Its not so much the experience on the night which turns me off the whole event, its the aftermath, relayed nightly, in aghast detail, in the Evening News. It looks like it will be a perfect November evening on Saturday, with just the right combination of damp and soggy ground, so that when it comes to packing all the travelling toys back in their boxes and trundling on to the cheese fair in Chelmsford, or whereever these thing go, the conditions will be ideal for ploughing. That is, ploughing up Earlham Park with articulated montrosities, attempting hill starts up a greased-up grassy 1 in 5 in the rain, like something out of Its a Knockout. I can almost hear Stuart Hall cackling away as great tracts of once-usable green space are flung around by the spinning wheels of a 1983 Volvo truck, hitting passing dog-walkers and families on a Sunday stroll. The state of that park after the tractor-pulling event is over is more like a great war re-enactment than a place where I can use jumpers for goalposts and have a nice cup of tea in a shed, looking out over the B1108 for stolen Vauxhall Novas.

I’ll be nibbling home-made carrot cakes and locally sourced sausages in buns, as I warm my hands around a crackling little community fire, oohing and aahing at the delicate little explosions put on for the benefit of the select few friends of the Plantation Garden, counting the Mini Boden wellies, and sharing stories of planning applications. You’d expect nothing less.

What did occur to me, however, as I perused the stats like some anorak, which I am, was that notwithstanding the lack of press coverage, there are still an inordinate number of people who will religiously attend the games at Carrow Road, whatever the prospects for entertainment. I know, because I am one, that Norwich fans generally like their entertainment to be painful, cringe-making and exhausting, which presumably explains the 25,000 attendance to a game against the mighty Swindon. That’s 25,000. That’s not only the highest attendance in league one, its higher than most championship games. In fact, as far as I could make out, its the 10th highest attandance in the entire football league. Even if you throw in Scotland, only Rangers got more, so Norwich had the 11th highest attandance this weekend in all divisions in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and even the Channel Islands.

Norwich City fans are bloody marvellous.

That’s not to say Hellesdon is the worst place in the world, or even Norwich. Its just that I haven’t taken a drive through Sprowston this week.

All I want to do is take a little trip from A to B and back again, which happens to be across the city centre, and you dullards are clogging up the place with your tongues hanging out like some mad shopping dogs on heat. If this is what being the fifth most popular shopping destination in Britain is about, them I’m moving to Ipswich, for all that culture.

Next time there’s a trench to be dug outside my house in the middle of the night, could you make sure it is, at the very least, being dug to shelter from the advancing hun, that have begun a 65-year rearguard action and are determined this time to claim the city hall for the führer’s typing pool. Any other reason will provoke a furious outburst from me, durung which I will spill my tea onto my broadband router.

So Stalham’s not that bad in the end. It could do with a Kebab/Pizza/unlicensed Vauxhall Nova shop or something, but apart from that, its nearly worth a visit.

I’m sure Chloe Smith could set me straight on the virtues of north Norwich when she’s finished looking concerned about things on pavements.

I expect they’re just parked there because they’ve gone to the corner shop for a sausage roll. They probably know I’m typing this.