Back on holiday

Haven't used this blog for over a year, but since we're back on holiday (albeit a rather less involved one than the last) I thought I'd use it again.

Travelled to Otematata yesterday - first day of our away-from-home holiday. We’ve been given the use of a house for four days, a house, I might add, that can hardly be classed as a crib or bach. It’s got three bedrooms, is fully furnished (and not with all the cast-offs from the real house), and all the mod cons it needs.
Otematata is near three or four of the big lakes up this way: Benmore, Aviemore, Waitaki. They’re all pretty much within spitting distance of the town.
On the way up we stopped in Oamaru and had a look at the public gardens - first time we’ve ever done that in all our times of stopping in the town. And later we stopped in Kurow, a place similar in size to Otematata, I think. It has the distinction (in our eyes, anyway) of possessing a curios/antiques/junk store which is not only itself absolutely cluttered, but has spread to a shop (maybe two) across the road, and into the two cars parked permanently outside.
It’s almost impossible to move in the main shop without feeling you’re going to knock something over, and whatever the organisational pattern is, I didn’t discover it. Books were absolutely everywhere, stacked high, low and in piles that threatened to come down when a heavy truck went through the town. Hundreds of collectors’ items stood on shelves in every direction. Outside, shelves hosted dozens of teapots, mostly metal ones.
The owner claims to able to find any book you want to ask about; just as well, as no one else has a hope of finding it. If you don’t happen across something that catches your fancy, forget about looking for something that you really want. Ninety percent of the books are shrink-wrapped. There’s a sign - amongst a number of signs - saying that all shrink-wrapped books have been inspected for marks or torn pages or any other wear. Shrink-wrapped means they’re in good condition. But it also means you can’t read a few pages to see what sort of book it is. On the other hand, there’s a sign telling people that the books are for buying, not reading in the store. And another sign demanding that parents make sure their children put all the books back in order. And another sign saying that all the hardcover books are in the store out the back; just ask, and the owner will get whatever it is you want. How you’re supposed to know what he has is another issue.
There’s also a sign saying that few stores offer the sort of service this store does!
If you follow the available space between the books you eventually come up to a dead end - and another sign on the way that says something like No thoroughfare through here. Not that there’s much chance of a customer going into that particular ‘area’ as it’s well and truly barred by the usual stacks of books.
I suspect that this shopkeeper has some really valuable stuff in the store. But he doesn’t seem to know that people like to browse, and in order to browse they have to be able to get their hands on things. Little chance of doing that here - the book you’re most likely to want to see will either be shrink-wrapped or at the bottom of a stack. Trying to pull it out will cause a major collapse.

The weather was great when we left Dunedin yesterday, but there were great black clouds looming before we got far north. It stayed warm and didn’t rain until we were nearly at Otematata. But later on, while both of us were having a bit of a kip, there was a heavy hailstorm, made all the more effective by the stones rattling down inside the metal chimney.

Back on holiday

God is Good!

