THE PEDDARS WAY

In Norfolk and East Anglia, the Peddars Way is an immediately recognisible 'brand,' being a sinuous footpath, sometimes continuous, running from the Brecks to the north Norfolk coast. It smacks of walking and pedlars, and even sheep droving. What is more difficult to explain is where the name actually came from, or what it once meant.
If the Romans had a name for this road then, irritatingly, they did not leave behind any written record or inscription. Or if they did, it has not been found or recognised. In any event, the Peddars Way is not mentioned in the Tabula Peutingeriana (the Peutinger Table), or the Antonine Itineraries, both of which are listings of Roman highways which, regionally, tend to concentrate on London to Caistor St Edmund (Venta Icenorum) routes.
Because of this, and in terms of meaning, it has been all too easy to fall back on rather obvious ped/pedestrian or ped/pedlar connotations, and indeed, there may be a grain of truth here somewhere. But the situation is more complicated than this, as I discovered in the early 1980s while writing the first guidebook for the then proposed long-distance walking route from Knettishall to Cromer.
It soon became obvious that this was a trackway which has had many names, including Stretegate, Ridgerow Road, Ridge or Ridgeway Road, and Deal Row. But these, it became clear, were purely local names for particular stretches of the Way, and not names for the Way as a whole.
Then I came across a reference to the fact that CH Lewton-Brain, the West Norfolk historian, had discovered on a 1580 estate map of Flitcham a mention of a road named as 'Street Way alias Peddars Way.' Later, another researcher found various spelling variations of the same or similar names recorded in documents from 1423 to 1561.
What did it all mean? Might other routes aside from the Peddars Way road, and in different localities, have shared the same name? This is what seems to have happened. And when the matter was mentioned in the Eastern Daily Press several readers wrote to say they knew of roads or trackways in their area which also had the name Peddars Way. Places or localities as diverse as Beachamwell, Thurlton, Harpley, Christchurch Park (Suffolk), Lessingham, Cawston, Haddiscoe, Beccles, Fulmodeston, and even Mousehold Heath, on the Norwich fringe.
Even now the matter is not entirely clear. But what we can say is that the name Peddars Way is not Roman, and that in the past it was not exclusive to this particular route. Indeed, there is the possibility that it might even have been in fairly general use from, for example, circa AD1500s onwards.
The name seems to have described a route for foot traffic (pedlars, people selling or carrying goods or produce, or even sheep walks or sheep droving), and may have been in use for several hundred years. Gradually, however, it seems to have dropped out of fashion (except in one or two pockets) and then gradually retreated to become the only recognisible name on this one particular road.
The Peddars Way, I think, has much more than a Roman history.     

Dialling Dilemma

Today's football writers operating 'across all platforms' might care to reflect that before the 1970s there were no computers and therefore no emailing or Tweeting, and no mobile phones. In terms of reporting matches, we scribes were utterly in thrall to the clunky black telephone. In other words, if the phone wasn't working the match report pages of the nation's Pink Uns and Green Uns were left depressingly empty.
I experienced this particular crisis once, though I cannot remember the match or the date, except that it was an away fixture and that I had travelled there on the team coach.
There had been warnings during the week that a strike by phone operators was scheduled for the weekend, but it failed to provoke alarm because even if the office was not able to ring me at the ground I could still ring them using automatic dialling. So plans for the coverage of this Saturday afternoon Norwich City fixture went on as usual, and the sub-editors on the Pink Un paper anticipated nothing more than the usual busy shift.
I recall getting to the ground, sorting out which phone I was to use, and writing a match intro based on team selections. I then prepared to phone the intro and a little 'background colour' through to the Pink Un office in Norwich, where a typist was waiting for my call.
Only I couldn't. The booked reverse-charge call did not materialise, so I resorted to automatic dialling, which did not work, either. Someone in the Press Box said cheerily, 'You won't get through today, mate. All the phones are down.' Meanwhile, as the match duly kicked off, I visualised ranks of sports subs gazing at silent phones and empty pages, and lighting up more Woodbines than usual.
After a couple of minutes I tried the automatic dial again, trying to raise Norwich, and this time was relieved to hear it ringing-out. When the phone was answered, however, it was to discover that for some technical reason it was an unknown and somewhat surprised lady who spoke up. Are you the Pink Un? No, she said. Are you in Norwich? No, she said. I live in Rickmansworth.
Throughout the entire first half I must have dialled the Norwich Pink Un number a dozen times, and each time it was this nice lady in Rickmansworth who answered. I must say she was jolly decent about it. After five calls I got beyond profuse apologies and we began a conversation. No, she said, she was not interested in football. She had never been to a football match. By the eleventh call she confessed she was not at all irritated but was sufficiently intrigued to ask the score. I, meanwhile, was desperately trying to watch and make notes as well as contact my office where, I could imagine, heart attacks were happening on a regular basis.
Half-time came and went and still no contact, and still the lady in Rickmansworth was patience and calmness personified as my frantic calls increased in intensity. Then, as the second half kicked off, and as my diallings reached about No. 15, I suddenly got through to the Pink Un. There was a lot of catching up to do.
As for the unknown lady in Rickmansworth, I did at the time and can only do so again, praise her patience and courtesy. So if she is still out there, and if she can still remember the incident, one harrassed football reporter, a bored copy typist, five frantic sports sub-editors, a deeply worried sports editor, and thousands of Norwich City supporters who were not actually at the game, owe you a big thank-you. 
  
 

James Stewart (1)

In the 1970s I got the idea that I would like to learn to fly a glider, a not-so-silly notion because at the time a gliding club based at the old Tibenham airfield in Norfolk was organising courses. I was taken up several times, went on a weather-affected course, and in consequence didn't complete the schedule or make the grade. But I did enjoy it, and subsequently three of my children were taken up to experience the thrill of engineless flight.
In early June, 1975, I took a phone call from a gliding club member who told me that film star James Stewart was planning a private visit to the base. A members'-only job, apparently. Very hush-hush. No fans, no Press. But  if I didn't let on how I knew, kept in the background, and didn't wave a notebook about, then I might be able to pass muster as a club member.
Stewart's visit was not a total surprise because during the Second World War he had been based at Tibenham (and elsewhere), from where he flew 20 bomber missions. He was a genuine war hero, and now, thirty years and many films later, he was appearing in the stage play Harvey in London, and was simply taking advantage of a day off. Though I didn't know it at the time, he was also planning to do a photoshoot with Terry Fincher for the Daily Express.
On the day in question I did my best to melt into the background and became a quiet bystander as James toured the base and the ruined control tower, and gazed at the runway. He clearly found it all very affecting. When they offered him a towed glider flight to RAF Coltishall and back, he jumped at the chance, and happily squeezed his lanky frame into the tiny cockpit. While he was away, Terry Fincher and I withdrew for a pub lunch. 
Back at Tibenham again, Mr Stewart was ushered into the clubroom for sandwiches and coffee, where he looked at more memorabilia and chatted freely with everyone. Every so often his gentle drawl, 'ahhh, well,' and 'kinda' and 'sorta' could be heard across the crowded room. Relaxed and affable, he was in his element.
I was sitting in a corner munching sandwiches when Stewart's agent came across. 'He knows who you are,' he said. 'He knows you're a local journalist.' I envisaged a firing squad. 'Would you like to meet him?' Yes, please.
Then James Stewart came across and sat down beside me, balancing a cup and saucer on his knee, and we talked for ten minutes. Deliberately, I ignored my notebook and later on had to struggle to remember some of the quotes. But in a way I was glad. It was not an interview, it was a neighbourly chat, freely offered and entered into.
James Stewart was like that. Aimable, interested, and at ease. He talked about Tibenham and how tough he had found it to remember his way around the base. 'The only thing I can really orientate on is the control tower,' he said. He talked about his glider flight, and I asked if he had taken the controls. 'Sure I flew it. Sure I did.' And then he talked about Norfolk and Norwich and how he hoped one day to visit the city's American Memorial Library.
Then his agent came back, and Stewart rose, shook hands, and wandered back towards the sandwiches.  
 

