I try not to use those words unless something is truly awesome and inspiring and I didn't even use them to describe places like the Grand Canyon or Angkor Wat.
But yesterday I saw something that WAS truly amazing and awesome and I didn't have to go very far to see it.
Every year in Norwich at The Forum they have a Makers' Festival which is a fancy title that just means it is a festival for people to show off their handicraft and artistic talents.
Margaret Seaman was born in Norwich and lives in Great Yarmouth and you certainly can't escape that fact as she has what is termed a broad Norfolk accent. Margaret so loves her home town that she knitted a model of the sea front - the entire sea front.
Margaret is also a royalist. So she didn't stop at knitting a sea front. She knitted Buckingham Palace and the Sandringham estate and a hospital and has raised over £100,000 for various charities.
Yesterday we caught the bus into Norwich. We have a whole fleet of new electric double deckers.
"They must run out of charge at times," somebody said to me. So far I don't think any of them have. So by getting the bus we are doing our bit to help the environment as well as saving us petrol money and parking charges.
My main reason for going into Norwich was to go to the Makers Festival to see Margaret's creations which were all together on public display for what I believe is the first time and possibly the only time.
Margaret is hanging up her needles. She has already been on local and national television in the past few weeks and is now looking for a home for her models.
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If only we had known that Tom Hanks has dual American and Greek citizenship we would have won the latest Bawburgh Golf Club quiz. The last round is always called Take A Chance and consists of four clues. If you get the answer correct after clue one you get 10 points, after clue two you get six, after clue three you get four and after clue four you get two. You can only have one guess and if you get it wrong you get no points.
Going into the last round we were in third place. The clue for 10 points was something along the lines of "Born in 1957, this American actor has dual American and Greek nationality."
The Greek reference put us off and we ended up getting confused and only scoring two. The answer was so obvious as Hanks is probably the best known actor in the world. We ended up fourth.
He and his family were given honorary Greek citizenship for their support of that country after the wild fires of a few years ago.
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During the evening the subject of travel shows came up after my comments about Clive Myrie going around Italy. Before going out I recorded Michael Portillo's rail journey to the Scilly Isles which was rather strange as there isn't a railway on the Scilly Isles.
You have to get to them on a ferry or helicopter from Cornwall or even on a cruise which was our mode of transport on our first visit. On our second we stayed in a b and b for a week and got there on a ferry from Penzance. I was laid up for a couple of days by what turned out to be a horsefly bite but which we thought at the time was COVID until a test proved negative.
We like the Scilly Isles a lot although to be fair we've only been to two of them. I'm looking forward to watching the programme. Michael Portillo is just about acceptable as a travel guide. He does get involved in certain bits of nonsense but you do learn something.
So a few of us remembered travel programmes of the past and agreed that the best two travel presenters are/were Alan Whicker and Michael Palin. I believe the latter is still travelling and will be doing shows on Africa in the near future. I know this because he was on The One Show which was truly amazing and awesome (not).
I guess that only people of a certain age will remember Alan Whicker. If he was still alive he would be 101. Whicker had a warmth in his voice and delivery that just made you want to visit the places he was talking about. As I write this blog I can clearly hear his voice in my head.
His biggest programme was Whicker's World which oozed charm and made you believe that he really did belong to the whole world. He so dominated the travel world that Monty Python produced an entire comedy sketch about him which pictured an entire island populated entirely by Alan Whickers and a tagline I remember so well "There are too many Whicker's on Whicker Island."
The other great travel presenter is Monty Python's Michael Palin, one of the men who portrayed Alan Whicker in the sketch and who took on his mantle with his easy going travelogues that were full of bonhomie but with an underlying seriousness.
Palin has oodles of charm - the kind of man I'd love to have a chat with in his beloved Southwold, a seaside place that we love so much as well.
There's perhaps a slight irony that Palin has been knighted whilst Alan Whicker only received a CBE, not that a CBE is to be decried of course. Margaret Seaman got a British Empire Medal for her knitting for charity and probably deserves more.