Yesterday we travelled down from Cambridgeshire to London. We made a long stop on the way at a National Trust house, which I’ll write about in another post.
Our trip into London was both what we expected and more than we expected. We haven’t really driven in the capital much, apart from our trip to Rochester, and this time we were actually having to go through areas that were very built-up and traffic-heavy. So it was stop-start, brake-accelerate, in and out of first and second gear (we could well do with an automatic) and in general rather stressful (though to give me a modicum of credit, I kept my cool - and I wasn’t even driving!)
The trip took far longer than our poor little Sat Nav had estimated at the beginning, because there were so many blockages and hold-ups (a normal London day, it seems). In the end, we were about five to ten minutes from our destination when Celia suddenly yelled that the brake had given up the ghost (well, she communicated that without words almost), grabbed the handbrake and we swerved to the side of the road. Fortunately we weren’t going fast, so it wasn’t a completely awful moment. We held fire for about ten minutes, while I suggested that perhaps with all the braking we’d been doing the brakes had overheated and given up temporarily. Celia gave things another go, tentatively, when we thought it might be safe, but they were still kaput.
Frazzlement.
We looked up the number of the AA on the Net: our little mobile connect friend was working wonderfully at full speed, as has done so everywhere in London. There was a number to ring for mobile phones, so we tried that. After some discussion as to who we were and why we should be ringing them, we were informed that there was no reciprocal agreement between the UK and NZ, as we’d been informed, and that just to get someone to come out would cost us £99! To join, according to the friendly lady, would cost even more. Meanwhile Celia was looking at the AA page on the Net where there was no indication that the price was anything like that. In the end we said we’d think about it.
By this time I was needing to go to the loo rather desperately (it’s one of the hazards of travelling) and because I’d seen a boy talking to the a man in the house we were parked outside, and because the bloke had seemed friendly enough, I thought I’d try and see if he’d let me use his toilet.
He was extremely friendly, and when I’d done my bit, he asked what the problem was with our car. I explained. He said, just give me a minute to get the kids in bed, and I’ll come and see if I can do anything. While we waited he must talked to his wife because she appeared and suggested we come in and have a cup of tea and that she was just ringing her Bank who covered her family for roadside mishaps to see if they would help us.
Amazingly that was fine: as long as she was with us when the RAC driver arrived, we’d be covered. Isn’t that extraordinary? We sat in the couple’s front room and talked about who they were and who we were (he’s a publisher of little children’s books - Little Tiger Press) and apart from the fact that we were still feeling rather frazzled by the incident, it couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. (We’d called to the place we were going to, to tell them we might be running late - and they rang back suggesting a similar approach to the problem!)
But the two virtual strangers were like a couple of angels sent from heaven. Bless ‘em, as they say a lot over here.
Anyway the RAC man arrived, and of course the brakes were fine. No oil on the road, no obvious problems except that the brake fluid was hot. He recommended we get the car to a garage in the morning and have the fluid flushed and changed. And then followed us all the way to where we were staying for the night to make sure we got there safely. And we got there at the time we were supposed to!
This morning we went to the garage our overnight hosts recommended and they did the job within an hour! We thought we might be looking at a matter of days. Since then, we’ve driven twice through London traffic with the same stop-start issues, and the brakes have held.
Good old God.

Fakenham

Yesterday was wet and blowy in the morning (as it had been the previous afternoon) so we didn’t decide to do anything until the afternoon. The National Trust choices weren’t good because most of the ones we hadn’t seen were quite a way away, so we finished up going to Fakenham (pronounced Fake-nam).
Whether it was the dull day that didn’t greatly encourage us about Fakenham or whether it was just the town itself was inspiring, we didn’t feel much enthused about the place. The church seemed untidy and dim, and there wasn’t much to write home about it in it (though we met a bellringer who was waiting for some other campanologists to arrive for a session on the bells), and the shops were okay. But everything had a down-at-heel feel about it, as though the town didn’t have much pride in itself. Even the secondhand bookshop, situated in the basement of a café, smelt mouldy and the books weren’t very exciting. This may all be a completely subjective impression, and there is a new mall in Fakenham that looks good - although two or three of the shops are untenanted.
However, the saving grace of Fakenham was a little teashop called the Tudor Tea Room - seating for about 25 at a pinch - which advertised tea for 60p and coffee for only a little more. In the end we actually had one cream tea and a coffee, which meant we got a scone with jam and mock cream as well as the drinks. We shared the scone and toppings (I had all the butter) which meant our points for the day were rapidly reduced. (Had vege soup and toast for tea to make up for it!)
The thirty-something bloke running the teashop kept all the orders in his head - I never forget an order, he claimed - and was working full bore to keep up with all the customers, because the place was nearly full when we arrived. Probably nobody actually bought a tea or coffee for the cheap prices, because the other items in the place were quite enticing!

