I ask this because today I bring you another edition of four men in a sauna.
Yes once again I walked into the sauna to find the same four old Norfolk boys talking up a storm.
As they seem to comment on everyone, I suspect they say things about me.
Something along the lines of "that bloke always sits up the corner and never says anything."
Little do they know that the bloke up the corner is making a mental note of everything and writing it down later to share with his bloggettes. Although of course as you read this you don't actually know if these people are real or fictitious. I could be making the whole thing up.
I can't relate much of what was said in the latest episode as quite a bit of it was rude and unprintable, but I can introduce a fifth figure- a younger man with a Scouse accent who said that he comes from Great Ellingham which just happens to be where we were at the weekend.
How often does this kind of thing happen? You go somewhere or read something and within a short while somebody makes reference to it. It's not surprising really because you have heightened awareness of things experienced and you immediately pick up on it when some trigger is mentioned or activated
Had this man told us three months ago that he lives in Great Ellingham I wouldn't have made anything of it, but because we had a connection with that village from the recent visit my ears
immediately pricked up.
But back to the action in the sauna. I entered whilst a conversation was in mid flow and one of them had been watching re-runs of shows featuring the northern comedian Bernard Manning.
Older readers will remember Bernard Manning. He was totally non pc and in modern parlance didn't give a stuff. Just like these guys.
One of them launched into a Manning joke which just happened to be a clean one.
A man goes into a barber's shop and asks for a Tony Curtis cut. The barber shaves all his hair off.
'I said I wanted a Tony Curtis'.
'That's what you have. I have always loved him in the King and I'.
Another man goes in and asks for a Beatles cut. The barber shaves off all his hair.
'I said I wanted a Beatles cut.'
'Well that's what they would get if they came in here.'
I told you they weren't funny. A third joke about Beethoven was even more unfunny and far too long and involved to worry about here. It did involve the humming of the opening bars of the fifth symphony. Let me know if you need any of those jokes explained as they are a touch obtuse.
Four men in a sauna then discussed a variety of subjects that included adverts for Tampax which I didn't quite understand their connection with.
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Popped up to North Norfolk for a couple of days and hit our first rain for some time. It was quite torrential in Weybourne and we had to run for it to get from the car to the local bistro.
We certainly needed it but not that much. Heard back home from a friend that roads on Hethersett were flooded, something else to catch up on for the next edition of Hethersett Herald. Apparently villages near Holt were for a time impassible. Thankfully we got through them before the rain came. At Weybourne there was 33 cm of rain but according to Look East Hethersett took the prize with 55 cm of rain and that's a lot of water.
We tried to stop for lunch at a large barn complex at Melton Constable. We had stopped there for coffee on a previous visit and made a mental note to return one day for lunch. This felt like the one day but when we got there it was all closed down. Another one bites the dust to quote Queen (that's the rock band and not the Monarch).
Before setting off for the north I went to the dentist to have a polish and I gave the hygienist a little trick on how to remember things. Actually it wasn't my trick but one of the pieces on Would I Lie To You. That's the programme where a celebrity makes a statement about something that happens to them and other celebrities have to assess whether it's true or false.
I can guarantee that you will end up doing this.
Do you remember leaving home and not being able to remember whether you've locked the door or turned the lights off?
Well the celebrity, and I think it was Richard Osman, said that when he leaves his house and locks the door he barks like a dog. When he gets into his car and drives away he may not be able to remember locking the door but he will remember barking.
I guess the problem will come if you can't remember whether you barked or not. And it could be a tad confusing as you may need a series of animal noises to cover everything. A bark for locking the front door, a meeow for turning off the lights, a moo for turning off the gas, a baa for turning off the computer etc. You would be standing outside your door making animal noises for minutes and then forgetting which ones you had missed and what they referred to and of course you would get strange looks from neighbours if they just happened to be passing.
Incidentally Richard's claim was false but I have already adopted the idea. Bet you do too.
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On my Facebook feed yesterday came memories with photos from eight years ago when the Tour of Britain cycle race came through our village and hundreds of people lined the main road through the village.
I will reproduce some of those photos in the next Hethersett Herald.
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I mentioned the other day a new website for writers by the name of Substack which doesn't strike me as a good name at all. I will be posting occasional pieces on there. It will be pieces from my past, articles written for various publications and other things I feel you might be interested in reading. A kind of Steward's Miscellany. I will let you know when the first piece is active. The idea is you sign in with an e mail address and get the pieces delivered to you. I won't make a commitment to post on a regular basis as I do with my blogs but this will be an occasional dip into my writing.
Do let me know if you would be interested in reading this as it will cover a variety of thoughts and subjects and I don't want to do it if nobody is interested.