We walked down to Weybourne to get the Coasthopper bus to Wells Next The Sea. How bus drivers get through Cley I don't know. At one point we were literally inches from the wall on the left. The problem with Cley is they allow parking on the main coast road through the village which is something we have never understood. Banning parking there would make things so much easier although there's still Chaos Corner where three vehicles had to back up so the bus could get through.
We got off at Wells and only had to wait five minutes for a connecting bus which we took as far as Holkham which was only about three stops away. The Coasthopper from Cromer to Wells is a single decker bus. Let's face it only a single decker can get through Cley and Stiffkey. From Wells to Kings Lynn via Hunstanton it's a luxurious double decker known as the Coast Liner which also goes via Essex on Sea which is better known as Burnham Market and so called because of the rich retirees and second home owners from London who live there. The Coast Liner is the kind of bus you don't want to get off. Luxury seats, air conditioning and USB charging points. But back to Burnham Market.
I may have told this story before so apologies if I have. After well over three years of blogs you have to excuse me a little repetition.
We were on a cruise. I can't remember where it was to, but every night we sat on the same table with a German family. We got on really well with them and had lots of laughs. After the meal we often went with them to the piano bar where they always asked the piano player for songs by Robbie Williams.
The one night we didn't sit at our table was known as a pot luck evening. This was a day when various trips away from the ship returned at different times. So tables in the restaurant were filled as people turned up.
We got sat next to a load of retired people from Burnham Market of all places. They spent the whole evening moaning about incomers and second home owners and then admitted they had retired there from London 10 years previously. We enjoyed sitting with the Germans, we didn't enjoy sitting with the people from Norfolk. There was more to this as well and I will recount that in the future.
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Up here in North Norfolk we get news on television from Yorkshire. As nice as it is to know what's going on in Hull and Bridlington, I would prefer to hear about King's Lynn, Norwich and Yarmouth.
There's a new online newspaper called the Seeker which seems to be staffed by former Archant journalists. It's officially what's known as a start up business and I wish it well and hope that it can get to the heart of Norwich and discuss the issues affecting the city.
Issues like why the BBC's Look East news programme seems to think that Northamptonshire is in the east. Somebody needs to sit the powers that be down with a map and explain to them that Look East should cover Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire and Essex at a push and certainly not Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. Mind you Lincolnshire isn't too far up the road from where I'm writing this so they could bring them in as well.
The amusing point is we continually have reporters on Look East showing over the top enthusiasm for asking us the public to contact them with our stories.
A number of reporters have been used for this. To some a shot of exuberance comes naturally but to others it doesn't. Take dear old Robbie West who is the latest to undertake this task and who has obviously been told to gush forth with hyper enthusiasm. Normally Robbie's delivery might be called droll or laid back. He's not given to over the top venting but in his latest role he's flinging his arms around and almost screaming.
"You might be doing something AMAZING" he screeches in capital letters. That's if you can speak in capital letters.
Then I guess he's off to Northampton to do an expose on flat graffiti or something equally unimportant to us residents of Norfolk.
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I feel sorry for a Norwich City footballer by the name of Max Aarons. Max lives in Hethersett but not for much longer. I don't know Max and have never spoken to him, but people in the village who have describe him as charming and friendly.
Max is still in his early 20s but has played well over 200 games for Norwich. He has also played for England Under-21s. As far as I know he has never asked to leave Norwich but he is on the point of being sold and he is being sold because he's what is known as a human asset.
You see Max is worth a few million quid to the club who seem hell bent on getting him transferred because it's obviously more important to have money in the bank than to have a top class player.
Norwich City's player recruitment over the past couple of years isn't what you might term as good. We have paid large sums of money for players that have been mediocre at best.
But now we want to get rid of one of our best players rather than keeping him and building a team around him. And the worst part is he could be going to another team in our league to strengthen them whilst we are weakened.
The present transfer policy at the club leaves me scratching my head. We had another young player on our books - Bali Mumba. Last season we sent him out to Plymouth on loan. He helped Plymouth gain promotion to our league, was voted the club's player of the season and that division's young player of the year.
So I think we were all looking forward to him returning and playing for Norwich. Apparently the Plymouth fans absolutely loved him. So Norwich would have an exciting young player.
What did we do? We sold him to Plymouth for a million. Now he's going to line up against us as well. Plymouth won their first game of the season and young Bali scored a wonder goal with a weaving run that took him past three defenders followed by a rasping shot into the net and all for a million which in football terms is peanuts. It was a club record transfer fee for Plymouth though and shows just how highly they value him. Football rant over.
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Last night's Real Life Stories programme trod a similar path to the previous week's. This time the subject was comedian/writer Ruby Wax who, like Anton Du Beke the previous week, was subjected to physical abuse by parents.
Her father once told her husband that he didn't hit her enough to which said husband replied "I don't hit her at all."
Her father was Austrian and Du Beke's father was Hungarian. Seems to be a common denominator here.
See you all tomorrow when I will post photos of our visit to Holkham.