It is about the American GIs that were stationed in the county during the war in what was entitled The Friendly Invasion. It is about their bravery and how, many never came back from bombing raids.
But I have a huge problem with this, or should I say I have two huge problems.
Firstly it was filmed in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire with the set designed to look like a Norfolk village of the 1940s. WHY?
Why in the name of hell's teeth wasn't it filmed in Norfolk? I read an article in the Eastern Daily Press Newspaper stating that it is expected the series will greatly boost North American tourism to Norfolk. So what happens when these thousands come and find out it was actually filmed 100 miles away? Yes I know the airfields and various museums still exist in Norfolk and those will fascinate the Americans but they will still be looking for film locations and sets which they won't find and I'll bet that in the series actors supposedly speaking with Norfolk accents will be, as usual, displaying broad Devonian accents.
My second complaint is that this will be on Apple TV. Apple TV is one of those I don't have. I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Discovery Plus and probably more that I don't even know about but, to my knowledge, I don't have Apple TV, although I did once have a trial of it with a new mobile phone but I think that has long lapsed.
It's all becoming very confusing. Confusing over what to watch and where. There seems to be continual bidding wars over things that can just change providers with little or no publicity.
Football coverage is a perfect example. You get league matches on Sky, but if you want to watch European cup competitions, it's over to what used to be BT Sport but which now has another name. Then sometimes the league stuff moves to Amazon Prime. FA Cup matches are on the BBC while England international matches seem to crop up on independent networks along with England Ladies games. Then there are a whole host of other ways of watching your own team with individual games available at extra cost.
Thankfully there's a very good website/app that lists what you can watch and where but it's still confusing, particularly as bidding wars start and coverage can shift to the likes of Apple TV at the drop of a hat.
Same goes for cricket. Test matches used to be on the BBC, then Channel Four, then Sky and goodness knows where they are shown now because I just can't be bothered to find out.
But back to Messrs Spielberg and Hanks. Do you think they would be interested in our massacre at Le Paradis? It's got all the makings of a top film - the war, the fighting, the surrender, the massacre, the survival of two soldiers and how they brought the perpetrators to justice, the bravery of the French People, those families bereaved and of course Dunkirk ( yes I know that's already been done) but it is what our massacre story is all about. Our soldiers were engaging the Germans and holding them back so over 300,000 could get off the beaches at Dunkirk.
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Yesterday afternoon we popped along to Wymondham to see It's A Wonderful Life at the ex-servicemen's club and to do a few other bits and pieces.
I couldn't help but think about the parallels between two of my favourite actors - James Stewart and Tom Hanks. Both are/were genuinely nice and hugely charismatic people. Stewart was stationed in Norfolk during the war and flew from Norfolk airfields and now Hanks has made a television series about it even if it is set in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
The film at Wymondham had a display of photographs of Stewart along with film posters etc and even a slim volume of his poetry. I didn't know he wrote poetry although there isn't much of it and what there is isn't very good but that doesn't matter much.
It was wonderful to see the film on a big screen in colour. I must have seen it 10 times but I notice something new every time and it's always fresh. The sheer speed of the action makes it exhausting to watch but if you've never seen it do give it a watch. Just remember it's a film from the 1940s but also remember it was shot just a few years after James Stewart was stationed in Norfolk during the war. I hadn't realised until I read the credits that Ward Bond was in the film. I remember him from Wagon Train.
We had a cafe in Hethersett on the fields next to what is now known as the B1172 but which was previously the A11.
The cafe was called the Kinkajou and it was a regular meeting place for the GIs. I wonder if James Stewart ever went there. The cafe was pulled down a long time ago. It was close to what was once a Jet petrol station and which is now private houses. We used to have two petrol stations in Hethersett. Today we have none. That's progress. Facilities diminish as population and housing increases. Doesn't make a lot of sense but I guess that's the modern world.
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Sunday was a bit of a mixed afternoon. After dropping a Christmas card off we popped into Wymondham Garden Centre to have a look at their Christmas display and buy a few things.
Got involved in a bit of angst in the car park as I faced Mrs Angry. As I moved towards a space with the intention of backing into it I saw a large car opposite moving forwards and then backwards. There were a couple of toots of a horn but I didn't know where they came from. I couldn't work out whether the driver was trying to get into or out of a space.
I manoeuvred my way into the space to be confronted by Mrs Angry going on about "didn't I hear her pressing her horn" and something about a young child that I didn't understand. I asked her what her problem was as I didn't see any problem and there certainly wasn't a young child anywhere near.
"You are a very rude and ignorant man," she shouted after me.
I then saw her inside the centre and couldn't hold back.
"You know nothing about me because if you did you would know that I'm neither rude nor ignorant," I said with just a hint of anger in my voice.
She mumbled something under her breath which might have been an apology and might not. I wasn't hanging around to find out.
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We have lots of Christmas cards but nowhere near the number we once got when we were both working and involved in numerous village groups. I think one Christmas we had well over 200 and it might have been closer to 300. They were all over the place, on strings stretched round the room and on virtually every surface.
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Something that made me laugh on Saturday was Wikipedia. I know it's not particularly funny in itself but bear with me.
I wanted to add and edit a couple of entries. Anyone can do this. I wanted to write a new entry and to do this you have to have an account and be logged in. I previously had an account but couldn't remember the details so decided to set up another as it's free.
So not surprisingly I typed in Peter Steward as my user name only to have it refused on the grounds it was advertising or the name of a group rather than an individual or owing to the fact it was offensive.
Offensive moi. There I was back in the car park - offensive, rude and ignorant. I can only imagine that they thought Steward was a job description. So I used my alter ego Scott Willoughby which is an alias I use occasionally. Scott Willoughby is actually a village in Lincolnshire. Scott Willoughby was accepted. Real names obviously are no good but fictitious ones are ok for Wikipedia.