Giving Details
Posted: Sat 19 June, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Norfolk, People, The '10 Writing Project, Thoughts, Writing 4 Comments »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.
Village Life
Posted: Sat 29 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, News, Norfolk, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »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.
Road to Nowhere
Posted: Thu 27 May, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Driving, Norfolk, Weirdness Leave a comment »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
Pheacock
Posted: Mon 12 April, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Norfolk, Photography Leave a comment »As I’ve mentioned before, our village has quite a colony of peacocks. In addition, the fields around here are filled with pheasants as well as partridge(s).
This year, we appear to have a couple of hybrid birds, taking bits from both. I’m sure it’s not the first time they’ve happened, but it’s certainly the first time I’ve seen one.
I’ve christend them Pheacocks, for want of a better name – and today I managed to get a couple of photos of them. They’re not perfect, and I want to keep on trying through the year because when you see them, they’re absolutely stunning. The head and tail are definitely pheasants, but the body colours are those of a male peacock – totally stunning in sunlight.
Pheacock 1 - click to embiggenify
There’s also the following one, which again isn’t perfect, but gives a good impression…
Pheacock 2 - again, click to embiggenify
Cold Frame
Posted: Sat 10 April, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk Leave a comment »Today we’ve been assembling a cold-frame for the garden that Herself bought this week. It was OK in the end – Herself took the lead, which meant I was infinitely less annoyed/annoyable and sweary – but still a pig to put together.
While instructions usually prove to be sodding annoying, it’s still better to have some step-by-step instructions on how to build these things. In this case all we had was four pages with some drawings of how to put together certain bits of the cold frame. Other than that, we were on our own.
Still, it’s up now – it took the best part of three damn hours to construct, but it’s done now. Happy Day.