North Walsham in Bloom?

Earlier today I was walking into town with my 9 year old when we passed some of North Norfolk's finest middle-aged ladies working on one of the many lovely floral displays in our town. There they were, sporting high-viz jackets in the sweltering midday heat pruning, weeding, watering and planting.
My son sidled up to me wearing a rather perplexed, concerned expression. He tugged at my sleeve and threw a glance in the direction of the gardeners. "Mummy", he hissed. "What do you think they've done wrong?" Now it was my turn to be bemused. I looked across at the bank where they were working, searching for a badly placed petunia or an overlooked weed, but all looked perfection to me. "What do you mean, wrong?", I asked. "Well", he replied. "Aren't they doing that thing that you get instead of going to prison?"
I had to stifle a guffaw. He clearly though that the good folk of the 'North Walsham in Bloom' committee were minor felons, serving their time in the public glare, and I began to imagine what sorts of crimes these green-fingered grannies might be guilty of. Perhaps one of them had been speeding round Waitrose on a mobility scooter? Another one looked the sort who might have been caught pilfering a packet of Tena Lady from Roys, during a senior moment, of course, not on purpose. Other possible misdemeanours included force-feeding grandchildren choc-ices (my own Welsh grandmother would have been hung, drawn and quartered for that one!) and wearing pop socks with a skirt.
The more I think about it, the more being a middle-aged delinquent appeals. I think I'd better start making my list now!

New Year's Resolutions

Many of you will already know or will have worked out that I am a teacher and I so I have always treated September as my New Year rather than the traditional January 1st. As the new term begins I thought I would share a few of my resolutions with you.

1. I will not get wound up by slow drivers on the way into work. 42 miles per hour is a perfectly reasonable speed on a straight open road in perfect weather conditions. Tractors have every right to be on the road during the morning rush hour without pulling over to let people pass and the mobile speed camera van going at 15 miles an hour below the speed limit ALL the way from North Walsham to Norwich is absolutely fine by me.

2. I am not going to swear, at least not much, unless it really is necessary. I think I'll have a 'swear box' and put a pound into my Sancerre fund every time I use a profanity.

3. I am going to keep my Mark Book beautiful. This has been one of my resolutions for the last 17 years and I still haven't achieved it. There will be no crossings out, no gaps, no use of multi-coloured pens. If a new pupil joins my class late in the term they will have to change their surname to something beginning with 'Y' or 'Z' so I can put them on the end without ruining the alphabetical list. For example 'Jack Cooke' would be offered the choice of 'Jack Yooke' or 'Jack Zooke'.

4. I will not get half way through September and start feeding my family ready meals, pizza or Weetabix for tea.

5. I will not even once threaten to resign and go and work in Tesco. However, Waitrose might be a different matter altogether.

6. I will not get depressed about the fact that I probably have another 24 years teaching ahead of me and that my pension is currently something like £26.78 lump sum and £1.54 a month.

7. I won't hit November and start going to bed at 8.30 just so I can survive the next day. Sad lamp and vitamin D instead.

To see how I am getting on visit http://normalfornnorfolk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/new-years-resolutions-24-hours-in.html

The North Walsham Mafia

I don't like to talk about this much in public for fear of waking up one morning to find a horse's head in my bed, but my husband is a member of a big North Walsham gang. I blame his friend Dennis for getting him into it. He came home one day a few years ago and told me he was going to a Rotary meeting. I thought this seemed harmless enough at the time but how wrong I was. It has taken over his life and is much more than the innocent fund-raising jamboree which it presents itself as. That is the acceptable face of Rotary. I am going to take you into an underworld of politics, back-biting and pavlovas that you never knew existed.
To begin with I managed  to keep out of it but then the phone calls started. These mainly came during the afternoon at about 3.30 when the advert break during Countdown was on. Sometimes I was home from work by this time and would see the 01692 area code on my caller display and know it was one of them. "Oh hello my dear, Cedric here. Is Geof in? No? Oh, you're his secretary are you? Ha ha. Could you just take down this message for him please." On other occasions I would be out, but pick up a message.  It is worth mentioning at this point that many Rotarians are ex services and old habits die hard. "Geof! Reg here.Thursday 3.01 pm. Just phoning with some figures for you to look at so maybe you could get back to me. Message ends Thursday 3.02"
Next came Geof's involvement in various events, with pieces of paper blu-tacked to the kitchen cupboards. My personal favourite was in the early months of his membership when he was called upon to help put up a stall for the Rotary stand at the Christmas Fair in town. When he joined he was 50 and managed overnight to halve the average age of members. Therefore, being a 'youngster' he would get called upon for any jobs which involved physical activity. As I glanced up at my kitchen cupboard I could not believe what I saw. There in bold font were instructions for the Christmas Fair under the heading 'ERECTION TEAM'. Perhaps this was going to end up being one of North Walsham's more memorable events?
Anyway, the years passed, the Rotary Chairmen died and were replaced. Then in December last year things took a nasty turn. The new Waitrose had opened here and it was time for the Christmas collection.  Naturally our Rotary wanted to collect outside Waitrose but the Bure Valley branch had already bagged that spot, and so the Turf War began. By now I was the North Walsham Treasurer's Bitch and was worried that I might start getting death threats from the Inner Wheel (that's the one they let the little ladies join apparently). How would I meet my end? By eating ricin-laced lemon curd? Maybe I would be found with crochet needles in my eyes or get bundled into the boot of a Honda and driven off Cromer Pier?

