If I'm around in the village on a Bank Holiday weekend I will usually be out and about with my camera collecting stuff for my two publications.
Stuff now there's a good word. When I was working there was often three of us in the office.
"What shall we do today?" One of us would often say.
"Let's do stuff," we would reply.
Stuff is a word like potter.
"What did you do at the weekend?"
"We just pottered around."
Basically that means you did very little. To really potter you need a shed or a greenhouse. That's somewhere you can literally rest on your laurels, do stuff and potter.
Now that the coronation weekend is behind us it's time to sort through all the photographs and information I have collected and put it all into some semblance of order for Good News and Hethersett Herald.
And so to the next leg of the travelogue. Here we were in Seville.
I've learnt a very important thing about Spain on this trip- the pavements and the streets squeak.
Yes you did read that right. We noticed it in Beaza and then in Cordoba and yesterday in Seville. At first we thought cars had serious fan belt problems.
I used to have cars with squeaks and it usually meant the fan belt was slipping and needed tightening. For all I know cars no longer have fan belts. I know nothing about cars and have little interest in them and I don't want to destroy my ignorance by Googling it as that's the coward's way out and my blogs are meant to be spontaneous and filled with my ignorance.
But even I with my limited intelligence realised that not every car that passed could have a slipping fan belt or the modern equivalent.
It was all down to tyre noise on the road surface and it made quite a spooky effect.
Another important thing about Spain is that if you stop for a drink outside a bar or restaurant you are almost certain to be annoyed by a guitarist, squeeze box player or similar playing music and then asking for money.
In Saville we stopped at a bar with a charming and helpful waitress. She had just delivered our food and drink when who should turn up but the entertainment. Let's call him Juan. He started playing My Way on the accordion, although he played it his way because he had quite a powerful speaker with him that he left about five or six yards from where we were. He then processed down the street and we got the full force of what he was playing 100 yards away.
Needless to say we didn't contribute to his retirement fund. We did lob a few groats into the hat of the Seville puppet man. That comment will resonate with anyone living on Norfolk and particularly in Norwich. We have our own puppet man whose name is actually Dave. He's become a symbol of Norwich which is pretty bad because he's not really representative of people from Norwich (or is he)? I will leave it for you to look him up on You Tube so you can make your own mind up.
The Seville puppet man was much better. He had a whole orchestra of puppets most of which danced or played instruments independently. He was definitely worth a grote or two and had collected quite a bit of money and certainly more than the strolling players.
Another fact about Seville - it's gruesome hot. Doesn't feel too bad in the mornings when it lulls you into a false sense of security with thoughts of pleasant temperatures in the low 20s. Then the heat builds and builds and by 4 pm it's around 32 degrees and a tad too hot for comfort.
It has to be said that Seville is quite a magnificent city with so many things to see. You just can't do it justice on a day trip which is pretty much all the time we had available.
"We will have to return when it's quieter," said the other threequarters at one point. Here I need to point out that the place was heaving with tourists. We kept complaining about them and then realised that's exactly what we are.
But there were tour groups everywhere. We had booked a free walking tour at 10 am apparently being led by a man carrying a yellow umbrella.
Actually it was a lady with a yellow umbrella. I was quick to realise that the yellow umbrella was an indication that she was a tour guide and not somebody anticipating rain.
We stuck with the tour guide for about 20 minutes, finding her mildly annoying because she started every sentence with the words well so and then clapped her hands every time she made a point. She also made the points in very fast broken English. Then a large ignorant Dutch woman backed into the other threequarters without looking where she was going. At that point we decided enough was enough and we would spend the rest of the day looking around on our own.
By and large I don't like guided tours. I feel they are usually a way of being talked at about a place you often aren't greatly interested in. It usually also means standing around on the sun. I much prefer to do it all myself.
"We will have to return again someday," the other threequarters repeated.
I nodded sagely as I always do but know we will probably not return as there are many other places I want to go to like Warsaw, Gibraltar and Newmarket.
Mind you we were limited on how much could be done. If, for example you wanted to visit the cathedral you had to join a very long queue to buy tickets and then join an even longer one to get in. Not sure this was what Jesus meant things to be like when he became box office.
It was the same story to visit the Alcazar which as you all know is a Moorish palace or fortress. We just call ours castles. That's moorish by the way as in belonging to the Moors and not as in that's one chocolate bar, I wouldn't mind another.
Visiting the cathedral and the Alcazar wouldn't have left any time to drink beer, eat stuff and drink coca cola or listen to the street entertainers.
This blog was not intended to be a history lesson on Seville. If you want that just get a book or try Wikepedia. It's just my idiosyncratic views on a city that is well worth a visit.