Good to be Back

Today I realized that it's nice to be back in Norwich. Somewhere amid the stressing out about my noisey student neighbours and wishing I could have a longer holiday I had forgotten that there are good things about being in Norwich. My noisy, talkative, enthusiastic and handsome 13 year old son for instance.

Today we were planning to go and see some open air theatre, but of course in true bank holiday weekend tradition it started tipping down with rain 10 minutes before we left.

OK we thought, plan b, we'll go to the cinema. D wanted to see the Phillip K Dick film - no good, it's a 15 and N is only 13 (well technically almost 14, but still not old enough). The other choices were dire, amongst which were "Cars" look like the worst film in the history of animation (yes even more sick making than Care Bears!), some kind of teen romance, Nachos Libre - Jack Black being his normal annoying self in the guise of a monk and a wrestler (huh?), several 18 rated films, a couple we had seen, You, Me and Dupree - I have seen the trailer for this and NEVER EVER want to see the film, and last but not least Monster House which looks ok but none of us were sufficiently moved by it to warrant spensing nigh on twenty quid to see it.

Ok plan C - go to look at books in Oxfam and go for a coffee in our favourite cafe "Olives". Despite the fact that it's open all day on Sundays, Oxfam was in fact shut. But Olives was a treat. It was another reminder that it is good to be back in Norwich. D and I went for lots of coffees in Edinburgh as well as eating out quite a bit. But apart from a funky arts co-op type cafe that we found on the last but one day it was all decidedly overpriced and pretty run of the mill.

There were too many Starbucks and Costa coffees, it seemed like there was one or the other on every corner. Then there was the over priced vegi burgers, we saw one at £6 ouside the natural History Museum in London a few weeks ago but that's nothing to Edinburgh. We saw some at £7 but then later in the week were flabberghasted to see them at £10 or £12 at The Hard Rock Cafe - needless to say we gave it a miss! In fact we did end up getting our Vege Burgers in the end at The Forest Cafe and for a reasonable £3.80 for a vege burger in a bagel with loads of scrummy wholefood salad on the side!.


So anyway to get back to the point - Olives suddenly seems cheap, it's smallish, friendly, the coffee is good, you can sit for ages reading your book or paper - it's good to be back. What better way to while away an hour or two than drinking coffee and reading a good novel in the company of the two boys you love?