The day we left London there was a tube strike. A dispute over a couple of sacked drivers meant an overground train, two buses and an hour and a half to get from Putney to Liverpool St. Station. It only took that long for the second train of the morning to get us halfway up the country, and into a part of England where tube strikes are something that happens to someone else on a planet far far away. Norwich is bigger than Dunedin but smaller than Christchurch. We aren't actually staying in Norwich but just outside it where every village has a church: the old ones have square towers because they are Norman; the really old ones have round towers because they are Saxon. We are staying in a tiny cottage nestling in manicured parkland in what was once the glebe of an 18th century rectory. At the end of the drive is a church (square tower) and underneath the drive is, apparently, a plague pit. When the plague hit, more years ago than anyone can remember, the villagers of Hardingham reali...