Poo I hear you say. No I'm not joining the great unwashed.
When the price of everything went up including water and we decided to be more environmentally aware, we decided to give up baths and have showers instead.
I have now got used to having showers. They use much less water and take much less time. I know they use much less water because one day I popped the plug in to measure how much my shower was using and it was only a tiny fraction of a full bath.
But I do miss cogitating in the bath. There was nothing like a good old soak and a good old cogitate. It's where I sorted out the world's problems and where skin turned to that lovely pink hue with a rosy glow all over. My baths could take up to an hour with continual topping up of water. At times I had so much water in the bath that I had to let a load out before topping up to maintain the heat.
It always reminded me of Archimedes Principle which had him leaping down the street with no clothes on shouting Eureka. I don't remember a lot of the things I learned by heart at school, but I do remember Archimedes Principle which went as follows:
"When a body is wholly or partially immersed in a liquid there is an upward thrust that is equal to the amount of liquid displaced." That basically means that if you fill a bath up and then jump in you will make a right old mess on the bathroom floor.
But back to the bath/shower debate. Now my showers take barely a minute or two at the most and that's not time enough to think about anything apart from turning the shower off.
* * *
You will know that I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I have an app for my bank. It allows me to pay in cheques without taking them to the bank. Well that's the theory. I recently received a cheque and was told it was a simple matter to take a photo of it from the app. After about an hour of trying to take it in every conceivable position and in every conceivable way, I gave up in frustration. It took me much less time yesterday to drive to the nearby town of Wymondham and pay it into the bank.
Sadly I won't be able to do that for much longer as the branch is closing. I do hope they make the banking app more user friendly or at least usable.
* * *
Podcasts - I feel I should listen to more of them. But where to start. There are thousands upon thousands of them available. Do I listen to sport or literature or music or art? It's a tough decision. But I did listen to one on Sunday afternoon after being told by my mate Tony Vale that one of his myriad of plays was being broadcast on a drama podcast.
Tony is a fellow member of Hethersett Writers' Group. We are a group of just six and we meet most months to share things we have written. Tony often gets us to read one of his plays and they are a mix of the serious and the amusing.
A few months ago we read one about the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations involving a husband and wife, much jealousy and a lemon trifle. This was the play broadcast on the podcast and it was interesting to hear it being performed by people we didn't know. Tony is a member of a locally based group of playwrights called Four by 4 and they regularly perform their work during the year. It's well worth going to one of their shows which make a very enjoyable evening, although I haven't managed to get to as many as I would have liked.
* * *
What's in a name - well quite a lot and at the same time not much.
Yesterday's blog featured our malls in Norwich and I referred to one as Chapel Field Mall. Bloggette Christine pointed out that this has now been renamed Chantry Place. Why are things re-named? Does it make them more attractive? Here in Norwich we now have a Cathedral Quarter and a Castle Quarter and any number of other quarters which of course should only be two because there are four quarters in a whole, but that doesn't always seem to be the case.
Just because the shopping centre has changed its name from Chapel Field Mall to Chantry Place doesn't make me want to go there any more than usual. It's not a better name and is just a case of what I call Fluffery. I will discuss Fluffery tomorrow.
I think most people will continue to call it Chapel Field Mall. It's the same at Carrow Road Football Ground. The stands have fancy names such as The Regency Stand and the Norwich and Peterborough Stand - both obviously due to sponsorship. For a short while one of the stands was named after a coffee company. It could have been Caffeine Corner but wasn't. This all leads to confusion.
For me the four stands will always be The Barclay, the South Stand, the River End and the Main Stand. Ironically the main stand in which we sit (strange terminology sitting in a stand) is the smallest despite the fact I have always known it as the main stand. It's where the players come out, where the team dugouts are etc. The stand is actually named after a former chairman Geoffrey Watling who was a real benefactor of the club despite my memories of demonstrations around fans shouting "Watling Out."
But then when I think about it I don't know why the Barclay is called the Barclay - perhaps some connection with Barclay's Bank which after all has a glorious history in Norfolk. I'm sure someone will put me right on that one. Then there's the South stand. Is it named because it's on the south side of the ground or after Sir Arthur South who was another chairman? I seem to think it was the South stand before Sir Arthur who was something of a colourful character so I'm assuming it was a geographical name. The river end is an obvious name as it's close to the Wensum. Incidentally Carrow Road is one of the lowest grounds in the country, being at sea level.
Sometime in a separate blog I will talk more about my memories of the ground and I promise that blog will have little to actually do with football.
* * *
The problem with writing and editing a monthly magazine is that deadline day comes, it gets published and then a couple of good positive stories come in.
Such was the case with the March Hethersett Herald. No sooner had I put it on the internet than I heard that Home Farm Gin, which is situated down Ketteringham Lane, has won a national award and also the Hethersett Community Garden at the back of the village hall has been given a £1,000 boost with a grant from Tesco's. A couple of stories to develop for my next magazine.