But as anyone who has ever been to Lincoln will know, Lincolnshire isn't entirely flat either.
As for Norfolk. Well we have gigantic cliffs (most of which seem to be crumbling at the moment), we have Beeston Bump and Roman Camp which are about 300 feet above sea level and Norwich has Grapes Hill and Kett's Hill and many more hills that certainly aren't flat. So we aren't as flat as many people feel although Halvergate Marshes are pretty much on the level.
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I am reading a very interesting book at the moment that will probably be of little or no interest to anyone who doesn't a/ come from Norfolk or b/ have a degree from the University of East Anglia.
It's a weighty volume on the history of the UEA. It was given to me by a friend who is a graduate of the university. It looked rather daunting. It's a big book with a lot of pages (495 to be precise) and I really feared starting to read it thinking that it would be full of academic indecipherable language. Thankfully it isn't. So far I have read about the history of the UEA set within its environment, the politics involved in bringing it about and the characters responsible for bringing a university to Norwich.
There was some debate over whether it should be called The University of Norwich or the University of East Anglia. The latter was chosen to attract wider funding and acknowledgement and it started me thinking about how many universities are named after areas rather than towns and cities and the answer is not many. Just have a look at the list on the internet.
When it comes to obtaining degrees from the UEA, I feel something of a fraud. Yes I do have an MA from there but it didn't involve four or more years of toil as it was a work-based degree obtained in 1999.
Primarily it meant spending Wednesday evenings at the UEA with all the rest of the research being done within the workplace (Norfolk Police in my case). It was all part of a new concept introduced by the UEA which I don't think caught on. It was called COMEX which stood for "From Competence to Excellence."
As I didn't have a first degree I had to do an initial module which gave me an advanced certificate in education (or something like that). For this module I looked at Beat Policing and the Role of Family Liaison Officers within police forces. For my main Masters I studied the affect that the Media has on victims of crime. That gave me the opportunity to look at both the Media and the Victims side of things. I interviewed people who had either been victims of crime or who had lost loved ones to crime (i.e murder). These people were very generous with their time. Many of them I had come across through my job anyway. I investigated the way they had inter-acted with the Media to the benefit of both themselves and the Media outfits.
I am proud of my work for the degree and my final dissertation, all of which is available on my website if you need something to send you to sleep at night.
www.peterowensteward.weebly.com/university-researchvictims-of-crime.html.
Going to those Wednesday night sessions was something of a culture shock for me. Writing academically was just about as far removed as possible from my usual style as a journalist. As a reporter quotes had to be attributed. As an academic writer everything was anonymised despite the fact that all the people I interviewed were high profile and happy to have their identities revealed.
Indeed the first draft of my dissertation was read by my university mentor who looked at the style it had been written in and said something along the lines of "I would love to put this forward but I couldn't guarantee that you would get your degree." So I played the game by re-writing it in the accepted formula.
Those Wednesday sessions were rather strange. I seem to remember the first of the Masters' sessions taking the format of a discussion on whether we should have a coffee break during the evening or not and then, when we decided we should, there was a separate discussion on how long the break should be. I suppose it was a way of getting us to understand negotiation and democracy!
We did some creative writing (the UEA is big in the world of creative writing). One of these was writing about the brick wall which could be seen from our lecture room. Some of my fellow pupils struggled. I saw it as a challenge and reeled off a few thousand words.
I do remember vividly one piece of so called creative writing that might bring a smile to your face. I have no idea where the subject came from. You have to use your imagination a bit here. I was the only man amongst a room of ladies (probably about eight of them). The subject was catching a delicate part of a man's anatomy in his trouser zip. Yes you did read that correctly.
Of course there wasn't a hint of arrogance when I was able to say "without any fear of contradiction I can say that I'm the only person in this room that has experienced it." I can't remember what I wrote or what the others wrote but I will always remember the subject matter. And for any ladies reading this I can tell you that it's bloody painful.
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There are a few photos with today's blog. The two churches featured are at Woodton (on Tuesday's very muddy walk) and Hethersett (taken yesterday). There is one particular picture that sums up Tuesday's walk. It's the very misty one with the church in the distance (if you can spot it). The gloom seemed to sum up the day.