In Praise of 8s & 10s

Inside-forwards - otherwise Nos. 8 and 10 in the WM formations favoured by almost every football club in the UK until Puskas and Hungary showed there was another way - were the craftsmen of their day. They supplied the ideas and the bullets, fired, sometimes by wingers who mostly hugged the touchlines, and generally by centre-forwards who ploughed a central furrow. Number 9 may have been the glamour-puss position of choice for most schoolboys, but inside-forwards, operating 'in the hole' (as they say nowadays) had a special elegance and importance all of their own.
Each generation has had its favourites, of course. One editor, hearing me proclaim to someone, 'Have you seen Keelan? He must be one of the best 'keepers Norwich City have ever had,' quietly interjected, 'Ah, but you never saw Ken Nethercott in his prime.' In much the same way the generation of soccer-watchers before me recalled with affection the artistry of Raich Carter, Billy Steel, Wilf Mannion, Ivor Allchurch and Peter Doherty. Alas, I never saw any of them in a League game, though a No. 10 I did see a great deal was that wily box of football trickery, Freddie Fox, little known nationally but the pride and joy of Holbeach United, in the Eastern Counties League in the 1950s.
I have a faint remembrance of having seen Len Shackleton play once, and Johnny Haynes once, though neither, I think, were at their best and played only peripheral roles in these particular games. With slightly more glimpses of Albert Quixall, Jackie Sewell and Ivor Broadis, there was still plenty of opportunity to thrill to the sight of a perfectly weighted defence-splitting pass.
Tommy Bryceland was perhaps the last 'proper' inside-forward at Carrow Road, retaining his place in the team and the crowd's affection until it became tactically fashionable to replace craftsmen with artisans. This happened after England won the World Cup in 1966 with Alf Ramsey's 4-3-3, when everyone jumped on to the 4-3-3 bandwaggon. In Division Two, and for several seasons afterwards, it had disastrous consequences, for many sides pressed unsuitable players into new roles or tried to convert inside-forwards into all-action utility men. It didn't work, of course. Not for a season or two, anyway, and football momentarily lost its way.
Change, of course, is inevitable. The old WM formation could not survive. And even today, the game is still evolving. For example, 1950s fans of the game will be perplexed to see today that the shoulder charge is evidently no longer deemed legitimate, whereas a player can jump with his elbows sticking out (once seen as highly dangerous) and yet evade punishment.
The last of the inside-forwards? I'm not certain, because Jonjo Shelvey sometimes looks like an inside-forward to me. But I think Trevor Brooking in his West Ham days probably ended the honourable history of this particular genre. Trevor, though a long way from being a play-anywhere workhorse, could always surprise you (and the opposition) with an angled pass no-one else would have thought of.
That's one of the things missing from some games at the moment. The unexpected. It doesn't happen that much any more.

Buckenham Tofts

During a tour of Norfolk's Stanford Battle Area some years ago, laid on by the Army to demonstrate how well they were looking after this beautiful district - and not using tanks and shells simply to chew it to pieces - the official car pulled up in front of a grassy platform of raised ground and beside a short line of dilapidated stone steps. The raised ground made a sort of elevated lawn, large enough for a tennis court or two, and the steps went to the top of the platform, and then went nowhere. We clambered out of the vehicle and strolled around.
'Buckenham Tofts Hall, or all that remains of it,' said the Army officer by way of explanation. 'The Royal family nearly bought it. Instead of Sandringham, I mean.'
Now, I have no knowledge of whether he was correct about one-time Royalist interest in the place, but the notion raised some interesting points.
Buckenham Hall, before demolition, had presented a solid and respectable face to the world, and in the mid-19th century it sat squarely in a large park surrounded by about 650 acres of land. It was also only six miles from Brandon railway station.
Around 1860, Albert, the Prince Consort, was searching for a home, and some good shooting, for his eldest son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, wanting him settled and well away from the unhealthy atmosphere of London. The Prince of Wales was nearly 20, and presumably in favour of the plan, for it is said - with what accuracy I do not know - that the Royal family looked at and considered several places in Norfolk in order to choose the most suitable.
Norfolk, of course, was stuffed with enormous sporting estates, some of them in various degrees of financial plight, which makes it at least feasible that Royal visitors, or their representatives, descended on Buckenham Tofts (also known as Buckenham Parva) as one of the places on their list.
Matters took a huge turn in 1861, however, when the Prince Consort, ill with typhoid, died in December of that year. Albert Edward's response was rapid. With his mother, Queen Victoria, in deep mourning, he rushed off to Norfolk, took a look at the available Sandringham estate, and decided to buy it. Two months' later, in February, 1862, the deal was done.
There is no need to say much about Sandringham, of course, as it is so well known. But what would have happened, or not happened, had the Prince of Wales bought Buckenham Tofts instead?
In all probability there would have been no railway line from King's Lynn to the North Norfolk coast, and possibly no New Hunstanton. There would certainly have been no Battle Area. At least, not in the vicinity of Thetford or Brandon. And possibly no Forestry Commission forests in Breckland.
Whether you feel disappointed at this I do not know, but there is some consolation for Breck Royalists in the knowledge that Buckenham Tofts Hall was, in the dim and distant past, once called Buckingham House.
So close. Oh, so close. 

The Quiet Season

My Sunday newspaper recently contained an article lamenting the fact that some football crowds, particularly in the Premiership, are becoming quieter. Quieter than a few seasons ago, presumably. One reason may be changed demographics, with the relatively well-heeled taking over the central blocks from the artisans. There are other reasons, though.
One is the cost of tickets. Up to the 1970s most Football League clubs had only two revenue streams, season ticket sales and turnstile takings, with - in Norwich, at least - the price of a standing ticket on the terrace largely staying in line with the cost of a seat at the Odeon.
Today, it boggles me how some families can afford to pay some of the fantastical seat prices, because football is not any more thrilling than it was. It always was thrilling. But I do believe that today's fans read of lorry loads of TV money being poured into Premiership coffers and then look at their tickets and see how much they are also being asked to contribute. Something, eventually, has to give, and it may be that the victim is spectator patience.
Nowadays many fans simply settle into their plastic seats and think to themselves: 'Go on then. Entertain me. I've done my bit, now you do yours.'
There are other reasons for the quietness, I am sure, and yet another is that many players are simply not playing the game. Time and again replay cameras starkly illuminate the fact that many participants are deliberately trying to influence the match officials. They feel a finger on their shoulder and crash to the turf squirming in agony. They 'roll' around the legs of a defender and stare appealingly at the ref even as they launch themselves into the air. And so, endlessly, on and on.
It used to be called cheating. So let's call it cheating again, because I am sure it has succeeded in breeding a level of cynicism among the watching fans.
Another culprit is that current tactical fad, the 'possession' game. It has its uses, but if overdone it can become a real passion killer. In a game I saw recently a forward made a run deep into his opponent's half. Near the penalty area, however, he turned, played the ball back to a midfielder who played it back to a defender who turned it back to his goalkeeper. The impetus died, and so did excitement.
No-one is thrilled by a pass back, or by the spectacle of the back four (or five) having a quiet little game among themselves. And so occasionally, just occasionally, I think Division One is beginning to emerge as the more exciting spectacle.
 

Call of the Wild

In 1973 it was not at all easy to plan a week's walking holiday on the Peddars Way. Jack and I poured over Ordnance Survey maps, read East Anglia by RR Clarke, and I asked around at the office, where I found someone who had walked it 20 years' before. But information was sketchy. We didn't even know where the path began, whether it was a continuous route, or how much of it ran over privately-owned land.
Equipment was also tricky. Neither of us had any lightweight gear - which at the time was impossibly expensive - though we could scrape together an ancient two-person tent, which was certainly not lightweight, and a couple of sleeping bags. Another problem was that neither of us had done any serious walking before, and thus had no real idea of what sort of task lay ahead.
In the end we started from Brandon, walked the Harling Drove and joined the Peddars Way north of the A11, and then spent seven days in a heatwave, tottering sweatily under impossible burdens, all the way to Holme next the Sea. That very night the heavens broke, and it was then we discovered the old blue tent was not actually waterproof. Hours later we were rescued by my wife, who bravely drove out to the coast from Norwich, and finally got back to our homes long after dark, wet, exhausted, and - after a decent spell for reflection - absolutely determined to do it again.
Nowdays, with the long distance route already in its 26th year, there are waymarks and guidebooks, duckboards and B&Bs. Forty years ago there were none of these. Not even a Coast Path. No signposts, no advice or guidance, no actual public route, no footbridges or safe means of crossing boggy areas, and no places to stay. Pubs? At least one of them did not welcome muddy-booted walkers. Rivers, such as the Little Ouse and the Thet, well, we had to take off our boots, put our rucksacks on our shoulders, and wade across. Camping? Where-ever you could find somewhere off the track and largely out of sight.
There were other problems, too. In 1973 the Army was still making use of Battle Area land on both sides of the path, and the route was closed for a short distance (there was a barrier, and a sentry box) at Stowbedon Plantation, south of Thompson Water, while military exercises spilled back and forth across the track near Sparrow Hill. There were other detours which had to be walked, too, such as the boundary of the Merton estate, and a section near Anmer which was blocked by brambles and vegetation.
As for water, I recall that aside from the occasional pub where we tried to persuade the landlord to refill our plastic canister, we came across one desperately needed supply thanks to a cattle trough (which had clean water inlet) near Harpley Dams, and a solitary public tap, at Holme.
But there were compensations. The freedom to wander, to invent a route, to carry all your possessions of your back. They were all high on the list. Fresh air, the sky, the sun, and the landscape, they contributed greatly, too. And sitting around a small fire in the evening, sipping scotch and listening to the owls, was memorable.
So despite the exhaustion and the blisters, we did walk it again. And again, and again.    

