While we are trying to keep warm, yep, I am huddling around hot water bottles as I type this, I thought it would be good to look forward to summer in Norfolk for 2023. New designs are arriving thick and fast inspired by the Norfolk coast.
Surfers and the shapes they make are always inspirational to take photographs of. The ones with a real passion for the sport, surf all year round. Yes, I think they are crazy when the temperatures are so low, but I get how addictive this sport must be. It’s addictive enough just watching. You can see how patient and fit the surfers have to be.
I would love to have a go, but would I have the strength and stamina? Hmm I’m not so sure!
While we don’t have giant rollers here in Norfolk, like in Cornwall or Hawaii, we do have decent enough waves for the local surfers to enjoy. Cromer is a favourite spot, next to the iconic Cromer pier. It’s great to watch the surf school there, tutoring the newbies. It’s fun to watch their progress.
Gorleston, Mundesley and East and West Runton are apparently also good spots to surf. From my investigations there are more secret locations, I will have to sniff them out. I have seen surfers at Happisburgh before, but that is a rare sighting. Scatby, Sea Palling, Trimingham, Mundesley and Hemsby are also good places to go. The site Norfolk Surfing Beaches is well worth a look to find your ideal location to test the waves.
The items you see here are just a snippet of my full collection of Norfolk surfer designs over at Redbubble. Choose from clothing, hats, tech and pet accessories, mugs, bags: duffle, drawstring, tote, stationery and prints. Designed in Norfolk, delivery worldwide.
Norfolk UK is my home, I live in Norwich by the River Wensum where everyday there is something different to see and learn.
I feel a big affinity with the river as I grew up in Cambridge, another great river city. My childhood and teens involved many walks along the Cam where we would watch 'The Bumps,' raft races and as we grew older we enjoyed adventures on our punting pub crawls.
Growing up in a multi cultural university city definitely influenced my reading choices, I am a big fan of Japanese fiction, love French literature and enjoy Shakespeare. As a young teen I entertained myself with Jilly Cooper and Dick Francis and then became quite obsessed with Henri Charriere's Papillon. At school all I cared about was English, Art and French, in that exact order. When I finished with school I went to live and work in Greece for a wonderful year before returning to study English Literature and Sociology. At this point I read more classics like the Wyf of Bath, Wuthering Heights and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man plus poets such as Wilfred Owen.
My first UK full time job was with Heffer's Paperbacks where I devoured several books at a time, excited by the fact I could borrow what I liked. Bizarrely for me I remember reading The Zurich Axioms, I have no interest in the stock markets but it had me gripped. I can't remember why I picked it up but I have never forgotten it. Heffers introduced me to so many authors, via their books and sometimes in person. It was here I learned about all the genres, it fascinated me that science fiction and horror were so popular, I tried reading it all.
Aside from writing letters, it didn't really ever occur to me to write anything myself for many years as I worked my way through a variety of interesting and varied jobs. Then on a visit to the London Aquarium I became struck by an idea so powerful I sat down and wrote my first novel. It went nowhere as really I wrote it because I wanted to. I wrote another novel and again, didn't have the persistance or determination to take it further, I simply enjoyed the process of writing and my characters.
Then years later another idea struck me and during a severe bout of Pleurisy where I couldn't do anything physical for months, I wrote the Eight of Swords and The Putsi. This time I published them as ebooks and they became pretty popular. When I fully recovered, I had to concentrate on my business and looking after my mother who has various health issues and the writing went adrift again for many years until 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world.
March 2020 I moved to my apartment alongside the Wensum to live alone for the first time ever. During the first lockdown I began to write a diary and then the idea for a new set of short stories came to me and in February 2021 they will be published. The Covid-19 Pandemic is not simply a scary virus, it is a historical time and here we are trying to live through it. To many it will feel like a punishment but to me as a writer, in some ways, it came as a gift.
Please stay as safe and as well as you can. I hope to entertain you with my stories as we all try to get through this together, even though we are apart.
Petra
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