We always seem to be busy...

I'm still energetically engaged in my pseudo-journey of New Things. Once I've docked (this coming Monday would have been the last day of actual travel), there will be time for more routine pursuits, and more contemplation perhaps.

In terms of new endeavours over the last few days, I/we have:

1. Walked to Sheringham along the beach from West Runton. Of course, we've walked to Sheringham twice before: the first time, out along the cliff and back inland; and the second time, out and back inland. But this was the first time we'd taken the beach route. It's really true that every beach is different:








2. Started reading a novel about the former Yugoslavia, to take my mind off all the bits of the former Yugoslavia we were due to travel through, and didn't... It's The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic; it's a moving exploration of the world of the exile; and it will no doubt be memorialized on The Velvet Cushion in due course. (POSTSCRIPT 2 May: It has been. Here.)

3. Proved that you can still celebrate a birthday in style under lockdown:





Unphotographed: the fish-and-chip lunch, the Stilton supper, and the raspberry-and-Greek-yogurt dessert...

4. Continued my low-carb mug-baking experiments. This week: chocolate cake. This needs more work... The texture was good, but because I don't like the idea of artificial sweetener, I left it out, and the taste was somewhat bland. But I'm definitely going to try again... I'm wondering about adding a little orange juice.


5. Uncovered a bit more of Overstrand's fascinating history. We've been past the Sea Marge Hotel many times, and in the course of hunting down other interesting things about Overstrand, I'd come across one or two references. Today, I finally took a photo, and rounded up the information (although -- as always -- it's not entirely consistent). According to Neil Storey, Winston Churchill "instigated the first moves to mobilise the British Fleet onto a war footing from the Sea Marge Hotel at Overstrand in July 1914. His holiday home, Pear Tree Cottage, was only a short distance away but it was not equipped with a telephone." This connection with Churchill possibly provided the inspiration for the Jack Higgins novel The Eagle Has Landed. Actually, the Sea Marge was not exactly a hotel at that point. From 1902 to 1920, it was a country retreat belonging to the family of Sir Edgar Speyer, whose rather tragic story -- German by birth, he was found guilty in 1921 of "showing disloyalty during the war by communicating with, assisting and doing business with Germans" -- is chronicled in this latest addition to my must-read list, Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?, by Antony Lentin.

(POSTSCRIPT 6 May: I know it doesn't really matter, but I am fascinated by that telephone story... Lentin tells us that Churchill and his wife, Clementine, rented a cottage in Overstrand, and were holidaying there in the summer of 1914. "The rapidly worsening crisis called Churchill back to London. At 'Sea Marge', Edgar and Leonora invited a worried Clementine [who was then pregnant] to maintain contact with her husband by using 'the Speyers' splendid telephone' in Edgar's study. There, on 28 July, she waited anxiously to be connected at an agreed hour. Opposite her, above the mantelpiece, she noted a portrait of the Madonna, who 'gazes with melancholy eyes at the pile of business books on the writing table'. At midnight, Churchill wrote to her from the Admiralty: 'Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse.' Shortly before, he had sent orders to the Fleet at Portland to prepare to take up its war station. The following night, under cover of darkness, the 18-mile-long convoy of warships steamed northwards past the unknowing denizens of Overstrand on its long journey to Scapa Flow." Just a few days later, Britain was at war. The Overstrand Parish Council website offers some more details: "In the summer of 1914 war with Germany was imminent, but Winston Churchill’s wife Clementine was determined the children should have a holiday and that Winston should take a short, badly needed break with them from his Admiralty duties... Clementine had chosen Pear Tree Cottage [no phone there, remember]... On Sunday 26th July 1914, Churchill spoke on the telephone to Prince Louis of Battenberg ... and decided that events demanded his presence. He left Overstrand for the last time and returned to London on the admiralty yacht HMS Enchantress.")


The last few days, like those before them, have continued to bring home to us (how appropriate that expression feels at the moment) more of the beauties of Norfolk: