Ichabod's Day

I just wanted to share with you my new love affair - now some of you will be thinking the wrong thing here. I have recently returned from a cruising holiday around the Meditteranean. One of the excursions from the ship was to Pompeii - somewhere I have always wanted to visit (Egypt and the pyramids, is the other place I would like to see before I die.). I wasn't disappointed - absolutely fantastic, fascinating, awesome and inspirational. However my new love affair is with Mt Vesuvius itself. It's presence over the landscape is magical - you can feel it - it fills the horizon as a brooding parent, menacing yet strangely hypnotic. Like the anti-hero in an old black and white film that you know you shouldn't be drawn to but you can't help yourself. I wanted to stay and just be in its shadow for longer - but I had to get back on the bus. A holiday romance I'll never forget.....

Well not so much a secret as a guilty pleasure. of course I'm talking about my model railway. Definitely a work in progress - and maybe it will never be finished - but I am hoping to spend more time with it than I have over the last two years. I always remember that one of my favourite things as a child was a Hornby engine and a small square hardboard with a circular track. I don't remember what happened to it - I think it burned out - but I loved it. A couple of xmases ago my husband surprised me with a Hornby model of the Flying Scotsman - only problem was we had nowhere to put it - so we had the attic converted (bit drastic I know!) and it lives up there. If we ever move it can't come out as the board that holds the track was put up before the stairs went in!! We have gradually put in the track and some buildings - and plan to do so much more- and eventually it will reflect a small taste of Norfolk in the '50's and '60's with a Broad and wherry, a church