Ginger DJ Rob

Like everything pathetic about the UK, my work closed because of the deep snow and imaginary travel chaos (even though the main routes were open and buses up to the University of Sussex were still running). A relief for those with hang-overs and great for my plans of visiting my dad in Norfolk . I say working from home but checking emails and adding a web page to the site that I manage hardly qualifies as a full day's work. In the background, the TV news was permanently on checking for the weather and travel. Could I even make it to Norfolk by car? I had to check out my mum's old house, which the tenant had moved out, and to see my Dad but with at least 6 inches on our street and Norfolk being affected by the snow it was a tough decision. With no one else 'working from home' I left at 3pm and ignored the media doom-sayers. Getting to Norfolk was actually easy with the main motorways clear. Norfolk was just as bad as Brighton though the temperature was getting lower a...

The main reason for our Norfolk visit was my nan's funeral. We'd left plenty of time for our journey arriving in generous time. My cousin flew over from Ireland but had to drive the rest from Stansted and arrived literally two minutes into the 'we are gathered here today' speech. It was a traditional service with a nice auto-biographic written when my nan turned 90. Otherwise it was trying to sing the chosen hymns getting the up and down notes wrong with the lyrics. At the wake, I was introduced to a new generation of family never seen before, including 14 year old twins are going to Shanghai for a school exchange and 17 year old thinking about Brighton Uni. My uncle, always one for coming up with good conversation and a knack for genealogy, had traced the family back to 1620 with possible links to a famous local witch in Derbyshire. Returning back to my dad's house and the snow fell, and fell, and fell. It was starting to settle at a disturbing rate and worries sta...

I'd completely forgotten about a Brighton tradition on the Winter Solstice. ' Burning of the Clocks ' was a parade of paper lantern art towards the beach then set alight to mark the shortest day. Getting a decent photos was near impossible but it wasn't the best parade I'd seen. It climaxed as all the paper lanterns were stacked on a heap then some clockwork music prepared for the lighting of the bonfire behind a scaffold platform then the fireworks were let off. The Wii Fit got delivered and with the limited time we've had its a bit of a giggle with some home-truths coming out. Like the Brain Training on the DS, it measures your age in BMI, weight and based on other exercise results. Proudly, I came out 5 years younger with the ideal BMI. Haven't yet tried the Shaun White Snowboarding just yet as we've got Batman on the PS3 to finish. A couple of pieces of news today which made me smile. The Icesave money has finally been transferred to my account - Me...

Had a quick trip to Norfolk at the weekend to see some family and the plan to do some quality Christmas shopping in Norwich. I've always raved on about how good the clothes shops are but all the regular places have gone a bit too 'safe' for my liking especially Elements. Philip Brown has also cut down its weird stuff and Dogfish has jammed so much stuff on its rails its beginning to feel like a flea-market. Its sister store, Catfish has gone stale and relies too much on brands long in the tooth and aimed at the pint-sized princesses. A curry catch-up in the evening with my dad revealed he'd crashed his car thanks to some black ice but mainly because of a dopey couple who were driving in the middle of the road. Fingers crossed his insurance company will understand. Sunday was another attempt at Chrimbo shopping, this time in Brighton. There were plenty of items I could buy for my double or myself but no luck with the special lady. Looks like either an online xmas or a la...

The weekend saw the second year running that we've missed Pride (first being Big Chill). This time a change of events meant having to go to Norfolk to see folks and friends as well as check up on my mum's house. My poor dad told us about his planned bonfire attracting some unnecessary village community interference resulting in numerous visits from locals, a stuck-up council lady, a farmer and the fire brigade. Also, caught up with some quality Norwich shopping with an evening visit to Josh and Christie's. Since last week we've been planning our Peru holiday for next year. For the first time we'll be doing an organised trip which actually works out cheaper. Using Llama Travel we've finally decided on the following itinerary: Lima , on the Pacific coast, was the most important and magnificent city in South America for the Spanish. Visit the colonial district and some of the finest museums in the world, with amazing collections of pre-Hispanic treasures. Cusco , ...

Selling my mum's house or preparing for it is proving to be a trickier than I thought. Although there's a few websites out there to help someone like me, Home Information Packs (HIP) are an easy bit of money making for the experts and just time-wasting red tape. There's an opportunity there for a Dummies guide I'm sure. The Index and Sales Statement are easy and to be honest a bit of a joke. The Energy Performance Certificate was reasonable to organise at the cheapest price of £82. My mum's house did averagely but the report assumed bits of it knocking the score down. The Title Information was slightly misleading as the Land Registry is a mind-field of confusion. It turned out that all I needed was a letter confirming it hasn't been registered so no costs involved there. The Drainage report should be coming soon and instead of using an official conveyancing map to draw the plot I used Google Maps - fingers crossed for that will be enough. The Local ...

The Saturday before was a packed day in Norfolk sorting out the funeral. A morning appointment with the funeral director, lunchtime at the Colney Woodland Burial Park deciding where my mum would rest (our old house had two huge Beech trees hence the title) and afternoon tea with the humanitarian minister to talk about the service. After a couple hours I had to get house keys cut, drop them around a mate's in Dereham then go choose some clothes for my mum. The last thing was to deliver them to my auntie's and then home. I guess I must have clocked up 500 miles at least that day. Midweek was more organising. I still had to choose some music for the day. Both I-tunes and my laptop's CD drive was playing up but finally settled with Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and Billie Holiday's East to Remember. Another funeral detail was the newspaper notice which is provide by the funeral director. After speaking to my aunt, they got the maide...

