Wednesday 1.

Yesterday we drove up to Norwich. Actually we killed half a dozen birds with one stone. We drove up to Beccles first, passing the remains of a small town (above) which stands to both sides of the main A140 road. We had only a post code to get to the first call, which is a few miles north of Beccles. Our Satnav took us to the post code address, which, as so often happens in country postcode areas is an area rather than an address, then abandoned us. We tried all the available natives we could find in the area (yes, both of them), but nobody knew our man (who makes small replacement castings of early gun parts, among other things). In the end he found us. We'd stopped in a farm yard, when the door marked Dairy opened, and a man came out and said, "Are you Mr. .........?" I admitted the charge, and he explained that most of the farm buildings are rented out to small industries (which we'd already explained to the two natives, without any positive response). Business was done, then we drove on to Norwich, to visit friends of ours with a nightmarish problem : They live on the ground floor of a lovely Edwardian house near the centre of Norwich, and had been away for Christmas, as had the owner of the floor above them. He had also been away, had turned off his heating, but didn't turn off his water, so that, when our friends returned, and after the very cold spell around Christmas, they found their lovely flat was DEVASTATED. Many of the pipes in the flat above had burst, cascading into their flat. The plaster work, electrics, and carpets were all ruined, the doors, and everything in the fitted kitchen, were badly warped. Their sitting room and bathrooms were the only ones inhabitable, so they're camping out until repair work can be started. They'd more or less completed clearing the flat the day before, so we took them out to lunch to (hopefully) cheer them up a bit, and although they neither of them felt much like eating, they did, in the end, and at our urging put away a very light lunch. As I said, a nightmare.

Did some shopping in Norwich. Ann bought a pair of Hotter shoes (offputting name for shoes, I'd have thought- might just as well call them sweaty shoes, and have done with it- mustn't be curmudgeonly, Michael, especially as they are rather nice shoes) and a handbag.
On our way home we stopped off in Stowmarket to deliver some of the metal parts we'd bought near Beccles. Then on to our friends' house (Jill and Keith) to pick up a brace of pheasants. They'd told us they wouldn't be in, but also told us where the pheasants would be hanging. In the event they'd got back earlier than they'd expected, so we had a latish tea with them. Finally arrived home about seven.
A good, full, day.