The Britons Arms

An eventful Monday but for all the wrong reasons!

I set out at lunchtime to find somewhere peaceful to eat my lunch, and went down to the river where the students from the University of the Arts tend to congregate. It's just minutes from my office. It was nice and I started to read my book about the blue plaques of Norwich; unusually for me I read it from the beginning, rather than diving in the middle somewhere. It detailed how there have been previous attempts to record significant historical buildings and characters in Norwich, but for one reason or another the record method had failed. (The plaques deteriorated or were stolen etc) so the latest blue plaque scheme has only been rolled out to cover 3 areas of Norwich, one, the first in the book, being the 'Cathedral quarter and Elm Hill'

So once I'd eaten, I looked at the map and decided I could follow the footpath along the river (a proper concrete path) and come back up Elm Hill to photograph The Briton Arms, which is said to be one of the oldest continuously occupied buildings in Norwich.

This is when my day went a bit pear shaped, as on this path by the river I tripped & went flying, landing on my arm and my ankle and hip took a bit of a bang. Two kind ladies helped me up, collected my shoe and made sure I was ok. Well, I wanted to cry, but as I'm 49 and had no shoulder to cry on, I did the stiff upper lip thing and limped away. I hurt, so I didn't really even think about how silly I must have looked. It took the edge off my hunt for the blue plaque and a nice blip photo, but I got there in the end!

The Britons Arms is also one of only two remaining thatched buildings. It survived a huge fire in 1507 which wiped out most of the timber and thatch buildings in Norwich.

It was once a home to a small group of single women called a beguinage; apparently unique in England. They dedicated their lives to prayer and charitable work. Common in France and Germany but not here. It us now a cafe. This area called Elm Hill is the city's most famous medieval street and is still used for film & TV.

On my return to the office I showed off my wounds, moaned a lot, and went and cleaned up my bleeding elbow. At least I didn't make a hole in my cardi!

Home by 6 to a very untidy house and a son who was doing his homework (hooray!). I was aching a bit, but after dinner I did a bit of clearing up, hoovered and wandered round the garden. There I discovered naughty Minny had escaped. I caught her and put her back in with the others, and it was only then that I discovered all the damage she had done in various bits of my garden. I went to tell her off but she didn't seem bothered.

I have just had another go at making a pocket for a bag I cut out at least 3 weeks ago! I need a weekend at home to get it done. That won't happen until mid July.

So that was my Monday. Big sigh.