This is Wolferton station in West Norfolk, which until the late 1960s was the Queen’s private railway station when she was at Sandringham. It was closed in 1969 and is now a private residence. We visited Wolferton during our trip to West Norfolk last week. It was the first time I’d been there: I hadn’t realised how out on a limb it was. While we drove round it started snowing and didn’t stop for about six hours. You can see the first flakes in the photograph.

It’s warmed up quite a bit since then. It’s also been pretty damp and this week there have been some very dull days when the whole sky seems full of water, just hanging there. Today is much nicer: a blue sky. Dot is at Hempnall for a meeting with members of the P4C group which usually meets at Ipswich. They are putting a book together to introduce a particular strand of P4C to England. It takes the “philosophy” aspect a bit more literally than Dot’s project does, but it has the same basis.

Yesterday Dot was not feeling at all well, but she made a miraculous recovery toward the end of the day after taking an hour’s rest on the bed. Her cousin Angela and husband Rodney came for a meal in the evening, and we had a really good time chewing over family matters and other things. Earlier in the day I had a PSA blood test to be sent to my consultant in preparation for a visit next month to see if my treatment was totally successful. I am optimistic. After a short period feeling a bit under the weather about a week ago I now feel pretty good. I went with my nephew Joe to the Cathedral library in the afternoon to hear a talk on Julian of Norwich which was very well attended and quietly interesting. The speaker was Father Gregory from the Order of St Julian in America.

Earlier in the week I visited the second artist I’m collaborating with for the Norwich 20 Group exhibition. She is Ruthli Losh-Atkinson, and she lives at Eaton. Her current work is centred on a trip she took to the Arctic, and her pictures are abstract meditations on the tundra, which I suspect may be a bit of a challenge to write poems about. But I have a few ideas. Later I managed to win a chess game against an 84-year-old. Quite a nice finish.

I have visited both artists again since then: Sandra because she wanted to photograph the painting I have, and Ruthli because I forgot to give her a copy of my poetry book. I also called in at the Grapevine to take a second look at Martin Laurance’s exhibition and was sorely tempted to buy a picture, but restrained myself because I don’t have any spare cash at the moment.

On Wednesday evening Dot noticed while clearing the garden up that the kitchen drain was overflowing in quite a serious way. I called our insurers, and a very pleasant guy came the following morning to fix it. He also took a look at a mark on the kitchen ceiling which was spotted during our Tuesday Group meeting, but reassured us that it was probably a one-off overflow from the bath through the plug system. He was less reassuring about the firm that is fixing our cooker and suggested we check to make sure the costs weren’t too high. Ho hum. While talking to the drains guy we discovered that drain-cleaning products are generally useless, and a kettle of boiling water is the best bet to keep drains free. He also suggested running the dishwasher and washing machine through empty and at a high temperature twice every four or five months to clean the pipes. Not very eco-friendly at first glance, but probably worth it in the long run.

Later that day, while Dot opened her business bank account with Barbara, I went to Paston for a session on iMovie, which was fun because quite few of the Paston poets and artists were there, including Rupert, but probably didn’t increase my knowledge of iMovie very much. Afterwards I drove down to the cliffs again, past the deserted holiday camp.