That's because I seem to be going further than expected. Today I did just under five miles on a walk to Ketteringham and back. The fields were very muddy after the unexpected heavy overnight rain and at times it was difficult to keep a solid footing.
It was lovely to see the Autumnal colours across the fields and I hope you enjoy some of my photos here.
In the eight days of lockdown I have completed 39 miles and so am on target to up my target distance from 100 to 150 miles.
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Had a zoom meeting early afternoon but then spent some time updating my Hethersett A Village At War website. Some of it was out of date and I had some minutes from a 1946 committee to add.
I am going to try to attack and update one of my websites each day over the next couple of weeks or so. If you would like to take a look at the village between 1910 and 1950 please visit:
https://hethersettatwar.weebly.com/
I have written a feature on the village Welcome Home Committee which gave every serviceman from the village £10 (over £300 in today's money) when they returned from the Second World War. This committee was then disbanded but was replaced by the Memorial Fund group which raised money to purchase land which became the Hethersett Memorial Playing Field. The story of that is on the website and I understand my article will be featured in the EDP Weekend magazine on Saturday.
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This one comes from the Isn't It a Small World category.
In the past, I regularly went to rock/pop gigs with a mate (that was in the days when gigs went ahead and weren't cancelled). Very often we would do what we referred to as "going blind." That meant picking a gig by somebody we didn't know and just taking a chance on it.
We usually picked Norwich Arts Centre for this as it was our favourite venue. Small and intimate, it was a former church in St Benedict's. You could get a pint and take it into the concert. It's an amazing venue that has seen some of the greats of rock playing there including Muse in their early days, Nirvana, Oasis, The Stone Roses, Manic Street Preachers, Coldplay and Mumford and Sons.
I remember seeing two of my all-time music heroes there - Jimmy Webb and Judy Collins. When I saw the latter advertised I assumed it was a tribute act. I couldn't believe a music legend would play the arts centre. But it was the real thing and a lovely evening.
So one day we liked the sound of a singer-songwriter by the name of David Ford. So we took a chance and it was an excellent evening. I believe this was back in 2013. I recorded in my diary that it was a very enjoyable evening and David Ford was very talented.
As I usually do I found out a few more things about him. I would describe him as a British Billy Joel. I downloaded his albums and decided to tell my eldest son about him - particularly as he lived in Eastbourne where Chris also resides.
I have subsequently seen David Ford on two more occasions - once at the Arts Centre and once at Epic Studios in Magdalen Street in Norwich - a venue that used to be the home of Anglia TV. On both occasions he was excellent. There were good attendances at both and it was obvious that he had a big cult following of people very aware of his music. In addition he has supported some of the biggest names in music throughout the world.
This all happened a few years ago. A couple of days back son Chris sent me a text.
"Check out an artist called David Ford on Amazon Music. See what you think."
My reply was:
"I told you about David Ford years ago. He lives in Eastbourne. I've seen him a few times and have read his book about almost making it in the music business."
A few minutes later I got a phone call from Chris to inform me:
"You know David Ford. Well I live next door to him."
"What," I replied. "I thought your neighbour was called Phillip?"
"No the other side. David Ford lives on our left."
"So you've lived next to him for a couple of years and didn't know who he was?" I inquired.
Not so long ago when Chris moved into his new home in Eastbourne I went down to help transform and clear his garden. I spoke to the "guy next door" about one of his trees and never twigged who he was.
But then neither did Chris: "I knew he did something in the music world and had a small recording studio," he said.
Mind you a similar thing happened to me when I was a young reporter working in Lowestoft, Suffolk. I was living at 211, St Margaret's Road. I did most of the sport for the Lowestoft Journal and came across the fact that an Oulton Broad footballer was playing his 1,000th game of football for the club. Can't remember his surname but his first name was Peter. A colleague in the office had his phone number. I gave him a ring and he was happy for me to pop round and have a chat to do a feature for the newspaper.
"I'm working in the day but you can pop round one evening," he said.
"That's fine. Where do you live?"
"St Margaret's Road," he replied.
That's a bit of a co-incidence I thought but St Margaret's Road is/was a very long road, probably the best part of a mile.
"ok - what number?" I asked
"I'm at 209 near the church," he replied.
And of course that was next door to where I was living!