Very warm and quite busy few days, especially for Dot, who has completed a church school inspection at East Rudham, looked round a vicar’s garden at West Raynham and actually completed the report in time for us to leave for Blakeney early on Friday afternoon. This was for our annual reunion session with the Evetts and with Alan and Rosemary – the remaining six of an initial 13 of us, back at the turn of the century. It turned out to be probably the best weather so far, if measured in terms of heat. Shortly after our arrival we went for a walk along the river, but soon headed back to the Blakeney Hotel for our traditional tea and scones in the upstairs lounge, with a nice view across the estuary. We were in fact staying at the Manor Hotel as usual, which is about half as expensive and much more than half as good. Our room had been refurbished, and the food was of a pretty high standard as always. I had a lamb shank on the first night (Murray, eat your heart out) and a sirloin steak on the second.
On the Saturday Dave, Julia, Dot and I drove to Brancaster Ship Hotel, which has been beautifully refurbished. We had tea and coffee there before heading out on our walk, which I took from Ralph (Will) Martin’s Pub Strolls book. He suggested it was 3½ miles, but this is a typical RM underestimate: we measured 4½, and we missed out a short section at the beginning. True, we did walk round an additional field, but it certainly wasn’t a mile in circumference. We were trying to find Branodunum, the Roman settlement, at the time, but it appears to be invisible (if that’s not an oxymoron). On the plus side, it was an excellent walk, though we were pretty warm by the time we got back to the Ship for our Light Bite lunch, which was exotic and delicious. I had a fried duck egg with some shrimps and mustard. We called in at Big Blue Sky on the way back and discovered they had sold four of the ten poetry books of mine they bought a couple of years ago. Yippee!
On the Sunday we went to Cookie’s for lunch, but not before Dot and I had taken another stroll by the river and called in on Godfrey Sayers, a rather good landscape artist who has a regular caravan display slot on the carnser. He used to be fan of my EDP column (no accounting for taste) and we had been corresponding by e-mail recently. Dot introduced me to him, and we had a pleasant chat. At Cookie’s I nearly took Julia’s leg off when I drove off while she was still getting out of the car, but she not only survived but stopped the door hitting anything too. What a hero! Yes, very clumsy on my part: I thought I’d heard three doors slam, but clearly I hadn’t.
We drove the Evetts back to their car at the Manor Hotel, and this time let them get out completely before driving off back to Norwich, in plenty of time for the World Cup match between a team purporting to represent England and what my late mother-in-law would have called “some foreign team”. Yes, it was England v Germany again, and I have rarely seen England play so badly. Whatever you say about the manager or the system, you have to question why the players can’t keep the ball, can’t ever beat an opposition player, can’t tackle and can’t shoot. In the end I was hoping Germany would win 6-1. They only managed four, and admittedly England were laughably deprived of a goal because the referee and linesman didn’t notice the ball was about a metre over the line (that is not hyperbole). But then again in the next match Mexico laughably conceded a goal against Argentina which was so obviously offside that you wondered if the officials were at the same game. That’s sport for you. The good thing about the English result was that the fans could not even be outraged, we were so bad.