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

An Old Norfolk Proverb

Having just travelled the familiar road from North Walsham to Fakenham on a Bank Holiday Monday, I have come up with my very own Norfolk Proverb.
'Caravan behind you, happiness. Caravan in front of you, misery.'
This would also apply if you are towing a caravan (or thought you were), so I like to think there is something for everyone here.

Happy Birthday Ronnie!

I have just found myself singing Happy Birthday to our cat Ronnie who is a year old today. This was at Bryn's insistence, you understand, and not something I would have freely engaged in otherwise.

Ronnie as a cute kitten

So, what has our little feline friend managed to accomplish in his first year of life? Here are a few of the highlights for you.

• He is pretty good at playing the piano and is often heard tinkling on the ivories late at night. Whilst this can be disconcerting it is not as alarming as his sister Coco who has learnt to turn the TV on and is apparently partial to a bit of late night viewing.

• He has managed to clock up 8 visits to the vet's including two anaesthetics, an operation, an endoscopy, several shots of steroids and two courses of antibiotics. Sounds like a normal night out in North Walsham to me.

• He has eaten approximately 30 kg of dried food and 600 pouches of meat but still prefers to chomp on rotting sparrow entrails and flies or to steal leftovers from the hedgehog.

• He is very helpful when it comes to wrapping presents, as I found out at Christmas. Even though it is August we are also still finding stray baubles which he knocked off the tree and rolled under sofas or behind furniture. They are currently sitting on the mantelpiece and will probably stay there until we decorate again in December.

• His best trick to date was jumping in a bowl of pea and ham soup and then proceeding to re-decorate the lounge with it.

• He is a handsome, affectionate, funny little chap and I hope he will be with us for many years to come just with fewer visits to the vet's.

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 ...

Match of the Day

Having spent what seems like an awful long time yesterday watching 'A Decade of Great Goals' with my son and his friend, and listening to them talk football incessantly I have the following Breaking News for you.

 

The BBC have announced that, due to cost cutting, Match of the Day is no longer going to be broadcast from Salford Quays but from the less well known Millfield Road studios in North Walsham. Further savings will be made by replacing the regular presenters with Bryn 'they think it's all over' Harrison and Josh 'it's a game of 2 halves' Parker with guest appearances from Ronnie 'which one is Iniesta?' Harrison. Concerns have been raised about the relative lack of experience of these two unknown pundits, but fears have been laid to rest given that they are 8 years old and therefore know everything.

Fifty Shades of North Norfolk: Chapter 1

I have been known to comment that the only thing even remotely 'Fifty Shades of Grey' in my life is my 15 year old M&S underwear. You know the sort I mean. The knickers which have been up the hoover a few times and the bras which have been washed to within an inch of their cotton-polyester lives.
I have never read so much as a word of the 'Fifty Shades' series and have no wish to. However, I have seen enough spoofs and heard enough snippets from friends to have a reasonable grasp of the content of the books. So, I thought I'd have a shot at my very own, much tamed down North Norfolk version.

Tina could hardly contain her excitement. Later she was going out on her first date with Dean. They had gone to school together back in the 80s when Dean cut quite a dashing figure at the end-of-term disco in his flecked trousers, slip on shoes and piano keyboard tie. They met again years later at the supermarket in North Walsham where they both worked. Dean was on the hot food counter and Tina worked at the kiosk selling cigarettes and scratch cards.
Dean wasn't like the other men she had known. He had a bit of class about him, like the fact that he bought his track-suits from Roys rather than QD. That's what had first attracted her to him. He was a bit different. One day she had overheard him chatting during a fag break and had been impressed when he said he'd once been to London. Tina had never really been out of Norfolk. She didn't see the point when she had everything she needed on the doorstep. Fields, tractors, farm animals, Christopher's Bakery. She later found out that he'd actually said he'd once been to *'Loddon', but by then it didn't matter. She was already head over heels.
Tina put down her copy of 'Take a Break'. Dean was coming to pick her up in a few minutes. When they'd arranged the date he'd said he wanted to take her up Cromer Pier (or Crooma Pair as it's pronounced round these parts) and she had giggled, thinking that this was a euphemism for something altogether less innocent, but he had remained serious and she realised that what he had meant was that he wanted to take her up Cromer Pier...to do a spot of crabbing, he said.
She heard the sound of a car pulling up outside and drew back the net curtains to take a look. He was on time; that was a good sign. She slipped the key into the lock and opened the door....


*Loddon is a small town in S. Norfolk

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!)

Supermarket Turf Wars

Food shopping in North Walsham can be a frustrating experience especially if, like me, you are not blessed with a huge amount of patience. I tend to do my main grocery shops on-line, which perhaps makes me even more irritable when it comes to actually going into the store.
Until recently there was only really one supermarket in North Walsham and whilst I like their products, their customer service leaves much to be desired. As I normally only pop in for a few items I do not consider it wholly unreasonable to expect that such forays would last a matter of minutes rather than hours. Not so. (Ok, allow me a little poetic licence please)
Let's say, for argument's sake, that I have bread, milk, eggs and wine (or Mummy juice as Bryn used to call it) in my BASKET. As I have a BASKET I make my way to the BASKET only checkout only to be greeted with a queue of more mature people with TROLLEYS. There is only one, single, solitary BASKET only checkout in this supermarket. There are 7 or 8 TROLLEY checkouts. Why do you do it? Can you not read or do you just choose not to?
On one or two occasions, God forgive me, I have been persuaded to use the 'Self Checkout' tills. Now that's a mistake I will not be making again. It is quicker to queue behind the trolley pensioners believe me. 'Unexpected item in bagging area'. YES! THAT WILL BE THE SEVERED HEAD OF WHICHEVER GREY-SUITED MIDDLE MANAGER THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO INSTALL THESE ****** THINGS!
Then, just before Christmas last year a new more 'upmarket' store opened just down the road. Very polite staff, lots of basket only spaces and so convenient for those few bits and pieces I always forget. OK, you need to re-mortgage the house or sell a kidney to shop there but it's worth it!