Some things I meant to mention

Policeman’s Loke. We’ve passed a sign with this on it twice now, and wondered what on earth a Loke is. Finally checked it out: it’s a private path or road; also, the wicket or hatch of a door. Presumably in this case it’s the former. The origin of the word seems to be a local dialect version of the word, lock.
Secondly, I keep meaning to say about the number of churches in Norfolk and Suffolk that have made their own hassocks. In some churches they commemorate occasions, in others they have all sorts of designs on them depending on who made them, in others they may be only a couple of designs spread throughout the church, and in others such as the one we were in today at Hingham, each hassock is a memorial for a person who’s been in the church, at some time over the last several centuries. And in Bury St Edmunds we came across a woman measuring out the correct distance between each hassock as it sat waiting for a user on the pew back and putting them closer or further apart as the need arose. There were at least thirty rows, with six or so hassocks in each. A time-consuming job! Those hassocks each had a different design on them, commemorating all the different parishes within the diocese.
Thirdly, in every National Trust place we’ve gone so far, they’ve had a secondhand bookshop. Very tempting, and I don’t think we’ve managed to get out of one yet without a purchase.

Old Norwich

Back to Norwich later this afternoon, where we finally got the Vodafone people to unlock the content control from my mobile connect. The control has meant I haven’t been able to get onto my Scrabble site - not exactly a site to worry anyone, you’d think!
The other aspect of our trip there today was that I rediscovered the Norwich I remembered - as far as I remember it at all. My impression had been of a place with narrow streets and old buildings. That’s the bit we came across today. It had been hiding further along the road than we’d explored so far. And there are some op shops there - and the SPCK bookshop. So we’ll have to go back when we have a bit more time, and find out what else it has hiding away.

A long post divided into more than one section`

Today was a wandering day. We left our current abode and moved on, as we’re now babysitting a house near Wymondham. Celia wanted to go along the coast past Sheringham to look at some of the other seaside towns, so that’s what we did, spending the better part of the day at the job.
I’ve think I’ve lost track of most of them already, but we passed through Salthouse, Cley-Next-The-Sea, Blakeney, Morston, Stiffkey and Wells-Next-The-Sea, and later on went to Walsingham. I’ve now lost track of where the three bookshops were that we visited, although there was one where Celia bought a book on Norfolk dialect called Crab Books; another that sold a lot of original paintings and prints, had at least four rooms and also managed to fit in a café and lots of bric-a-brac. And then there was another which had rooms scattered around what might originally have been a house, including a chunk of books out in a shed out the back (a very tidy shed, that is) and which also had pottery for sale.
I watched a potter making a pot another place, and we discovered what appeared to be a small town that had a very large church, in very good condition, and full of interesting wood carvings. There was another church – in much worse condition, in Salthouse- where their annual art exhibition was going on. The few paintings and ‘works’ that were worth looking at had been snapped up early, and the rest of the stuff was being ignored (rightly so in my opinion). Someone had written in the visitors’ book: not as good as last year, and someone else had written: positively gloomy.
The bookshops were all worth visiting, each in their own way. Apart from the peculiarities of the one with the café (some shelves of books were around the sides of the café, but it was difficult to interrupt the people eating their meals), it had a great stock of stuff, including tons of sheet music, much of it for horn. I picked up a Bach piece that I can probably still play, and an autobiography of Eric Ambler.
Crab Books was very clean and tidy, to the extent I thought it was a new books shop at first. But there were no category headings anywhere, so that you had to work them out for yourself, and the books weren’t in any order within the categories. But the books themselves were a great mix.
The other bookshop was more typical of secondhand bookshops: books crammed into every available corner, and wonky shelves. But! Everything was categorised, and all the books throughout were in author order. What a difference that makes. They also had quantities of books by various authors such as Wodehouse, Kipling, Leslie Charteris, and dozens of others. I found a book of short stories by Dorothy Sayers which I don’t think I already have.

