When I was at college (and that chapter of my life story will be foisted upon you shortly), aged about 18, I stayed in "digs" with a couple of people that were 25. It seemed impossible for me to grasp what being 25 would be like.
Then when I got to 25 I couldn't think how old 30 would be. Now here I am of an age that I don't want to discuss at all!!!
I write this because in my imagination people always stay at the same age as when I knew them. When I was 18 my landlady was in her late twenties. Now she will be in her late 70s if still alive. Her two children were six and four but now will be in their mid 50s. To me they will always be tiny people.
About two years after getting married - it would have been August or September 1978 - we decided to exchange homes with a couple in the USA for a two week holiday. When we contacted them through an exchange programme, we were living in Beccles but, by the time we went to the States, we had moved to Long Eaton in the Midlands. They got a reasonably pleasant four bedroom house by the canal. We got an historic ranch style house in a huge amount of ground. The kind of American house that has a porch with a swing on it. They got a Volkswagen Beetle while we got a massive Chevvy Station Waggon. We also got three dogs - one of whom we shut in a room one day by accident and who destroyed much of the wallpaper. We had to make a hurried call back to the owners to tell them. They didn't seem at all worried but were concerned as to whether the dog was ok which he was.
This dog was called Little Fellow and he met a sticky end a few years later when he attacked some chickens and was shot!
Next door to this palatial home was a bungalow. American bungalows are marvellous as they often have dens which are massive rooms underground that run the length of the property and which are ideal for pool tables and the like. This bungalow was occupied by Bud and Mary-Lou Fisher and their 12-year-old son Robbie.
They became firm friends and later on godparents to our boys. Bud was a wonderful character. His day job was with the Bell Telephone company but he was the official chief clown of Maryland. This was an honorary position which helped raise money for charity. Bud's clown was a non speaking one. One evening we went to a dinner at the Bell company. Bud was dressed as a clown and so spent the entire evening in silence. I was approached by a number of Bell employees who seemed to want to show me various things and I also received a number of invites for later in the month - all of which I had to turn down due to our holiday being over.
By the end of the evening I was beginning to feel that I had been set-up in some way and there was only one person who could have done that and he was wearing a ridiculous red nose, extremely large shoes and very colourful trousers. When I asked him what was going on he just smiled (well I think it was a smile but you never can tell with clowns). He later admitted that he had informed some of his colleagues that I was a "top journalist" from England and wanted to write a series of magazine articles on the Bell company. I warned Bud that if he ever set foot in England he would be in serious trouble. Sadly he never did.
A number of years later we took our sons to Maryland and they joined a youth sports group for one of their training sessions. They taught our boys how to play baseball and we taught them how to play cricket.
Bud took me and the boys on an overnight camping expedition into the forests around Maryland (or it may have been Virginia). Before going we crossed over a state border to get some beer. It was a Sunday and liquor stores in Maryland didn't open on Sundays but those in Virginia did. So we had plenty of Bud both in the car and in the boot.
First thing we saw on entering the campsite was a sign saying "strictly no alcohol." I think Bud said something along the lines of "Oh Dear" (well actually it was much stronger than that but this is a family blog). He smiled at the person at the entrance, waved and drove straight through. We did imbibe a little that night. Neither myself nor the boys got much sleep - they because of excitement and me because I shared a tent with Bud and he snored extremely loudly most of the night.
Next day he said: "Sorry if I snored last night. It's the beer, always makes me snore."
Bud at this point would have been about 40 years of age or perhaps a touch more. I can still picture him today. He has been frozen in time for decades. Tall, upright, wearing a bright red blazer and full of energy and enthusiasm. Many years previously he had been a reserve third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles Baseball team. He was a history buff who loved the Confederacy and wore confederate buckles on his belt. To us he was just a lovely man who was charismatic and great fun (even if he did snore).
Over the years we kept in touch with Bud and his wife Mary Louise who was an accomplished pianist. For the past few years our contact has been restricted to Christmas cards and messages. It was still a nasty jolt when we received a Christmas card which also informed us that Bud passed away last February.
