Very warm today. Dot has being doing a little work in the garden, and we have just sat in the garden listening to the weekly Julian podcast, followed by a walk up to the Cathedral. Our various packages arrived, and so we have started on the Cley Smokehouse pates, and Dot has eaten her dressed crab. We have also made a start on the new Neal’s Yard cheese; so we are living quite well.
We had a minor Zoom issue at St Augustine’s last Sunday, when Carrie couldn’t utter a sound for no apparent reason. That wouldn’t have mattered so much, but she should have been giving a talk; in the end Howard read out a copy of it. Pity – would probably have been better directly from her. But she has been having a hard time of it recently, with members of her family ill or in difficulties. Not unusual, but… Her husband Al is now having antibiotic injections for a leg infection.
Monday continued warm, and we were FaceTimed by the Murrays. We agreed how lucky we were with our children and how happy we were that they were together. It is quite extraordinary, really. We walked up to the Rosary and then watched The Enforcer, with Humphrey Bogart, an old film which was strangely stilted, but quite amusing, though it wasn’t meant to be. Apparently the idea that criminal “contracts” on people involved killing them was quite new at the time. Later we watched Slumdog Millionaire, which was excellent. I thought I’d seen it, but I hadn’t.
Tuesday was still warm but with cloud. We did a longer walk to the Cathedral, and Dot sorted out the Hello Fresh boxes, which we discovered can no longer be returned. She also cleaned out the freezer. I’ve been working much harder (ho, ho), writing three poems in a couple of days. Not sure how good they are. We also watched Top Hat (Astaire and Rogers), which was wonderful because Astaire and Rogers are wonderful. Quite funny too. We also watched most of Unorthodox on Netflix, because it was highly recommended by the Murrays.
The next day we watched the rest of Unorthodox, which is about a woman who breaks free of an Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg and goes to Berlin. There was a lot more to it than that, and it was very well done. The next day we watched Educating Rita, which we couldn’t help noticing had a very similar theme to Unorthodox, in that the young woman involved was trying to break free from a stultifying background by becoming educated. Again, much more subtle than it sounds, and the acting was brilliant, as was the writing (by Willy Russell).
Earlier that day Dot had gone for quite a long walk with Anne out at Poringland. When she got back we had lunch (I had stayed in because we were expecting deliveries), and I then went for slightly longer walk than usual on my own, trying to find a couple of Tudor houses that Peter Stibbons was looking for because they had been rendered into a 3D digital form by a group whose name I have forgotten, and if they were Paston-related he was going to try and borrow them for his fast-expanding Paston page. I had a couple of ideas but they were wrong. In the end I found one of them at 24 Princes Street, which may have been a Paston site, but who knows? It certainly wasn’t a Paston house.
When I got home I thought I might be able to find the other one online, and eventually I did. It turned out to be Bacon House on Colegate, and it had a historical connection to Kett’s Rebellion in that it was owned by the Sheriff of Norwich, Henry Bacon, at the time of the Rebellion (1549), and he sheltered the Earl of Warwick when he was being chased by rebels. There is a Paston connection to the Rebellion, but probably not enough to make it a Paston site. Quite satisfying to have found it, though.
On Thursday, which was again warm, we took the radical decision to drive to North Walsham and put some roses from our garden on the graves there. That went well: we met a guy of 91 who was visiting his wife’s grave: she had died 10 months ago and he went up every day. He stood a bit close to me, but I couldn’t push him away – also I have developed a deafness in my left ear which makes social distancing quite difficult.
Afterwards we intended to go to Happisburgh, but we got diverted to Walcott, which was packed with cars; so we gave it a miss. Happisburgh car park was closed because of you-know-what, and we gave up the idea of walking on the beach, partly because the toilets were all shut as well, and we needed to use some. So we went home, pausing only to pick up my prescription from the chemist’s. This took about 24 hours to order, as opposed to four or five days before the crisis.
When we got home and had used the toilets, we walked over the Julian Bridge so that Dot could see the new development, and the ancient house that’s falling down. I put a picture of this on Facebook. It looks pretty dangerous to me. The house, not Facebook.
Mark has not come back; so presumably he made it to Alabama all right. On Thursday evening we did what is said to be the final “clap” for NHS and other key workers, and last night we did the special Aspland Roadwine evening to commemorate VE Day+21. More people attended from lower down the road, including the new occupants of the flat next to Des. I had quite a long chat with Freddie, who seems to have some good ideas about what he wants as a career, and some good contacts too. I think he should be OK. Phoebe brought out her ukulele again, but only played it very quietly.
Had a FaceTime with David and Amy, who was very disappointed that we knew nothing about the Elon Musk space launch due tonight. We are going to try and catch it at 8pm to restore her faith in us.