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March 2004
As I sit here on a grey and dismal March afternoon two thoughts are uppermost in my mind. Firstly, the axiom "Work expands to fill the time available" is completely irrelevant when the amount of work required cannot be fitted into the time available. And the point? I sat down this morning to complete the preparations for the Quiz Night we are running tonight in aid of Feltwell resident Richard Hunt, who is running in the London Marathon for the deafblind charity Sense, thinking a couple of hours should see the task finished and it's now 4.30pm and the final copies of the blank answer sheets are still coming out of the printer! And, apart from 20 minutes for dinner, I haven't stopped researching and writing questions. So this newsletter, which I wanted out of the way by the start of the afternoon, is now nearly 4 hours behind schedule which means that the school reports due in on Monday will now be late which means... which means... and so it goes.
The second thought was one that came to me on Friday last and that is "Traffic". "Why traffic?" I hear you ask. Part of the answer goes back to last Monday's Parish Council meeting when the issue of parking in the High Street came up under AOB. The village now has 4 successful businesses operating in the High Street - Spar grocery shop, The Lodge public house and restaurant, Withers Greengrocers and now The Sanctuary incorporating a hair dressers, beauty parlour and the Buttercup Coffee Shop. But what we don't have is a car park. So all the customers have to park along the High Street and because there are a lot of private houses along the same road, some residents are starting to express irritation because they are experiencing difficulties getting out of their own premises. Thank goodness we have a one-way system because the High Street would be impassable otherwise. A similar problem exits in St Mary's Street where Londis Grocery and Waterman's Newsagents are located. The really difficult issue for the Council is what, if anything, can be done to ease the situation. The Highways department are highly likely not going to be interested because, when compared to traffic problems in Kings Lynn and Downham Market, this issue is insignificant and only a problem at certain times of the day and on certain days in the week. In the meantime all we can really do is monitor the situation. Another part of the reason why I've been thinking about traffic is because the dreaded Highway engineers' traffic lights arrived in the village this week unannounced. We have, apparently, some drainage problems along Wilton Road just outside the Doctor's Surgery. Tell me something I didn't know! Anyway the engineers are putting in additional drains which means digging a trench across Wilton Road just at the junction with Bell Street and Oak Street. And the work is scheduled to last for 2 weeks. Now this is where Sod's Law comes into play. No matter what time I leave for work in the morning, around 8-8.05am, I always get a red light! Now the train crosses the Lakenheath road, the other side of Hockwold, anywhere between 8.08am and 8.12am. I hardly ever get caught by the train except for this last week. Every single day! My daily journey to work increased by 5 mins this last week. Only one week left and then back to normal. Of course, underpinning all of this, is the fact that our villages were never designed for the motor car; certainly Feltwell wasn't. I suspect that many of you also have a love-hate relationship with the car.
On the website front regular visitors to the site will have noticed that I haven't done an upgrade this month. This is down to the fact that Site 2 is full and Site 1 is not far off being in the same condition. I have a solution but haven't had the time to implement it yet because it requires a significant number of coding changes to be made to a lot of pages. As an amateur webmaster I have an aversion to paying for storage space! In the meantime, please be patient, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
A couple of items of interest from my Feltwell Inbox. Firstly, Mrs A Cutler is seeking details of a Reginald Wright who died in 1987 in Southampton. He did not hail from Feltwell but wonders if anyone related to the Feltwell Wrights might be related to him and if so she would appreciate any information. Toni Burr has sent me 33 old photographs which need to be looked at and the people in them identified. As they are very large files getting them processed to go onto the site will take time (This is probably a job for the Easter break). And welcome back to three lost members - Ejon Traister, Richard Yeldon and Philip Lord.
