A quiet day to relax

 

The business gurus call it decompressing a bit of jargon which has come from the world of deep-sea diving to talk about the recovery time needed in a workplace environment. Well sometimes something similar is needed on a holiday too.

 

After two days when we spent twelve and a half and thirteen hours out and about and walked 6.08 and 5.16 miles respectively, which is, according to Google Fit 15,800 and 14,600 steps. It seems perfectly sensible to have a day to rest and recuperate. There are muscles in my legs which didn’t know they were muscles before this week that are certainly doing what Jane Fonda used to call ‘feeling the burn’.

 

I woke at the later the usual time of 6am and planned to write my blog post for the day before. But even awake and having had breakfast the words wouldn’t flow on the page. So, I did something I find much more relaxing - checking my accounts.

 

Those who know me know that I love a spreadsheet and can get lost in the enjoyment of doing accounts to the extent that people can be doing things around me [co-pilot's note: innocent whistling and smiley face!] and I wouldn’t notice as I focus on the accounts.

Well, I had noted three days ago that there was a problem between the internal balance of my accounts – there are three checks on this built into the spreadsheet, but no need to worry about that – and the ‘available balance’ on my credit card app, the difference being £7.67 a very strange number that I knew wouldn’t be easy to find.

 

Having completed the task of checking off each transaction I was able to see (thanks to the Credit Card app having a Pending Transactions feature (which was a great innovation three years or so ago after much completion of feedback on the app from me, as my other credit card app already had the feature, but the one I use most doesn’t) that I had a payment of £24.03 for petrol when the app said I’d spent £31.70. This puzzled me as I don’t often mistype numbers and certainly at the worst might invert a number order, not change it completely. Then I remembered!! I’d bought petrol at the 'Pay at Pump' and the machine had no paper for a receipt. It wasn’t a problem as I log price paid, number of litres, price per litre, total mileage, mileage since last petrol and miles per gallon in a book in the car each time I fill up. Then it dawned on me, Drew had volunteered to go to check the amount in the car when I was doing my holiday accounts update and didn't have a chit. It turned out that he had given me the number of litres bought not the price paid!! An easy solution that took me about 80 minutes to discover that the problem wasn’t my record keeping, but my source. Now, dear reader, I’ll leave you to decide if Drew did this inadvertently or advertently [Co-pilot's note: Larks, dear readers, as if I would - laughs like Muttley], whichever it was it gave me a very enjoyable and relaxing start of the day with my focus consumed on the three workbooks in my Holiday accounts and the Credit Card spreadsheet. This may seem a sad way of enjoying myself, but once a bookkeeper forever a bookkeeper in my mind.  

 

That task finished I then went through and checked/edited the 390 photos from our day in Norwich, this also took a similar amount of time. So, after showering and dressing it was 10.30am before we left the Barn.

 

Mattishall and East Tuddenham

We have travelled through Mattishall and East Tuddenham, the two villages to the east of Yaxham on the Norwich Road, ten times or more this holiday. We have always said, we must stop in them and take photos of the quaint villages and their village signs and churches, this became the first task of our day.

Mattishall is surprising for what seems to be a small village as it has both a Post Office and a substantial Pharmacy.

Like many of the villages in this part of East Anglia these two villages go on for a few miles each, but with houses only on either side of the main road, not the three or four roads either side seen in the villages with which I am more familiar.

 

Mattishall Church is very distinctively marked with an unusual top to its spire.

 

The church is entered by going across to the Victoria Store opposite and asking for the key. This worked well and we were soon able to appreciate the church which had stood on this site and been developed since the early 1300s. There were clearly times when wealthy families had endowed the church and many of the names honoured follow down through the generations.

 

We left Mattishall and went to the neighbouring village of East Tuddenham.

The Church in East Tuddenham is also typical of so many we had seen in Norfolk, but in this case the door was locked due, the notice said, to a faulty hinge!

 

Holt

 

A friend from work days had advised me to visit the picturesque village of Holt. Karen Fitzgibbon, one of my colleagues at the University of Glamorgan who worked with me throughout my time there, both in the Business School and in the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, knows this area well, her parents having lived here for many years, so I was glad to take her advice. So, on leaving East Tuddenham we travelled to Holt.

 

The town is quaint and decidedly Georgian in style, with little shops not seen elsewhere since the rise of the supermarket, and art galleries with a wide range of local scenes painted by residents and visitors on show and for sale.

 

We visited the Parish Church of St. Andrew’s

which has an unusual depiction of St. Andrew among its statuary.

  

We wandered through the town enjoying the scenes, though it was somewhat busy given the large numbers of tourists in the area this year.

Holt also has a very distinctive road marker with mileages to places throughout Norfolk.

Laundry

Following our visit to Holt and being down to my last shirt, socks and pants it was time to do our last laundry of the holiday. We returned to the Laundromat we had used previously and found it as easy as ever. It is a great relief to have somewhere there to provide change for the machines, change being something that hasn’t featured in my life since the start of the pandemic with almost every transaction being done by waving my phone, or in lower tech environments a credit card, at a device rather than paying cash.

 

Laundry down we were back at the barn at 3pm and put the clothes away.

 

Late Afternoon

 

In the afternoon we read and snoozed a little until it was time to go out for dinner.

 

Railway Arms, North Elmham

We loved our visit to the Railway Arms on our first night in East Anglia, so we had promised ourselves to visit again. Given they close on Monday and Tuesday tonight was our first opportunity to do so.  

Drew began with a warmed camembert with a raisin and almond bread. The delicious oozeiness of the cheese was something Drew really enjoyed. The bread too was fruity and lovely.

I opted for the warmed smoked duck with a cherry and walnut chutney and toasted sourdough. This was perfect, the duck was tangy with smoke and the cherry and walnut chutney was sharp and pickled rather than the sweetness sometimes associated with chutneys. The bread was a doorstop, but all the better for that as it mopped up the remaining chutney after I had eaten all the delicious duck.

For mains Drew ordered the Jerk Chicken Burger from the specials board. This served with saccatouch and salt and pepper chips. The burger came as a surprise to Drew as he assumed it would be a minced chicken patee, instead it was quite a substantial breast of chicken, beautifully cooked, but more easily eaten with knife and fork than in the hand as burgers normally are. Drew extracted the chicken eat it with his knife and fork and then eat the bun and trimmings separately. 

At the last visit here, I had been intrigued, but not intrigued enough to order that time, by the idea of a Traditional Steak and Kidney pie with thyme and walnut pastry served with nutmeg mash and vegetables. I have no idea what your view of a traditional steak and kidney pie is, but mine has never included thyme and walnut - now I think perhaps future ones should. 

The pie was served in a deep serving dish full of juicy steak and fragrant kidney, the pastry flakey and nutty (from the walnut) was perfect for dipping in to the pie. The pie juice was so tasty that having finished mopping it up with my nutmeg mash, carrots and parsnips (the aforementioned veg) I asked for a spoon to eat the final pieces. Wow, how delicious. 

The evening complete we returned to Wagtail Barn by 9.30pm and were soon in bed.