The Grand Cafe

Might be of interest to you Michael @MichaelF

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Well away for 3 nights……originally for 2 nights, but my daughter got her first bonus and paid for a night at the Gunton arms….on a Deer estate, very nice. Hopefully the other nights in the next hotel are as good. This place in Norfolk is owned by a high end art dealer……art everywhere, bit lost on me.




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Tell him he needs a Naim!

@anon70766008 have you already managed to escape?

Listening to a Roberts radio….no TV…….he wants to deliver something different. So no Naim likely…….its a nice change from consumer business client guest offers.

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Completed day one of my residential stay at a centre that deals with intensive physiotherapy.
Mainly induction, introduction, instruction. Real work starts tomorrow at 9am.

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Good luck

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Good luck and hope it all goes well. :+1:

I expect a report on your first real day.

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Looks fantastic Gazza enjoy yourself. :+1:

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It was a real Stag deer up on the mound……we did not see him until he stood up as we got close. He apparently lost out on the rutting going on nearby……we slinked off backwards😬

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Good idea he’s probably pissed.

When you say estate do they hunt on site?

It’s a 1200 acre site with red and fallow deer that are culled ( not sure how) and their own herd of beef. The owners are Ivor Braka (an-art dealer) and his wife, they bought it back in 2009 a while ago? But they have been steadily been buying back the estate from farms that bought way back when the original owners sold off. The pub is the original shooting lodge.





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Gazza that looks horrible I’d ask for my money back. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Beats my day I’m off to the farm to help clean out my new studio, it’s full of stuff and some of it probably be alive. :flushed:

We arrived at their place last night for dinner to the sound of a shotgun, apparently there were some non native birds that are keeping them awake. For a non gun person it’s a little confronting.

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Forgot to mention….the starter was monkfish cheeks deep fried, followed by Venison stew……very nice indeed.

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They weren’t just preparing dinner from scratch were they?

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No but apparently the foxes (which do cause a lot of damage here) are next in his list.

It’s one of the things we’ve had to come to terms here people in the bush have a different relationship to guns. While I understand and in no way judging it’s just a bit of a concern. I hate guns and have no interest in shooting anything, they probably think we’re the strange ones.

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You’re not wrong Pete, guns in general can be scary and unsettling for people that aren’t familiar with them. I felt the same way about guns about 30 years back and decided to do something about it by joining a target shooting gun club and getting familiar with them.

So I have a little 22 rifle, and lever-action rifle, and a pistol, and they are certainly great fun putting holes in targets from various distances. I no longer have a fear of firearms, and neither do my three daughters who have all been out target shooting with me. In Ontario it’s generally a family sport that way. Lots of people hunt I suppose, but that’s never interested me.
My wife and I also have good compound bows, also for target shooting, and that really is a lot of fun. However at the moment we don’t have an archery range to use them at.

So, I find a lot of the personal gun thoughts are really just one’s perspective on the sport. I really like the history that’s behind many firearms. My lever action rifle is the Marlin 1894, because it was designed in 1894 and is still being made as it was designed back then. You can track a lot of historical developments by the introduction of firearm designs. There’s a group of black powder boys at the club and some of the very old firearms they bring in are very neat. They’ve let me shoot a few of them.

There’s a safety factor to knowing firearms, in that, if one of my daughters came upon a handgun, they’d know how to see if it was loaded, unload it, strip it down, and make it safe, and not just be terrified by it. They’d also know how to hold it and shoot it, if the perpetrator were still about and needed a warning.
There’s always guns around and you really can’t get away from them. But I thoroughly understand your distaste for them.

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We’ve just stopped for lunch and so far the only I’ve broken is 2/3 of a box of clay pidgins.

My new studio before it’s cleaned out and the view from the front of it.

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Wow … you must be thrilled. That’ll be perfect!

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Will there be a bar for wine tasting ? :crazy_face::crazy_face:

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