However, there's not much that a change of name and identity and a bit of help from the witness protection programme can't resolve. They still haven't caught up with us and I even managed to make a public appearance at the Lord Mayor's Banquet earlier this year. I nearly gave the game away what with being about the only person there who could walk un-aided but I think I got away with it ...

What's in a name?

Apparently the most likely names for the new Royal Baby are Alexandra for a girl, or George if it's a boy. The only reason I would be remotely interested in William and Kate's choice of name for their first-born would be if I had placed a hefty bet on it. I haven't, so I'm not.
Nevertheless, names do mean so much, don't they? I'm not sure how this works in other cultures and I would be most interested to hear from any overseas readers on this topic, but here in good old Blighty, you can definitely tell a thing or two about a chap (or chapess) from the name they have.
When we were choosing names for our first (and last) born my choice was definitely limited due to having been a teacher for so long. Every name seemed to have some sort of memory associated with it and more often than not it was a negative one. One of Geof's suggestions was 'Kyle'. Now I am really sorry but every Kyle I have taught has been trouble with a capital K. It's a name I associate with small children being yelled at in supermarkets (Lidl, not Waitrose of course). My dear husband also suggested 'Jamal', a gorgeous name I am sure, but possibly one which would result in him being stopped and interrogated at airports on a regular basis. Why not go the whole hog and christen him 'Death to the Infidel' just to be sure.
However, we both liked 'Bryn', each having separate but happy memories of holidays spent in Wales. Phew! Sorted and at only 20 weeks pregnant. Ah, but what about a middle name? I really wanted it to be 'Morgan' my mother's maiden name. At least that way I would always be able to answer the security question to reset my password. However, Geof thought that 'Bryn Morgan Harrison' sounded like an accountancy firm.  He had a point I suppose so we went for a bit of biblical with 'Reuben'.
You can have a lot of fun with names too. I'm sure you've all worked out you film star name using your middle name plus a park near to where you grew up. Mine would be 'Kathryn The Rec'. Mmmm maybe not. A recent one doing the rounds was your rock band name. For this you used the colour of your underwear plus the last food you ate. Following on from my 'Inner Baptist' post you won't believe this but mine was 'Black Quiche'!
I work in a Catholic school, and when the new pope was being elected we had a great time deciding what our 'Pope Name' would be. I know, we don't get out much. To do this we looked at the saints' names calendar, looked for our birthdays and selected a name. I went for 'Pope Casimir Humbert'.
So, names do mean quite a bit. That's why we are unlikely to ever see a 'Queen Chardonnay' in our green and pleasant land.

A nice bit of British classism

As you all know by now I have what some may consider an unhealthy obsession with the relative merits of local supermarkets. I do particularly like the posh one up the road from me and when I go there I feel all middle class and grown up as I choose between the chargrilled artichokes and the olive and manchego platter. However, on a recent visit I was left feeling quite shocked and confused after spotting a customer buying a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper. Now I don’t like to be judgmental but I’m going to be anyway. To explain to anyone from a different country who may be reading this, ‘The Sun’ contains pictures of scantily clad ladies, no news and could easily be accessed by someone with a reading age of 7. In a nutshell, it is not what you expect ‘Waitrose’ clientèle to be buying.

When I relayed this dismaying news to a friend, he asked if I was sure they weren’t buying  ‘The Sun’ in a kind of post-modern ironic way, a bit like people who send their children to fee-paying schools buy ‘The Guardian’. (Kerrching! I have now managed to alienate the remaining 50% of my friends, the ones who were smugly chuckling about ‘The Sun’) I assured him that this was not the case as I had overheard them talking and they didn’t even know how to pronounce ‘cous-cous’ properly. I grabbed my elderflower and raspberry terrine and practically ran out of there.
This story takes me back to the early days of my marriage. A semi-
famous soap star had died in an accident and the only paper covering in was ‘The Mirror’. I asked my husband Geof to buy a copy on his way home so I could read about it. He said he would, but that he would have to divorce me afterwards!

(Disclaimer – I love all my friends and family. I don’t care what newspaper you read, where you shop, where your kids go to school. You are all lovely, warm, caring people and that is what matters!)