Started the day with a light visit to the gym and then my friend Rev Christopher Mallett showed me the latest Good News magazine which I'm really pleased with in a modest kind of way. The new cover is very bright and impactive and inside it's now a colourful and positive magazine, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve. There's still a few more tweaks to do before I'm completely happy but I like to think that since I took over as editor the magazine has moved forward considerably IMHO.
After a quick chat with Chris (and it seems we have a new rector in the village who I must contact for the next edition) we came home and I pretty much finished off Hethersett Herald, although there's still one feature to write before I publish it on Christmas Eve.
Then we picked up granddaughter Poppy and drove into Norwich. We were taking her out to lunch and then going to the cinema to see Wonka. The Waffle House (her favourite) had a queue so we gave up on the idea of going there and went to Pizza Express in our wonderful Forum building. I have to say I wasn't impressed with the food. Pizzas are now around the £17-18 mark which I feel is a little excessive and they weren't that good. Poppy did have the three course children's menu which included a bombadino (you need to remember this for later).
Overall the food was very average and over-priced but there were plenty of people there. I tried to deliver one of my friend Richard's books to Radio Norfolk and was sad that this radio station no longer feels part of the community I love. It has too many networked programmes and localism seems to have disappeared. I went to what was laughingly called "reception" to find nobody there and a rather terse sign telling me not to activate the intercom as nobody would respond. Not sure what happened to customer care. So I dumped my parcel on a desk and rejoined the family at Pizza Express.
I was concerned about leaving the parcel in case somebody thought it was a bomb and when I read the notice more closely after finishing our lunch it said parcels should be left with customer service which was on the other side of the building. So I did and then I had much better luck at what I still refer to as ECN (Eastern Counties Newspapers). I walked through the doors of what used to be the newspaper office in Prospect House and felt just as I did all those years ago when I returned from a lunch in the city to work through the afternoon.
But today the newspapers are owned by a company called Newsquest which is based somewhere else in the country (probably Devon. I say this as I just can't be bothered to check exactly where it is). The Eastern Daily Press and the Norwich Evening News still have an office there but the building is now the home to insurance companies and others.
Where there used to be a number of vibrant desks for the public where you could place adverts, ask to see a reporter etc etc, there is now just one catch-all desk.
"Will there be anyone there you know," Poppy asked before going off to do some shopping with Grandma that involved buying some new earrings.
"I doubt it very much," I replied.
But there was. I last worked in the building in 1989 and the mathematicians amongst you will realise that was 34 years ago. But on the desk was Andrew and somehow I remembered him and remembered his name. A lovely soft spoken guy who would phone up when somebody came to see us.
"Hi Peter, Andrew on the front desk. I've got x to see you," he would say.
"Hello you're Andrew," I said, coming back into the present. I had to tell him who I was but then he did remember me.
"Didn't you work in features?" he said.
"Yes for a time but then I was sports editor and a sub editor on the Mercury for many years," I replied.
"That's right I remember you now."
We had a reminisce and he told me he had worked there for something like 37 years. Really he didn't look much older and it was nice to have a chat. I left a copy of the book for the reporters and met up with Anne and Poppy to go to Cinema City to see Wonka.
A number of people we know had been captivated by this film. I found it strangely dull with very little storyline. I think the Dahl family co-operated with it but I'm not sure that Roald Dahl would have been happy with the plot which was both silly and contrived and, to be honest, there wasn't much of it anyway. For me it didn't bring Christmas magic to the screen, or any kind of magic. Even Poppy got restless, although she did seem to enjoy it. It's certainly not a film I would bother to watch again when it comes on the small screen. For those a bit confused... Wonka is a prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is a brilliant story. Wonka tells the story of what happened to Willy Wonka in his attempts to set up a chocolate factory in what looked remarkably like London. It's directed by the guy who gave us Paddington and Paddington II and both those films are infinitely better.
The songs were written by one of my favourite artists Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy and the incidental music is by Joby Talbot who also did a lot of work with Divine Comedy. The songs were what you would expect from a children's film. The two good performances for me were from Hugh Grant and Olivia Coleman. Olivia, who we all know comes from Norwich, is one of our best actresses and played the sneering, battle axe at the centre of the story. Her character was taken straight from the Thernadiers in Les Miserables. The other enjoyable performance was from Hugh Grant as the tiny Ooompah Loompah. Ok he was playing Hugh Grant with his usual plummy accent but at least he was amusing.
We battled through the Norwich traffic and it took some battling through and just had time to drop Poppy off at home and have a cup of tea before coming home and having a quick change and going to the Christmas quiz at Bawburgh Golf Club which I have mentioned many times.
We have won these monthly quizzes on a number of occasions but lately haven't been doing too well. At times we feel like a boxer who used to be great but is now punch drunk, living on former glories and past his sell by date. Last year we came bottom in the Christmas quiz but at least we did better this year and finished in mid table, although if we had made some better choices we would have possibly have finished in the top three.
One question we stupidly got wrong was: "Which country would enjoy a Bombardino (remember that) at Christmas with the drink including coffee, Advocaat and Brandy."
Taking the Advocaat as the clue we said Holland. Italy was the answer and then I realised that part of Poppy's three course meal at Pizza Express had been a Bombardino - without the coffee or alcohol of course. Basically it was just frothy milk with some chocolate on top. And of course Pizza Express serves Italian food.
And that as they say was a wrap as far as Thursday was concerned and talking of wrapping, I must do my parcels today. I suppose it's too late to send them to Santa for delivery now. Which brings me onto one of the questions at the quiz for which was "how fast does Santa have to drive to deliver presents to every home in the world?"
The answer was in millions of miles per hour. I actually looked this up and three physics students from the University of Leicester have worked it out as 0.5% of the speed of light. It's good to know our young people are doing such important work. To be fair they probably did it as a joke and but of fun. As far as I'm concerned the answer is simple. He would have to go b----y fast and those reindeers would certainly suffer.