entered our lives,

A brace, a couple and a mating pair

She full of grace and he of despair,

And in the dark shadows of the sunlit tangled honeysuckle,

their nest hidden and their eggs kept warm with a loving snuggle.

Each taking their turn to cover the clutch and wait

for the tiny oval eggs to warm and slowly incubate

a duty carried out with an ardor so very dependable

sitting there a guardian, a protector and a sentinel.

April becomes May and the time flies by 

high above Swallows start to fill the bright blue sky,

and one by one new life breaks through

Four little blackbirds with nothing to do.

Defenseless and vulnerable to a risk ridden world

cossetted and protected until their wings unfurled

Blind bald and helpless the future unsure,

The parents work tirelessly until they mature.

Then all of a sudden on one designated day

They take the plunge and try to fly away.

Over the brim that's kept them all in

leaving their kin behind safely within

Mum and Dad fluster as their brood departs

you can sense the tension, the beating hearts.

This odd duo working as one,

feeding the fledglings their life begun.

Within the week two chicks are dead

 a bite to the throat and they are bled

No time for sorrow no time to care

the parents now feed the surviving pair

A few days pass and the babes have departed

two lives and two stories now have started

Oily black and leather brown still remain here

I wonder if they're sad or if they even shed a tear?

One day soon they too shall go

leaving just a nest and the status quo.

I watch this disparate pair with admiration

and see a love and devotion in it's personification.

                                                                m.thomas

 

 

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I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots. All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat: She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat! T S Eliot

This is Scribble,

Scribble is the cat that lives at The Old Bakery.
It would be wrong to say that she is 'our' cat as like all cats she is beholden only to herself.

We have cohabited for about 10 years now and it is fair to say that we both understand, and put up with, each others little foibles.

We brought her into the family from an RSPCA rescue centre along with Mr. Gladstonebags, a big black furry male soppy cat who Scribble doted upon.

Soon after they joined us Gladstone was diagnosed with a heart murmur and given only a year to live. He lived a 'relaxed' life and was seemingly never in discomfort going on to enjoy a further 3 years of life before he finally died.

Scribble clearly had great affection for him and spent many hours washing and grooming him for which he tolerated her with good temper.

They were very close and it was quite a loss to us all when he died but as is often the way with rescue cats you never know of their pre-adoption life and clearly their bond was long and strong. Thus Scribble was clearly saddened that her best buddy had disappeared. It is at times like these that you wished you could talk to your cats, but alas all we could do was give her a spread more of attention and pour on a dollop of extra affection too.



Originally Scribble was my daughter's cat, well the idea was that she was responsible for her but my daughter headed off to University and we were left with Scribble to look after.
I can understand why Claire left her behind, firstly because the Halls have a NO PET policy and
secondly because whenever any of us sit down to do any work Scribble will come up and sit on whatever it is that we need to read.

You can put 10 separate pieces of paper on a desk and only NEED to use one of them and she will seek it out and plump her big furry bottom onto it ~ game over!

We have tried all sorts of tricks to fool her, pretending to read one piece whilst really waiting for her to sit  so we can use another but it is a waste of time, she has the thing off to a fine skill. I'm thinking of entering her on to Britain's Got Talent, she is far cleverer than that dumb dog, however whilst it is a true (and very annoying) talent I really cannot see how it can be put to good use. Perhaps I could hire her out to the people that sell Time Shares and she could discretely sit on the part of the contract that tells the punters they are signing a contract which will tie them in for the rest of their lives. Or I could stick a Royal Charter seal up her butt and she could officially approve all of our new laws on behalf of the Queen as she is starting to delegate more tasks.

The long and the short of it is that whenever you want to get on and do something Scribble turns up and either puts her metaphorical bum in the blinking way and more often than not this involves her putting her actual bum in the way.
Here she decided to sit on the pile of towels that I was stacking, so I just carried on stacking them but she didn't seem to give a hoot.




Time marches on and here we are in different circumstances and a new dynamic. I used to see Scribble early in the morning and then often late in the evening when I returned from my ludicrously long hours working at the Supermarket. It's all changed now of course as my work is this place and Scribble is always 'there'. As a result we have developed a routine much as a retired couple would do and I guess I have become a 'second best' to Gladstonebags as well.


