The day I found a postcard from Virginia Woolf

A dispiriting week. Three months ago, skips arrived, into which were cast the detritus of a decade. Charity shops were donated so much that they began to wave us away. Family welcomed furniture while, oddly, refusing to accept their own toys, clothes and school photographs which had been stored with us ‘temporarily’. Book collections were culled because the new house is much smaller. But hey, we had sold the dearly loved house, whose surrounding garden, meadows, trees, pond and abundant wildlife I will miss so much – and, even better, to enthusiastic, trustworthy buyers whose dream home it was. Apparently. Because on the day before exchange of contracts, they pulled out. Solicitors report that this, and other bad behaviour, is now happening frequently. Friends had the house they thought was theirs whipped from under their feet; others, like us, had their ‘sold’ one handed back the night before moving. Do people no longer have any scruples about breaking their word? And so we start again, stressed, distressed and exhausted, unpacking dozens of crates to make the place look smart again. Everyone agrees we should adopt the Scottish system of house-selling. Why haven’t we?

‘May you live in interesting times.’ Yes, and interesting weather. My corner of north Norfolk has its own microclimate. Ten miles away, you drive across an invisible line in the road, on one side of which it will be raining; on the other, not. It often happens with fog too, the same line being where a dense sea fret peters out. Thunderstorms will rage here but not over the hill, navy blue clouds mass forbiddingly to the west, before veering away as we sit in sunshine. Norfolk is England’s driest county and famous for its big skies. Outside the conurbations, we have black velvet ones glittering with stars on clear winter nights.