Meandering with the River Bure!

The plague had arrived, and all the world (except North Korea!) was locked down. Wendy and I had just come back from our FGB (Full Gospel Businessmen) global conference, via a tiger safari in India. Life was rather busy, and friends had urged us to take a 3-month sabbatical, both from FGB and from hosting church in our sitting room. We explained that it was impossible, and also, we loved working with FGB and church. Then the plague arrived.

We walked our village, and then further. The river Bure is just 2 miles, and we wandered along the banks of the meandering waterway in which I learnt to swim, fish, and steer a motor boat around 65 years ago. I started reliving those days… cycling to the more narrow stretch at Tuttington back in the early 1960s, or late 1950s even. Sunset. Coypu tracks. Setting traps. Strolling through the twilight. Returning to the traps. Cycling home in the dark with large rodents swinging from the handlebars.

(Coypus were large rodents. They escaped from a fur farm in East Carleton in the 1930s and soon infested East Anglia. They devoured young crops and demolished river banks. I helped by trapping quite a few, and used them in our school biology lab).

Wandering by the Bure in 2020 took me back to 1960, or thereabouts. And other childhood and boyhood memories of life in rural Norfolk. I started tapping away, but not expecting…. BIG BLUE SKY to emerge. Waterstones stocked it, and likewise Jarrolds and many other East Anglian bookshops. I came across a small pile in Roys of Wroxham last week. Maybe it doesn’t sell so well in Roy’s, or maybe they had a larger stock. It had good reviews and sold quite well.

And now I have more memories, and I’m tapping again. Maybe there will be a sequel!