The Bartram Effect

As 12-year-olds, we played football on the edge of a field - later, the site of a garage - which most years grew broad beans. The farmer always left an uncultivated strip conveniently close to the road, where his tractors and lorries could manoeuvre, so at non-school times and at weekends we played on a rough 'pitch' with goals marked by piles of jackets.
The trend then - and may be now, though I suspect not nearly so many lads play football in fields today - was to 'adopt' the name of a famous player. Thus one of my mates was always Jackie Stamps; another Tom Finney or Stan Matthews; a third Tommy Lawton or Billy Steel, and so on. For me it was more difficult, for being always short of breath and largely unable to play outfield, I specialised in keeping goal, which restricted the choice somewhat. In the end, and with Frank Swift rejected, it boiled down to Ted Ditchburn of Spurs or Sam Bartram of Charlton, a club which had just won the FA Cup. So it was no contest, really. I 'became' Sam Bartram, and my mother even knitted a polo-necked jersey, as seen in the News Chronicle photographs.
The time came, of course, when I actually wanted to see Sam play. In the flesh. Dad did take me (by rail) to Filbert Street to see Leicester City play Fulham; but a trip to the Valley had to wait another two years until I was 14. Eventually, I saved enough pocket-money and got a nervous parental OK, and so very early one Saturday morning three or four of us went by rail from Long Sutton (Lincs) to Spalding, and then Peterborough to King's Cross, had a crash course in using the London Tube to get to Charing Cross, and then caught the surburban train to Charlton.
I remember the stations even now: London Bridge, Deptford, Greenwich, Maze Hill, Westcombe Park, then Charlton. Follow the mass of red and white scarves along the platform and up the steps, turn right over the bridge then left into Floyd Road by Sam Bartram's shop, and thence to the Valley, that monumental concrete bowl that held 50,000 fans with no trouble at all.
The trick was to be there before noon, to get a place in the queue, and the ambition was always to make use of the 'facilities,' the largest and longest open air gents' urinal I had ever seen. But it was a journey two or three of us managed four or five times. I still have the match programmes. And we saw Sam in action. He became my hero and I became hooked on football in a way that has never entirely left me. Despite Norwich City, and after 60-plus years, the Charlton result is still the first one I look for.
A decade or so after these outings I actually met the man himself. I was in the old wooden Press box at Carrow Road, and saw this giant of a man clumping slowly up the steps. He came in, said scarcely a word, sat down and watched the game. No-one else in the Press box, or in the surrounding seats, seemed to know who he was, and I thought: 'Isn't fame fickle! Here is a man who has played in two Cup Finals and over 620 games for his club, who was never dropped by his manager and was one of the greatest football showmen, and whose appearance could put hundreds on the gate. Then a decade later no-one knows who he is.'
It is possible Sam felt that, too. In the Press room under the iron beams of the old grandstand I got him a cup of tea and we exchanged pleasantries and a few words about the match. He was modest and even shy, and somehow it didn't seem right to tell him he was my boyhood hero. Anyway, Sam - who was representing a Sunday newspaper at the time - turned up for three or four more matches, and then I never saw him again.
But the magic stuck. 

Final Curtain

I went only once to the long-demolished Hippodrome theatre in Norwich, largely because in those days, in 1959, it was not the place to be seen in. Full of plaster statues and cupids and decorated boxes it may have been, it was still long past its best. The shine and showbiz glitz had gone, and it had become an empty, shabby place which was having to resort to showing films. I had gone to see Gone With the Wind, and there were only two or three other people there. A door somewhere in the bowels of the building banged regularly in the draught all the way through.
Despite its state, a residue of nostalgia for the honourable old Hippodrome hung around for a time rekindled, no doubt, by a decision by the City Fathers to bestow their blessings on the Theatre Royal (as the city's preferred theatre) rather than the Hippodrome.
When I joined the Norfolk & Norwich Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society as a back-of-the-chorus baritone of exceeding modest talent, and completely unable to read music, the debate was still quite heated. The older generation in the society loved the Hippo, and could not understand why it had to be consigned to history's dustbin. They had staged Gilbert & Sullivan there for years, for goodness sake. A wonderful place.
Others shook their heads and muttered darkly. There were not enough dressing rooms, which meant they had to park a line of caravans outside in the street, and there was no space to bring in scenery. They would never be able to stage opera or musicals there, and because the Hippo was built up on all sides, there was little or no chance of expansion.
So the Theatre Royal it was, a plain utilitarian building (also showing films when I first arrived in Norwich), later modernised and refurbished to give it a touch of glamour. As for the Hippo, it disappeared under the wrecker's ball many decades ago, and despite its cupids and history and gilded tiddlybits, the space it once occupied is now filled by the St Giles multi-storey car park.
Do I miss it? No really, not in a sense that it might have become the city's No.1 theatre, because it couldn't. Despite the tradition, no elbow room, you see. The Theatre Royal was always a much better long term bet, and so it has proved itself to be.
The loss of the cupids and the gilded tiddlybits is another matter, of course. Very sad, and equally as sad as the loss of even more plaster and gilded bits when the old Savoy cinema in Prince of Wales Road was refurbished.
Mind you, I once knew a man who had a selection of buxom cupids from the Savoy in his garage. But that's another story.

East of Eden

Have just finished reading East of Eden, John Steinbeck's ambitious and ultimately impressive novel of life in the Salinas Valley, first published in 1952, though I have to say the lapse in time is, for me, puzzling. Why did it take me sixty years to get around to it? One thought is that I might have been put off by the 1950s film of the book, starring James Dean and Julie Harris, though I cannot put hand on heart and say I actually watched it. At least, I can't remember it in any detail.
Steinbeck was one of the first 'grown up' novelists I turned to once I left school, and had already devoured The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row and To a God Unknown by the time I left South Lincolnshire for Norfolk, or more precisely Norwich, where, it was widely rumoured, the streets were paved with gold. So in that sense Steinbeck was representative of a particular time in my life, and when that time ended I simply left him behind.
On reflection, I may also have caused this to happen to Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) and to Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood, a tape recording of which I heard for the very first time in 1955 in the basement lounge of Urchfont Manor, in Wiltshire, during a 'Writing for the Radio' course run by a BBC producer and thankfully paid for by the RAF. Ever since then I have had a recording (LPs, tapes, and now CDs) of this classic piece, forever linked in my mind with approaching demob.
Is this what happens? Does a book, a piece of music or prose, listened to or read at a particular time, forever lock one's memory into that time? If it happened to me with Steinbeck, then it certainly also happened with Richard Addinsall's Warsaw Concerto, a piece of film music often criticised as a 'pastiche' but one which always makes me think of the last War, and in particular of those grainy black and white photographs in the News Chronicle of columns of refugees or troops struggling for survival during the long Russian winter.
What - or rather, who - happened in leisure reading terms post-Steinbeck, was HE Bates (particularly Fair Stood the Wind for France, and his titles from Burma, followed by his English rural stories), followed by Nevil Shute, whose titles I loved and many of which still sit on my shelves.
There were many others, of course, often of a similar genre, and things did not really change again to any great extent until about 1960, when I discovered Ernest Hemingway. Then, of course, everything changed. 
  

The Dressing Room

In eleven seasons of reporting on the ups and downs of Norwich City, and watching upwards of fifty football matches a season, only twice did I make it into the Canaries' inner sanctum on match day, once before a kick-off and once after a final whistle. There were a number of reasons. The most obvious reason why it was not commonplace was that dressing rooms are, or rather were, looked upon as the players' home from home, the one safe place where they could get away from incessant public scrutiny, even if it was for only 15 minutes. The placing of a TV camera there, as seen occasionally nowadays, seems to me like rigging CCTV in a public loo. We just don't need to go there.
The before-match experience was at Huddersfield. I'd travelled with the team, eaten a light lunch with them,  and seen them into the dressing room when, to my surprise, the manager suddenly launched into his briefing.
To be honest, it was fairly mundane stuff. 'Try to unsettle them early on. Go for a quick goal and make them counter-attack. Play your normal game.'
He mentioned only two opposition players. One was a striker who favoured his left foot. 'Force him away, steer him towards the touchline.' The other was the opposition goalkeeper. 'He doesn't fancy high crosses,' the boss said. 'He flaps.' Then he turned to one of City's inside-forwards (which shows just how long ago it was) and said, 'Tickle him up a bit when you get the chance. Show him you're around and let him know he's got you coming straight at him when he goes for corners.'
The other dressing room occasion was at Bolton. City had lost heavily and many of the travelling fans were disgruntled. The team was slow-handclapped off the pitch, and afterwards there was a demonstration outside the players' entrance. When I went to the dressing room, having finished reporting duties, I could hear the City fans' rhymical clapping in the background and the chants, in unison, of 'You didn't even try . . . '
Inside the visitors' dressing room a first impression was the strong smell of embrocation and surgical spirit, and the second, a view of the sallow-faced players, still in their muddy kits, sitting quietly in postures of total exhaustion. The floor was a litter of bandages and bloodstained clumps of cotton wool. In one corner a player was being intermittently sick. Another rolled down his socks and showed me his shins, which were lined with bumps and dents accumulated over many seasons. Nearly all the players had bleeding places on their feet and legs, and so many bruises I couldn't really count.
Later, we all left by the players' entrance to find the team coach in the car park, the cries of the fans still ringing in our ears. 'You didn't even try . . . '
I thought, blimey, they tried. Harder than usual, actually. But on that day, nothing worked. Most of them were carrying wounds which, for us, would have raised the possibility of a week off from work. They, however, faced a coach journey back to Norwich, a day off, then training again on Tuesday. None of the wounds and bruises I saw would have healed by then.
So I don't think many fans quite realise the damage sustained by pro players, and the effects of accumulations of injuries sustained in what is, after all, a very close physical sport.  

The Eleven-plus

The prospect of the examination known in South Lincolnshire as the Eleven-plus hung like a lead weight around my shoulders just after the end of the Second World War. I thought I was reasonably bright. I could read. I devoured books, and I could write moderately well even though the handwriting left something to be desired. And I knew certain facts about certain parts of the world. But the thought of the eleven-plus was terrifying, because it would decide which school I went to next - grammar or secondary modern, or stay put at the town's senior school. The problem was, when the time came for the exam, book reading and general knowledge just didn't come into it. Fright inevitably gained the upper hand.
I remember some of the exam papers even now. There was one on maths. I was not good at maths, and it was an awful drawn-out struggle. There were also a lot of what I would call puzzle questions. Questions such as, 'Which motif is the odd one out?' and 'What letter/number is next in sequence?' It was all as gibberish to me as 'if A and X equal 53, and Y is 3, what is B and E?'
A few weeks' later I knew I had failed. When the whistle went one playtime and we all queued at the school door, one or two of the boys bumptiously announced they would soon be going to the grammar school. 'You've failed,' one of them said to me. Obviously, those who had passed had been told their results in advance.
My luck changed when it was found I was top of the failures and that there was one place left at the Gleed secondary modern school at Spalding.
On my first day at the new school the new intake, 'failures' all, must have been looking glum because when the teacher faced his new class he said: 'Well, cheer up. You're the lucky ones if you think about it. If you'd gone to the grammar school you'd be learning Latin and have homework every night. We don't do that.'
He was right, and we all cheered. It was going to be OK after all.

Marcus le Touche

One of the best things about being a newspaper columnist in Norfolk was opening the morning mail. You never knew what you would get. One day I got a letter from someone who wrote, 'In Burgh-next-Aylsham there is a circus clown who lives in a tiny caravan beside the river Bure, who entertains children.' There was, too.
Marcus was sort-of retired when I first met him, sort-of because he was still honouring occasional bookings for children's parties and garden fetes; and his home made wooden caravan turned out to be about the size of a tiny trailer capable of being towed behind a car. He lived on his own on a meadow in this little caravan beside the Bure with no electricity and nothing but a little stove for warmth and a small dog for company. Yet he gave every appearance of being blissfully content, and he told a wonderful tale.
He was descended from Hugenots, he said, and spent his early youth with a circus in South America. His betrothed, a trapeze artiste, was killed at his feet in the circus ring, and so he never married. Then he went to Hollywood, appeared in some early short-reel films, played cricket for Ronald Colman's ex-pat team, went to Africa with one of the first wildlife film crews (an enterprise which became bankrupt) and ended up touring this country with various shows - now accompanied by a little dog - with an act which appealed mainly to children.
For a time, he said, he lived next door to the violinist Albert Sandler, and remembered him rehearsing in the garden. He said he also appeared in a Royal Command Performance, presumably in the 1930s-1950s (though I haven't been able to trace this), and had by this time become, officially, Clown Roma. Then his appeal dwindled. Television lured away child audiences and vandals attacked his caravan (in Nottingham, I believe). Twice his van caught fire, and by the mid-1980s his showbusiness career was over.
On one occasion Marcus allowed me a glimpse of a pile of scrapbooks crammed with photos and cuttings and old programmes, all of which, I assume, were lost in one of his fires. When I took my youngest son to meet him, Marcus and his dog immediately produced an impromptu performance of part of his act.
And once I recall inviting him to lunch at Jarrold's restaurant in Norwich, a city he visited occasionally. He turned up in a check Norfolk jacket and trousers, a deerstalker-type hat and shiny brown boots, and won over the waitresses with his old-fashioned manners and charm.
'My dear boy . . .' he would say, because Marcus was gentle and charming in what I imagine was an Edwardian sort of way, and utterly comfortable with his lot and his tiny number of possessions.
Then a few years' later he died and I do not know what happened. I lost him then in a sense that I have not been able to find any recorded trace of him. No listing of him having been the official Clown Roma, no reference to any Royal Command Performance, no glimpse of his surname among Hugenot archives or in the records of the Hollywood cricket team.
But he certainly existed. He once insisted on giving me his portable typewriter, as he did not use it any more, and I eventually handed it on to my youngest son, who still has it and who still remembers him. As for Marcus and his legacy, he seems to have packed up his tent and disappeared, just like the circus. 

A Home Fixture

The best thing about youthful football enthusiasm was that it was directed at, and enthused by, one's home team. By and large it is the same today, even though satellites and the internet have allowed the game's tentacles to spread globally; much further, anyway, than the next town or village.
There is no doubt that the foundations of the popularity of the English game were geographical. A community, be it city district, town or village, had a football team, and lads from that city, town or village wanted to play for it. Rivalries were nurtured and traditions established. Location, nickname and team colours helped to help define where you lived and where your loyalties resided.
The rebuilding of the old clapped-out Victorian framework of grounds, however welcome, has nonetheless put the ideal of localism in football under strain. My football mid-life dreams and visits were rooted in dark, shabby, thrilling places like Roker Park, the Baseball Ground, Highbury and Maine Road, Ninian Park and Filbert Street. Nowadays, watching Final Score on Saturday TV, I am often left in the dark when the linkman shouts, 'There's a goal at the Amex (or the King Power).' But that, after all, is my fault. I'm out of touch.
What I do worry about rather more is the thought that the game, for purely financial reasons, might one day decide to move away from its geographical tradition and instead embrace the monetary wiles of the franchise. This could mean someone might be able to buy the club (sorry, brand), and the players' contracts, and move it all, lock, stock and barrel, from the south of England or where-ever, to the north-east, for example.
The key question is then: if a club moves away from his traditional geographical base (because of a new stadium, say) is it still the same club? Or is it a new club? And there are related questions. For example, if a club does move away from its traditional location should it have to rename itself and start again in the bottom division?
I have to confess that the closure of Wimbledon and the birth of MK Dons did bother me in a sense that here was a club which (a) moved from its geographical base, and (b) called itself something else. So, should it have been made to start again and gain admission to the Football League, like every other new club has to do?
Now, I have nothing whatsoever against MK Dons or their modern stadium. But I do think that at some point someone is going to have to decide what constitutes a new club, or whether a fresh start in a new location automatically means beginning again. Something like a 20-mile rule ought to do the trick. Move a club more than 20 miles from its historic home and it is a new club which will have to make a fresh start.
Anything to keep a franchise-type culture at bay. 

