It was certainly a mistake to start writing about warm weather, as I did last time. Inevitably it has since turned damp, cold and extremely windy, and made the weather forecasters very happy – or at least enthusiastic.

At the top of our road men in hi-vis jackets (gilets oranges) are measuring up trees as if they intend to cut them down before the wind knocks them over. They taped off a footpath for a while, but as far as I can see nothing else has happened, which is Normal for Norfolk. They are probably waiting for the result of the Brexit vote so that things become clearer. Or they may simply have lost interest.

As has become something of a habit at this time of year, we escaped from Norfolk for a few days to reassure ourselves that roads were just as bad everywhere else, and indeed in many cases worse. No-one, after all, is building smart (aka moronic) motorways in Norfolk, where there are no motorways of any kind. Nor do we, like the otherwise relatively sane county of Derbyshire, have blanket 50mph limits, which make driving tedious and therefore more dangerous.

Buxton, our ultimate destination, remains as stunning as ever. I’m not sure why. It may have something to do with geometry, or the juxtaposition of curves. It may be the way it attracts snow (though not on this occasion), or encourages people to walk.

Coincidentally, one of my local councillors is also keen on people walking. He would like to have a car-free Sunday in our fine city of Norwich, but I’m afraid he just falls into the category of people who are really selfish – not, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, because he wants to do things his way, but because he wants everyone else to do things his way as well.

Cars are not evil. They are quite useful in carrying people and things to places where they might otherwise be unable to go. They also benefit the sick and the elderly, which can hardly be said of bicycles – especially when it’s damp, cold and windy.

I could also point out that if everyone in the UK stopped using a car tomorrow, it would have no effect on global climate whatsoever. But I won’t, because that would make me a climate change denier: any schoolchild could tell you that.

It’s been a warm few days, and so all those predictions that would normally be frozen and probably buried at this time of year have come to the surface and sprouted alarmingly.

Because it’s been so warm, and it’s still February (at the time of writing), this means we will have a warm summer, like 1976. Or it could be that we will have a cool, damp summer, so that things even out.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, has reminded us that if we are shown a number of high temperatures – preferably accompanied by pictures – and are then asked how warm it will be, our answers will be higher than if we weren’t shown anything.

I am paraphrasing slightly. If you want the full story, buy Deep Thinking, his excellent book on Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity, in which he also says that weather forecasters are no more likely to affect the weather than economists are to affect the economy.

In a nutshell this more or less summarises my theory of climate change, which is that the climate changes.

This is not a prediction I would make if it were a normal February, but it seems appropriate in the circumstances. What is undeniable is that since I am about to have a weekend away in Derbyshire, it won’t be warm for much longer.

That is by far the most common way that humans influence the climate. For some reason Mr Kasparov doesn’t mention this in his book.

They tell me that Norwich City have the oldest football song in the world. If not, they almost certainly have the only one with the word “scrimmage” in it.

I suppose you could say I am a supporter of the Canaries. As a schoolboy (in the early 1960s) I stood in the South Stand on a fairly regular basis, and was part of the 40,000 swaying, cheek-by-jowl crowd who watched City play Leicester one memorable Saturday. The capacity for the current, rather larger, seated stadium is around 27,000, and my wife has a season ticket.

I don’t, which is why I wasn’t at the derby match against Ipswich Town recently. I do go to Carrow Road on occasion, but I am not a die-hard fan, slotted into the Barclay End, waving a flag, making up witty topical songs to fit the players’ names and being generally abusive to the opposing fans, especially if they come from Suffolk.

I am not against a bit of banter, such as the chant “You don’t know what you’re doing” directed at the referee. Similarly “Who are you?” or “What’s the score?” directed at the opposing fans or manager.

What I don’t have any truck with is the real abuse, verging on violence, aimed at small groups of individual visiting supporters. Mixed in there is heartfelt hatred, frighteningly close to riot and affray, causing real harm to real people who are just like us.

It’s one small step from calling Ipswich supporters “scum” to punching them in the mouth.

Admittedly, Ipswich is in Suffolk. But to be quite honest and risking personal harm, I have to confess that I quite like Suffolk, despite its nonsensical speed limits. Is there any real reason for Norfolk and Suffolk people to be at odds? How far are we from having a hard border, a backstop, bombing and other atrocities?

