It's taken me a number of weeks but yesterday I finally got the bird!
Now all I have to do is see the owls!
Another eight mile walk yesterday which gives plenty of time to cogitate. What a lovely word that is. There are a number of lovely words that I have mentioned in this blog. Cogitating whilst pottering is the order of the day.
Now here's something that I have been pondering. How many times in your life have you got on well with somebody only for everything to fall apart and for a relationship to turn sour despite you having done nothing to bring this about?
My working life seems to have brought a number of such instances, the most marked of which occurred in a short sojourn in the Midlands.
After a bad experience working for a news agency which really wasn't the job for me, I applied to become editor of a weekly newspaper in Derbyshire. I was interviewed by the elderly man who was standing in as editor. He was the only person on the interview and a few hours afterwards when I was back home I got a telephone call offering me the job.
I was only too happy to accept it. I had already realised that I was more suited to small town journalism and being part of the community than trying to be an aggressive newsman. So being editor of a small weekly paper in rural Derbyshire seemed like the ideal job. Sadly it wasn't. Shortly after starting work the former editor who had promised to disappear from the scene once I was appointed stayed on and took against me. I have no idea why or how I had gone from the person perfect for the job into almost an undesirable within a few weeks.
I mention this because I am currently reading Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. In it Nicholas' sister is sent to work as a seamstress and her boss Miss Knag takes an instant liking to her. It all soon turns sour and that like turns into hatred in a matter of minutes through nothing other than jealousy.
So have you ever been in a similar situation where things have just turned sour for no apparent reason?
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The other thing I was thinking about on my lengthy walk was a person's ability to train and expand their brain. I am a firm believer that this can be achieved.
With awareness of one's situation and position in life an individual can expand his/her perceptions of existence - almost learning through experience.
I have found as I get older that my thirst for more and more knowledge has got more and more acute. I now devour facts and have become an obsessive collector of history and information. I wish I had brought this kind of attitude to much of my working life. It would certainly have made me better at what I did.
Wherever I go now, I am on the lookout for unusual pieces of history and unusual angles to things. This is particularly true with the book I am co-authoring at the moment under the title of Wymondham Vignettes. Myself and cousin Belinda are collecting together short 1,000 (maximum) word pieces on various aspects of Wymondham life from the past, the present and even the future.
Once we have about 30 pieces we will put them together and self publish in book form to raise some money for a local charity (still to be chosen). If you are reading this and have an unusual story relating to the market town we would love to hear it.
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Every so often Facebook throws up memories from your past. Yesterday it reminded me of my time on the quiz show the Weakest Link which was a day out and a half. You can see the photograph they took of us in the hospitality room before the programme was recorded.
I was pleased to answer all my questions correctly until I got to the last three contestants and then I had a brain freeze. It's a long and very tiring process anyway and by the time you get to the later stages your brain is fried.
So I got voted off after failing to answer the question: "Which character in the children's television series Rainbow is also a word for making a mess of something?"
I know all the characters in Rainbow, having watched it so many times when my sons were growing up. But at that point my mind went blank and all I could say was Zippy which I knew was wrong. The real answer was Bungle.
It was a good day though.
Also on the pictorial front are a few shots from Hethersett and Wymondham taken over the past few days.