Thursday 8th March 2012

And so Tuesday morning dawn bright and clear. The early morning light showed through the gaps in the curtains. I put on the radio to listen to the early morning news and boiled the kettle for a brew. Right, my boss had suggested going for a walk if the rain had stopped, and I thought I should just go and do it.



I grabbed my camera and put on my coat and went downstairs, opened the front door and the chill hit me. But it wasn’t raining, and the pavements were already drying. I headed to the seafront and walked past many closed and gently faded arcades. A few joggers and dog-walkers passed me by as I snapped away. As I looked at the arcades, and behind the neon signs and lightbulbs, details of the original building can still be seen; wonderful art deco brick buildings, decorated with tiles. Wonderful stuff. Maybe if they strip the tacky stuff away it might look better? Just an idea….



I got as far as a couple of abandoned cinemas, both art deco in design, but now both closed and crumbling, and now only home to colonies of pigeons. It was nearly time for breakfast, so I headed back up the promenade to the hotel, dumped the camera in my room and went to the dining room to join my boss for breakfast.



Thanks to the wonder of modern technology, we knew roughly where the Scroby offices were, so after settling the bill we set off through the old guesthouses towards the river. We found the building with no trouble, and after booking in we were all ready to go and be a pain in the ass. It is now my job to ask questions and get answers. Not in a nasty way, but just to ask and ask. And if I can’t get the answers I want, I suggest how they might want to do things better. I am still learning, but I can already see the benefit to what we do. So, I ask, they answer, I write what they say and we move on. And the day passes and soon it is time to head back home.

At a quarter past two, the rickety diesel EMU shakes us out of Yarmouth Vauxhall and over the marshes to Brundall and onto Norwich. There, my boss and I part, with he catching one of the most crowded services to Liverpool and I onto the express into London. I settle into a seat with good views and watch the East Anglian countryside slip by as we speed towards London.

I get off at Stratford, switch to the International platforms and wait for a service to Dover with the hundreds of other commuters as Eurostars go thundering by at 170 mph shaking the platforms like an earthquake. The train arrives, and I end up standing all the way home, but it’s for less than an hour, and my half past six I am back at home indoors, just like I had never been away.