Cromer - Gem of the North Norfolk coast

We haven’t got quite so much access to the Net at the moment, so things are a bit quiet on the travel blog front At present we’re in Cromer, which is only a few miles from Sheringham, the famous town that my wife couldn’t wait to get back to and see. In fact we went been back there again a couple of days ago checking the place out, and had a look at the old alma mater (the caretaker who came out to see what we wanted had been to school there himself and originally couldn’t wait to get out of the place) and then at another part of it which I hadn’t heard about before: Upper Sheringham. This turned out to be a delightful place, not large, but with its own church, and full of those houses that are made of the local beach stones. Even the newer buildings were made to fit in with the old houses. In the centre of the village was a large round wall less than a metre high, with a gate in it. It turned out that inside the wall was a pool and the water was pouring out on either side of the gate, and presumably being channelled back into the pool again. It may originally have been a horse trough, according to my sister-in-law.
We walked into Cromer yesterday - my sister-in-law is a keen walker - and then back again a different way. Both of us have started a new regime diet-wise, as we’re both needing to deal with our weight. Being on holiday is not conducive to exercise or healthy eating. So we’ve gone onto the Weight Watchers’ approach - my sister-in-law has used it in the past, and continues on a maintenance diet - and we’re keeping track of what we’re eating. I certainly need to deal with my tendency just to munch away, and I certainly need to get some more exercise. I’m used to walking a lot more than I’m doing at present.
Anyway, we walked into Cromer and did the op-shops, and then in the afternoon we took the car part of the way and walked back into town again from there. Unfortunately, even though the weather seemed lovely when we set out, it rapidly turned off, and a chilly wind blew up, and it began to drizzle. We checked out the secondhand bookshops - there are three, but only two of them were open. The two we went into were packed with books, and I found a Studdert Kennedy (The Wicket Gate) for a couple of pounds, which I suspect was a bargain. In the morning we’d found that one of the op-shops was also a Christian bookshop, with both new and secondhand books available. I found an F W Boreham book there for 75p. His books are highly sought after - in NZ, Australia and the States anyway - so that was a bargain. Also bought a new book on Christianity and Islam, which I started to read when I got home.
We got soaked walking back to the car, so I popped into the bath to warm up, and read.
Cromer doesn’t have quite the appeal for either Celia or me - perhaps it’s because it’s so close to Sheringham. It’s still an interesting town, full of those typical English seaside buildings, three storeys high for the most part, with balconies and large windows. They only seem to appear in seaside towns. There are odd alleyways, and streets going off at peculiar angles (which isn’t good for the traffic that trawls its way through the town), and then there’s the beach. It’s way below the town - about three storeys below - and there’s even a modern lift for people who find it difficult to get down or up. We haven’t been down to the beach yet, but no doubt will as we’re here until next Wednesday, when there’s a Carnival procession.

