Welcome to the second half.

By Monday evening I was 40.  My nearly-godfather (he would have been officially appointed had mum ever got around to having us christened) left a message.  'I remember your birth.  Dear God!  I had black hair!'  His hair is white now but lots of it still.  And his partner of 50 years (also my nearly-godfather) is drifting into dementia taking all their shared days with him.  I have low stock left from that generation.  It was good to hear his voice.

Friends, with gloomy camaraderie on Facebook, sent greetings like people who have managed to haul another soul into the lifeboat.  Or asked if I've written my will.

'Welcome to the second half' wrote one of my favourite people.  I have often avoided the second half and gone to the pub.  During this show they let you bring your drink in with you and the plot's not bad.  I've got good seats.  If it's close to last orders I can always say I need the loo and sneak out early.

As I suspected 40 feels remarkably like 39.  I celebrated the change of decade with the man I want to be with when I enter the next one.  We avoided subjects that have proved touchy in the past, like whether we once had a beer with Satan and the existence of flamenco, and had an excellent evening at the Wiveton Bell.  Nice Chablis.  Lovely cheese.

Presents from the children were a small parcel of 5 pebbles from my son, a handful of glossy hazelnuts and a linen box for precious things from my daughter and rowdy singing from my little one.  And Mr P and the children gave me a poppy red Pashley bike with a springy seat.  It is the bike of my dreams.  On the front is a basket big enough for a child to ride in.  Or I could put a dog in there.  Or some cockles and samphire and a bottle of cider.  It got dented on the way but some new bits are being sent and I sense a summer of adventures on the open road.  A merry song, small smooth treasures and the promise of a journey.  A good birthday.

Sculthorpe Boulevard

Yesterday we went to a reclaimed timber yard to find floor boards for the holiday cottages. Heavy rain was muscling down all day.  The yard was on a desolate criss cross of tarmac and grass which used to be RAF Sculthorpe.  Lumbering bombers heaved into the sky from here in the Second World War.  Nan always called it 'The Last War'.  If only. Although she meant the war just finished of course, since the Cold War didn't count.  Too sneaky and no street parties.

Skeletons of half-demolished hangers and bunk houses haunted the empty paths.  We drove down one called 'Sculthorpe Blvd'.  It is big, it was the wars that got small.  Two men in acid green jackets were digging clumps of turf up by the side of the road.  By the black mountain of tyres we stopped to ask directions at a snack bar.  The snack bar was a small trailer where a wind-blasted woman was fighting with dirty blue tarpaulin, trying to weigh it down with rocks. She didn't know left from right but we followed her gestures and found the place.    

Enormous posts with sharpened ends, massive beams and piles of planks spiked with metal lay in the mud.  Welcome to the Somme.  We parked in a puddle and pulled Little Three out of her sleep into the gale. In an old hanger two men were cutting wood with giant circular saws.  One of them, in wet wool and a damp beard muttered "Picked a day for it". He might have been building an ark but in the meantime was using a portacabin.  I've run out of contact lenses so I was in my specs.  Useless in the rain, they steamed up when we went inside but I was holding Little Three so I couldn't wipe them.  Through my private fog I peered at floorboards, oak and pine, treated with wax, varnish or left splintery, ripped from derelict buildings.  Lucky Mr P can see and I hope he could tell the difference.  

Little Three examined some pages torn from a lads' mag and glued to the wall.  "A girl!" she shouted. "Girls!"  Someone dreaming of girls in red bikinis had built a Star Wars AT-AT Walker and put it on a filing cabinet.  

The guy in the beard and hat was a nice guy.  His firm had laid the floor of The Wiveton Bell using old boards from some other place. The first time we came to Norfolk The Wiveton Bell was our local for a week.  My feet were standing on those boards when I turned down a second gin and tonic, the first sign that Little Three was already with us, although we didn't know it then.    

We have found some boards at Homebase but think we'll go with these.  Less predictable - they will bring whatever they have at the time.  Inside some pine trees are streaks of sunset pink.  I like that they were cut and planed, laid and trodden and now they have been abandoned we will take them to use again.  We are buying our floors from the Battersea Trees' Home.  Without the bark.