Postcard from Norfolk – Holme-Next-The-Sea - night of the otter

Lying in bed, in the dark, sensations, and fears, are somewhat magnified. As once wisely stated by Bill Watterson, night time is dark to allow you to worry without distraction. My particular concern last night was that the cottage was going to blow over. While the wind did not quite howl and shriek like a banshee (I understand Irish cottages have the monopoly on that) it did moan like a sulky teen, and there was the occasional high pitch whine as a gust picked at the vents in the double glazing.

I was wondering for a few moments if this was the Norfolk version of the end of the world. This is an area famous for flooding and a stiff onshore breeze combined with a high tide can be trouble. Luckily, despite the darkness and the holiday quantities of wine I had taken on board, I was able to make the connection between the view directly out to sea, the exposed position and all of the bloody wind farms dotted around the horizon and realise that this was, in fact, situation normal.

The only excitement came when, from the bathroom, came a noise exactly like little mouse claws scrabbling on the sides of the bath. Oh no! Scrabble scrabble! Upgrade from mouse to rat. Scrabble SCRABBLE! Crikey, sounds like an otter. SCRABBLE SCRABBLE! Badger, there's a badger in the bath! I sprang into action, ready to set to with a brush, mop or TB, whatever it is that badgers are intimidated by.

Putting on the light convinced that something was in the bath, I was surprised to see it empty. Oh no! The badger is out! Then rain-pitter pattering against the velux window with, in my defence, exactly the sound of a scrabbling rodent, solved the mystery. All that remained was to head back to bed and wait for my heart rate to return to normal. This took until dawn.

The next day was ideal for a stroll round the village. Holme qualifies as a village because it has the trinity of village requirements, pub, post box and telephone box. Oh, and a church.

The church was in fact rather lively, it was reached by walking past the pub's garden, where the winds of last night had redistributed the gaily coloured plastic patio furniture on the green grass in quite an attractive fashion.


We were all set to take a look inside the church when the Wedding March struck up, and then the bells began to peal, and then the bride and groom exited the church! It was a fabulous day for a wedding and everyone looked very pleased and excited, just as wedding parties should.


Wandering along the lane, we heard behind us the distant buzz of a scooter, turning, we were confronted by the vicar astride his moped, crash helmet on and cassocks billowing as he sped past at a mighty twenty miles an hour. From the look of expectant determination on his face one can conclude that nothing gives a priest a thirst quite like a wedding.

Looping back to take a look at the now empty and rather gorgeous church, I hit upon a realisation - if you are going to get married, make sure you do it at Harvest Festival time, because the church looks fabulous. As long as you don't mind the odd vegetable wound into the flower arrangements, you won't have to worry about anything apart from bouquet and buttonholes, and if you make sure your florist knows to weave some barley into the arrangements, you'll co-ordinate beautifully and save yourself a fortune.

If you do need fruit, it's available from many of the roadside stalls that line the roads in the village. Many of them have little roofs to keep the worst of the elements off and remind one a little of those roadside shrines that one sees in Greece, except they lean less to candles and rather more to honesty boxes made of Tupperware and cox's pippins in plastic bags.