A text from Stevan, and I’m up in Blakeney. The combination of an old haunt, good company and getting out, swung it. I delegated the Book Club, thank you Sheila.
Those huge skies. We walked of course, out of their Blakeney High Street front door, down the street to the low tide water front, and out to the marshes to Overy Staithe. A cream tea, then off again to Cley. Steven addresses a birder: Why are you looking so happy. What have you seen? He gave us the names, Red throated diver. An Indian runner duck, the cry of the curlew, the petwit, the oyster catchers.
The past, of course, came by. Blakeney Hotel was were the rich Norfolk farmers would go for the weekend, and my mother and I would watch them through the windows eating their restaurant food. I am still this outside looking in. Even then well healed, Blakeney has become all the more so, now with the fasionable Farrow and Ball muted colours. In our street, not one home is lived in but rented to holiday makers – like ourselves. What local would deny such an easy income? I wouldn’t.
I had to find it, finding ourselves driving so close. Which of the 7 Burnhams was it? Burnham Norton, in the contrary way the church outside Burnham Market, in the fields, separate, a plague church. The one with the Jacobean pulpit. The one where Bob’s and our marriage bans were read out, when we were to get married. What disturbed that direction? I’d concluded the marriage was just an excuse for a good party, neither of us having any direct family. I’d somehow missed the point.
Another memory lane, this one before Bob, Michael. We called in North Creek. Unchanged. Happy, still painting. Still helping me into my coat.
Kalikellett 