Busy week. Carrie turned up in hospital, but is recovering. Meanwhile I’ve met Sandra, who I’m collaborating with for the Norwich 20 Group exhibition. She lives off Earlham Road and showed me a series of pictures she’s doing on Norwich. Happily, I really like them, and we found we were on a similar wavelength, so it should go well. I have written a poem, and it may or may not be the final one: I’m quite pleased with it. It’s called Stretched Stone. At the moment, anyway. However, I was then approached by another artist who wanted to collaborate, and after some initial caution (wasn’t sure I should be collaborating with more than one artist for this exhibition) it transpired that she knows Sandra, who is quite happy about it. I should see her next week: I’ve left a message on her answerphone. Exciting times!

On Tuesday Dot went out to a couple of schools at Tacolneston and Wreningham, wearing her DSSO hat, and I had a long list of things to do, all of which were completed and have now been forgotten. On Wednesday she spent the first part of the day with Barbara at Metfield discussing the P4C project, while I walked to Surrey Chapel to deliver my talk to Joy’s afternoon group. Turned out I had completely underestimated the length of it, which meant it was rather unbalanced, with the poetry only just scraping in at the end. Rather too much on my early life, I suspect. Still, could have been worse.

On Dot’s return from Metfield we travelled to the King’s Head at Bircham, which is a lovely hotel, quite sophisticated in an unpretentious sort of way. Quite difficult sometimes to find a member of staff on the premises, but a very warm welcome when you did run into them. We had a good meal in the evening, and I indulged in steak, which was excellent. The next day I took Dot to her inspection at Flitcham school, about five miles away. One of her interviewees was the Queen’s chaplain, who is the local incumbent. I went for a brief walk in the Fring area. Found a white owl which looked snowy but was almost certainly barn. Followed it for a while. Walked up a hill on the Peddar’s Way to Dovehill Wood at the top. Not exactly a stiff climb, but the guidebook calls it “an Everest for Norfolk” at about 200ft (61m). Very cold morning, but the sun made it pleasant. The back roads were pretty icy. After I picked up Dot we had a sandwich back at the hotel bar and then went for a drive to Thornham on the coast. Brief stroll, but the wind was bleak and bitter, and we retreated to the car. We then tried Sandringham, but it was pretty cold there too, though the shop, restaurant and toilets were all open. We decided to go back to the hotel, but took an excursion first to Wolferton, which I hadn’t realised was so remote. The old station was well preserved. It used to be kept open purely for the Queen, but eventually shut in 1969. While we were there it started to snow, so we drove back to Bircham as the snow got heavier. It kept snowing for about six hours, and I was concerned about getting Dot to Flitcham the next morning, but by then the temperature had risen above freezing, and the roads were actually better than they’d been the previous day. Still plenty of snow, though: the photograph was taken from our bedroom window at about 7.30am. Another good meal at the hotel while the snow fell, and the only two other people there turned out to be colleagues of Birgit at the nearby Construction Industry Training Centre. They clearly liked her, and the hotel owner liked one of them (possibly both), so he provided all four of us with a champagne-type drink on the house. Which was very nice.

While Dot paid her second visit to Flitcham yesterday, I returned to the hotel, had a bath and packed and wrote a bit of a poem about the owl. Left at 11am, drove round by the training centre to see what it was like and then by a circuitous route to Flitcham, where I parked and looked round the church, then walked down to the River Babingley. Dot emerged a bit late, and we drove straight back to Norwich, eating as little as possible for the rest of the day.