After a damp start, our East Anglian summer warmed up nicely during August. It dried up too, with hardly a drop for our thirsty plot. It’s been perfect weather for bringing in the crops. Ancient lanes hereabouts have vibrated to the rattle of massive farm machinery driven by burly farmhands. Time to make hay while the sun shines. Such is harvest time in England’s breadbasket.
August also witnessed the bonfire of the boats. A row of pleasure craft went up in flames on the nearby River Chet. The inferno spewed thick, choking smoke that could be seen for miles around. We’re used to the never-ending march of walkers passing by our gate. We weren’t expecting fire crews from across two counties. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
Courtesy of Facebook
And we saw an increase in pretend dogfights above our heads – loud and menacing. Jet fighters from a nearby NATO air base thundered across the hazy skies, playing catch-me-if-you-can. Let’s hope it remains just a training exercise.
We binned the car in 2014 so, unsurprisingly, good public transport is important to us. That’s why we chose a village close to Norwich with a decent bus service – regular and reliable. And Norwich has fast and frequent train services to London for our big city fixes and family stuff. All in all, it works well most of the time. But when the wheels come off, they come off in spectacular style.
Our most recent jolly was a trip to The Old Smoke for a family affair – lunch and a stopover in London’s Spitalfields district.
But then…
… a water main burst, blocking the main road to Norwich. Buses were on divert. That’s ok, we thought, we’ll just give ourselves extra time. After a grand tour of the pretty hamlets of the county, we made our train – just.
And then…
… some poor soul was killed on the tracks just outside London. All trains on the line ground to a halt while emergency services attended the scene. That’s ok, we thought, we’ll just be a bit late. No big deal when compared to the loss of a life.
We were late, but not too late and the lunch went ahead without further ado. Afterwards, we checked into our trendy digs for the night and happened upon a traditional East End boozer to finish off our jolly with a flourish. We were safely tucked up in our comfy bed by drinking up time.
And then…
… we awoke fuzzy-headed to find the water was off the menu – for us, for everyone. You can imagine the commotion in reception. That’s ok, we thought. We had just enough of a trickle for a whore’s wipe, and we’ll get a refund too.
At least our train back to Norwich left on time.
And then…
… a vehicle damaged a level crossing. All trains on the line ground to a halt while emergency services attended the scene. That’s ok, we thought, we’re not in any rush.
We were late, but not too late. Back in Norfolk, the burst water main was still bursting water and buses were still on divert to a hit-and-miss schedule. We waited patiently at Norwich Bus Station. We even had time for a coffee and a custard cream. The bus eventually arrived and we started another grand tour of the pretty hamlets of the county.
And then…
… as we approached a roundabout, the bus ground to a halt. We saw a plume of nasty black smoke in the distance and spotted a vehicle on fire at the roundabout. We were held in a queue while emergency services attended the scene. This is not so ok, we thought.
Our driver finally received orders from Mission Control. “Turn back and we’ll find you a different route.” U-turning a double-decker bus on a minor country road with nose-to-nipple traffic is no mean feat but our valiant driver managed it, ably assisted by a couple of gung-ho passengers. Back on the road, we went on another grand tour of the pretty hamlets of the county. Brooke is particularly pretty. I should know; we drove through it twice. Mission Control then sent us down a pretty country lane and pretty country lanes aren’t really designed for double-deckers.
And then…
… a double-decker approached us from the opposite direction. “That’s ok,” our driver said. “I’ll just reverse into a side road – simples!” And that’s what he did. The oncoming bus passed without further ado. Off we went to the next pretty village along the pretty lane.
And then…
… the lane narrowed and a second double-decker approached us from the opposite direction. With cars backing up, we had nowhere to go except forwards. Our driver attempted inching past the other bus. And it almost worked. But, with a loud metallic bang, bus scraped bus and the window next to us shattered, spraying us with shards of safety glass. We leapt from our seats. The game was up. We were on the road to nowhere.
After mooching around for a while waiting for something to happen, I said, “Sod this for a game of soldiers, let’s walk.”
Home was about three miles along the pretty lane.
And then…
… it started to rain. “That’s not ok,” I said.