All Fall Out

My National Service number, allocated at RAF Cardington reception unit almost exactly sixty years ago, still rolls off the tongue without the slightest effort. 2708260, sir. It was something you had to remember in order to get a pass, get paid, or go anywhere. Now it is like having a tattoo. It is always with you.
Not that I'm embarrassed at having been called up. Everyone was called up. Well, most of us were. Rumours of favouritism often hung in the barrack-room air. There was the story of a pop singer who, someone decided, would suffer traumas if forced like the rest of us to march about in the rain on a parade square, and so was excused. And another of a cricketer who was also excused on medical grounds, only to be selected for an MCC overseas' tour instead.
Whether either story was actually true, I do not know. But general resentment at call-up did run deep, and it was not helped by procedures at Cardington. One day the entire week's intake was marched into one of the vast hangars to be given a pep talk on the importance of conscription (the Korean war was just over, but there were bushfire wars all over the place, and the Cold War) and the importance of following orders.
Then they said: 'Hands up anyone who attends or has attended public school.'
Out of the several hundred raw recruits about twenty did so. They were promptly spirited away and not seen again for a week when they emerged bursting with pride with white bands around their brand new caps. POMs, we called them. Potential Officer Material. No one else, it was assumed, could possibly be suitable.
The second command was: 'Hands up if you have played professional sport.'
Again, four or five did, including a couple of amateur boxers and a fast bowler attached to a county second eleven. They were given special postings, too, with an eye to joining RAF sports teams.
The whole effect, of course, was demoralising, and left the rest of us with the sole objective of trying to avoid being posted to Compton Bassett which, rumour had it, was the most severe of the training camps.
I did avoid Compton Bassett, doing my training at Hednesford instead; and I did, in the main, actually enjoy my two-year stint as a telephone operator in the signals section at RAF Worksop. But I cannot use any of that to suggest support for a crackpot private members' bill (proposed by Philip Hollobone, Con, Kettering) to bring a sort of national service, or community service, back on to the political agenda. At the very least, any such scheme would almost certainly be selective (public school pupils excused?), and there is no evidence that boys (and girls?) between the ages of 18 and 26 would (a) actually do it, and (b) return to civvy street refreshed and reinvigorated.
In 2005 I went back to RAF Worksop and met two former service colleagues I had not seen for fifty years. We were there, but RAF Worksop was not. It had closed as an operational base shortly before the Hungarian revolution, and was returned to farming shortly after that. So the three of us stood in the middle of harvest fields listening to skylarks and trying to remember the layout. We walked on a remaining bit of the runway, found where our billet hut used to be, and where the signals section was. And I thought: 'There used to be 3000 men here, Meteor jets, hangars and workshops, mess halls and medical centres, billet sites and sports fields. And now, nothing but skylarks and sky, rabbits and harvest fields.'
National Service belongs to the early Cold War period. It is history, thank goodness.
   

The Ghost Runner

A recent glimpse of some 1960s nostalgia, which included some of the leading British sporting champions of their day, brought home how modest and ill-at-ease they all seemed in front of cameras and in the public eye. Not at all like today's preening 'personalities.'
The stars of the 60s came from a very different background, of course. Most things were different then. Sport certainly was. There were no sponsorships, no TV money, no hype. Cricket was still hampered by self-imposed pro-amateur divisions such scoreboards with initials for some and plain surnames for others (ABJ Fennistone-Haugh c Bloggs b BKN Trumpington-Browne, etc), and by Gentlemen versus Players fixtures. Football also promoted a clear distinction between the amateur and the professional. Even so, 100,000 people would still turn up to watch the FA Amateur Cup Final at Wembley.
As for the Olympic Games, they were solidly (or as solidly as they could make them) for the unpaid (and therefore privately funded) competitor only.
To be fair, these rules merely carried on the policies of the pre-War years. But in the 1950s and 1960s the Games 'amateur only' rule was beginning to be queried. Working class competitors, whatever their sport, could not afford time off work to train, and there was little opportunity for them to gain top level or overseas experience. If they competed in local sports - and many towns held annual sports days then - the award of a Woolworth's glass ashtray or a half-crown postal order for winning the sack race would have labelled them as 'professional' and thus ineligible for the Games.
Some sports, I am sure, devised ways to get around this. And certain Eastern Bloc countries enrolled their best sports men and women into the armed services, which got around the training problem. But it would be another decade before sponsorships (horse racing, followed by golf) came in, soccer dropped its am/pro distinction, and Gentlemen and Players cricket fixtures retreated into history. Yet for a short period between these milestones, problems proliferated.
One man who clashed with the authorities was John Tarrant, born in London in 1932. As a youth in the Peak District he took up boxing, and at 18 won £17. Then he switched to running. But when he tried to join Salford Harriers his application was turned down, and at the age of 20 he was banned from official competitions by the Amateur Athletics Association solely because of the money he had won in the ring.
Tarrant, it should be remembered, was a very good runner with a distinguished record. Some would say a top runner, and he had the 1960 Rome Olympics in his sights. Yet he was banned, and he decided to try to do something about it.
In 1956 an important race was held at Liverpool, drawing big crowds. The race began, and suddenly a figure in full racing strip emerged from the crowd, joined the runners, and raced with them almost to the final line when it veered away and duly disappeared. It made headlines, and for the next few years John Tarrant - or The Ghost Runner - 'gatecrashed' dozens of events throughout the land.
One of the towns which held an annual sports weekend in the 1950s was Holbeach, not far from where I was born. It was also hugely popular, drawing crowds and top competitors, including grass track cyclists. And I am fairly certain - though I cannot find a record of it - that The Ghost Runner appeared here, fleetingly, joining in part of a race and then disappearing.
John Tarrant, who died in 1975, never got to complete in the Olympic Games. But he had made his point, and at least he lived long enough to see the Games begin to open up to everyone.   

The Lost World

Most of the known world evidently forgot to mark a major research centenary earlier this year, for it was in February, 1913, that Clement Reid (and Cambridge University Press) published his book, Submerged Forests. For the first time, anecdotal and research information was brought together to make a strong case for there having been, in ancient times, a swathe of land, now submerged, which once joined the British Isles to mainland Europe. It was groundbreaking stuff, and only now, a hundred years later, and thanks largely to oil and gas research, is much more information coming to light.
The lost world of Doggerland was a land bridge to the mainland stocked with trees and streams, grasslands, marshes and rivers. Particularly rivers, some of which may even have framed the land corridors wherein prey and hunters concentrated their movements. Thus some of our present river systems (the Ouse, Thames) can be seen as surviving remnants of earlier systems and tributaries now under the North Sea.
By about 10,000BC Doggerland was already reduced in size, but it was still attractive to wandering Mesolithic groups as it stretched from north of the modern Wash to the Thames estuary, and joined the mainland - via the Dogger Hills - between the Elbe and Rhine rivers. It was also an important larder, for in addition to fish and fowl there were mammoth, red deer, auroch and wild horses among the willow, hazel, and later, pine, oak, elder and elm.
One ancient river flowed north across Norfolk in the Runton and Cromer area, and this was the origin of the Cromer Forest Bed (700,000 to 600,000 years ago) which formed during one of the warmer periods. The residue can still be seen as a black layer at the foot of the cliffs about 200 metres east of West Runton's slipway. The Runton elephant - actually an early mammoth - was one of its denizens. An even larger body of water, the Bytham River, flowed from close to Stratford Upon Avon, north-east towards Leicester, and then east to skirt Stamford and Peterborough. Then it flowed south of King's Lynn and on to Shouldham Thorpe; south-east towards Bury St Edmunds; and north-east again to exit Norfolk north of Lowestoft.
Where did these rivers go? On Doggerland, the old Thames ran into the Channel river and what is now the Rhine; the Ouse was connected to systems which reached as far as the Norwegian Trench; as did the Cromer Forest Bed river, which flowed by Dogger Hills on the way.
Oddly, there is an echo of all this in the occasional debate on the advisability of siting nuclear power stations near sea shores, one pro-voice stating, well, at least we don't get tsunamis here. Actually, we do. Or rather, we have. In about 6,000BC retreating ice sheets and subsequent readjustments of land surfaces caused a mass of undersea material to shift, provoking a huge tsunami. The landslip occurred off the south-west coast of Norway, at Storegga, near the Norwegian Trench.
The Storegga slides were monumental, and the tsunami seems to have hit east and north Scotland and parts of Northern England. In some places the waves reached several kilometres inland, and layers of sand have been identified at 23 locations. It is likely that the lives of hunter-gatherer groups were disrupted, and the tsunami may even have enlarged the Channel which was beginning to open up in Doggerland and which would eventually grow to isolate Britain from the mainland. 