I always viewed John Cheese as the funniest member of the Python team but, having re-watched many of their sketches on You Tube, it's Palin's lunacy that I now find the funniest.
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The name Fyfe Robertson also came up, although he wasn't strictly a travel reporter. Older readers will remember him. He was Scottish, had a very Scottish drawl and a pointy beard.
He would have been 120 now. How time flies. He was born in Edinburgh and ironically died in Eastbourne which is pretty much as far away from Scotland as you can get other than Land's End in Cornwall. His real first name was James which is nowhere near as romantic as Fyfe.
He roamed the country for the Tonight Show, discovering people with unusual stories and interesting lives. People just like Margaret Seaman who probably watched him as a little girl growing up in Norwich.
The word Fyfe looms large in my boyhood, living in a greengrocers. Every Friday we had a delivery of fruit and veg which included Fyffe's bananas. That's Fyffe with two fs and was the surname of Edward Fyffe who started the banana business in 1888. It was certainly well known as I remembered it from the mid to late 1950s.
Going back to travel shows I used to enjoy the BBC' Holiday programme and ITV's equivalent Wish You Were Here with Judith Chalmers. And continuing the age thing, Ms Chalmers is still alive at the age of 88 whilst Michael Palin is a mere 80 although he will be 81 in a couple of weeks. I find getting the age of these people often gives me some perspective on time.
The Holiday programme and Wish You Were Here gave genuine assessments of various holiday destinations. They showed you places so that you could make up your mind whether you wanted to go there or not. By and large there were no ridiculous antics and celebrities trying to prove how much fun they are and actually detracting from the places they are in.
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And so to the Grand National. Numerous years ago we went to Aintree and I have to say I didn't enjoy being there all that much. It was an occasion but I only saw the last couple of fences and watched much of the race on a large screen. I do remember they had a tanning tent and that wasn't for the horses. Let's just say it was for fillies of a different kind.
There was also a heel bar for fillies that had broken their stilettos on which they hobbled around all day, much to their own discomfort of course.
There's been plenty of publicity in recent years about the exploitation of and cruelty to animals. On the way from Aintree railway station to the course we had to walk past a handful of people with placards imploring us not to go to the races as if their presence would make us turn round and return from whence we came.
Same thing happened when we went to the Derby at Epsom. There were a few protestors on an area of land that seemed to be having a party rather than a genuine protest.
As I've said before one of them ran across the course after the race had started thus endangering himself, endangering the police, endangering us, endangering the jockeys and endangering the horses. Ben Newman received a suspended prison sentence for endangering so many people. Not a great deterrent I would suggest.
We never seem to have much luck in picking winners of the Grand National. We don't have much luck either in getting horses in the top six. We are very small time fun betters. So I can say that we backed six horses for an outlay of a whopping £8 and got most of that back with a third place. Enough of that.
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Unfelt phrases number one - "We apologise for any inconvenience."
Our journey to the quiz is about four miles at the most. Firstly we came across a set of traffic lights in the village and then we found a key road closed and had to double back to take another route, virtually going back to where we started from.
Apologies feel very empty, especially when they refer to the umpteenth set of roadworks on our village.
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Turned on the television on Saturday morning to find another of those crassly awful shows. This one was a vehicle for Katie Price who was all girlie giggles and hugs. I have a lot of time for Katie and what she has gone through (acid being thrown in her face by an ex with her losing the sight in one eye) but I have no time for these stupid programmes just designed to promote the so called guests.
There are of course revelations in these programmes. Today we were asked the vital questions "how many showers do you have a day?"
A viewer had posed this question. She had two a day - one before work and one after. Meanwhile her partner only had one in the morning and she didn't like the idea of him bringing dirt into bed with him.
A deep discussion ensued and Katie shocked us all by saying she doesn't necessarily shower every day - the little minx.
Now I know you are going to ask the obvious question. Peter how many showers do you have a day and the answer will amuse Cousin Belinda.
I rate the heat of the day according to how many showers I need. In Egypt I hit the record of five. I very occasionally miss one but my usual is one or two.
In tomorrow's blog I will tell you about our slightly unusual trip to Norwich and there will be some photographs.