After about a mile, a passing car stopped ahead. Hallelujah, it was someone we know. A knight in shining armour. We were saved. Also saved were a couple of other strays from the bus crunch. Thank you, Sir Galahad. You know who you are.
So then…
… we went straight to the pub.
With thanks to members of the Loddon Eye Faceache group for the burning car and bus crunch images.
My poor Liam fell badly and broke a couple of ribs. Naturally, most people assume he was a little worse for wear after a few sherries. In that case, he would have bounced. No, he slipped on some icy decking in broad daylight and cracked his back on a wooden planter – big ouch! Attractive it may be but decking can be treacherous at this time of year. Despite the cocktail of painkillers prescribed by the quack, Liam’s still in considerable discomfort, though it’s slowly easing.
I feel his pain. Many years ago, I broke a rib falling off a ladder. I wasn’t pissed either but, I confess, my wobbly ascent, rooted as it was in shingle, was an accident waiting to happen. It didn’t have to wait for long.
In the meantime, Liam is confined to the sofa, propped up with some pillows, popping pills and bored silly by a daytime diet of quiz shows and ‘classic’ episodes of Coronation Street. For my sins, I’m acting as good nurse, dispensing TLC and peeling grapes as required. As I dance in attendance I’m trying not to make him laugh because it hurts. Liam’s developed a taste for Cadbury’s Twirl and sends me out into the cold to feed his new addiction.
Perking the Pansies has recently passed its seventh birthday. It’s quite a milestone, I think. Most personal blogs are lucky to make it beyond the terrible twos. I still write it because I still enjoy it and I’m chuffed that enough punters still pop by to catch up on my news and views, rants and rambles. You make a fading fairy very happy. As it’s the turn of the year, it’s top ten time once again. So, ladies and gents, and those who are both, neither or someone in between…
The top two promised smut but delivered something altogether more innocent. I do hope visitors weren’t too let down, but this does demonstrate the value of a good headline, the ruder the better or so it seems. The also rans are an eclectic pick ‘n’ mix of danger and disability, dotage and death, beards and biography, civic history and doing the right thing.
In these social media-obsessed times, the most shared post was Home Sweet Home, an image-rich homily to little ol’ Norwich, published while Liam and I were away livin’ the vida loca, Greek-style.
And the most popular single image in 2017 (ever, in fact)?
When we first moved into the micro-loft we tarted up the bathroom and fitted a fancy new shower screen. But East Anglian water is so hard it almost hurts – calcifying kettles quicker than Medusa’s stare – and I soon tired of the elbow grease needed to keep the fancy shower screen fancy. So we replaced it with an easy-wash shower curtain in electric blue. Sorted.
But what to do with the fancy shower screen? There’s not a lot of storage in the micro-loft (the clue’s in the micro) so we decided to ask the Council to take it away. In the meantime, we just slid it under our bed and forgot all about it.
Twelve months on and we returned to the micro-loft one afternoon to find the entire bedroom floor covered in glass fragments. It didn’t compute at first. You know, those times when you just can’t believe your eyes? Then the penny dropped – the fancy shower screen. It had exploded – everywhere. The biggest bang our bed had experienced in years. And the effect was almost artistic – the kind of thing that wins the Turner Prize.
It took hours to sweep up and I put my back out in the process.
The moral of this explosive story? Simple. Don’t store a fancy shower screen under your bed.
You need a second mortgage to park in Norwich city centre. When we moved into the micro-loft, we flogged the sexy-arsed Mégane (to my sister) and Liam now rides the bus to work. He no longer risks life and limb on the narrow country lanes with their tail-gating yokels, blind bends, loose livestock and black ice.
Bus travel in Norfolk belongs to a bygone era. People still (mostly) queue at bus stops and drivers apologise for being late. Just imagine that! It’s the kind of civilised behaviour long since abandoned in London, a place where the law of the urban jungle prevails and it’s survival of the fittest. The last time I visited the Smoke, a bright red double decker actually yelled at me. Over and over it screamed…
This bus is under attack. Call 999!