A Reminder

Strollers on Sheringham's west end clifftop footpath, which leads up to the Coastguard Hut, may have pondered the origins of a moving little cluster of crosses of remembrance placed just behind the fence - on the seaward side - above, yet close to, the Lifeboat Shed. To the best of my knowledge this is an individual family's private tribute to a lost, loved member. It is an area of the cliffs which, during the last War, was honeycombed with tunnels and heavily defended. What younger visitors or post-War residents may not know, is that the moving little assemblage also overlooks the place where three airmen - enemy airmen, as it happens - did lose their lives.
This War-time drama occurred during the early hours of December 6, 1939, during a night of hail and rain and brisk winds. Residents close to the seafront were awakened by the sound of an aircraft, very low and with engines spluttering, which went on to crash in the sea on the east side of the Lifeboat Shed. Despite an initial fear that 'Jerries might be running around in the dark,' which caused some alarm and excitment, people poured out of their houses in the pitch dark, the lifeboat crew was 'knocked up,' and the lifeboat launched into heavy swell to search for survivors.
Ashore, flickering lights and torches picked out the sight of a parachute draped over the prom near the Whelk Coppers, and an equally ominous glimpse of a swastika-adorned plane rolling in the sea about 50 yards from high-water mark. Despite the wind and the stink of aviation fuel some of the male bystanders waded into the sea with ropes and managed to secure the wreckage to the breakwater, to prevent it drifting away.
Daylight added detail, even as the area was flooded with military guards, officials and aviation experts. The aircraft was a twin-engined Heinkel HE 115 float plane which may have been laying magnetic mines. The story was put around that it had been 'downed' by a 'secret weapon' at Beckham, though subsequent consideration suggested the plane was much more likely to have clipped one of the Chain Home radar towers at West Beckham. The Heinkel also boasted self-sealing fuel tanks, a system which greatly interested British boffins who were working on their own version. Eventually, of course, the wreckage was cleared away, though one of the engines is said to be still there, off the beach, lying in about 20 feet of water.
But what of the German crew of three? The body of one was discovered immediately and subsequently buried, with military honours, at Bircham. The other two bodies were washed ashore several days later. They too were given military funerals, this time at Sheringham's Weybourne Road cemetery. After the War, I believe, they were exhumed and re-buried in the German cemetery at Cannock Chase, Staffs.
It is an odd fact that if the Heinkel had come down at low water, it might well have been recorded as the first German plane of the War to crash on British soil.  

Words of Wisdom

As a 16-year-old school-leaver taken on as a junior district reporter by a weekly newspaper in Spalding, my first editor quickly handed over the job of writing up the week's wedding and obituary reports. It was an office tradition, apparently, that the most recent arrival (there were only five of us) found the 'deads and weds' dumped on his or her desk on day one.
The system then, in 1951, was that you sifted through the wedding and obituary forms, typed up each one on your rattling office-issue Remington, and placed the finished article on the editor's desk. Later, pencil in hand and in your trembling presence, he would go through it line by line making copious alterations and usually suggesting you 'have another go at making it more newsy.'
It was hardly Fleet Street, but if you showed the slightest hint of frustration or boredom he would warn: 'Remember, once you get printing ink on your fingers you'll never get it off.' And he was right. I stayed in the industry for 40 years. Though not on the same newspaper.
One of his favourite grumbling asides while editing my attempts to write a wedding report was, 'All brides are beautiful. You don't have to say so.' In other words, stick to the taffeta and organza.
And his patience often snapped thus while reading a draft obituary: 'You don't pass on, pass out, or pass over. You bloody well die.'
He was right, of course.

Half-time Blues

The last time I went to Old Trafford, Norwich City won the match, Manchester United (with Nobby Stiles and all) played their thundering roles, a courteous Matt Busby wandered the corridors with a tear in his eye, and cars belonging to several Sunday tabloids chased the City team bus all the way to Derby, where they were booked into a restaurant. Someone paid for lots of champagne, and for once the Canaries - who as a group seemed as astonished at their achievement as the rest of the country - were the hot story of the day.
It was so exciting and memorable, and so unlike my second visit to this fabled ground, where the sides played out a passionless cup-tie, fielded clutches of reserves, only grudgingly gave out the team news, and Norwich City took to the pitch in black and white as the away fans sang, 'Come on you yellows.' (Explain that to me, someone, please).
It was nearly as dispiriting as a visit earlier in the day to the National Football Museum in Manchester, where context is confused and chronological order a game of chance. You can go from the 1930s to the 1970s and back to the 1880s within a very short distance. In another room, archive films are obligingly projected on to a wall and seats provided nearby. Unfortunately, a line of display stands are also placed in front of the projection wall, so that if anyone looks at the displays the seated audience cannot see. And all this accompanied by a strident cacophony of background sound.  
Alas, we left at half-time.
We did stay at Old Trafford even until the very end of the eleven minutes of added time, and there was much to enjoy - the crowds, the lights, the vast stadium, the occasion.
But has football lost something?

The Walker's Dilemma

Ask any walker the greatest bugbear of his or her life, and the reply, almost certainly, will be - blisters. Mind you, things have improved. Several decades ago there was little footwear to choose from other than the sort of boots which invariably reminded me of National Service and basic training; and there was little you could do to combat the blister menace other than to treat the wound after the damage had already been done.
Essentially, and even after boots and socks and every other piece of walking equipment gradually improved over the years, the argument - and goodness, there were arguments - boiled down to this. You've got blisters, so, do you cushion them with plasters and let them develop at will, or do you burst the bubbles and cover them? For years the debate raged beside numerous campfires on different trails, and two schools of thought formed. You were either a burster or you were not.
In the end my strategy (which was not always successful) was to try to prevent blisters in the first place. I recall prior to one week's walking holiday continually bathing my feet in surgical spirit in the hope that it would harden the skin. It didn't, and the smell was not something that could easily be dismissed. Then I tried to soften my boots in the critical heel area, and rejected any woolly walking socks which had holes or darns. This, at long last, seemed to be progress, and it gradually formed the basis of the strategy employed henceforth in the days Peripheral Claudication became a constant companion.
The pre-walk routine went like this. Check boots and socks for chafe points and, if found, smooth them out. Grease the feet, particularly the heels, with a non-smelling ointment (Atrixo or Vaseline are good) before putting on socks and boots.
During the walk, stop immediately if you feel any discomfort or chafing, and adjust boots and socks. At the midday stop, remove boots to ventilate them, re-grease the feet and swap the socks over. Sore places? Cushion with a touch of Germoline and a plaster. If there is a blister, burst it, and cover with a plaster and a touch of Germoline as antiseptic. At night, take the plasters off to assist the healing, and replace in the morning.
It's not foolproof, but it helped.
Postscript. And while on the subject of walking (in Norfolk, anyway), I note that Tim Lidstone-Scott, who has overseen the Peddars Way and the Norfolk Coast Path for 29 years, is retiring from Norfolk County Council. Tim has been a great supporter of Norfolk's long distance route, and an enormous help to anyone involved in compiling guidebooks. Thanks, Tim, and have a happy retirement.   

Lure of the Big Top

During the austerity years immediately after the Second World War, recreational outlets for youngsters were strictly limited. There was football, of course, cycling, and the cinema. There was also 'exploring,' which in our case meant scrambling for miles around nearby fields using the dry ditches as trails. But as far as I was concerned there was another big lure - namely, the travelling fairs and circuses which regularly came to town.
Of the two, it was circus for me. We would get to know when they were coming and cycle to the recreational ground to watch them hauling up the tent and to get a sniff of the animals. Exciting stuff for a youngster largely brought up on nothing more colourful than black and white Abbot and Costello films, and Johnny Mac Brown, and black and white photographs of footballers in the News Chronicle.
These were the smaller travelling shows, of course. The large ones, the cream - Chipperfield, Billy Smart, Bertram Mills - circled our town but kept their distance. You had to save up your pocket-money and travel in order to see them. But we did. And the kings of them all, of course, were Bertram Mills.
I still have tucked away four or five Mills' programmes from the 1940s/50s, which prod me into recollections of a hair-raising high trapeze, a lion walking a tightrope, a bossy ringmaster, of lights and music, and of the Cumberlands, a highly drilled team of bareback horseriders.
Where did this fascination for the circus come from? Well, we Robinsons have an old family story that my paternal grandfather, who lived in the Cotswolds, actually ran away with a circus when he was a young lad. This would have been before the First World War, of course. And I have always believed this was Baker Brothers' circus, and that they put up with him for a week or so before they sent him home.
The Baker family of bareback riders and performers had a travelling show for many years. Edward Seago, the painter, lived and travelled with them for a time. Then in the 1930s some of the family members finally joined Bertram Mills to form a new bareback act - called the Cumberlands.
It sort of closes a circle as far as I am concerned.
By the way, three of the Baker boys appeared at the Hippodrome, Great Yarmouth, in 1961.  

