East is East

The east side of the country tends towards flat and watery - I will remind myself that I typed that tomorrow when I'm climbing the inclined streets of Norwich.
When Amanda and I were young, our parents often took us to the Norfolk Broads, a series of waterways in Norfolk's protected wetlands area. We would hire a boat and live on it for a week. As a child I just took it for granted that every parent must have sailing skills. My father was a marine engineer and so he did, but I wonder now how much my mother enjoyed these trips, not that I ever heard her complain about them and she certainly would have done.


Years later, the company my sister worked for was taken over by a Norwich based firm and the family moved to Norfolk.
It is a year give or take a few days, since I last went to visit them, although I have seen them several times in between in Portsmouth. In spite of my waxing lyrical about British Rail, this is a three change trip, including a tube between mainline stations in London, but I see it as a reading opportunity and I seem to have been gathering books. I have almost finished the one I brought from Canada, lent to read on the flight, it has served me well.

Last year, I travelled on from London after a morning that I had been dreading for months. One of those days that seem to have their own gravity pull, causing brooding and darkening whenever I thought about its advent.
I had spent the morning at my barrister's chambers at Temple Court, a rabbit warren on the bank of the Thames. In the afternoon we were due in court and to that point there had been no reason to expect an end to the interminable saga of my divorce case. But we had not yet met X's new lawyer.
By mid-afternoon I was on the train to Norwich from Liverpool street, hardly able to believe that it was all finally over.

This year my disbelief is about another abrupt ending. My sister's marriage has ended suddenly and badly. All of her adult life, longer even, has been spent in this relationship, an absolute, something that could be relied on, and then suddenly, no more. Devastation, shockwaves.
Norfolk can be a place for happy families, but it can also be a cold place. I'm not sure what I will find there.