Thanks to everyone who sent me or posted photos on the internet. I will include a number on the next edition of Hethersett Herald. Our garden seems to have recovered after finding it submerged yesterday morning.
There certainly seems to be a potential flooding problem in the village and I'm sure that the parish council will now be looking at the whole subject in a new light in their future plans.
So how did your Christmas Day go? For us it felt like the last hurrah before tier four kicks in. For me this is all becoming very very confusing.
So, as in the past, I think it's good to have some aims during the lockdown that kicked off this morning. I think it's best to go back to a very simple life which, for me, will involve writing my daily blogs, putting together Hethersett Herald, finishing off the Norfolk Family History magazine, going for more Steward Strolls and writing more articles on village history. Add to that list sorting out the garage and garden and I certainly won't be short of stuff to do. What I will miss though is meeting up with people, going for a coffee and all those social interactions that we will be missing.
* * *
We had our usual Christmas breakfast - Bucks Fizz, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and brown toast with real coffee. That lasts for a long time - hence the fact we had our Christmas dinner at tea time.
Might have got that wrong of course. Different parts of the country have different names for various meals. I have always referred to the meals as breakfast, dinner, tea (and possibly supper if you feel excessive). But other people refer to dinner as lunch and tea as dinner. So it all gets a bit confusing like Yorkshire Puddings. When I was growing up you had Yorkshires as a separate first course. Now, of course, we have them as part of the main course.
Up in Yorkshire you could have them as a separate starter with gravy and onions and then with the main course and then as a sweet (or should that be dessert) with cooked apple sauce, jam or syrup.
* * *
Stayed up long enough on Christmas Eve to listen to the national news to be told by the presenter that it was "an historic day" (that of course is grammatically correct it is an historic day and not a historic day). Sorry but the agreement with Europe didn't feel much like "an historic" moment to me. After four years of negotiations it felt like a rather flat end and nothing much to celebrate although it did give Boris Johnson the chance to use the word "TITTLE." Boris likes using unusual words - I'm sure he finds it empowering. Actually I find it just a touch annoying.
* * *
So sad to hear of the passing of cricket legend John Edrich.
Edrich was born in Blofield, Norfolk, in 1937 and came from a big cricketing family with four cousins all playing first class cricket. He played 77 test matches for England, scoring over 5,000 runs with a batting average of 43.54. This included 12 centuries. I have probably lost a lot of people here with figures. A test batting average of over 50 is exceptional. Anything over 40 is very good.
I seem to recall that Edrich wasn't a big man but he certainly was powerful with massive arms. My main memory of the Edrich family is that every year they would have a charity cricket match. I believe this was at Ingham Cricket Club. The Edrich family would form one team and play against a team comprising professional cricketers and show business stars. I have no memory of who I went with or how I got there, but I do remember one of those games where fun was as important as the cricket although John Edrich regularly smashed the ball over the boundary for a barrage of sixes.
These charity games were limited over matches at a time when this format of cricket was in its infancy. I have no memory of who won the game I watched or much about who played but I do remember John Edrich and also getting the autographs of two of the showbusiness team - Michael McStay and Johnny Briggs.
Both were pretty big stars at the time for their roles as detectives in No Hiding Place - one of the first cop dramas on television. it ran between 1959 and 1967. McStay played Detective Sergeant Perryman and Johnny Briggs played Detective Sergeant Russell. Johnny Briggs went on to become a household name when he played Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street. Apparently McStay also featured in Coronation Street playing a minor character, Alan Hoyle, in 2011.