The past six days I’ve been in Norfolk at a one bedroom cottage by the coast in a place called  Wells Next to The Sea. I’m still here.  The sky is grey but what a sky.  The Journalist and I have been cooking walking and hiring bikes.

There’s one or two streets and one theatre that  fits one hundred. There’s a poetry festival on called Poetry Next to The Sea.  I met a poet  friend (and photographer) , by coincidence,  Martin Figura and his wife, both poets and fast becoming a sort of poetry royalty in Norfolk.  This is also the home of Luke Wright who seems to have split the Norfolk poetry community into those who like what he does and those who don’t. It
clearly puts him on top of the whole bunch.

Last night we ate hot marshmallows toasted on the log fire. Do you know how hot a hot
marshmallow can be. Basically it is just  burning coloured sugar. Ahh  toasting  Marshmallows in the light of the fire..  How romantic. But when the journalist  withdrew the skewer from my mouth like a sword swallowers assistant  I was left with what amounted to a spit popping skin rippling blister inducing burning  piece of coal in me talking shop. The romance of the moment was over.  I ran screaming like a banshee pointing at my mouth   towards the kitchen sink  “Meloo mou urn”  “marshmallow mouth burns”. The tap water swished around my mouth turning the hot sugar crispy as the roof of my mouth.     I was not so much Well Next To The Sea as  Burning By The Beach.

When the journalist suggested we put potatoes in the fire I grimaced.