Norfolk and Northern Folk

So it's Monday and Norfolk seems like another country, another century. Today's the day (hopefully) we get our Mac up and running and on the internet and the future will no longer be dimly Orange.

Our holiday snaps will be along later in the week. We sampled all that Norfolk had to offer except for a trip on the Broads. I just didn't fancy piloting a boat after all that driving.

Over the two weeks we watched the end of the second series and the whole of the third series of The Wire. It's still classic television, though the third series was sexed up considerably. It was as though the actors had told the producers, "What's the use in me going to the gym for four hours each day if you're not going to show my lovely body in all its glory?" So the producers capitulated and we got a sculpted chest and clenched arse fest.

My reading matter was Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by BBC stalwart Stuart Maconie. I'm supposed to like Stuart, he's a decent bloke and he has marvellously catholic music tastes, and I do like him but he don't half get on my nerves, too. Like that dick Robert Elms, he's always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, whether it's the Northern Soul explosion, the Punk explosion, the Chicago House explosion or the Madchester explosion. But then, as he says, he does have marvellously catholic tastes.

In this book, a lot of the time he's confusing being "Northern" with being working class, (e.g. the word "dinner" to describe the midday meal as opposed to the middle class evening meal). This gets even my upper working class privileged Southern jessy hackles rising. His prejudice against southerners I can't really take seriously as it seems to be a prejudice against his BBC middle class mates. No wonder he lives in the West Midlands! He must hate his poncey London-based working life. He says near the end that there are many northerners who are not typical northerners and are twats and many southerners who act all northern like and aren't twats. I think I'm likely to be one of those untypical southerners. Will you be my mate, Stuart?

The digital radio I bought before we went away turned out to be a waste of money - BBC6 Music and 1Xtra are far too worthy and boring. We listened to Radio 1 in the car, usually untypical northerner Sara Cox (because we didn't get up in time to listen to untypical northerner Chris Moyles), and in the cottage we had on East Anglia's Kiss. At least Kiss played some decent music, even if their playlist only consisted of twenty tunes. At the weekend we listened to Kiss in the car as anything, and I mean anything is better than that untypical northerner Vernon Kay.