I believe I'm correct in saying that Mel was born in nearby Ketteringham but has lived in Hethersett virtually all his life.
He will be talking about the days when trains stopped at Hethersett Station along with his memories of when the village had a racecourse and much more. His talk will be entitled Trains and Aches and Pains" which is a title loosely borrowed from the Bert Bacharach song "Trains and Boats and Planes."
If you are within striking distance of Hethersett, do pop along to the library and at the end of the presentation there will be coffee and light refreshments and it's all free. Donations for the refreshments will be gratefully received.
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So how did your Valentine's day go? We had a family get together in the evening with two sons, two daughter in laws and three grandchildren and, I mustn't forget, a dog. So it was all quite noisy.
Now grandson Elliot and granddaughter Poppy claim that Jack Valentine doesn't exist which is of course absolute nonsense. Mind you Jack must be getting on a bit now as he used to visit me when I was knee high to a grasshopper.
And there's an interesting phrase. Just where does that one come from? Well here's another of those useless facts that I seem so adept at delivering.
Being knee high to a grasshopper obviously alludes to being very small or very young. The expression dates back to 1850 but before then the saying was knee high to a mosquito or knee high to a bumblebee or knee high to a splinter.
In America in 1814 they had the phrase knee high to a Donald Trump. Whoops sorry that should have read knee high to a toad but then again perhaps that's the same thing.
Anyway I believe Jack Valentine was doing his rounds last night. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't come from Norfolk.
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There are two by elections taking place today. It's likely that the Tories will lose in both. Will be interesting to see how the Prime Minister glosses over that and turns it into a positive when in reality he will be absolutely seething inside and realise he's a dead man walking. And as I always say, that's not a political point but an observation based on reality.
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Poppy insisted on putting together another of what she refers to as a chapter book. This one is about the vicious Victorians. Poppy seems to be more interested in design than in content and wanted me to show her my dummy copy of our Le Paradis book. Chapter one in our book doesn't start until quite a few pages in. So she looked at the dedication pages, the introduction and the foreword and then said:
"Granddad I don't think those bits are important, no offence."
My reply was of course
"None taken."