I’m delighted to confirm it was a slip of the driver’s wrist. Still, it was enough to wake the dead and give nervy tourists on-the-spot seizures. The hapless driver was frantically trying to switch off the announcement as the bus cruised slowly by. After events in Paris, Beirut, Turkey and elsewhere, I felt his pain.
The beauty of renting is that we’re not responsible for all those annoying little things that inevitably go wrong around the home. We had a dodgy boiler that refused to heat water (though it was more than happy to heat the radiators, even when not asked). Our friendly landlady despatched a boiler-suited chatty man with cute dimples. He installed a brand new heat exchanger (No idea? Me neither). I provided tea for his labours and listened intently to my boiler man recall his boiler tales. A dull date on a Saturday night, I thought. Despite the cute dimples.
Then we became undone by a temperamental washing machine that only spun when it could be arsed. The reluctant spin went on for weeks. We were seriously in danger of being buried under sopping piles of dripping undies. Our landlady dispatched a smiley man in baggy bottoms and a corporate polo top. I provided tea for his labours as he tried to wring a final spin out of the moody machine. “It’s knackered,” he concluded. His home-spun words were music to my ears. I almost invited him out for dinner.
A week later, our landlady despatched a replacement appliance escorted by a thick-set older man with an even thicker-set accent. He was accompanied by a spotty young apprentice. “Where’s it plugged in?” asked the old man. “Absolutely no idea,” I replied. After a lot of huffing and puffing, hauling and heaving, he found the socket behind the fridge. Then I watched him slice the live wire with a Stanley knife. The loud bang almost gave me a seizure. Unlike me, he wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the black flume and strong whiff of electrical burn or the fact that he’d blown all the sockets in the kitchen. The young spotty thing was shocked into silence. For one brief moment, I thought I’d been beamed back to Bodrum where all workers are fully qualified electricians/plumbers/carpenters/roofers/rocket scientists (delete as appropriate).
Laurel and Hardy didn’t get tea for their trouble, I can tell you. Well, the kettle wasn’t working.
After the big freeze comes the inevitable big thaw as temperatures rise to their seasonal norm. The glaciers of Norwich are gently melting to a sloppy slush of dirty grey and iced water gently trickles away into sewers. My bruised back is gradually recovering from my big trip and I can venture out once more without fear of slippage and indignity. Before the cold snap becomes yesterday’s news, I give one last cold snap of my own – our patio table looking like a giant iced sponge on a silver cake stand.
Norwich City Council in its municipal wisdom has decided that gritting pavements isn’t their bag. While city streets are generally clear, the continuing arctic snap means that unsuspecting pedestrians risk their dignities and their coccyxes attempting to skate along the glacial footpaths. People are dropping like nine pins judging by the amateur footage taken by a voyeuristic resident of Duke Street. Yesterday, I was gingery trying to navigate the Tombland icecap. My thick-tread winter boots did not save me from an arse-over-tit, ice scream tumble that nearly put me into an early grave. It hurt. I think I’ll sue. It’s all the rage these days.
St Andrew’s and Blackfriars’ Halls (known collectively as ‘The Halls’) is a 13th century medieval complex at the end of our street and the best preserved friary in England. The riot of sturdy buttresses, hammer beams and Gothic arches is one of the ‘Norwich 12‘ – a list of the most iconic buildings in the city. When Henry VIII decided to strip the Catholic Church of all its power and wealth, the friary was dissolved, the friars were cast out into the cold and the buildings were put up for sale. They were saved by the intervention of the Mayor of Norwich who took them off fat Harry’s hands for £81, pledging to use the halls “…for the good of the citizens, for fairs and feasting.” The Halls have been used for secular knees-ups ever since. Carrying on the 450 year old party tradition, St Andrew’s Hall has just played grand host to the Norwich Beer Festival, a six day piss-up sponsored by the Norwich and Norfolk branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). Real ales are for real males judging by the herd of nerds in knitwear corralled outside a side door having a quick fag before resuming their drunken orgy and sucking the kegs dry. I was so fascinated by the species that I walked straight into a lamp post and nearly knocked myself out. And I was the sober one. Cheers!
Another lovely old face after it walked into a lamp post
Perking the Pansies 