We drove up to Norfolk Saturday to pick up my Mum's key from the police station and met the policeman who found her. Apparently she'd left the gas fire on and the kitchen tap running but the Pc couldn't say where the cat was. Other details were a little sketchy with confusion over recently changed procedures. The Police only had the backdoor key and first thing we found was the cat looking very worried and hungry. Sasha, the cat was glad of the food and started tidying the house removing the items I didn't want to be reminded of. We collected all the essentials and worked out what to do next knowing that Monday would be the day the coroner would be back at work. The evening was a meal out with my dad and, inappropriately his new lady friend. Whether it was whole downer of the weekend or I just didn't like her but the atmosphere was horrible. Sunday was more house clearing, catching up with Mark who's offered to help with the renovation, and feeding/bonding ...

Coming up with a title for this entry was really hard for me but not quite as hard as my past week. My last blog mentioned my poor mum and her decline in health. After visiting her Sunday I managed to convince she should visit the doctor. After a call to say I'd arrived home she called back 30 minutes later to say she'd changed her mind as it was worrying her so much and felt she could deal with it on her own. Naturally I felt angry and let down. The calls to her the next two days were to persist she try to eat and even consider a home visit from the district nurse to at least get a blood test to perhaps prove to the doctor there was something more than she would let on. It was hard not to get frustrated and angry as her memory failed to grasp the importance of the matter. Tuesday evening was my last conversation with her as I decided to give her a break of a day without calling her. With Wednesday a really busy day for me at work I doubled my efforts to call her and convince h...

Unfortunately, this entry will not be a cheery, irrelevant one but to record a low point in my life so I can, hopefully, look back and say I got through this. The weekend was a trip to look after my mum in Dereham (Norfolk), the town I grew up in. When I last visited her just before Christmas I realised something wasn't right. It turns out she's an alcoholic, on strong medication for her arthritis/high blood pressure and not really eating. She now hardly answers the phone, has memory problems, refuses to go to the doctors or accept any help and has fallen over a number of times. To make matters worse, I've quickly realised that there's very little support for this situation unless she accepts she has to go to the doctors. I've also heard my uncle is now in a hospice which I also hope will improve. Its good to talk to the rest of my family but wish the subject matter were a bit more uplifting. At least I'm not distracted by the dizzying delights that Dereham has ...

Bewilderwood - A Curious Treehouse Adventure Park near Norwich, Norfolk Stumbled across this 'curious' place which is in deepest Norfolk. If anyone has been to this please tell me about it.

Popped up to Norfolk to do a parent catch up thing for the weekend. My mum needed some support rails installing for the stairs as she’s still suffering mobility problems after having both hips replaced nearly two years ago. Whereas my dad is suffering from ISP dial-up hell as Orange cancels his webmail account for no reason. No wonder he splashed out for a 50” flat screen TV to cheer himself up. Has anyone seen the Phil Collins drumming gorilla yet?

Upto the fatherland last weekend to attend Josh & Christie's wedding in Norwich for best man duties. However these were pretty small duties apart from the speech I decided to give. It didn't start well as Christie asked me to give the ring to her oldest daughter, Lily at the crucial moment so she had the honour of passing it to her mum. I gave it to a look-a-like bridesmaid who looked completely confused as 4 year-olds would do. All eyes drilled into me of which we knew hardly anyone there. You couldn't fault the day's weather and we were spoiled all day. The reception part at Reepham Old Brewery was just a guilt trip and nerve building session as I downed a couple of drinks in dread of delivering the speech. Josh had covered most of the points I wanted to say without knowing it so when I did deliver I felt it went flat. After a quick visit to Norwich for Kerry's shopping addiction, we headed over to our guesthouse for the night so we could at least have a decen...

Image by Ginger DJ via Flickr It was our summer visit to Norfolk . Too many people to see and no time to enjoy the scenery. Not that we really saw any as the majority of Saturday was spent in Dereham, my home-town. They've added another shopping centre nearer the library and there's a lot more houses, otherwise it’s the same type of people: old people (which includes my mum) and chavs. There is a minority which include teenagers waiting to move out either to university or Norwich as well as a growing number of Portuguese (due to cheap labour for Bernard Matthews). My mum was first on the list and although in good spirits, she's starting to repeat things which is a worry including her obssession over some rabbit that's taken residency behind her garden. We walked into town for lunch passing a couple of places including the Portuguese owned bar/restaurant filled with smoke. Later we caught up with Mark, our best man and one of my oldest mates. He was proud to show us ...

The weekend was a return to the 'folk. Friday's journey up there was quite good apart from a 40mph average speed restriction on the M11. There were about 4 cameras along the stretch so every time I sped up over 40mph I had to decrease the difference and go about 30mph in some places. Listened to Pete Tong 's Radio 1 show for most of the journey and couldn't believe how many re-hashed old tunes are being pumped out. If I was to judge the dance scene on that show no more proof would be needed to say that dance music was on its last legs due to self cannibalisation. Saturday started very early with bright sunshine burning through the wafer-thin curtains. Even the t-shirt wrapped round my head couldn't stop the light. First stop was a catch-up with my mum who welcomed us with a present. It was a stuffed toy of a black panther. Speaking of black cats, my old cat, Sasha tugged at the heart-strings as he recognised me when I stroked him, purring like he was asthmatic. H...

Red light district Originally uploaded by Ginger DJ . Found these facts on the BBC website magazine :- 6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine - it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub's toilets. 25. Nelson probably had a broad Norfolk accent . "Hardy, 'ave ye gotta loight boy?"