I'm intrigued to find out who has bought it and what it will be used for - bearing in mind the fact that planning applications have been turned down a number of times in the past. But as we know the criteria for planning is changing and I believe being eased. Watch this space as they say.
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Yesterday I had a rather strange experience on the bus. Popped into Norwich to get a few things and the bus went down Queen's Road and out through the main part of the village as part of Henstead Road is currently closed.
On the way back I was expecting the bus to turn right at the Queen's Head but it didn't. It turned as if to go into the village but then went onto the Old Norwich Road and back onto the B1172. That meant it missed out six bus stops and provided no service for people wanting to go from Hethersett to Wymondham.
The lady bus driver was very apologetic, not to say somewhat confused when it was pointed out that she should have gone through the village.
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Yesterday we received a letter informing us that we had won £825,000 in a postcode related lottery in support of the coming World Cup and Olympic Games. If you get one of these please do not respond by phoning the telephone numbers printed. This is a scam and it will almost certainly find its way to other homes in the village.
A copy of the letter is at the top of this page. I will also have more on this in the October edition of Hethersett Herald which will be published later today.
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Yesterday I tuned into Breakfast TV as I do virtually every day. It was full of doom and gloom on the pandemic front of course but there was also a lovely article on an 80-year-old man suffering from dementia who composes music after being given four notes to work on.
Apparently Paul Harvey did this on national television a few weeks ago and the performance has gone viral and his composition is now going to be recorded by an orchestra.
The thing about his piece that struck me was how lyrical and beautiful it was with a very strong melody and many key changes. That took my mind back to a programme in this year's stripped down proms programme. It was a programme on new British music and it was dreadful.
But of course they had fellow composers in the studio telling is about how "life affirming" and "brilliant" the music was, whereas in reality it was just a noisy mess and didn't represent "the struggle of the oppressed through the ages" as they suggested (I might have got that a little wrong) . I call this pseudism. I would define that as: Writing music or producing a painting or any other art form that you claim stands for something of great note but which nobody can understand despite the fact the pseuds rave about its beauty, its message, its resonance and slap themselves on the back for being so clever. Very often those who nod their heads and eulogise are either related to or friends of the exponent.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy what I might call difficult music like the next man. I like to be challenged by listening to the likes of King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass and many more. But for me the music that lives on forever, whether it be classical or rock, is that which contains a memorable melody (and in the case of songs, a memorable lyric as well). That doesn't mean to say it has to be simple music. On the contrary it can still be complex. One of my favourite songwriters of all time is Jimmy Webb and some of his memorable songs are very complex.
The pseud thing reminded me of the book I have been reading recently about Pink Floyd founder member Syd Barrett where the author (Rob Chapman) justifies the fact that before being kicked out of the Floyd because he was uncontrollable and totally unreliable, Barratt would appear on stage and play one note on his guitar over and over again. The man was quite obviously seriously mentally ill. But no Mr Chapman in a real bout of pseudism claims that Barratt was being minimalist and making an artistic statement. I pretty much stopped reading the book at that point. Being a lead guitarist of a group and playing a single note isn't making an artistic statement any more than classical composer John Cage is in his piece entitled 4' 33" which is just 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence but which has a whole page on Wikipedia justifying it as a piece of art including the following tripe: "It was composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments and the score instructs performers not to play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece which is split into three movements."
I'm sorry but that isn't art. There is no skill in writing 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence and the man had an absolute nerve in splitting it into three movements. Mind you I'm working on a similar piece at the moment which will outdo Cage. I'm calling it 8' 47" and it will feature five movements of nothingness. Then in a couple of years time I will try to extend this to a magnum opus entitled 10' 39" but that's going to take some doing!
Anyway back to Paul Harvey. I liked the idea of taking four random notes and writing something around them and so sat at the piano and had a go myself. I'm nowhere near as proficient as Mr Harvey but I had a good go at chiselling out a melody of sorts and it's certainly something I will have another go at in the future.
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Yesterday I mentioned tennis and my love of the sport which goes back to when I first played it at around the age of seven. I used to go over the courts on Hellesdon Recreation Ground with friends and soon fell in love with the game. Mind you I also fell in love with cricket and football and virtually anything that had a ball. That love passed down to my two sons and now my grandson, but my granddaughter seems uninterested at the moment.
I started playing tennis seriously at the Norwich School where I played firstly for the junior school team and then the senior team and my Saturday afternoons were spent having Norfolk County coaching with Brian Blincoe at the Hewitt School. Brian also coached at the Norwich School on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Norfolk coaching was intense. My parents bought me the best racket available which I still have and I keep meaning to play a few games with it to see how it measures up against today's modern rackets. In those days rackets were of course made from wood.
The training was so intense that I began to lose interest in the game and it became a chore rather than an enjoyment. Indeed when I left grammar school I didn't play for a couple of years.
Now I'm back playing regularly and thoroughly enjoying it again. The problems with being over-coached come in the form of expectations. Brian told the county squads that there was no reason why any of us couldn't one day play at Wimbledon. That was raising our expectations to a farcical level. There was no way I could ever play on the national scene - I just wasn't good enough and my lack of height was a serious problem.
My game was based on serve and volley. In other words serving and running into the net with the second shot usually being a volley. This has largely gone from the modern game but back in the 1970s it was the way to play (just watch some old footage of the likes of Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall). Problem was being short meant that all too often the ball sailed back over my head to the back of the court.
Now I just play tennis for enjoyment without any pressure - mind you with my competitive spirit I still want to win every game.