Bit extreme, you may say. All this violent talk is just a bit of fun. Maybe it’s a safety valve of some kind. No-one gets hurt.

But they do, don’t they? Words turn into deeds, and all too soon you have a little scrimmage, bones get broken, bodies cut and bruised.

I should emphasise that Norwich fans are not known for this sort of behaviour. But once passions get unleashed, almost anything can happen. It has in the past, and it will again. It stems from repeated insults, mindless abuse, creeps into hatred and without thinking – yes, definitely without thinking – it goes too far.

Just like Brexit, really.

My wife is an optimist. If she weren’t, obviously, she wouldn’t have married me, and things would have been very different. Oh, yes, they would.

I too have always considered myself an optimist in a general sense, but when I say this, she laughs. I guess the sense in which I am an optimist is too general to be of much use in daily life. I believe in life after death, for instance, and while this can and should colour what I am doing every day, you can’t always tell.

My wife’s optimism is sometimes frustrating. She actually believes that you can find a Sent folder in Outlook Mail, for instance, and she almost convinced me that one of the methods described on the web for finding it might actually work. To a realist like me, the fact that there are so many methods described on the web for finding it is an indication that something is basically wrong with Outlook Mail, but of course we all know that.

Why Outlook Mail finds it necessary to hide the Sent folder is beyond me. Possibly because it is designed by technicians, and not people. This is what will happen on a global level if Artificial Intelligence ever gets beyond playing chess. All folders will be hidden, and we will eventually starve.

Happily, I am not worried, because I have a Mac, which works well in adverse weather conditions, especially rain. And you can find the Sent folder.

Sorry, I got a bit distracted there, because my wife raised this problem with Outlook Mail (again) in the optimistic belief that I could fix it. Sometimes I can fix things, but not alien technology.

As a couple we have a few problems with time, but of course that is much akin to alien technology too. I work out how long it will take to get somewhere, my wife sort of agrees on a time to leave and is prepared to leave about ten minutes later than that, while I stand around in the kitchen trying to keep my blood pressure down.

To me, leaving late like this seems to be asking for trouble, because people drive so slowly nowadays that nobody can get anywhere in a reasonable time. But she is never worried, and quite often, against all the odds, we do get there in time, which is pretty annoying.

I am not complaining about my wife’s optimism. It is one of her many endearing features, like her beauty, her compassion and her forgiveness, and her willingness to let me choose a time to leave.

I am not leaving her, of course. I am realistic enough to know that. Why would I? She is optimistic about the whole thing. She also supports Norwich City.

At school I was shy and hated speaking in public. I remember having to give a five-minute talk to my class on railways: the idea of it terrified me, and the execution was even worse. The fact that I knew next to nothing about railways didn’t help. I was on the wrong track from the outset.

A couple of weeks ago and roughly 60 years later, I performed my own poetry four times in a week, to four different audiences. I am not boasting: it just happened like that. But it shows that if you’re born shy, it may not last. This may be good news for someone.

The first performance was on a Friday at Halesworth, at what is known in some quarters as a Poetry Café. Originally this group of mainly Suffolk poets led by Mike Bannister met at an actual cafe – Pinky’s – but it burned down a few months ago. So now we meet upstairs at the White Swan, while pool and darts are played downstairs. So I guess it’s a Poetry Pub.

Yes, I’m a Suffolk poet, though I live in Norwich. The second reading was at the Seagull Theatre in Lowestoft, which is still a Poetry Café, though it’s really a theatre foyer – a smaller gathering run by the genial Ian Fosten, who used to live and work (as a URC minister) in Norwich, which is where I first met him.

At the Seagull I have also been known to sing my own songs, a phenomenon which my teenage self would have viewed with horror.

My third outing in this fearsome week was on the Tuesday at Jurnet’s Club in Norwich, where a Norwich poetry group meets. It’s not a real café either: it’s the ancient undercroft of the Music House, rumoured to be the oldest house in Norwich (it’s on King Street, once called Conesford Street). And it was once owned by the Paston family.

