Postcard from Norfolk - Yarn Bombing is a sunny Hunny delight

Hunstantion is getting posher. It still maintains its kiss-me-quick sensibility, but that co-exists very happily alongside skinny lattes. It is also presently the home to an event known as ‘yarn bombing’.

This essentially consists of tree cosies, that is, finding a suitable spinny, knitting like a fiend and then draping the knitted product round the trees and branches. The effect was enchanting. There were scarfs, waistcoats, bunting and even dolls (one of which is of the type from the label of a popular jam!).


But it doesn’t stop there, in the town the parking signs and various poles of officialdom that conspire to tell us what to do, where and when had also been yarn bombed. Somehow a ‘no stopping’ sign seems much more reasonable when the pole supporting it is covered in a purple knitted wrapper.


It’s quite a sight to see something so indoorsy and fragile, and obviously made with so much care, placed in an open air environment against rough nature or a rougher town centre. Maybe it’s this contrast that provides the charm, but I suspect that the charm is more the love and care in every stich of something made for the public to enjoy.

And The Ship at Brancaster fully redeemed itself after the whole tricky ‘not serving dinner yet’ episode earlier in the week. Overhearing an ill-informed but as usually fully opinionated discussion at our dinner table about just what constituted a ‘flat white’ coffee (latte we know is mostly milk and froth and a bit of coffee, cappuccino is the same, but with the froth mostly on top and added chocolate, but what the hell is a flat white?) our waiter turned up with a flat white and the girl who had made to explain how she makes it. It was sampled and proclaimed very delicious and on concluding her explanation, the waiter remarked to his colleague that ‘that’s not what it says on the instructions in the kitchen’. ‘I know, but that’s how I make it for the owner’ was all the reply needed.

So, if you are in the ship at Brancaster and Sara is available, get her to make you a flat white – it’s delicious.