Last night I had put together a blog on song lyrics and more memories of growing up in Norwich, when Boris popped up to strut his stuff and put us back into lockdown again.
Whilst accepting that this was inevitable, I can't help but think that this will sound the death knell for so many businesses already struggling.
No sooner had we got used to a "different kind of normal" in Hethersett than lockdown restrictions have again been tightened.
I'm not sure how it will affect the village yet but from next Thursday it looks as if things will be going backwards again. This will have huge impact on the village. I will try over the next few days to capture a few of the things happening (or more to the point not happening).
It does look as if the Steward Strolls will have to re-start. Time to be re-acquainted with the highways and byways around Hethersett with my friend "the camera."
It was a sad evening as well. Usually for Hallowe'en we carve out a pumpkin and put it with lights outside our home to tell youngsters that they can call on us and get sweets. Of course last night there were no knocks on the door. I will also miss collecting Hallowe'en pictures for Hethersett Herald. This virus has certainly squeezed much of the fun out of life.
Now back to the blog I had prepared before the news hit.
You will have realised by now that I love listening to pop/rock music lyrics and it is a joy when I come across a new one that has meaning.
I also am a person that likes to reflect on what has gone before and certain songs and lyrics take me right back to my childhood growing up in Norwich.
I had a discussion with my cousin a couple of days ago and she asked if I ever felt lonely growing up as an only child. The answer was no because I never knew any different. I didn't know what it was like to have a brother or sister. In later life, it is something that I regret, although regret isn't the right word as it wasn't something I could do anything about.
My best friend was an only child as well so I guess we adapted. I can think of a set of brothers, the older of which was a close friend. They would argue non stop when together and I'm sure I was glad at that point that I was an only one.
The time I really needed the support of a brother or sister was when my father was old and ill. It would have been good to have had someone to share the burden with and somebody who could give me some moral support.
I'm sure I didn't feel like an only one as I had numerous friends - the only difference was they didn't live in the same house as me.
Overall I had a happy childhood. Most of my early memories surround living in a greengrocer's shop in Reepham Road, Hellesdon.
I remember Fridays when all the fruit and vegetables were delivered and a man named Russell who worked for Pordages came to see us. I remember my mother putting money in tins when my father brought his wages home - one tin for the gas, one for electricity etc. I even remember being in a play pen whilst my father was at work and my mother was serving customers. I remember having chicken pox and some appalling medicine. I remember toy soldiers on the mantelpiece which our family doctor remarked on when he came to see me for some childhood ailment (yes in those days doctors made home visits). I remember a few years later playing the piano to entertain customers despite the fact that a wall separated me from them. I remember getting sweets out of the jars in the shop in the evening when the shop was cold and dark. I remember my mother crying when somebody stole her purse which she had left on one of the shop counters.
I remember my first day at Kinsale Avenue School at the top of Middleton's Lane. I don't remember whether I cried which probably suggests that I didn't. But I don't remember being anywhere near as precocious as my lovely granddaughter who uses words like sarcasm and vegetarianism and probably knows more at the age of five than I did when I was 10.
Sometimes those days seem so close that I feel that I can reach out and touch them and grasp the past again. I almost feel that I have to be in a kind of dream-like state to recall them in detail.
Time is a strange concept. At times it seems to be frozen. It's now almost 50 years since I went to journalism college at Harlow Technical College. I was there just nine months but put together more memories in that short time than at any other part of my life.
I had wonderful lodgings which we called digs, staying with a very liberal-minded lady of about 30 who let us have parties and use the house as our home. She had two very young children - a son who was four and a daughter who was six. It's almost as if those people are frozen in time. I will forever remember them as they were in 1971. To me they haven't aged a bit. Sonia is still young and wearing hot pants and borrowing my car as hers seemed to be perpetually in the garage. Jamie will forever be four, learning to speak and dropping his mother in it on the telephone. Sonia was divorced and had two boyfriends. One was single and one was married. Each were unaware of the other's existence.
Unfortunately they were both called John. To differentiate them to her children she referred to them as John 1 and John 2. One day one of the Johns rang up and Sonia was getting ready and so asked Jamie to talk to him on the phone. Jamie took the phone and said "is that John 1 or 2.
I can't remember whether there was any fall out from that but I believe the married John got ditched which was a good thing as we didn't like him but did like the other John.
Then there was the daughter - a lovely little girl by the name of Samantha and my granddaughter Poppy reminds me so much of her.
It seems ridiculous to me that Sonia if she is still alive will be approaching 80 and the youngsters will be around 56 and 54 - pretty much contemporaries of myself rather than an adult and a child.
I often think of those long gone days and I wonder where those people are and what they did with their lives. I suspect they will long ago have forgotten me.
But back to those lyrics. I have found another one to love - another one that somehow sums up the feeling about childhood seen from the distance of advanced years. This is from a song by Magna Carta entitled "Time for the Leaving".
The wind blows the ashes of summer,
and pulls the tar paper face on the pudding
the marmalade cat, with dark mangled ears
slips through the fence without pausing
this is my world and home
football and marbles and coming home late if you dare
I look at the face in the mirror,
I know it so well, but I don't know at all
and the child books are weary, and fade on the shelves
with things that were precious now dusty
this was my yesterday
and the friends that I knew, have all gone.
That lyric is so evocative of looking back on childhood from rather advanced years.
Magna Carta were an interesting British folk rock band from London who were formed in 1969. They continued recording and touring until 2019.
Still on the subject of music I have been re-visiting the Edgar Broughton Band. They started life as a blues band from Warwick before becoming part of the psychedelic scene, although I would say that their music had a slightly rougher edge than many. In fact they were probably ahead of their time.
Finally, yesterday I picked up an autobiography of Charles Aznavour in a charity shop. When it comes to music I have a number of guilty pleasures - one of which is Charles Aznavour.
I have a lovely vinyl album entitled Aznavour sings Aznavour Volume Three (admittedly not a catchy title). It has some stunning Aznavour songs. Two of the best are "No I Could Never Forget" and "The Ham" but every track is exquisite and it's in English.
Aznavour was born in France to Armenian immigrants. Early in the novel he talks about the Armenian genocide. I don't usually bring religion into my blogs but I was struck by a comment made early on in the book by Aznavour who says:
"Where was He anyway (God). He who is so often absent at such times: God, Allah, Jehovah, where were you? In Turkey, in Germany and in Cambodia, where were You when we needed You? Try and figure that one out."
I will leave it up to you to consider what you think of that comment.