Which is a rather a neat link to my final outing, which was two days later at the Maids Head in Norwich. No poetry café, this, but something much grander. The event was a celebration dinner organised by the Paston Heritage Society, of which I am a trustee, to mark the anniversary of the first mention of the Maydes Hedde in a Paston letter, on 22 November 1472.

For this I not only had to perform but also dress up and, truth to tell, I still don’t like doing that. Between courses we performed a number of poems and some excerpts from the famous Letters – and enjoyed some excellent food and wine.

In all this I steered clear of railways. I don’t know why.

Until quite recently I thought the most fascinating thing about Cley, a small village on the North Norfolk coast, was whether you pronounced it Cl-eye or Clay. Even locals disagree about this, and they are all sure they’re right. So they probably are.

However, I recently spent a week living in a house fronting on to the narrow street that twists through the village and forms part of the coast road. This particular street is a Coasthopper and HGV challenge second only to Stiffkey – and don’t get me started on how you pronounce that. But there is much more to Cley than traffic jams.

I already knew about the stunning coastal walk leading from Cley to Blakeney and on to Morston and points west. I also knew about the Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s lovely nature reserve and visitor centre just down the road – marsh harrier, anyone? – and the long, beautiful trudge out to Blakeney Point starting at Cley beach. Ladies and gentlemen, I had tried them all, and they were all good.

But I was less familiar with the village itself: the tiny harbour by the windmill and the intricate and cunningly crafted little brick paths that snake round the back of the 3D jigsaw of beautiful old houses and keep you away from the traffic. The paths on the edge of the marsh and out to the beach road. The “inland” way to Blakeney through Wiveton Hall farm.

I was also unaware of  the delicious smoked fish obtainable from the Cley Smokehouse almost next door. And although I knew of the strangely named Picnic Fayre deli, I had forgotten the delicious range of pies, cakes and Pastonacres bread that can be purchased there – among many other delights. It was close by, and we were in and out. Who cares that you can’t buy a daily paper anywhere in the village? You can buy Sunday papers, but that’s another story. Several other stories, in fact

There’s also the George (no Dragon), the Crabpot Bookshop and the church – safely positioned way above sea level and a home for the Cley Contemporary Art Exhibition. And if you’re into art there’s the Pinkfoot Gallery and the Wildlife Trust’s visitor centre – at the time of our visit home to a series of stunning photographs.

The views in and around the village are classic and irresistible, as many a camera fiend will tell you. But if you still think the most fascinating thing about Cley is how to pronounce it, my preference is for Cl-eye, because I rather like the establishment that sells binoculars and telescopes and calls itself Cley Spy.

My friend Dave “Swacking” Cuckoo claims that a Broad Norfolk pronunciation of Clay  comes out pretty close to Cleye anyway. But then he would.

Erich Fromm, who described himself among other things as a “nontheistic mystic” (I wish I could come up with snappy phrases like that), had some interesting things to say about being awake. Possibly the most immediately accessible was this: “The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is that they are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep, or when they want to sleep.”

I can identify with this. My wife has been suffering with a virus which, among its many joys, features a persistent cough. The result of course is that she finds it hard to sleep and, being of one flesh and usually one bed, I find it hard to sleep too.

But there are other times when for no good reason sleep eludes me. I know many people are worse off: I have no wish to make you feel particularly sorry for me. I do sleep, quite often.

In any case I am more interested in the other half of Herr Fromm’s pronouncement – that we are often half asleep when awake. You can take this at different levels: some people are so dozy that they rarely have much idea what’s going on, for instance. This is probably the only thing that makes democracy work.

As I get older, however, I find it easier and easier to doze off at embarrassing times – during a sermon, for instance, or silent meditation. Indeed, I spend most of any meditation session that I happen to get involved in trying not to go to sleep, which is annoying because I’m supposed to be tuning into God. If I can sleep at such a time, what hope is there for me? It’s like dozing off while making love. No, I haven’t done that. As far as I can remember.

Even more surprisingly (perhaps) I often go to sleep while watching television. This happens even during programmes that I enjoy and which to other people are gripping. Dr Who,  for instance. Last Sunday I surfaced towards the end of the programme, slightly puzzled and thinking I had missed a crucial moment or two. But hey, the Tardis was back,  and the sonic screwdriver; so I got over it.