Norwich Cathedral

I only realised after my brother-in-law queried it, that the dates on these posts are in NZ time, not British. Consequently we’re sometimes managing to do things eleven hours before they’ve happened.
Yesterday we finally went and had a look at Norwich Cathedral. It dwarfs all the other churches, even the big ones, that we’ve been to so far. Not only that, it’s like a collage: piece after piece and layer after layer has been added on. Other pieces have become hidden under Time, pillaging, spires falling, the Dissolution and so on. People who existed and died in one century lie cheek by jowl with those who died two centuries later. Brasses have been removed from most gravestones now, as seems the custom generally in England because they were getting rubbed away. Splendid art work from three or four centuries ago rubs shoulders with something done in the last few decades. A glittering museum of gold and silver plate is reached by a narrow spiral staircase inside stone, and there’s a rope, grimed with thousands of hands, to haul yourself up by.
We discovered that the innumerable bosses on the ceiling (not those sort of bosses – even in England they don’t banish bosses to the ceiling) are not all the same, but highly individualised. This discovery came about because each boss has been photographed and put on a CD Rom. It’s the only way you can see them clearly at all, since the Cathedral is virtually three storeys high.
It’s also like two separate churches. Half way down the centre is a kind of narrowing, a bottleneck almost between wooden structurings, and then the church opens out again into a second section as big as the first. I suppose you could have two separate services going on at once – quite apart from the services that could be going on in the Jesus Chapel and the Mary Chapel and the who knows what other chapel. All around the edge of the Cathedral is a kind of walkway, where there are doors and passageways and rooms. It would take a year to become familiar with the place. We were there for maybe an hour all up – and that included having tea in the Refectory: the name of the café but also the real name for the area that used to exist there where the priests and monks would have had their meals. It’s now a modern structure hung between the walls of the Cathedral on one side and the old Refectory wall on the other. A theological library sits up along the end of this section (this is all on a first floor level) and in the middle of the library is a piece of the original wall, about three foot by one foot in size.
It’s a church we’ll have to go back to. For starters we didn’t have the camera with us, so it just exists (barely) in memory at the moment.
We came out of there into Tombland, a street presumably named after an area that was once where graves were. Each shop in the street is called Tombland something (newsagent, bookshop, hairdresser). We went into the secondhand bookshop, but it was very expensive overall. Certainly there were some good books there, but it was geared for those with plenty of money in their pockets, like the old man who was buying up large and handing over wads of notes as he did so. We found a copy of one of the two boEllis Peters’ Brother Cadfael books we’re missing out of the series but at £10 it was just a bit pricey. Celia said, ‘Phew…!’ and that confirmed my feeling about the price!

Footnote: Norwich Cathedral is apparently named The Cathedral of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. And I forgot to mention that it has proper cloisters, in very good condition. Obviously Henry VIII didn't manage to get his nasty hands on those.

Lavenham

Today’s been a less eventual day: we spent most of the morning enjoying the sunshine and each reading a Christopher Fowler mystery that we got in an op shop in Bury St Edmunds (I think – all the op shops are starting to coalesce into one homogenous mass).
But this afternoon we set off to Lavenham, primarily to see the Guildhall, which is 16th century, like the house we’re staying in, but also to see the various other 16th century houses in the main streets. Not so much because they’re 16th century but because they’re odd. Every one of them is skew-whiff. The ground floor sections aren’t too bad, but the upper storeys either lean to the left, or lean to the right, or even lean out over the street. Consequently casements are out of kilter, and presumably floors are likewise. In the Guildhall itself, in the upper storey, you go gradually downhill as you walk through the museum, and then back uphill again. Part of the problem no doubt, is age. Part of the problem surely must be that there’s been some upheaval in the earth beneath, or that the piles of the houses have shifted. Perhaps there was some manic builder who couldn’t set a house straight – my wife doesn’t seem to think this is a likely possibility. Whatever the situation, the strangest thing is that these houses have survived. You have to wonder why they haven’t been pulled down by some 19th century developer and replaced by something more sturdy – and secure!
By the way, Lavenham isn't pronounced like Taverham (in Norfolk) but like the beginning of the word, lavendar. The 'h' still goes missing, so we get Laven'am. Celia and I had a debate about the pronunciation, and of course she had to check it out with a local.