Your Move

I love books, and over the decades must have acquired (and sometimes disposed of) hundreds of them. Some even worked their way into my affection. But for the life of me I cannot remember what siren call persuaded me to purchase The Golden Treasury of Chess, by the Editors of Chess Review, published by Arco in 1958.
Now, I am no chess player. I know the basic rules and I even have a chess computer, though I have never, not once, managed to beat it even at simpleton level. So I think my passing interest at the time may have been the thought that it was actually possible to write down the moves of some ancient game and replay them again, centuries later. Thus the book offered a brush with antiquity.
The earliest game recorded therein dates from the late 15th century, probably 1485, when a certain Francisco de Castellvi (white) beat Narcisco Vinoles (black) in 21 moves. It also contains the notation for a Ruy Lopez game in Rome in 1559. And so on and so forth, selected notated games right through until the late 1950s. Amazing!
One or two of the games particularly intrigued me, though. One was a match of 1873 played at Thorp (note the missing final e), near Norwich, between CH Capon and IOH Taylor. This was notable because after white's 16th move every one of black's pieces were liable to capture, though to take one would be to incur instant defeat. Another recorded game was played in Norwich in 1871 between an unnamed amateur (white) and JH Blackburne (black) who won on his 21st move.
But the really curious one was a correspondence match which ended in June, 1842. This was between Norfolk (Col Green and W Newton) and New York (Col Mead and J Thompson), New York winning after 29 moves.
How did they communicate? Letter? Telegraph? And how long did the match last? Alas, the book doesn't say.

Tesi Balogun

Long before droves of foreign footballers began to strut their stuff on the Premiership stage visitors from overseas had already reached these shores, but in nowhere near the sort of numbers today's fans see as normal. I can remember Long Sutton having a Dutch goalkeeper in the late 1940s. But the moment I recall in greater detail was the day in July, 1957, when Holbeach United player-manager Len Richley telephoned and told me he had signed Nigerian international and former QPR centre-forward Tesi Balogun.
Locally, this was big news. Balogun was foreign and he was coloured, and the chattering classes went wild. The aspect of colour didn't matter. It was simply interesting and unusual. In any event, other things were more pressing. 'Will he play with bare feet?' 'Can foreign players actually shoot?' - for there was a perception at the time that all they did in the goalmouth was pass the ball sideways. I found out that Tesi's nickname was 'Thunder,' so that seemed promising. As for the bare feet, I didn't know.
In those pre-Google days information was more difficult to find than it is now. Two months before he signed for Holbeach, Tesi had written an article for Charles Buchan's popular Football Monthly ('I came 4000 miles . . . '). Aside from that, I was able to ascertain that Tesi was 6ft2in and that he had played for several clubs, including QPR, for whom he had made 16 League appearances and scored seven goals. It was enough, and it added several hundred people to the Tiger's average Eastern Counties League gate at Carter's Park.
Tesi did not play in bare feet, and alas, he did not stay long, for despite his undoubted ball skills he did not overly impress the fans. His downfall, so to speak, could be traced to the heavy and sometimes waterlogged pitches prevalent at the time. I think he rattled around several more non-League clubs, including Skegness and Peterborough, and then, one day, I heard he was playing at Boston.
I travelled from Spalding to Boston by train and went to the game, and afterwards, returning to the railway station, found myself sharing an otherwise empty compartment with the man himself. At this distance I cannot recall what we talked about on the journey back to Spalding. Football, presumably. But I can place on record that Tesi 'Thunder' Balogun, so tall and smiley, was also friendly, approachable, completely at ease, and thoroughly enjoying the interest he was creating wherever he went.
Memories of Tesi Balogun faded over the years, and it was only recently I caught up with more details about him. He was born in Nigeria in 1927, so he was 30 when Len Richley signed him. He had played for his country, he was the first Nigerian to play in the English Leagues, and he was a Law student at Cambridge, eventually qualifying as a lawyer. He also became a politician. In 1968 he was coach for the Nigerian team at the Mexico Olympic Games, and in fact, I think he was the first African to qualify as a professional soccer coach.
Teslim Balogun died in 1972 at the age of 45, and 35 years' later they named a stadium after him, the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, next door to the national stadium. There is even a statue of him on the approach road.
Lovely man, and a brave pioneer.  

Lost in the Wilderness

A few years ago fortune smiled and I had an opportunity to fly to America and travel around a portion of the East Coast. It was wonderful for a number of reasons, one being that I had never been to the States before, and another, that it allowed sight of several locations I wanted to include in a novel I was trying to write. One location was the 1777 American War of Independence battlefield at Saratoga, where a surprised ranger in the ticket office said, 'Hey, we don't get many Brits here.' We lost the battle, you see. Surrendered, in fact. It was the beginning of the end, and in the end we lost America.
One component of Lt-General John Burgoyne's Army which confronted Horatio Gates' troops near the Hudson river at Saratoga, was Norfolk's 9th Regiment of Foot, forerunners of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, and raised in the east of the county around Great Yarmouth.
To say the situation was confusing is an understatement. Gates was English, not American, and many of his troops had earlier emigrated from Britain and settled in the States. On the other hand, some elements of the British Army were German, and their English comrades must have looked at their former fellow-countrymen - now called Patriots by the Americans - and wondered why they were fighting each other, because other than family most had nothing to return to in England. Yet in America they must have seen at least the possibility of land, and perhaps even a farm. And no pesky squire to deal with. So who should rule America, the King or the Americans? It must have provided much food for thought.
We went to Freeman's Farm, one of the sites in this elevated and beautiful landscape, where some of Norfolk's 9th were caught in a desperate fight, and heard how the battle flag of the 9th was smuggled off the battlefield and brought back to Norwich, where it is now part of the Regimental Museum's collection. We also heard how, after the surrender, some of the survivors deserted, hoping no doubt to start a new life in a new country. And we were also able to locate some of the surviving stretches of 'the old road to Albany,' along which Burgoyne's bedraggled soldiery limped towards a prison camp, and where some of the desertions occurred.
The officers evidently logged each successful deserter in the official records as 'lost in the wilderness.' Which may or may not have been the case. But how many Norfolkmen did actually flee? No-one knows, apparently, because the regimental records of the 9th were lost when the ship Ariadne sank in 1805.
Another source told me that after the return from America, and after several peaceful years in Ireland, the remainder of the 9th finally embarked on three transports at Cork for the voyage back to England, but the little convoy encountered very heavy weather in the English Channel. Two of the transports struggled to the English coast, and safety, while the Ariadne was driven on to the French coast and wrecked.
Aboard was the commanding officer, the headquarters staff, and 262 men. All of them were taken prisoner by the French. However, the Regiment's baggage and its records and plate were lost.
So we may never know how many Norfolkmen were 'lost in the wilderness.' But if you are ever in the Saratoga area, or the Finger Lakes, Albany, or even Boston or New York, and you hear a local speaking with a slight Norfolk accent, then you are at least at liberty to believe that some of them did actually make it.
PS. One of the officers of the 9th at Saratoga, so I believe, was Major John Money - estate owner, mercenary, pioneer balloonist, and a controversial figure in Norwich society at the time.

The Flag Unfurled

Did you know East Anglia has - or had - a flag? Not that it is seen much nowadays, or that it would be widely recognised even if it were flown; but it has been around for over a hundred years, and discussion about it does pop up every now and again.
One of the earliest references, dated to 1900, was printed in the Eastern Counties Magazine. The flag had evidently just been adopted by the East Anglian Society, whose committee - which included Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, of Elveden - had approved a design by George Langham. What made the moment particularly apt was that the upcoming Coronation of King Edward had been chosen for its unveiling, allegedly because of Norfolk's Royal Sandringham connection.
Actually, the design of the flag united the shield of St Edmund and its three golden crowns with the cross of St George; the three crowns, in turn, apparently echoing or suggesting connections with the Royal house of Sweden.
But interest in the design, and in particular interest in the three crowns, got a little over-excited at this point, with other theories surfacing that the crown trinity could actually be traced to an ancient Icelandic document. Meanwhile, the design could also be found in a pre-Christian tower at York Cathedral, while yet another Swedish interpretation attributed the three crowns to the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, once subjected to one king.
It was at this point that the then curator of Norwich Castle Museum stepped into the ring. No, no, she said, the crowns have nothing to do with Scandinavia. They are actually the crest-coronets of the under-kings of the South Folk, the North Folk, and the Cambridge Folk, all of whom were subservient to the Lord of Wessex.
And there, by the large, the matter has rested, save for the fact that subsequent research has demonstrated widespread symbolic use of three crowns, although AJ Forrest - the East Anglia based writer who in 1951 (Festival of Britain year) undertook a 3,000-mile writing tour of the region - was largely content with the St Edmund connection. With a tenuous connection to Sweden, too.
I cannot ever remember seeing this East Anglia flag actually flying. But you never know, it might make a come-back if East Anglia ever votes to cede from the Union.

