Dereham Photo Blog: #5

 This van has been seen a couple of times on my road and, in fact, I have even parked behind it a few times where I park outside my house. For obvious reasons, I kind of found it quite amusing! (If I have to explain why, you probably shouldn't be reading this Blog. Or be allowed scissors. Or be allowed to go to the toilet on your own!)

 Meanwhile, again on your right, is what I consider to be real graffiti. These were discovered by me in my nearest local city, Norwich, down a back alley close to the marketplace. As you can see, they are much more skillful and talented pieces of work than that which can be found in my own town, Dereham. I think they are dead cool which is why I decided to include them here!

Dereham Photo Blog: #4

 Thought I'd have a long-awaited and anticipated return to my Dereham Photo Blog posts with some new entries for your perusal....

These first two are of a strange-looking moth that I discovered on the wall outside our kitchen at work. Thought the colouring was really different which is why I took these photos......never really seen anything quite like this before!

And now....to our right, we have some local coloured grafffiti taken on the way to one of our local parks....hardly Banksy I think you will agree and anyway, what sort of a tag is "London Stona"? Not only is it shite but you are obviously illiterate because you cannot even spell Stoner right! Twat!!

Dereham Photo Blog: #3

These last couple of images are taken of Dereham's abandoned Railway which no longer operates a passenger service except for on certain weekends during the summer, when a steam powered locomative runs tourists up and down the line. From the front, it all looks quite nice and polished and the Railway Station has all been made quite pretty with an old-fashioned feel and a new lick of paint but I thought it might be nice to also show what lies behind the pretty facade and what can be seen if you approach the Station from the other side....suddenly, it all doesn't look quite so swish does it? I also have it on good authority that the carriage pictured below does indeed stink of piss and vinegar and that it has become a local hang-out for wino's, bums and drop-outs from society of which there are several in sleepy Dereham because after all, who would really want to live here by choice? Because it is difficult to see from the picture, I should point out that all the windows in the carriage have been put in and that someone has scrawled some local colour illegible graffiti down the side presumably in an attempt to educate the masses or just to pass themselves off as the next Banksy perhaps...

Finally, this is the old Mill-House building, some of which has been converted to housing. There are plans to convert the rest to luxury studio apartments at some stage but presumably they (whoever "they" are) have run out of money and I pity the fool who gets left with the apartment that juts out towards the road. Especially if we get another bad storm like the one which ended Sir Michael Fish's career so cruelly. As you can see, the same graffiti artist has been at work here too, which is convienient as this building locates just behind the Station; either that or another impoverished and under-deprived hoody lurks the dark streets of this quiet market town. And that would just be unthinkable wouldn't it? Especially seeing as how we have only just cleared out the Polish because and I quote, "They ain't be from arund here, is they?"

Dereham Photo Blog: #2: the road to nowhere

Just around the corner from The Dereham Windmill is what I have aptly entitled The Road To Nowhere. This is a road that seemingly has no point, rhyme or indeed reason and seems to go precisely...nowhere. Apparently, this road ends with a rip in the Space/Time continuim and that is why it was never completed. It has been said that at certain times of the year, when the stars are in their correct alignment, that a portal opens up here to another dimension. There is talk locally of one paticular night, after a very heavy storm, in which a local resident watched as a skeletal coach and horses came carousing down the road in a "blaze of unearthly light" and disappeared at the point that this road ends. There is also talk of people who have walked the road at certain times in the past and subsequently have never been seen or heard of ever again. Of course, some or all this might have just been made up by your favourite Internet Blogger but then isn't that the way that all Urban Legends are born and, after all, doesn't Dereham deserve a little bit of local colour of it's own?

Dereham Photo Blog: #1

In the many years that I have lived in Dereham, I have often seen a sign posting the way towards something called The Dereham Windmill. This has always troubled me firstly because I have never heard anything locally about The Dereham Windmill and because I have never seen any sign of it from the road despite always trying to glimpse a peek so one day the other week, before HC's holiday began, I decided to take Emilie in the push-chair and try to track down this long sought after local attraction. This is the forested road that supposedly points the way to The Windmill. I took this photo because walking down here reminded me of a Stephen King story I once read about a woman who is always trying to take short-cuts whilst travelling from A to B and ends up taking the narrator through dark, woody roads in which fearsome and scary creatures seem to lurk beyond the shadows. This path doesn't look that menacing during the day but you can well imagine that as dusk approaches, suddenly your imagination might go into over-drive. It also looks to me like a road that might lead you somewhere nasty....

Finally, we reached our final destination, The Dereham Windmill, and it is fair to say that I was less than imprssed seeing as how I had been curious about this local "attraction" for several years now and had quite built up my anticipation. Luckily Emilie had long since fallen asleep so could conceal her disappointment. I however was not so lucky and experienced feelings of "Is that it?" and "Well, that was worth it, wasn't it?"
It's not even as though it gets any better from the other side. In fact, it is fair to say that our local Dereham Windmill was something of a let-down on all fronts! Glad I waited all this time to see it...not!

Dereham Photo Blog: #0

As some of you may have noticed, there are a few Blogs I follow regularly

amongst which, one of my favourites is ROME
PHOTO BLOG. This is basically a collection of photos by an American girl living in Rome who takes photos of everyday life in her magnificent city. I first became aware of the Blog because it appeared under the Blogs Of Note section of Google Blogger and it appealed because a few years ago, myself and Mrs.Sparky sent a very enjoyable 10 days in Rome for our honeymoon and it is great to see snap-shots of streets we remember walking down taken by somebody who lives there. One of my favourite photos on there I have seen so far is a portrait of an empty Via De Corso at night; the shops all lit up and closed for the night, the streets all deserted of people. Anyway, inspired by all this I have decided to begin a random and occasional series of photos that give a snap-shot look of life here in sleepy Norfolk and more specifically, of my current home town, Dereham, and the city I was born in, Norwich. Above is a picture of Dereham Fire Station. Yes, my quiet little market town is actually big enough to have it's own Fire Station though it is reassuring to note that Dereham is thankfully quite short of pyromaniacs. In fact, the last time there was a fire, the majority of the local people gathered around to keep warm. This is because we live in the sticks and apparently have not quite caught up with the rest of civilisation yet and so have never heard of either central heating or that damned electrickery that supposedly powers something called "The Internet" that will lead all our children into depravity if you believe what they print in The Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is the only paper available in local newsagents along with The Sun and The Daily Sport; because everyone knows that people living in small market towns are all either inbreds or bigots or both!