I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in previous years, but in Summer our house gets a real influx of houseflies – particularly in the kitchen, but really through the place.  And they drive me mad.

We can’t find a reason for them coming in – the walls have been filled with cavity-wall insulation, the kitchen units have been replaced, nothing’s dead/rotting/stinking/festering in the kitchen or house at all, and yet every year we get all these sodding flies. It’s not quite “Biblical Plague” of the buzzy little bastards, but it’s enough to drive me mental.

Hound’s not keen on them either – collies are renowned for their fly-chasing activities, so she keeps on chasing them and trying to eat them – and in that aspect I guess I must be part-collie. I use a fly-swatter rather than trying to catch the little flying shitbags in my mouth, but I admit I can get quite obsessive about it.

I don’t know what else we can do, though. Fly-paper is bloody ugly, the ultra-viole(n)t bugzappers are monstrous on power, and fly-spray’s even worse than fly-swatters- although spray doesn’t leave bug-bits on the walls/ceiling.

I think it’s just one of those things with living in the area – other people we know have similar issues here, so it’s not just our place. That’s some kind of reassurance, I suppose. Not much, though.

Today I was out in Norwich, doing some photography for an event. A couple of the people I did the NCFE Photographyt course with were involved in the planning, and had volunteered us to do all the photography. And today was the day.

It was actually really enjoyable – although I’m knackered now, of course – and pretty productive.

I focussed (pardon the pun) on people more than anything, as that’s always my weakest subject. So ad hoc street photography ahoy, and  a fair dollop of wandering around the area, just trying to get the right shots as they came up.

I’ve got about 150 photos out of the event, some of which I’m pleased with, some less so. I know I’ve got a lot of editing to do regardless, as there’s blown-out highlights in lots of them. Still, it’ll keep me busy for the week.

Out of action today because of

• More Driving
• Shopping
• Sociable Stuff
• Family Stuff
• Barbeque Stuff (May be associated with the two items above)

Life getting in the way of writing. It happens.

A while back I wrote about Emma Ward, who’s been missing from the next village for about two months now. The police have now charged her husband (ex-husband? Widower? What’s the term for someone who’s suspected of killing their wife?) with murder, even though as yet they haven’t found her body. I guess there’s enough other evidence for them to know it’s been done, just not where she’s been disposed of.

Anyway, the police are now doing door-to-doors for “correlation”, just to find out if anything else has been seen, who’s visited the house, who knows the Wards etc. etc. We got visited yesterday as part of this, and had (well, we probably could’ve refused, but it would’ve looked even dodgier) to give all our information.

In a way it’s quite interesting really – the sheer amount of information that they take, and particularly information about us. Supposedly  it’s all locked into a database just for this case (and when was the last time you trusted anyone who says “Oh, the information’s only accessible to this investigation”?) and is ‘only’ used for correlation – for example if other people said they’d seen someone approximating my description walking past while another suspicious vehicle was toodling along, they’d be able to come back and ask me more about that particular time/incident.

It’s all done through HOLMES (or more technically HOLMES II) which is apparently a very good bit of database and data-mining kit.

I don’t know if anything will come of it all – I doubt we ever will, unless they find Emma Ward’s body – but it’s been an interesting insight into the entire “murder investigation” thing.

This week has been fairly eventful in the life of one of the nearby villages.

On Tuesday Norfolk police arrested a man about the suspicious disappearance of his wife, Emma Ward, who hasn’t been seen since the start of April. Since then the house has been taped off, and there’s always a police person sat outside it in a car. He’s been released on bail for the moment, but it’s all a bit “wait and see if she appears”. Her friends have put up a Facebook group, and it’s had coverage in the local media too.

It’s strange really – I walk past their house every day with Hound, and you realise afterwards that you haven’t seen two cars there for a while, but you don’t really think about it ’til something like this occurs. I do keep an eye open as I walk round, but still you don’t think about that kind of thing. I wouldn’t know either of them in the street – while I know some of the people in the village,and others as I walk round, I couldn’t put names to most of them, and I certainly don’t know their life histories. Maybe I should- personally I don’t think so, but there we go- but I don’t.

I’m not one of these “Oh, it’s so shocking that it happens near where we live” merchants – this kind of thing goes on wherever you live. It’s just it’s not the first thing in your head – “Oh, the car hasn’t been there. I wonder what’s happened to the owner”.

Of course I’ve mentioned it to the plod sat outside, that one car’s not been there for a while. In a fit of community spirit I even remembered that Google StreetMap had gone through the village a while back, and was able to give them a printout of the StreetMap photo of the house with the now-missing car in the driveway. (No numberplate, but it gives them a colour, make and model to work from) I’m sure they knew already, but well, I’d rather they got told thirty times than everyone assuming they’d got the information already.

My personal suspicion is that she’s dead. If she’d just disappeared then you’d think the husband would be the first person to report it, and to take far less than six weeks to do so. Not reporting her missing just makes you look so suspicious anyway, but the entire thing just strikes me as strange.

Ah, the intrigues of village life.

Only in Norfolk.

Over in Attleborough, there’s a new road been put in which currently goes nowhere. It got used straight away as a place for a bunch of travellers. (and I believe there’s rumour of it being used as such on a longer-term basis) They got cleared out a few weeks back though.

Over the weekend I went past it, and there’s some road signs been put up.

30mph on a dead-end road with no houses or buildings on it