All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.
Aaah the places I have lived. Lots of them on my life journey.
As a boy I lived in two places. I was born in Reepham Roasd in Hellesdon which is about three miles from the centre of Norwich, At the age of about 12 we moved just around the corner to Middleton's Lane.
At 18 I left home to go to journalism college at Harlow in Essex and lived with a family about two miles from the centre. That was a real education and one of the best years of my life.
My first job was in Lowestoft in Suffolk where I had a bedroom and kitchen in a house in St Margaret's Road with a very strange elderly lady who liked her drink.
Then I moved to Norwich and lived at home for a while until moving to Cromer to a flat in Corner Street which was just a two minute walk to the sea front. I was then moved to Beccles in Suffolk.
There I had three different addresses. I started off in lodgings or digs with an elderly woman where two of us had the use of a lounge come diner and a bedroom each. She provided food which was universally pretty awful and I seem to remember that she had a Bedingfield Terrier dog.
People I worked with there knew I wasn't greatly happy and suggested I contacted a lovely couple who lived by the river and sometimes had vacancies for lodgers. This I did and the result was a move down the road. It was a large house and there was a lot of partying, usually led by the landlady. I remember on one occasion being woken up at midnight because there was a party going on. It felt like Harlow all over again.
The couple were called George and Betty. George was much more laid back than his wife. He was a fellow journalist who, before his retirement, had read the news on either Radio Three or Four. One day he became the victim of an unintentional spoonerism. He was meant to talk about the politician Sir Stafford Cripps but pronounced it Sir Stifford Crapps.
Got married and we moved into a flat next to the newspaper office. Couldn't get much closer to work than that. There was actually a connecting door between the flat and the office. On one occasion when it had snowed heavily I decided to wind my boss up by phoning him and telling him I was snowed in and wouldn't be able to get into the office.
"ok" he said in his usual fun way. Then he realised. "you live in the flat," he said.
We then moved to our first home. This was at Kirby Cane which is also known as Ellingham - one of those places that has two names. We bought a bungalow from a Mr Lord and I told people for ages that we had bought the house of the Lord! It meant that each working day I went over the border - living in Norfolk and working in Suffolk.
When I left there it was for a move to the Midlands where we lived in a house by the canal at Long Eaton in Derbyshire. That didn't last very long and for a time I moved back to live with my parents until we found somewhere else to live.
Then we came to Hethersett and have never left. We started in one part of the village and then moved to our forever home where we still are.
I remember lots of characters I have lived with over the years and I remember the places well. On Thursday on our Wherry trip I had a chat with somebody who told me that the church tower at Beccles was open to the public with lovely views over the Waveney Valley. We must have a day in the town.
I was very sad to leave Beccles and looked upon it as still my home when we lived in the Midlands as I never settled there at all. But now I feel little affinity to Beccles whilst I do still feel close to Cromer. It's strange how some places come and some places go but some stay in your mind and memory more than others. My happiest working years were in Beccles. I loved the town and I loved the job and I will develop this sometime in the future.
* * *
Don't you just hate it when technology changes. You just get used to using something and it changes. And as I write this, what I have just written has suddenly disappeared and I am having to write it all again. This has happened for no apparent reason and, before you say you should have saved it, that was exactly what I was doing when it crashed.
Anyway I was talking about putting photographs on You Tube. Previously the simple photo editing programme I used came automatically with my computer. Turning my photos into a slideshow and making a file for upload to You Tube was relatively simple. Now that programme no longer exists but has been replaced by a piece of video creation software that is difficult to use.
Another thing that gets my goat is how ridiculously difficult it is to do things on line. We have been trying for over a year to set-up a bank account for the Friends of Hethersett Library. We have gone through hoops to get this done, filled in numerous forms, danced a bit, hopped about, said 20 hail Mary's, sent electronic signatures over, waited a bit and then repeated the process again and again until finally we might be there. I am reasonably computer literate so goodness knows how some people get on with this kind of progress. I often feel like giving up with a shriek.
I have no idea where the phrase "getting one's goat" comes from. I do remember my grandfather getting a goat and the damn thing attacked me one day. It was probably just trying to be friendly or perhaps it thought I might taste better than grass. Anyway my grandfather caught it and tied it up and that probably was a case of getting his goat.
Well that's enough dribblings for today. I had better get this published before it fails again.