Yes I started the conversation with a stranger by talking about the weather.
Regular readers will know how much I hate talking about the weather. You can't do anything about it so why continually bring it up in conversation?
Ok it's an ice breaker. So in the changing rooms it was a matter of.
Stranger: Good Morning.
Me: Good morning. Looks like another hot one.
Stranger: Yes it's certainly hot.
Me : Can't last too long though.
Stranger: No.
And with that we both went silent. I had a much more interesting chat in the sauna with two more strangers. They came straight in with a very unexpected opening gambit.
"We come in here so we can feel like Roman Senators."
To be fair I'm not sure why entering a sauna would make a modern male feel like a Roman, although it was probably similar to the baths they would have had in Roman times.
"So what did the Romans do for us?" He said just as his wife gave him a clip round the chest. Were these two of my bloggettes trying to wind me up and tempting me to write about them. If so they succeeded.
But I quickly twigged. Said man was referring to Monty Python's "Life of Brian" one of the funniest films ever IMHO.
We discussed the film and then chat got round to Hancock's Half Hour. I recently watched the one where he had a cold on You Tube. Actually that came out all wrong. He had a cold but not on You Tube although come to think of it he probably had a cold on You Tube as well. I think I'm tieing myself in knots here.
Anyway we agreed that much of today's comedy owes a huge debt to the likes of Python and Hancock.
I suggested man and woman might like to slip into a toga when they left the health club.
"I think that would look a bit strange, " they said.
"I like strange," I replied, just falling short of adding "I write about it."
You will know by now that I can write more rubbish than you can poke the proverbial stick at. My friend, or should I say soon to be ex friend, Chris said as much at the Old Farts lunch.
He likes to read the blogs to see if they can get even more tedious. I can assure you Chris they can.
On Friday we tried another new bus service to the village. It was like a half day outing. I wandered to the village to pop up a poster on the charity shop noticeboard advertising our next talk at the library on 17th September when Paddy Anstey will talk about the Mid Norfolk Heritage Railway, tickets £5 on the door including refreshments. Plug over.
Then we caught the new service which runs from Wymondham through the village and Little Melton and onto the Longwater retail park. This bus runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There's just the one bus and you get about 90 minutes on the retail park. That's long enough to do some grocery shopping or, in our case, to have a coffee and a cheese scon or scone in Marks and Sparks.
We then had time to get some photographic stuff which gave me the chance to say: "call the Police I've been framed."
Isn't Lego clever how it's reinvented itself? The company now has themed kits to prove that it has moved with the times. We had a look at all the Harry Potter Lego and all the Minecraft Lego with Christmas in mind.
But Christmas shouldn't be in mind - not yet anyway. We went into the Range where they had a small Christmas display but it was a Christmas display nonetheless. I couldn't help notice it was over 30 degrees outside and possibly the hottest day of the year.
I promise not to mention Christmas again until at least the middle of November after all we have Hallowe'en and Fireworks first.
At 11.30 we got back on our small but perfectly formed bus. We had the same five passengers on the way back as we had on the way there. We got on the bus with a dear lady who said she was "beyond excited" with the new service. She regularly goes shopping on the retail park but for sometime has taken taxis. Now she can get the bus. She really was excited. Never being one to miss an opportunity, I gave her a card promoting Hethersett Herald. On that front I have a number of ideas for stories for the next edition. All I need is the time to research and write them.
We had a lovely driver as well. A young lady who obviously came from Eastern Europe. I meant to find out where but forgot to ask her. Before taking on the route she only had one practice drive and so knew the way there but wasn't sure of where to turn on the way back. So we helped her out. She was so obliging that I think if we had asked she would have taken us home.
Many years ago we were staying at a hotel on the outskirts of Bury in Lancashire. We got a bus into the town centre, had a look round and then went to the bus station to get the bus back. We knew which number we needed but not exactly where to get off as we had to walk from the hotel to find a bus stop on the way out.
We asked the driver if he would tell us where to get off at a stop the closest to the hotel. He made a slight detour and dropped us outside the door. Now that's what I call service.
We knew the other couple on the bus and waved to lots of people in the village as we passed: "Do you know everyone here" lady asked. I explained that we had lived in the village for over 40 years. During the day it's the same people moving around ie people who are usually retired so there is a good chance that we will know most of them. I couldn't help thinking back to the comments I made a few days ago about Beccles and how I used to know so many people there.
The same now goes for Hethersett. Then I worked on the Beccles and Bungay Journal, now I work (voluntarily) on the Hethersett Herald. There are lots of parallels between the two.
I have written a lot recently about my obsession with writing. I do a lot of it. You may have noticed. So I went onto Facebook and my daily blog site and scrolled down and down and down. It went on and on and on and after minutes of scrolling I had still only reached March of this year. I hate to think how many words I have written since I started.
This blog for example amounts to around 1100 words already. Taken as an average that would be 33,000 words approx each month. That's a book every two to three months or very approx 400,000 words a year or well over a million since I started. And some of you lovely people have read virtually every word. I can't thank you enough.
Last night I dreamt again of Manderlay. Whoops that's the opening lines of one of my favourite books "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier. What I meant to say was Last night I dreamt of a mellotron.
Well I've gone on far too long today so tomorrow I'll explain what a mellotron is and also where we went on Saturday and there might even be some pictures as well.