Ickworth House

We found our way to Ickworth House today. Turns out to be only about ten minutes from where we’re staying. It’s not as old as the other two National Trust homes we’ve been to, and it’s larger and more imposing than either of them. An enormous rotunda (see picture) is the centrepiece of the building, with east and west wings extending from it. The interior of the rotunda is about all that’s available to view; the west wing contains a large restaurant, foyer and the obligatory shop while the east wing has been formed into a hotel.
Ickworth must be one of the NT’s showpieces. Certainly a large amount of money has gone into keeping it up to scratch, aided by the fact that the family who owned it put plenty of solid money into it over various generations.
The house and gardens (some 1800 acres of them!) have been in the Hervey family since the mid-fifteenth century, but Ickworth House was only begun in 1795. It was the creation of a rather eccentric member of the Hervey family: Frederick, the 4th Earl of Bristol and also the Bishop of Derry, neither places being remotely near Ickworth, as far as I know. Frederick can’t have had a lot of time to be a Bishop, as he spent much of his life collecting things for his house – mostly abroad in Europe. Consequently, the house has a host of marvellous silverware, gold plate, various statues and busts, an intriguing collection of metal fish thingees - I can’t remember their purpose – around thirty miniatures, stuff from the Orient, and umpteen paintings, mostly portraits. Included amongst these are works by Gainsborough, Hogarth, Reynolds, Poussin, Velasquez and Titian. (I think there are actually only one each of the latter two artists, but the Titian is a superb portrait, the head shining out of a dark background.)
Besides all this, the design of the house is breathtaking. You walk into the Rotunda and there’s a large foyer, with a ceiling reaching up some thirty feet. When I say ceiling, I actually mean a glass roof, a curved glass roof. (One person there today was observantly asking: were the panes of glass actually curved, or just the shape of the roof as a whole?). Beyond this glass ceiling the building goes up further, and by stretching your neck you can see a metal spiral staircase clinging to the side of the upper storeys, and more storeys above that again. As Celia said, you wouldn’t want to drop anything while you were up there.
Everything in every room smacks of wealth, and beauty, and good taste. The walls are covered in portraits, many of them nearly life size. I think there are over 200 portraits around the place. But the furniture and fittings and adornments are all top of their class. (Only one pair of ornaments, candleholders in the form of a couple of very pink cherubs, seemed kitsch rather than classy.)
There are around 7,000 books in the various shelves and the library. Many of them were rebound at the beginning of the 19th century to make sure they stayed whole. Apparently most have been read at some point, as there are pencil notes scattered throughout. (Those people who will insist on annotating their own books!)
The house and gardens were given to the National in 1956 in lieu of death duties. The east wing was supposed to stay in the hands of the family, but the rather notorious 7th Marquess of Bristol sold it to the NT in 1998. He had managed to blow a £30 million pound fortune away in his short life – he died at 44, possibly from AIDs and definitely after having been involved in the drug scene. The next Marquess in line tried to buy the east wing back, but the NT refused. However, they did complete the unfinished west wing, in partnership with Sodexho Prestige.

Oxford

We’ve been to Oxford today [Monday], in spite of having to struggle our way through yet another traffic jam. The town is everything you’d ever heard about and much more. It’s full of delightful buildings from a number of eras, and decoration abounds. Once you’re in the centre you can’t help but stumble over history at every point. We sat for some time in a church - the University Church of St Mary Virgin, if I remember rightly - where John and Charles Wesley preached, and where John Henry Newman rattled the rafters.
We went to a free exhibition of books related to Plutarch and Dante and Boccaccio. Some of the books had belonged to Plutarch himself, and had his notes very tidily written in the margins. (Making comments in the margins is nothing new, obviously.) Some of the books had the most glorious paintings alongside the text (and more comments from the owners). The colour was as fresh as the day it was done. There were all sorts of editions of Dante’s work, and a number of pictures and cartoons and drawings connected to that great tryptich. (I once had an edition of Dorothy Sayer’s translation of the book, which I think I must have left behind last time I was in England. Unfortunately, along with a trunkful of other books that we left in the care of a family member, it’s never been seen again.)
Oxford is curiously busy in certain streets - chock full of mostly young people speaking other languages - and then suddenly quiet in another street. Bicycles abound (their riders inconsistent in their use of helmets) and students are everywhere, debating on the street, striding along listening to ipods, walking seriously from one famous building to another, or laughing and having the time of the lives in a place they can barely comprehend the history of. Who can? Trying to be aware of the fact of the famous people who’ve trod these streets is nearly impossible; even in the church I could only think that the people listening to Wesley and Newman were no different from me: they ate, drank and slept as I do. They were privileged to hear men I’ve never heard, but I wonder if they considered it a privilege at the time.
In these church buildings you keep walking over memorial stones set in the floor. I’m not sure how many people are normally buried beneath these stones, or whether anyone is at all, but the memorials are a distinct reminder of our own mortality. One day, in a sense, people will walk over our graves too, careless as to who we are and what we did or didn’t do, incapable of appreciating our tiny role in the history of the world. It’s awfully sobering. Thank God we matter to God and to those close to us, otherwise it would be very depressing.