Replay Delay

Once upon a time, many football seasons ago, Norwich City's Carrow Road ground had a wooden main grandstand, and at the top of a mountain range of wooden steps, an enclosed wooden Press box. It resembled a garden shed with large windows. Inside, there were benches, and shelves, on which we media folk rested our notebooks. The only available technology was a cluster of wired-in telephones with dials protected by padlocks. Our phone, however, also had a little handle. Lift the phone and crank the handle and a bell rang in the copy typist's room at either Redwell Street or Prospect House, depending on whether it was the 1960s or the 1970s.
The view from the Press box was mixed. It was high and it was central, overlooking the centre line, but if fans on the wooden benches in front of the windows actually stood up, then there was no view at all. Thus it was occasionally difficult to work out who had scored. The anguished cry was, 'Who got that one?' Was it Allcock? Did Bolland get a touch? Was Bryceland's shot deflected? On those occasions we took a vote. Democracy prevailed.
Which brings me to filmed replays, on TVs, on screens at the ground, and in Press boxes.
Replays are loved by various categories of people. TV producers relish them because they drive controversy and give sofa pundits something to argue about. Managers like them because they offer an opportunity to slag off referees and officials if and when. And the written and spoken media love them for similar reasons. A 'was he or wasn't he off-side' row can be kept bubbling for days.
However, I am constantly dismayed when I hear a commentator or pundit say, 'I've looked at that incident 17 times from 15 different angles, and I'm still not sure if the ref got it right.' Poor ref. Poor linesman (or whatever they call them now). But the matter is irrelevant, anyway. So I am always slightly heartened when Radio Norfolk commentators, for example, find the need to say, 'Oh, the replay screens have gone down!' Good, I think.
Personally, I don't think instant TV replays are good for the game and they are certainly not good for pressured match officials who, after all, still get something like 95% of their decisions right. On the other hand, replays cannot be banned completely because it is too easy to film them.
It does seem to me that football needs instant TV replays like it needs a close association with the betting industry (surely the next big scandal to hit the game), and like it needs a hole in the head. Might it be possible, therefore, to ban the screening of match incident replays (to crowds, management, and media) until one or preferably two hours after the game has finished? Such a move might water down controversy to a point where it would take some of the heat off the officials.
After all, when the whistle's gone, its gone.

Swacking Cuckoo

Long before accurate map-making produced a need for the standardisation of place-name spelling, people tended to write and thus spell many names phonetically, or as they heard them being spoken. It was a problem that existed until only a very few generations ago, for a facsimilie of a 19th century registration document shows that a London official, perhaps writing down a place-name he had never heard of until the person in front of him spoke it, resorted to the spelling Scheringham, for Sheringham. He was not alone. A place-name directory on my bookshelf suggests that another nameless clerk went for a very similar spelling as long ago as AD1242.
That same directory - the work of Eilert Ekwall, who interpreted the name Sheringham as meaning 'the place of Scira's people' - also lists other versions: Silingeham (in the Domesday Book), Siringeham (in 1174), and even Schyringham (1291). In fact, things do not really seem to settle down until the 18th century, when Sherringham was firmly in vogue. Indeed, Faden's map of Norfolk (1797), Bryant's map of Norfolk (1826), White's Norfolk directory (1845), and the revised one-inch Ordnance Survey map (1885), all proudly trumpet the double-R version.
But what are we to make of Swacking Cuckoo? The name, that is, not the spelling. I first came across a reference to this place-name oddity some thirty years ago in an ancient Norfolk gazeteer then gathering dust in the EDP's newsroom.
Swacking Cuckoo, it said, consisted of 'a few houses' and confidently placed the location close to the railway cutting and bridge where the Cromer-to-Norwich line crosses the Cromer-to-Holt main road. A subsequent item about it in the EDP produced a negative, or rather nil, readership reply, suggesting the name might have slipped from public conciousness at that time. Indeed, one of my large-scale maps merely marks the location, somewhat more soberly, as Cromer Plantation. The same map, incidentally, also labels a small woody area on the north side of the Cromer Curve rail line as Jacket De Hole - explain that if you will!
But public loss and forgetfulness do not seem to be in vogue today. A quick check on Google unearths the fact that several properties, mainly alongside the Holt-Cromer road, now use Swacking Cuckoo as part of their postal addresss, suggesting that at least the local postie knows where it is.
So what does Swacking Cuckoo mean? Does it mean anything?
A first thought was that it might once have been a field name. But an 1826 directory says the road from Cromer to Aylmerton - or the stretch by Cromer Hall - was then called Cuckoo Lane. However, my dictionary suggests that if you are 'swacked' then you could well be in a state of alcoholic intoxication. So was there a pub named the Cuckoo in the area? Eilert Ekwall, the great place-name expert, is silent on the matter.  

Publications list

A History of Long Sutton (South Lincolnshire). With FW Robinson. Produced privately 1965
The Peddars Way. The Weathercock Press 1978
A Skylark Descending (novel). Robert Hale 1978
History of Long Sutton & District. With FW Robinson. Long Sutton Civic Trust 1981, reprinted 1995
Norfolk Origins 1: Hunters to First Farmers. With Andrew Lawson. Acorn Editions 1981
Norfolk Origins 2: Roads & Tracks. With Edwin Rose. Poppyland Publishing 1983
The Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path. Countryside Commission 1986
Norfolk Origins 3: Celtic Fire & Roman Rule. With Tony Gregory. Poppyland Publishing 1987
Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path. Aurum Press 1992 and 1996
Norfolk Fragments. Elmstead Publications 1994
A Glimpse of Distant Hills (novel). Elmstead Publications 1995
Chasing the Shadows: Norfolk Mysteries Revisited. Elmstead Publications 1996
Passing Seasons: A Watching Brief on 50 Years of Football. Elmstead Publications 1997
The Norfolk Walkers' Book. Elmstead Publications 1998
Hudson's Drove (novel). Elmstead Publications 2000
The Nowhere Road: A Fresh Look at Norfolk's Peddars Way. Elmstead Publications 2001
Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path. Aurum Press 2002
Norfolk Origins 3: Celtic Fire & Roman Rule. With Tony Gregory, and John Davies, revised. Poppyland Publishing 2003
Walking the Norfolk Long Distance Trail: The Coast Path. With Mike Robinson. Poppyland Publishing 2006
Walking the Norfolk Long Distance Trail: The Peddars Way. With Mike Robinson. Poppyland Publishing 2006
A History of Long Sutton. With FW Robinson, revised. Long Sutton Civic Society 2008
Norfolk Origins 2: Roads & Tracks. With Edwin Rose, revised. Poppyland Publishing 2008
Boudica: Her Life, Times & Legacy. With John Davies. Poppyland Publishing 2009
Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path. With Mike Robinson, revised. Aurum Press 2010
The Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path. With Mike Robinson. Aurum Press 2012. Category winner, East Anglian Literary Awards 2012

What's it all about?

To begin at the beginning, why Notebook? Probably because I plan to use this blog to write notes. To remind myself, perhaps. Notes about what? Well, anything, but certainly including local history, books, football, Norfolk, and walking.
And why 'flongster,' a most unattractive word when standing on its own. Actually, flong harks back to the days of hot metal (as opposed to computer digital) printing. A flong was a sheet of a compressed composite material which went under a heavy mangle on top of the flat, metal page of type. The resulting flexible mould could then be fastened on to the printing press rollers. In the late 1950s, if working late in the offices of our two weekly newspapers, I was occasionally press-ganged into driving the office car - with the flongs of the next day's edition in the boot - from our office in Spalding to the printing press at Peterborough.

All about me

No, I am not the Bruce Robinson who wrote Withnail & I.
I am an older version who happens to carry the same name.
The Withnail & I author was born at Broadstairs, Kent, in 1946, but I had been grappling with war-time austerity for 11 years before he arrived on the scene. I was born at Long Sutton, South Lincolnshire, in 1935. Some of the rest of it went like like this:
1946/51  Failed the 11-plus exam, but managed to gain a place at the Gleed Secondary Modern School, Spalding; did modestly well at English; played football and cricket.
1951/53   Junior district news reporter for the Spalding Guardian; some football reporting.
1953/55   National Service, RAF signals PBX (at RAF Worksop, Notts).
1955/59   Sports Editor of two weekly papers, the Spalding Guardian and the Lincs Free Press; covered Spalding United and Holbeach United matches; did page design and page make-up.
1959/73   Sports department, Eastern Daily Press, Norwich; the EDP's Norwich City football correspondent for 11 seasons; in charge of overnight sports pages, EDP.
1973/86   Wrote and compiled the Clement Court (Window on East Anglia) column in the EDP; feature writer, assistant leader writer.       
1986/93   Subbing on Evening News and EDP; retired 1993 after illness.
1994/02   Ran own writing/publishing concern, Elmstead Publications; produced seven books in seven years.
From 1973 to present day, have written or co-written over 20 books (including three novels) mostly based on Norfolk history, walking, roads and tracks, and football.
Married with four sons. Currently living in Sheringham, which is the real gem of the North Norfolk coast.