The day starts with Scribble normally waking one of us up with a niggling meooowww out side the bedroom door. Obviously we both pretend to be asleep adding a little snore for effect hoping that the other one will go to feed her (much the same as when the children were babies and wanted feeding in the night). When we are both at our maxim 'acting asleep' capabilities and at warp factor 5 for obstinacy then Scribble will start to scratch and paw the hall carpet whilst emanating a blood curdling wail that will eventually cause one of us to break and get up in a huff thumping across the bedroom floor and making it quite clear to the other person that he or she should have got up instead. Alison can even make a crash and a bash whilst putting on her dressing gown, I admire that.

That reminds me that earlier today I was fooled. I seem to be under a constant barrage of various noises from telephones to Microwaves. It seems that every bit of kit wants to let you know it is there. If you don't open the microwave once it has gone ping then it won't let you forget and a few minutes later it will ping at you again..... then again until you can be arsed to open the door and then close it immediately to shut the darn thing up.
The fridge and the freezer beep at me if I have the door open for too long (in their opinion!).
The fire alarms let a random peep out just to keep me guessing.
And as for my new phone well it rings, beeps, sings, whistles and even knocks at me. The knock makes me jump as it sounds like someone knocking on the window. I don't know what half of these sounds mean or why it is bothering me. All I know is that it does every noise but burp, somethings remain in my domain.
So with this constant shock and awe bombardment of sounds I was totally confused by a 'dingggg' noise that I heard in the bedroom whilst I was drying my hair. Every time I had the towel drying my head I heard this new sound, slightly muffled by the towel, go 'dinngggg'. Well I stopped drying and patiently listened for it. Nothing. So naturally just as I started to dry my hair again... 'Dinngggg'. I'd whip the towel off to try to locate it but it was too late.

I checked my mobile, I checked the alarm, I checked the answer phone, I even looked out the window, still no sign whatsoever of where this 'Ding' came from.

EVENTUALLY as I 'threw the towel in', well onto the bed I found out what it was. Every time I dried my hair the loose end of the towel had kept flicking against the brass bed knob of the bed.... 'Dingggg'........ Duuurrrr!

Back to Scribble. Well as I say we are like an old married couple (without the 'relations' bit just for the record). She'll have breakfast and then have a morning snooze to shake of all that sleeping she had done all night. At about noon she will want to go into the garden to pester some wild life and at about 4:30pm she will come in for her tea.

However this 'partner' obviously doesn't speak the same language as me, OR should I say that I don't speak the same language as her for we are both equals in this inability to communicate. When Alison is at home well then I'm in the majority and feel superior to the cat but when it is just us two and I'm trying to tell her something or she is meowing something or other to me well it is just like trying to speak to a foreigner. I remember trying to explain to a french garage mechanic that my cars clutch was slipping. What an earth is the french for clutch slipping? It ended up with me doing an embarrassing charade, Marcel Marceau style. Well Scribble will come to me with a longing meow and I won't have a clue what she is saying but that doesn't stop her just as a true brit will use the shout it louder technique with Jonny foreigner Scribble uses the persistence method in the belief if she says it often enough I'll get it.

Eventually we both give up either she will walk off with a grump or I'll go into another room and shut the door so I can't hear her. That normally resolves it for me. Perhaps the power of the door handle gives me that superiority back after all. 

So we bumble on and in the evening she jumps up onto my lap and will flop out there until I go to bed only getting off when I have to go to the loo, which seems to happen more often now days.

We were watching a great Horizon TV programme in which they tracked 50 cats in a small village for 1 week with GPS devices. They over layed the cats movements on to a map of the village and you could clearly see how far they had traveled. Many had gone to a neighbours house and eaten their cats food and some had gone to a near by farm. If you did this with Scribble it would just be a line between the sofa, the food bowl, our bedroom and my lap...... You'd just have a blob to illustrate all her movement.

She is a pest at times and comforting at other times. Most of the guests adore her, even the guy that was allergic to cats liked her. So with all life long partners we just have to live with the foibles and tolerate the differences of opinion and concentrate on the positives, she's cute, she's fairly cheap and she is house trained.......  And the cat is OK to live with as well!!

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