Later I re-ran the programme and discovered I had slept through a good half of it.

Falling asleep during TV dramas can be quite interesting. I have noticed on several occasions that my mind continues the drama after I have lost touch with it, and all kinds of things happen in my mind that never happen on screen. So I wake up thinking I’m at a certain point in the  narrative and find that not only am I somewhere else, but the bit of narrative I thought I was watching never happened.

If I was Erich Fromm, of course, I would see this as a valuable area of study – possibly source material for several books. As I haven’t read his books, he may already have sorted it all out.

But I have to do my tax return now; so I’ll leave it at that. Wake me up when it’s all over.

After I had got in the habit of turning the sub-titles on during TV dramas as a matter of course, I realised suddenly that it might not be the Geordie, Liverpool or New York accents  to blame after all. I might have a hearing problem instead.

So I went to the opticians – which is where you go nowadays if you have a hearing problem. Doctors do very little. They are too busy.

The hearing expert at the opticians had a good look and said she couldn’t do a hearing test because there was too much wax in my ears. I needed to get them syringed by a nurse at my local surgery. So I rang the local surgery, and it turned out that  they didn’t do that either. They said I should go to my opticians.

Odd, Holmes. This could be a tricky one. I rang the opticians back, and they said they didn’t do it (yet), but they knew a man who did. His name was Nick, and he didn’t have a surname or an address. Just a mobile number.

I know what you’re thinking. Bit risky. I didn’t want just anyone poking about in my ears. But what was the alternative? I took a deep breath and rang Nick, who sounded reassuring. He was a nurse specialising in ears, and he did have an address. Admittedly it wasn’t in the smartest part of town, but that might be a good thing, cost-wise.

The opticians and the surgery had told me to put olive oil in my ears for a couple of weeks, but Nick said this was a bad idea. I could get the job done straight away. It wasn’t a syringe; it was more of a vacuuming. He had the latest equipment.

A trifle hesitantly, I made an appointment, walked to the address and after a while, I found it. It was through an arch which looked as if it led nowhere, but in fact it led to a rather modern-looking glass door, behind which was a reception area. The idea, apparently, was to press a button, and the receptionist would let you in.

Unfortunately there was no receptionist.

Eventually a woman came up behind me, pressed a combination of numbers, and the door opened. I tailgated her. She didn’t seem to mind. I asked her about the ear man, but she had no idea: she was there because her son was having a music lesson. I scanned the reception area, but could find no indication of where anything was.

So I followed the woman upstairs. I am good at that sort of thing. We met a couple of guys in business suits, but they looked mystified when I mentioned ears. I tried various floors and then bumped into someone who looked as if he might have been a caretaker, though he probably wasn’t. He knew about the Ear Clinic. This was a reassuring phrase that I had not heard before. He directed me to it, and to cut a long story short, behind a door marked Ear Clinic (handwritten) I found Nick.

Nick was brilliant. He was calm, professional, explained everything and answered my questions. He then had me lie down while he vacuumed my ears. He warned me about the noise, but in fact it was quite a pleasant sensation. It cost £50.

I went back to the opticians, where I saw a different hearing expert. She reassured me that there was no wax now, and gave me a hearing test. It turned out I was marginal, though good at cognition. She gave me a hearing aid to take on a test run with my wife, but while I could hear the background noise more clearly, and my own voice much more clearly, it made little difference to my wife’s voice.

It would have cost a minimum of £500; so I decided to pass, and take another test next year.

I am quite happy about that, because I know where Nick is now, and sub-titles are not so bad.

If you saw someone wandering around Norwich on 15 September with about 16 people in tow, it was probably me. To be honest, it could have been any number of official City Guides, but they would have known what they were doing. For me it was a one-off Heritage event, and I had been plunged into it almost by accident.

I am a trustee of the Paston Heritage Society – in fact the only such trustee living in Norwich; so it falls to me quite often to introduce visitors to the various Paston-related sites in the city. (If you don’t know who the Pastons were, I refer you to pastonheritage.co.uk; there is also a Facebook page.)

