Church Street Gallery, Cromer

While in Cromer I went to the Church Street Gallery which is on the main street. They had a lovely exhibition of etchings by Kathleen Craddock which focused on wintry countrysides, gaunt trees and the sun low in the sky. The colours were all sombre, yet they works were very appealing. David Carson Shaw was also on show, and his colour palette is the opposite: greens and blues and reds and yellows, done in oils but with the feel of pastels. His works are small (with large frames) and require attention, as they’re full of little details that aren’t noticeable on first glance. And there was a third artist who painted misty beach scenes, or scenes near a beach perhaps, in which a solitary figure is almost melting into the background, and looks as if he’s been caught contemplating when he should have been doing something else. I thought I'd lost his name, but it's John Bond.

More on the subject of luggage

We arrived at the house we’re due to babysit on Wednesday to find the family just about to set off to Cromer for a few days’ camping. We were due to head back there ourselves because we’d left all our own luggage at my brother-in-law’s while we attended to a minor medical matter.
Anyway, the family’s car was full – and the daughter’s bag hadn’t even been put in. In a last minute plea, my niece asked if we could possibly deliver the daughter’s bag to Cromer for them. Of course we could. And then we saw the bag. It was virtually as big as the daughter herself, and may possibly have contained everything she possessed. We should have realized that you don’t go camping without all the things you might possibly need.
Whether she had the kitchen sink in there or not, I don’t know – she may have had two kitchen sinks, since the case was very heavy.
And talking of kitchen sinks, I’ve noticed something odd about the taps (faucets, if you’re in the US) leading into them. When I go to fill a kettle (jug, if you’re in NZ) from the taps, the cold water seems to be on the wrong side altogether. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m partly ambidextrous and do some things around the wrong way, but I have to reach over the top of the kettle to fill it, rather than being able to turn on the tap on my left, as I would at home. Maybe I need to try doing it round the other way – if I can. Although it feels a bit like trying to play golf right-handed to do that.

Churches in Cromer

Cromer has a large church in the centre of town, which didn’t initially strike me as very interesting. However, once you’d checked out the information around the walls and saw the pictures of past events, you realised that it suffered considerable damage in the last War, with windows being blown out, and sections of it being badly damaged. This will account for it not having so many unusual features. The church in Upper Sheringham turned out to have interested carvings on the ends of the pews; not animals this time, but a series of strange designs that almost looked like knights, some with hollow eyes. The front five rows or so, however, had additional features: beside the main designs were other individual designs such as a woman lying wrapped on her side, strange mythical creatures and so on.
And continuing on about churches, we went and checked out the Beeston Regis church, which is halfway between West Runton and Sheringham. It’s up on a hill, overlooks the sea and a large caravan park, and is in good condition. Celia couldn’t remember ever having been in there, and thought there should be a more ruined building there. That turned out to be the Priory which is further along the road towards Sheringham. The Beeston Regis church however did have a series of very old paintings on the rood (that sort of divider that separates the congregation from the altar area). Apparently they’ve been touched up at various times, but the paintings themselves are what the artists conceived centuries ago. It seems that if you don’t skimp your visit to churches you’ll find something special about each one.