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Thinking to holiday in Norfolk last week, tried booking a hotel on the Ordance Survey Landranger sheet number 132 (possibly the best maps in the world. I have never found anything better for holidays). Having never thought that this was going to be a problem just before the main holiday season kicked in, we failed to find a hotel which could do the whole week. Most could do most of the week, with the difficulty being the middle of the week. To be absolutely fair, the Ramada at King's Lynn could have done our business, but BH was not impressed by the idea of staying at a hotel with an address on an industrial estate, despite the town being old and important enough to have deserved to appear in many episodes of 'Timewatch'.

Next stop was http://www.cottages4you.co.uk/, an outfit which we had not previously used, but from which a helpful operator found us an entirely suitable cottage in a place called Wighton. Quite a stroke of luck since we wanted to occupy the day after the day after we spoke to her. Another stroke of luck was that the inhabitants of Wighton seemed to be deep into flowers; to the point of our holiday cottage having a fine, flower filled garden. For example, the clematis illustrated.

At some point during the week we found out that the likely reason for hotel problems was the arrival of the olympic torch and its attendant caravan of people, vans, security men and women, minor celebrities and what have you in north west Norfolk. I was also very unimpressed to learn that that the torch was not actually being carried about, rather it was moved from town to town by motor vehicle and just carried through the actual towns by actual athletes. Has athletics so far declined that we cannot muster enough distance runners to carry the thing night and day through our green and pleasant land? Did the security men and women belong to a union which objected to their working in the dark out in the country where there might be funny noises? In any event, sufficiently unimpressed that we decided not to go to Fakenham to see the thing, choosing rather to spend the relevant day on the first of two visits to the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham. But we did get to see some inflatable souvenirs of the torch on the bus home.

We were also treated to an impromptu rant from a chap of about my age & inclinations at the vast waste of money involved in the whole olympic business. Most entertaining; perhaps we should have invited him and his wife to the pub to share the full story.

Back at the cottage, I was further unimpressed to read that we have been keeping Ian Brady alive by tube feeding for 10 years or more. Why on earth do we not let the chap starve himself to death? What decent purpose is served by keeping him alive? Where is the Christian charity (which we are supposed to be signed up for) in dragging out his life for him? I would go further and make sure that suitably lethal pills were made suitably available to people who commit unspeakable crimes. I dare say a good proportion would make use of them.

Back at the house, BH & FIL were both even more unimpressed to find that tennis had disturbed the second episode of  'The Hollow Crown' on BBC. To the point that they gave up and went to bed. They had both liked the much lauded first episode, while I did not like the ten minutes or so that I saw at all, for me a production which had been taken over by the costume and set designers. And I did not think that a king of some years standing would toy with his pet monkey while conducting state business of life and death.