It's a chilly day as it always seems to be in Cromer at this time of the year. There's a cold wind coming off the sea and temperatures have dipped to around 5 degrees.
But that's not a problem as I've enjoyed a day exclusively in the office where the central heating has been on full pelt bringing a rosy glow to those working there and probably making some of the staff feel slightly drowsy.
Now it's 6 pm and the day's labours are over. Everyone has gone home, the front door and front office are shut up leaving just the reporters' room, the photographic darkroom and the toilets open. Open that is until the last person in the office locks them and leaves through the short passageway and the back door. And that last person on this evening is me. I'm just finishing off some of the newspaper copy gathered during the day.
Despite living just 10 minutes walk away from the office, today I have brought my car in case it was needed, which it wasn't. So I drive home through the back streets ignoring a dark cloud that seems to threaten rain or something worse. It takes just a couple of minutes and as usual the neighbour has left his boat in the spaces outside our flat.
This is a deliberate move, not so necessary in the winter as in the summer but still a good thing to do. Our street is literally a stone's throw from the promenade and the famous pier. It takes about a minute to walk to either. But that means in summer the road gets clogged with day trippers parking there. So Richard, our neighbour, who just happens to be coxswain of the Cromer Lifeboat as well as a fisherman, puts one of his boats there and, when we want to park, we just take the boat round to the back of his house where he boils the crabs.
Richard is a lovely man - a lovely brave man who has saved many lives. He has followed in the steps of the great Henry Blogg, Cromer's most decorated cox and a local hero. Blogg was a very unassuming man who hated the limelight and was a fisherman and also hired out deckchairs on the beach when he wasn't battling against ferocious seas. He lived in a cottage opposite our flat. It used to be called Rose Cottage (or some such flowery name) but has now been renamed Blogg Cottage.
Richard is hewn from similar stock as Blogg. Obviously he knows that I'm a reporter on the local rag and so makes a point of ringing our door bell and knocking on the wood when going off "to a shout". This tends to be in the middle of the night. Now I ignore it, but there have been occasions when I have hurtled downstairs to see a rather large figure i.e Richard disappearing round the corner.
We usually have a chat when he gets back about what has happened. The other thing Richard does is leave crabs on our doorstep. My flatmates love this but I'm allergic to them. I've only eaten crab a couple of times and been sick on each occasion. I'm sure I would be ok with them now but I'm not going to risk it. I do love seafood though.
So on this day, I move the boat round to the back (not too onerous) and park my car and quickly go up the stairs to the flat to have a much needed cup of coffee. My flatmates John and Clive are already there and soon it will be time to decided 1/what we are going to have for tea and 2/whose turn it is to cook.
Clive is an entertainment's officer with North Norfolk District Council and through him we have got to know many of the people appearing in the summer show on the pier. They have all gone home now, probably taking some minor parts in pantomimes throughout the country. John is a very charismatic man, now in his early 30s and still unmarried. But he hasn't been short of girlfriends and takes the phrase "playing the field" to new heights. He is now manager of the local wine shop. Clive is very careful with his money and visibly goes grey when we tell him how much he owes us for a special bottle of wine (it's quite a cheap one actually but we do like to wind him up and at times he can be gullible).
I can't remember who cooked on this evening but I do remember that John insisted on playing my LP by Sandy Denny and the Strawbs that he has taken a great fancy to. A few months later for Christmas he gave me a huge box which was jammed full of newspaper and just contained the LP Fire and Ice by Demis Roussos.
After the food there was the usual bottle of wine sourced by John and then we settled down to whatever we settled down to in those days. Clive sat on the bad (I never figured out why we had a bed in the lounge when it was never used). John sat in an armchair and I sat at the table (remember that as it's quite important in our narrative).
I don't think any of us had anything to do that evening. It wasn't a table tennis or an indoor tennis evening or a visit to the Red Lion. In modern parlance we were just chilling as the temperatures dipped.
Around 8 p.m there was a knock on the door. "Could the lifeboat have gone out I asked myself?" But then there was another, louder and more persistent knock. So it couldn't be the lifeboat. I volunteered to go down the stairs and opened the door and there stood PA in his shirt sleeves.
PA was my boss. Now he was a strange man in some ways but why would he be at our flat wearing nothing but a pair of trousers and a shirt in winter weather?
"What's happened" I enquired.
"You locked me in the bloody loo," he replied. "It's taken me over an hour to get through the window. I'm f-----g freezin."
I wanted to laugh but I didn't.
"Where's your jacket? I asked.
"In my bloody office with my keys - both of which you've locked up whilst I was in the bog."
Oh dear, I thought. Well actually I thought something else.
"You'd better come in and have a coffee or whisky or something to warm you up and then I'll give you a lift to the office and unlock so you can get your jacket and keys," I offered.
So we went up the stairs. Now on such occasions you don't want your fellow flatmates to ask stupid questions but, of course, they always do.
"Hello P what are you doing without a coat in this cold weather?" they said in unison.
P spluttered a bit and I cut in.
"P would you like tea, coffee or something stronger?"
"Cup of coffee," he muttered.
Now I mentioned before that John sat in an armchair. There were in fact two armchairs side by side and as I handed P his coffee it was into the second of these that he decided to sit.
We tried to get the words "don't sit there" out but before we could he had sat there. The chair was broken and had no springs. P immediately sunk to the ground, throwing the coffee all over himself and falling through onto the floor where he sat in an ignominious pose with his legs sticking into the air.
"Don't suppose we can ask you to contribute towards the cost of cleaning the carpet," asked one of the flatmates.
The answer has been lost in the mists of time and in a haze of expletives. As far as P was concerned, it was a miserable day. As for me, well I had to make all his coffee and pick up his lunchtime sandwiches for the rest of the week.
The flat is still there in Corner Street, Cromer, and came on the market a few years ago. I would have loved to have been able to buy it as it has so many good and happy memories for me. I don't know where Clive and John or P are, having lost touch. Sadly Richard died many years ago from a brain tumour but I have met his widow Julie on a couple of occasions and we had a chat about those days. At first she didn't remember me but when I mentioned a New Year's Eve fancy dress party at ours which was raided by the local police sergeant (a set-up) and which saw the mock arrests of two people dressed as chickens who were charged with Foul Play, the memories came flooding back.