From Glasgow to Manchester late for a few hours at home then next morning to Norwich. Four apprentices to get through their final EPAs, anxiety bubbling as I wandered this town. Found it most beautiful. Even more beautiful after they had all passed, two with distinction.

This cathedral is calm, wondrous. Romanesque arches stacked one upon the other. I love the curious weight of them yet still they soar upwards. This miraculous ribbed vaults of the nave in contrast to the simple (just as beautiful) vaulting of the aisles and the glimpse of wood roofing the second story. More traces of paint and decoration than I have seen elsewhere, all medieval, pre-reformation. Time’s passage and architecture’s technological development visible in the size of the enormous round columns with their simple spiral decorations giving way to incised flutes emerging from walls to stretch up and up alive to vault the precise stone of the ceiling.

A cat.

Beauty through the train window almost made me forget anxiety. Everything remained covered with frost in the Pennines. Melting away as we reached the flats with their thick dark silt and water logged fields filled with birds.

Norwich itself it seemed I barely had time to see, I hope I come back. It too feels a bit lost in time, cobbled streets and a beautiful flint church on every stretch. Old crooked streets and crooked houses. A working class court left standing after the clearances. Spontaneous City art for insects and birds. Old stone towers and the ferry, factories along the water now mellowed brick and almost silent.