Amongst all the Christmas celebrations and the good news from the village - which included a step forward in getting a new health centre and the continuing growth of the new pavilion on the memorial playing field - came an appeal over a spate of vandalism.
Vandalism is something that over the years has blighted our village and also many villages of a similar size in the country. I have in the past personally had a hand, through being part of various groups, in fighting wanton vandalism. It is a blot on any landscape and something that seems to go in waves.
I received a call from David Smith of the Memorial Playing Field Bowls Club asking if I could highlight an appeal to the public to report anything suspicious in or around the bowls club to the police. The clubhouse has been broken into on three separate occasions. Virtually nothing has been stolen apart from a few cans of beer but damage is costly and, as David pointed out, the club doesn't have a great deal of money and each time they have to replace a lock they have less.
David reckons it is vandalism rather than burglary that was the motive for what has happened and he thinks it has been done by youths.
I keenly remember a few years ago getting into trouble with some people for describing the vandalism of a table tennis table in the playing field as almost certainly being the work of young people. i was taken to task and it was pointed out that older people also cause vandalism. My response was simply that I hadn't heard of any marauding gangs of pensioners moving around the village other than the notorious Zimmerframe Gang.
So, at the risk of being taken to task again, I would say this latest vandalism is the work of young people. The club is working with the police to stem this latest spate. If you are living locally and you see acts of vandalism please do phone 999 and report it.
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I'm not sure which is worse - extreme cold or extreme heat. They are both thoroughly unpleasant.
Thankfully the recent cold snap is over, at least for a while. It's been unpleasant and walking has been difficult. Going to the football match to see Norwich's appalling performance against Blackburn on Saturday it wasn't grandad or grandma who fell over on the ice but grandson. Luckily no damage was done but it did illustrate how difficult things were.
There's nothing worse than shivering and everyone is so grateful for the warm spots throughout the country where people struggling to pay their energy bills can go and have a a warm and a hot drink.
It still beggars belief that the energy companies can continually hike prices up despite making massive almost obscene amounts of profit whilst our Government refuse to peg back their profits by imposing tax hikes on them.
This is something that is almost beyond comprehension. It borders on corruption. But back to the temperatures. A month ago in Indonesia we were sweltering in 34 degree temperatures. Which was just as unpleasant as shivering in sub zero temperatures. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have temperatures that stayed around 20 degrees?
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You will know by now that I love coming across an unexpected fact in an unexpected place.
You will also know that my favourite rock group is Barclay James Harvest.
BJH have a rather strange history. The four original members eventually split and went two different ways with two of them forming one re-incarnation of BJH and the two others another.
One of these groups was known as John Lees' Barclay James Harvest and the drummer in that band was/is Kevin Whitehead. Whitehead was also a member of another band called Dare. This Facebook post pointed out that Whitehead would soon have a dilemma as his two bands would be touring at the same time.
So as I usually do, because I'm a nosey person, I looked up Dare on the Internet and found that they are playing a venue in Norwich during their 2023 tour. But of considerably more interest was a list of current and previous band members which included Brian Cox on keyboards. Yes that Brian Cox. The Professor Brian Cox - world renowned physicist.
I wonder how good he was with the keyboards?
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On Saturday we went to a new indoor street market in Norwich. I suppose the term indoor and street are rather contradictory.
Anyway this new Norwich venue was previously a Jamie Oliver restaurant. Now it's more like a school refectory. The food isn't cheap or perhaps I should say not as cheap as it perhaps should be. But it was reasonably tasty.
The main problem is you have to order via a telephone app. It was ok because we were with our two sons and our grandson so they were young enough to know what they were doing. It will probably put more senior people off.