Blickling Hall

Today we finally did a bit of real sightseeing stuff and went to Blickling Hall. No, not Blinking, but Blickling, which is a marvellous old house/mansion/stately home near Aylsham (pronounced Aylsham!).

It’s a Jacobean house, which means it’s nearly four hundred years old – it was built between 1616 and 1627 – but it’s in great condition, and much of the original interior is as it was when it was built. There have been numerous alterations as well – like my wife, the owners of this house have never been content to keep it as it was – and the main staircase in the front hall is different to the way it began, and now goes in a different direction; various bathrooms have been substantially altered and rooms that were something before are now something else. Sounds so much like our place!

The house is full of paintings – most of them portraits, including one of Henry VIII by Holbein. There are a couple of Van Dyks, and no doubt there are other famous ones that I missed noting because I was overawed by the place.

The library is a massive long room with a plaster ceiling, which has a basic pattern to it, but between the pattern are a considerable number of separate sculptured sections of people and insignias and so forth. Below this is a painted frieze that goes all the way round the hall; it must be very early as the colours have faded a good deal and the detail isn’t as clear as it would have been. Below this again are some 12,000 books, scholarly works that a cousin of the then owner collected.

The plaster ceilings throughout the house are extraordinary, filled with detail, as are the fireplaces, some of which stretch from floor to ceiling. They’re enormous works of art, two or three metres wide, and three or four metres high.

The house we saw today is the second to built on the site: the original house was substantially pulled down and rebuilt for the Hobarts in the early 1600s. It had a proper moat – there’s no water in the current ‘moat’ – and it was also famous as being the family home of the Boleyns. Anne Boleyn, as you might recall, became the second wife of Henry VIII (who can’t keep out of the picture, apparently). Her ghost is still supposed to haunt the place, as is that of her father. He runs about the place once a year, and Anne appears on the anniversary of her execution. Which apparently wasn’t today.

I said to Celia on the way into the building: this is like the setting for some film, and it turns out the The Wicked Lady, with Margaret Lockwood and James Mason, was filmed there in 1945.

Blickling Hall – and 4,500 acres of estate - was left to the National Trust in 1940. It was used as an Officers’ Mess during the War, and finally opened to the public in 1962.

For more detail on its history, click here.

Photo by Nick Meers, copyright National Trust

Living with Less?

At present we're living in a house where half the stuff is packed away - and more is to go away yet in the small bedroom that's been allotted as the store-room while we're gone. We're renting the house out, so we've been advised (and even if we hadn't been, my wife would have insisted on doing it) to pack away things we don't want to lose, or that are of any value to us. There have been arguments over what's worth storing and what isn't. They will no doubt continue - and I will lose, almost invariably. What's a bit shocking, though, is that we're not really missing anything that's stored away already. It goes to show how much clutter there is in this house, and how much of it we don't really need. Okay, a number of books have gone away that I'd like to have more ready to hand, but in general there are things in the store-room that could quite possibly stay there for years after we come back, and never be missed. It says something about our acquisitiveness, or our inability to throw things away, or our long-gone enthusiasm for certain hobbies, or our bargain-hunting traits. Could we learn to live with a lot less? Maybe this is telling us we could. My thanks to mini-lathe.com for the photo of a junk room.