Recently, as the more alert Norwich-dwellers will know, there has been an extensive  Castle Museum exhibition on The Paston Treasure – it finishes this weekend (September 23). There has also been a more general, highly informative exhibition in St Peter Hungate, which continues until November. One of the spin-offs from this was my walk, which was inserted when something much more exciting was cancelled. I cannot reveal what it would have been. If I did, I would have to kill you.

I was a little concerned about how many sites I could include in the advertised 45 minutes. I was also slightly worried about whether I would be blamed if someone fell under a bus or was flattened by a cyclist, but I did warn them about it beforehand. They were a cheery bunch, and took full responsibility.

One of the problems with the Pastons was that they did not restrict themselves to a small part of Norwich – an area with a 45-minute radius of the Castle, for example. But we did what we could, taking in the main areas, such as St Andrew’s Hall, St Peter Hungate, Elm Hill and those ruins behind the Cathedral. We also slipped by the Guildhall, and stood for a while on Whitefriars Bridge. We ended up in front of the Cathedral after 90 minutes, having lost a few people on the way (all for very good reasons).

So what did we miss?  Mainly the Music House – the oldest house in Norwich, owned by the Pastons in the 16th century and now containing a Paston Room; and Dragon Hall, created originally by their friend, the equally famous Robert Toppes. But other sites of interest to Paston-lovers are scattered not only throughout Norwich but throughout the entire county, from Paston itself across to Appleton and taking in such beautiful buildings as (part of) Oxnead Hall and Barningham Hall.

As relaxation the following day I sat with my wife in St Augustine’s Church, which has nothing to do with the Pastons (as far as we know), but which is the church where I am a member. The building itself is owned by the Churches Conservation  Trust, and the church hall is used for worship. But on heritage days the church is open to visitors, and the experience is always interesting. This year I met someone who was born in the same place as I was – Earlham Hall.

Afterwards I wrote the poem that appears below.

For my birthday my son gave me a book called The World Needs More Canada. He handed it to me while we were in Canada on holiday, so that I could test the truth of it.

On the face of it, the idea seems unlikely. The world already has a great deal of Canada: it is the second biggest country in the world (after Russia, since you ask). If you travel from London by air to Vancouver – on the west coast – by the time you reach Newfoundland, on the east, you are about halfway there.

I have been to Vancouver once, and to the Rockies twice. The city is beautiful, and the mountains spectacular. The Icefield Parkway, from Banff to Jasper, is the most sensational road I have ever travelled on. It’s too far away, of course, but that is not entirely Canada’s fault.

I have been to other parts of Canada, such as Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Calgary, and I loved them all – a feeling that is partly to do with the people, who are extremely relaxed about everything except stopping at Stop signs. They show great understanding, except about the nature of roundabouts. And they smile a lot.

But most of my time in Canada has been spent in Ontario, which in my opinion is greatly undervalued. Toronto itself is an entertaining and pleasant city, especially by the lake, although it  struggles to accommodate all the vehicles that want to get in there (or out again). Its Highway 401 is a legendary road, 18 lanes wide at one point, carrying up to half a million vehicles a day. It was the first road I drove on in Canada, and the first time I had driven an automatic car. It was a memorable experience. I would commend it to those who find the new Northern Distributor Road in Norwich a challenging day out.

Further west, north and east, Ontario quietens down. It quietens down south as well, but that’s because if you go south you’re in Lake Ontario. We generally stay with friends in Caledon, which is close to the Niagara Escarpment, with its rolling country roads organised in amusing grids. Despite the woods, there is a great feeling of space and openness, and there’s always the chance of running into a coyote, or a bear. Just the one bear, which appears to be lost. It made the local paper.

Yes, there is wildlife. Where we stayed there were snapping turtles and chipmunks, geese and the occasional (non-poisonous) snake. But all the wildlife is Canadian, and therefore good-natured.

Did I mention the wineries? Canadian wine is surprisingly good, and so are the restaurants. Did I mention the malls? They’re big – so big, in fact that walking clubs use them before they open for business. Did I mention the farm shops? I could go on. Did I mention Penetanguishene?

In short, I concur with the book in question, which covered the proposition thoroughly, with numerous quotes from almost everyone except Leonard Cohen who, to be fair, is dead. I presume they left it too late to ask him.  Canada – that’s where the light gets in. That’s what he would have said. Probably.