The advantages of relatives

We’ve either been staying with relatives or baby-sitting their houses since we got here, and that’s the way it’s going to continue till the end of August. As you’d expect that’s been great in terms of saving on accommodation. After August, of course, we might have to start paying our way!

But it has other advantages too. We have time to spend with people we only see rarely (some of them have been to NZ to visit us, some, particularly the younger generation, haven’t), and time to sit down and get to know each other better. Time even to spend helping with things like shifting a pile of roof tiles from the front of the garden – where the lorry dropped them off – to the back, beside the garage they’ll go on top of on Friday.

Roofs here are almost invariably tiled; some older houses are thatched, but obviously that’s not such a long term solution to roofing, though there are still thatchers around. And unlike NZ there are almost no houses with walls made of wood, or roughcast. Bricks are king here, and bricks are what houses are made out of. Bricks and more bricks. And more bricks. Bricks as far as the eye can see. The bricks in England will probably number more than the entire world population. I think I mentioned that the Tate Modern in London is made of brick: hundreds of thousands of them.

Even the houses in Sheringham, which have walls mostly made of the beach stones (the older houses, that is), have brick corners for support. It gives a very distinctive flavour to the urban landscape.

Another curious thing is that where we’re staying at the moment, in Attleborough, many houses don’t have a street address. They’re known instead by names: The Elms, The Grove, The White House, Casa Novo, and so on. It must be a nightmare for a new postie!