Tuesday 15th December 2020 - Christmas Tasks, Wow Factor and Same Old Story

I am up to date with the Christmas tasks I mentioned last time – cards written, Dundee cake made and menus planned for over the holiday period. I have some dishes to cook over the coming week, a door wreath to make, the decorations to put up with a trial table top Christmas tree, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. I say trial because we don’t know how Sid is going to react to it, whether he will ignore it or see it as a challenge! We are pretty minimal with our decorations and prefer natural things to glittery items. Absolute bargain this afternoon; I purchased some bright red cyclamens from the stall just inside the Conservative Club’s walled garden, for just £3 each. As cyclamens don’t like a lot of heat, these will stay in the greenhouse until closer to Christmas when I will put them in the cool of our windowsills. After Christmas I will plant them in the garden where they will join the previous years’ purchases. I had hoped to have hyacinths in the house too. I bought the bulbs a few months ago, bringing them on in the dark and cool of our roof space, but as has happened for the past couple of years, the buds have areas of rot so I have consigned them to the tables in the garden where, as far as I’m concerned, they can do what they like!

As we set off along the prom with Barney on Sunday morning, the cloudless sky was a vibrant orange. I resisted taking my camera from my pocket, thinking to myself ‘this is going to get better when the sun gets behind the approaching clouds’ – and it did. A clear sky is not always the most impressive at sunrise, but with clouds it makes for a far more striking scene. The same applies to sunsets and this is often where, as we know from experience, photos taken on holiday in warmer climes with clear skies, don’t have the same wow factor as they do here in good old Norfolk. Below are two of Sunday’s shots; taken as we walked from west to east and then up the slip road to Clifton Way.

I have just had a Victor Meldrew moment – ‘I don’t believe it’. I have been reading North Norfolk New’s website where it’s reported that a family from Leicester posted their holiday luggage to Norfolk as they knew if they were stopped on their journey and found to be carrying luggage they would get fined! We are told Norfolk’s economy needs tourism and embraces visitors – but when they behave like this – really????? Of course, it’s the same old story, the minority spoiling it for the majority, which in this case is getting tourists a bad name.