I did a little research on the internet and found that Bud (whose real Christian names was Austin) was either 84 or 85 when he died. I couldn't think of him as an elderly sick man anymore than I can think of my old landlady as a woman in her late seventies.
Perhaps it's good that we remember people when they are young and active. That after all is the way we would want to remember them.
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Hethersett has lost a couple of vibrant people in the last few weeks. I am hoping to have tributes to them in the next edition of Hethersett Herald and possibly submit articles for the EDP newspaper.
The first was Alan Utting who lived a very long and busy life. Alan died just after his 96th birthday. He was a member of a small luncheon group I helped to put together and a keen supporter of the Hethersett Dementia Support Group. He lived in Rowan Gardens until the last year or so when he lived in a care home in Norwich.
Secondly there was Bea Ewart who lived in Recreation Road. Bea was what is known as "a force of nature." She contributed much to the environment in Hethersett, being a keen member of HEAT (Hethersett Environmental Action Team). It was as a writer I will remember Bea. She was a keen poet and in the past I have used some of her poems on various websites and publications. Many years ago Bea was co-author of a booklet on Hethersett War Memorial and asked me to proof read the publication which I was only too happy to do. I will write more about Bea in a coming blog.
Bea is pictured in a press cutting which marked the launch of my website on Hethersett during the two world wars.
Whilst on the subject of Hethersett Herald, I am pleased to announce that edition 64 is now online. You can find it at www.hethersettherald.weebly.com.
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Yesterday morning I finished my second Charles Dickens book. I have now read David Copperfield and Pickwick Papers and have now started Oliver Twist. Like Oliver it's left me asking for more. I have read most of the books before but thought it a good idea to re-read them in the order they were written, although I have read Copperfield out of sequence.
As a bit of a light aside, I am also reading Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing. It's a light but enjoyable read even for somebody who has no interest in angling/fishing (me). It gives a history of the sport alongside recipes and jokes.
It was all borne out of the fact that both Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer recovered from major heart operations. They had always been friends and both were keen fishermen, although it seems that Whitehouse is more proficient. So they got together to fish various rivers around the UK (of course it helped that a camera crew accompanied them and that they had a tv contract as well). One of the rivers they fished was the Wensum in Norfolk and I made a mental note to try to find that episode.
Incidentally Paul Whitehouse was a student at the University of East Anglia but dropped out after a year. It was whilst in Norwich that he met one of his writing partners Charlie Higson. I also remember a pop group from Norwich called The Higsons of which Charlie was a member. They were based around the UEA and described as a Funk Punk combo. They must have been around when I was writing a rock music column for the Eastern Evening News (now the Norwich Evening News) but I don't remember coming across them.
I did come across Paul Whitehouse once. I was representing Norfolk Police on their Crimewatch programme which was an interesting experience and one I will talk about in a future blog. It was in the days of Nick Ross and Jill Dando when Crimewatch was prime time viewing.
It must have been recorded at BBC HQ in London as I remember staying in a hotel close by for the night. Anyway I was walking out of the building when I walked past somebody I recognised but couldn't put a name to (does anyone else suffer from what I call face recognition syndrome but which has got a real medical name - this is the inability to put a name to a face). It was only a short while after that I realised it was Paul Whitehouse. I would loved to have looked at him and said "suits you sir."
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By and large I don't like cookery programmes - there are far too many of them. But I have taken a liking to The Hairy Bikers. There are chefs I wouldn't want to share a pint with - Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and many others spring to mind - but Si King and Dave Myers, well they seem to be regular fun guys and their cooking is fulsome and not pretentious. As I write I have put together their New York Cheesecake which is currently baking in the oven. Next up Bread and Butter pudding (my favourite).
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Finally today marks a failure. My attempt to walk 150 miles by the end of January has failed. Yesterday saw me rack up my 142nd mile - eight miles short of my target, but still a fair old distance.
So I'm recalculating my target and aiming for just 100 miles in February which should be comfortably achievable.
Well that's it for today. When I started I felt I had very little to write about but then it all started to flow again. So this one's for my friend who said he could only take my blogs in small chunks. This one should keep him going for a whole week.