NORDELPH COMMUNITY WEBSITE -- OCTOBER 2006
If you have found this page from a search engine, and cannot see an index frame to the left and a pictorial header above, click on www.nordelph.org to load the page correctly.
You can recreate the state of the website as at any time in the last 18 months by choosing 'Back Numbers' from the index. Contact us on info@nordelph.org
Our introduction of 'Nordelph on Video' in our September update generated a great degree of interest. One purpose was to show off a bit of our community to the unexpectedly large number of visitors (to the website) from abroad. This had an unexpected effect on one American correspondent who e-mailed to tell us of his moment of panic when he first saw a car coming at him on the wrong side of the road!
More seriously, we were gently chided for recording the drives when the weather was so gloomy -- a frustrating truth, because as chance would have it we recorded the village on the day before the weather changed into the glorious Indian Summer that we recently enjoyed!
It was also suggested that we might like to clean the windscreen next time!
But correspondents were clear about one thing -- they liked the feature, and wanted more!
That of course poses a bit of a problem -- there isn't really any more of Nordelph! But, emboldened by the reaction to the experiment, we have added extra material recorded on the same day (we just left the camera running while we moved between drives). As well as the X-shaped paths from A to B and from D to C on this map, we've added two more.
You can now view the village on a drive from B to D, seeing High Street and Birchfield Road from the other angle, and from C towards D, until it begins to repeat the previous drive. We've also updated the video introductory page with some technical advice on removing temporary files that viewing the videos creates on your hard drive. And, with another entry claiming space in the index, we've been forced to reduce the text size, to avoid ugly scroll bars for as many viewers as possible! By the way, we do advise that you maximise your browser window if you haven't already done so.
But there is one video that we'd like to add, but which we're not equipped to create ourselves: we'd like to pass through the village on Well Creek. Is there a boat-owner out there who'd be prepared to give us a ride up and down? To be realistic, we'd need to mount the camera on a tripod and speed up the video -- we can provide the kit, we just don't have a boat! If you can help, let us know on the usual address: info@nordelph.org
Looking up
We received three new 'Favourite Images' for this month's update. Click on the link above to go to the master page -- the new images are the last three.
But two of these images were quite stunning ones of some atmospheric curiousities: tornados and rainbows. And that's prompted us to add a new item in our 'Features' section: Fenland Skies. We're always being reminded that whenever Norfolk is mentioned, the wide skies enter the conversation seconds later, and this feature describes some of what might be seen there -- not merely rainbows and tornados, but also halos and 'sun dogs'. Don't know what they are? Click above and find out!
The village pump
There isn't one, of course -- not any longer. We do have a picture of it in our 'Old Pictures' section in 'Nordelph Past'. And now we have some more information, which you can find on a new page Village Pump. We've located the original brass plaque, with the names of the Nordelph worthies who managed its installation -- something that links again to the search for the Tuck Family that we chronicled last time.
Vegetable of the month
October comes, and with it Hallowe'en. So the vegetable of the month is pumpkin -- right? Wrong! To see what this is, click on the link above. And to see what's in season for October, look at the Fen Food master page.
Nordelph Church
We drew attention to the Norfolk Churches website last month, because it was the Betjeman centenary, and his visit to Nordelph is chronicled there. Since then, the Nordelph page has been updated with more material. You can see it at: www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/nordelph/nordelph.htm.
And all the rest ...
West Norfolk Sports Council are keen to appoint a number of 'Sports Coordinators' for villages. There's a modest recompense for what is essentially a voluntary activity, which includes generating enthusiasm for Inter-village Games. Details, and who to contact, can be found by clicking on our link to their letter.
We return again and again to the question of 'nuisance' and anti-social behaviour in the village. Reports of the Parish Council's thoughts also include the advice from our Community Support Officer to keep reporting incidents -- without which pressure, policing in Nordelph is almost invisible. Well, it's not quite as simple as that! This month, we heard from two residents, both of whom had cause to call the 'non-emergency' police number
0845 456 4567. Both have the same gripe -- after being answered by a human being, they were placed in a queue that was completely reminiscent of the experience of 'contacting' a call centre, complete with the recorded assertions that "all of our operators are busy" and that "your call is important to us". In each case, the caller gave up after hanging on for about 10 minutes. The overall conclusion can hardly be other than that low-level crime doesn't get reported because it's impossibly difficult to do so. Anyone else out there have any thoughts, experiences, or ideas about what to do about it?