I'm afraid I have to talk some more about shopping.

I know it's dull, but in years to come (presuming we have such), we'll need to remember the incessant labour of keeping ahead -- of combating the steady erosion of day-to-day supplies by topping up on a regular basis, and preparing for future emergencies by processing and freezing...

In response to shoppers' concerns about proximity, many supermarkets have introduced new restrictions on the number of people who can be inside at any given time. This is good, but it means that queues form outside the busiest outlets.

So on Wednesday, we skipped Cromer's biggest supermarket, where the queue was already lengthy, and went to the slightly less busy one a little further away. Here, they've set up one-way routes up and down the aisles. But some shoppers still seem apparently oblivious to the distancing provisions, and checkout procedures seem to vary somewhat.

Once out, and reunited with Nigel (we each have our own lists), I found I was missing a glove. So I headed back in to look for it (because if you lose anything at the moment, you can't replace it...). Nothing. Outside again, I found the glove in the wrong bit of my bag... This is symptomatic. I find shopping really stressful. Trying to find things, trying to keep out of everyone's way, trying not to touch things -- it's exhausting.


We've still had no luck booking a supermarket delivery slot, but Holland and Barrett are today (allegedly) bringing us a big consignment of the sort of low-carb stuff that we struggle to find enough of in the supermarkets. The problem there is that you don't know when they're coming, and have to stay in until they turn up, but in the great scheme of things, I guess that's a minor price to pay.

Meanwhile, just as we're all struggling to keep two steps ahead of insanity, we are treated to some advice from the Malaysian Women and Family Development Ministry on maintaining household happiness. Here's a taste:

"If your spouse does something that you do not like, don't nag him. Use humour and tell him 'this is the way you hang the clothes, my darling' (using Doraemon's tone and giggling)."

Yuck. Just yuck.

Thankfully, Malaysia's civil society is very quick to savage sexist nonsense like this, and the messages were subsequently withdrawn, with apologies.

On a (much) more cheerful note, we continue to walk...

On Tuesday we did our "railway walk", but in the opposite direction to usual.





Yesterday we walked as far as Trimingham. The Norfolk Coast Path takes you over the beach to Overstrand, and then along the top of the cliffs (this part of the route offers really dramatic views, but the terribly crumbly nature of the coast around here makes it not a little scary):







The path brings you out at Trimingham's church of St John the Baptist's Head. This is renowned not so much for keeping ahead as for keeping a head:

"In the late medieval period, there was a great devotion to St John the Baptist here. In fact, it was actually possible for English people to go and pray by the real head of the Baptist, as it was kept just across the channel at Amiens Cathedral, and it was kept at at least two other European cathedrals as well....

"But rather than make that journey, it was possible to come and pray at the shrine altar here at Trimingham, where a life-sized alabaster carving of the head of St John the Baptist was on display. The head was probably destroyed by Anglican reformers as a result of the 1538 Injunction against images during the reign of Henry VIII. If not then, there was a further injunction which was rigorously imposed in 1547, during the early weeks of the reign of Edward VI."

You can no longer go into churches, of course, but we stood in the bird-filled sunshine at the corner of the churchyard, snacking on cashews and chocolate, and enjoying the view of the squat-towered old building.


We walked back along the road (not the best idea, as there's no footpath until you get to Sidestrand).




When we're not on our daily outing (either shopping or walking), we're at home...

Which is apparently a great site for the practice of "vertical travel writing":

"Vertical travel and travel writing -- where we immerse in the spaces around us in greater detail, peeling back layers of history, botany and culture -- goes back to the late 18th Century in Turin and a man named Xavier de Maistre.

"De Maistre wrote A Journey Around My Room while imprisoned in his bedroom for six weeks after he was caught fighting a duel in the north Italian city in 1790.

"Rather than sulk through his imprisonment, he decided to challenge the popularity of imperialist travel writing and he wrote a travel book about the contents of his bedroom...

"De Maistre’s room became a place with latitude and topography...

"There were many inspired by this new style. Heinrich Seidel refocused his apartment into a microcosm where each item had a history and an interconnected story. Similarly, Alphonse Karr produced two volumes and 700 pages focused solely on his garden where he lived in Montmartre with his pet monkey Emmanuel."

OK, well, I'm not yet totally sure how to emulate these examples. But here, to be going on with, are the views from my sofa: