SNOWY CIRCLE

I knew the lad only vaguely. Whereas I had been tip-toeing through my National Service in the RAF for nearly a year and a half and had a mere six months to do, he was a newcomer, a bemused replacement straight out of Hednesford training camp who didn't know the ropes as we 'veterans' did. Wet behind the ears, a sprog, with gleaming buttons and shiny shoes and a new, carefully ironed uniform. That sort of thing. He was also still living in the camp's transit hut, patiently waiting for a bed to become available in the Signals Section hut, where the other nine of us slept.
It was our job to man the three-seat PBX telephone switchboard at our Flying Training Command station, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes, if the Meteors were flying there would be three or us on duty, kept busy by calls and queries. If there was no flying, then only one operator was needed. So it was my job, on this particular evening, to show him some of the ropes, dodges and procedures.
He had to learn how to make military calls, how to cope with sudden flurries of telephone activity, what to do in an emergency (when there was a crash, for example), which officers were rude and dangerous - and how to (accidently) back-ring into their ear - and which were OK. And most important of all, which calls to listen to, to find out what leave we were going to get at the weekend. And where we hid the rolled-up mattress bed on which the night-shift operator slept (against regulations) during the quiet hours. Standard National Service stuff, really. 
On this particular weekend there was no flying. It was bitterly cold, and two days' earlier it had begun to snow, flurries at first and then some serious storms. Then it had snowed solidly and thickly for at least 24 hours so that nearby roads were clogged, paths and lawns were a flat sheet of white, and there were drifts three feet deep around the doorways.
Thus Air Traffic Control was closed, the jets were silent and still, and the camp in shut-down. Which explains how he and I were on duty this particular evening, by ourselves, sitting beside a silent switchboard. Me yawning with boredom, reading a book. He pale and quiet, looking oddly and uncomfortably out of place.
Suddenly he said, 'I got a Dear John letter today.' His girlfriend had dumped him. Now he looked grey and hunched, and when he rose to leave at the end of his shift, leaving me there for the rest of the night, he dragged on his greatcoat, turned up the collar, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled out.
For some reason I watched him out of the window. It had stopped snowing, but the night was pitch black, with the lawned square and line of three trees in front of Station HQ dimly illuminated by pale lamps. Only you could not actually see the lawns or the paths, because of the snow.
Anyway, I saw him shuffle away in search of his hut, his movements slow and tentative. Then, suddenly, he veered from the line of the path and stumbled through the snow towards the centre tree, and walked in a tight circle around it. Then he retuirned to the line of the path and very soon disappeared into the darkness. The line of footprints he left behind looked decidedly odd.
I wondered: Why did he do that? Why did he walk in a circle round the tree? I always meant to ask him about it, but never did. Somehow it didn't seem the right thing to do.

ON THE ROAD

I love roads. Not the M25 or the A47. Not that sort of road. But green lanes and pilgrim tracks, grassy footpaths through woods and across fields, and Roman highways, forest rides and bits of old turnpikes. In recent years I have also developed a partiality for farm tracks which lead from the corners of country lanes and shamble off across the landscape.
Hello, I think. This used to be a three-track junction; then the main lane was consolidated (gravelled, or whatever) and the third prong, the track, was left hanging in the air, as it were. Would love to explore.
Except that nowadays, and for a variety of reasons, most of my exploring is done not rucksack heavy and brown-booted, but by reading. Consequently, I seem to have accumulated a library of books about roads and the history and romance of roads - travellers, gypsies, inns, ancient journals recording ancient wanderings, and archaelogical reports. When I can no longer get out of my chair I shall read them all again, starting at the end of the shelves, and work my way through to the beginning.
Scott-Giles' book - unearthed several decades ago in a second hand bookshop - is one of my favourites despite the dullnes of its dedication: 'To the President and members of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers.' Because, in fact, it is an anthology, beginning with verses written by Rudyard Kipling and ending with John Milton, and between the two dozens of extracts and verses and descriptions of or about roads and road literature.
Just two examples for you. One is by Celia Fiennes, from her Diary of 1697, who describes travelling from Newmarket to Ely, when she found that 'by reason of the great raines the roads were full of water,' while Ely itself was 'the dirtiest place I ever saw,' its streets a 'perfect quagmire.'
The other is an extract from Journal of a Tour, produced in 1662 and written by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich. Young Tom and his companions reached Lynn, intending to travel to Boston, in Lincolnshire. Then they made their way to Walpole Cross Keys, in those days the jumping off place for crossing the Wash estuary. They immediately hired a guide who said there were basically two ways to cross, either over two short cuts, or the long way over the Wash. They chose the latter, one reason being the novelty of travelling 'at the bottome of the sea.'
In general, it seems they enjoyed their low-tide experience. The guide helped them to avoid 'quicksands,' and they made rapid progress. Then the guide and 'his fliing horse' saw them safely on to the Lincolnshire coast some three miles from Boston. They had successfully crossed this dangerous area, evidently covering the 14 miles in just under two hours.
This was the norm in those days if you wanted to go from Norfolk into Lincolnshire, for although it was possible to route via Wisbech this detour added many miles to the journey. It was to be another 170 years or so before the river Nene was embanked and a causeway constructed across the estuary, allowing four-wheel travel in reasonable comfort for the very first time.
(The Road Goes On, by CW Scott-Giles. The Epworth Press, 1948)

DOING IT IN STYLE

In days of fore, when journalists used telephones rather than digital platforms, any newspaper worth its salt had a style book. Indeed, some managements considered them essential, for they were seen as a means of bringing editorial uniformity and consistency to their titles. One of the problems was keeping them up to date. The first style book I was given instructed me to spell Jugoslavia with a J, an entry which was not changed - and then only grudgingly - until an international table tennis team arrived in Norwich with Yugoslavia with a Y on their tracksuits.
In the 30 years or so I was with this newspaper, staff were issued with updated style books on three occasions. I have copies of them all, dated 1959, 1976 and 1991. That is, roughly, one every decade and a half. So it was a slow business. Which brings to light another problem. Fashion and meanings, even in words, change.
The 1959 booklet is very detailed and particular and much concerned with the correctness of peoples' titles. Get those wrong, it seems to be saying, and you're in trouble. It is also much concerned with 'the pressure of imported words from across the Atlantic.'
Mainly, though, it is the nitty-gritty which is important, such as alternative spellings (aeroplane, not airplane), hyphens (to be held to a minimum), quotation marks, foreign words (the German umlaut caused problems for Linotype type setters), and place-names (Bintry, not Bintree). Forbidden words include: breathtaking, getaway, Jap, poetess, speed cop and venue.
By 1976, the style book was scarcely any more relaxed about things. 'This is for use - not for the back of office drawers,' it says, ominously; and this time it includes a greatly enlarged list of forbidden words and phrases including: amongst, at this moment in time, Chinaman, bombshell, farm labourer, lady, and whilst. It also has a section on misused words, such as: gutted, like, and unique.
The 1991 version, however, is more bulkily important and much more fidgety, running to 34 pages and being encased in a folder. And this time there are sections or comments on race and colour, tenses, introductions and split infinitives.
Cliches, it says: 'Do not use them.' And use spokesman, not spokeswoman or spokesperson; and chairman, not chairwoman or chairperson. Trade names also come into the mix for the first time, together with a demand for capital letters for Fibreglass, Jacuzzi, Plasticine, Catseye, and Biro.
However, there was still particular concern in getting Honours, Ranks and Titles right; sport ('different in that collective nouns take the pliural,' such as 'Norwich City are,' and 'England are' (not is. And more importantly, perhaps, and 30 years or more after the sin was first committed, a final correction for a Norfolk village. Henceforth, and finally, it is to be Bintree, not Bintry.
How times change. Mind you, some things can also get a little out of hand. In 2010 The Guardian newspaper published guardianstyle, in book form and on general sale. It runs to over 370 pages, and is a handy desktop work of reference.
(guardianstyle, David Marsh & Amelia Hodsdon. guardian books, 2010)

SOUND OF MUSIC

One of the facts which came to light while rummaging through family history material was the discovery that my mother had been a singer. I knew she sang, because I can recall after the Second World War going with my father to a concert version of The Messiah in which she was in the ladies' chorus. But among the papers left by my sister were two flimsy programmes which proved that, before the War, she had been more than a member of the chorus. Indeed, she had been a member of a local amateur concert party, and a soloist. The programmes even listed the songs she sang.
This was something of a revelation, and it helped to explain how I acquired my own interest in music - classical and swing - which was forged, first, by listening to bands on the wireless, then to gramophone records. It also helped to explain why, at work in Spalding and at a loose end in the evenings, I applied to join the town's operatic society.
Unable to read music scores (I learned the tunes and words by rote), this was once again a 'back row of the chorus' job, but it suited me fine, and we went into rehearsal for Sigmund Romberg's The Desert Song in which, switching rapidly from Riffs to French Legionnaires, we wore rough 'arabic' robes, dark facial make-up, dustings of Fuller's Earth, and stiff army uniforms. It was great fun, and we did a week of shows at the Corn Exchange.
Twelve months' later I changed jobs and was now in Norwich, working days and again at a loose end in the evenings. So, I somehow squeezed through auditions for the Norwich & Norfolk Operatic Society which, for a final time, had alternated its annual productions between the dilapidated old Hippodrome Theatre (where because there were not enough dressing-rooms they had to park caravans in the street) and the Theatre Royal, which also showed films.
The Norwich Society was also just beginning to emerge from a traumatic period in which it had finally turned its back on Gilbert & Sullivan - and lost some G&S enthusiasts in the process - and instead had begun to embrace the modern world. Except that it hadn't. Young members of the chorus wanted to do Oklahoma and South Pacific, but instead they got light opera, of the Romberg and Franz Kalman ilk.
More-over, they went directly into rehearsals for, you've guessed it, The Desert Song. So for me, and for a second successive year, it was rough costumes, dark face paint, and Fuller's Earth powder. This was followed, very successfully as far as I remember, by The Student Prince and then The Gypsy Princess. Then I had to drop out, having changed my work shifts. 
But I did enjoy it all, even the Fuller's Earth, because although it was tiring it was great fun in the back row of the men's chorus. And we did pick up new skills. In the desert, we learned how to do fast costume changes; in Kalman's cafe scenes we had to besport ourselves and behave badly in evening dress; while in Heidelberg it was marching up and down steps, singing, and keeping everything in time to the music and the movement of your feet. And that is difficult, if you've never tried it.
We also went to watch neighbouring societies do their stuff, and laughed at the story, probably apocryphal, of the music director who, dismayed by the on-stage grim and anxious faces of his nervous chorus, tried to lighten the atmosphere at one particular performance by rolling pickled onions across the stage.

   

ON THE LINE

It used to be a time-honoured quiz question in some areas, and one that often baffled quizzers. What links Ghana, Algeria, Spain and Mali? Or even Ware, East Grinstead and Lewes? The answer is the same. It is the Greenwich zero Meridian Line, of course.
I first came across the zero Meridian when I was a junior reporter on a weekly newspaper in Lincolnshire desperately searching for column inches, and actually became fascinated with the thought that this invisible and yet so important line, the basis of global navigation and a link with some very obscure places, managed to clip a corner of our circulation area. Not every newspaper can claim that, of course, so I wrote a little story about it.
In due course it was picked up by someone in Holbeach (Lincolnshire), who evidently also thought the passage of the line ought to be marked in some way. Which is how (the last time I was there, anyway) a certain spot on a certain grass verge at Wignall's Gate, Holbeach, beside the A151, came to have a commemorative stone. Which also puts Holbeach in a very exclusive club.
Me too, I think, because when I was in London several decades ago I stood astride the Greenwich Line with a foot in both camps, as many tourists in London have also done. But I've also stood with a foot on either side of the line in Wignall's Gate. And not many people have done that.

MORE SNOW, PLEASE

Last winter - in terms of where we live, anyway - was a wimpish thing of no snow to speak of, an occasional frost, dull skies, and bitingly cold winds. A very different story elsewhere, of course, and different again in other countries. In Canada, where heavy snow comes each winter as regular as clockwork, most things still manage to work. Drivers simply switch their summer wheels and tyres for the winter variety, and ploughs and blowers keep the main roads open.
It is much the same in Norway, where motorists have a set of winter wheels hanging in their garages, ready for use. But here? Well, if we get a powdering and a little ice, our roads come to a standstill and the gritters get the blame.
But no, it isn't the fault of the gritters. It's the fault of the motorists, hardly any of whom (myself included) have winter tyres or wheels, or snow chains. And why not? Because we don't usually get enough snow nowadays to make it economically worthwhile buying any, and perhaps because no-one has come up with any reliable sort of emergency winter wheel kit.
And there's the rub. Not enough snow, and not regularly enough. Therefore, and because of our modest half-and-half winters, the gritters will have to continue to shoulder the blame. For the foreseeable future, anyway.      

KETT'S CASTLE

I know of only two events which relate to the life of the Rev Henry R Nevill, one-time incumbent of St Mark's church, Lakenham, in the city of Norwich. The first occurred on the evening of March 17, 1857, when Henry rose to his feet at the School Room in Lakenham, in front of an audience of parishioners, to deliver a lecture titled, 'Kett's Castle.' The second, which may have happened the following day, was when members of his grateful flock pleaded with him to allow them to have printed copies of his talk made available for sale, at their expense.  
Whatever the precise detail of the affair, the fact remains that within a very short time someone took his manuscript to Thomas Priest, printer, in Rampant Horse Street in the city, and that sometime later copies of a slim 32-page booklet were duly delivered. The price was sixpence each, and profits from the sale were to be given to Lakenham's Parochial Library and Reading Room.
I know these things simply because, several decades ago, I found a surviving copy in a Norwich second-hand bookshop, and bought it because I thought the title, 'Kett's Castle,' was of interest. In effect, however, the main subject of the Rev Nevill's lecture was not the old Thorpe Hamlet ruin, but the Kett Revellion of 1549 in its robust generality.
This, quite naturally, I also found fascinating because for several years we lived not far from Wymondham, which was home territory to the Kett family and the centre of the early events in the Rebellion; and earlier still, lived in Thorpe Hamlet next door to what was then called either the Gas Board Land or Jubilee Heights - the actual place where Kett parked his artillery to bombard Bishopgate - and only a stone's throw from the ruins of 'Kett's Castle'itself, which was used as a rebel observation post.
The Rev Henry described the ruins of St Michael's Chapel, as it is properly called - and accessible in 1857, apparently, through a gap in a hedge near a windmill - with the north and west walls still standing. But by page 12 he is on to the Rebellion itself.
Henry's enthusiasm for and interest in the events of 1549 are clearly evident, but so, too, is the dilemma which faced him. Kett may have had some good social and political reasons for causing trouble, he seems to be saying, but not that sort of trouble, and not in that way.
'The end,' he says, 'does not justify the means. That a cause, however just in itself, can never prosper if it be not lawfully and quietly run . . .  a French Revolution, a Kett's Rebellion, a Chartist riot, a workmen's combination to destroy machinery, it is all the same. They may destroy, indeed, but they cannot build again.'
He believed Robert Kett had lived in a house, still standing at the time of the lecture, at Dykebeck, which is on the Hingham Road about a mile outside Wymondham; and that Dussin's Dale, the location of the decisive battle, was between Magdalen Hill and Denmark's Lane, whereas today it is thought to have been closer to Thorpe. And he also said there is supposed to be an annual service of thanksgiving for the restoration of law and order celebrated in the city each August 27. I have no knowledge of when it fizzled out.
Incidentally, one of the very early histories of the Rebellion was written by a certain Alexander Nevill. Whether he was a forebear of the Rev Henry, I do not know.
(Kett's Castle: A Lecture by the Rev Henry R Nevill. Thomas Priest, Norwich, 1857)

ANOTHER VIEW

It occurred to me only recently that we look at football matches from a very different perspective nowadays. According to my memory, and therefore from the 1940s possibly until the 1960s - when a slow change began to take hold - the Saturday afternoon match was all about anticipation and tension, spectacle and drama. Each game was a theatrical performance enjoyed (or otherwise, depending on the final result) in its own right.
Today, the fluttering police Keep Out tapes, familiar to all watchers of TV cop shows, are being put in place well before each game is over. This is a crime scene, the fans and pundits seem to be saying. It requires forensic examination. Then a nano-second (or more likely, lots of nano-seconds) of action is placed under a microscope for repeated slo-mo scrutiny while team managements and pundits (and fans, too, if they can see the repeated video replays) sit in judgement. The ref got it right. The ref got it wrong. It should never have happened. And on and on.
One or two pundits, who usually make me want to grind my teeth, invariably say something like, 'Why did Boggins switch play to the left when he should have kept it on his right?' The answer is because he wanted to switch it, I suppose. And anyway, it doesn't matter. It's done. It's over.
Or they argue the toss as to whether Jones was actually off-side. 'He didn't look it. It was very tight. Could have gone either way.' Well, the linesman (or whatever they call them now) has given his decision. The ref has given his decision. So the matter is actually done and dusted.
The problem is that this increasingly forensic-style examination of the nuts and bolts of each game is also linked to strident calls for even more video intrusion, no doubt with managers having the right to stop play and call for a screen adjudication of a disputed incident. The difficult is that this would apply to some games and not others. For example, I don't suppose the Anglian Combination, or the Vanarama Conference North, or the Evo Stick Southern Premier would be able to do it; whereas soccer always used to pride itself that the same rules applied everywhere. Again, do fans really want such interruptions, some of them tactical, to the flow of the game?
There is another solution, of course, because the 'crime scene' approach, which is not duplicated in boxing or hockey, or even the theatre, but is to a degree in rugby, cricket and tennis, would be to stop the endless slo-mo replays. During the match, anyway. That at least would choke off much of the argy-bargy and waffle.
Ten differently angled views of the same 'controversial' incident serve only to stoke the fires of argument. Without immediately accessible screen replays all the 'controversy' nonsense would be over in seconds.
Some of the answers, therefore, appear simple. For example, ban all screen replays until at least an hour after each match has finished. Switch off the pundits, or at least turn down the sound. And stop the endless criticism of match officials. After all, they have a much better 'win' average (well over 90 per cent of their decisions are correct, so I believe) than the pundits, players and managers.
Then all you have to do is relax and enjoy the match.

REGRESSION

Many moons ago, when I was a newspaper columnist and much enjoying the experience, I spotted a small ad in one of our local titles from someone offering his services as a hypnotist and, as part of that service, offering to help smokers give up their tobacco. Intriguingly, the ad also said he could hypnotically regress folk in order to unearth their former lives. Uncertain about any of my former lives, I thought the stop-smoking element was nevertheless interesting, and went to see him.
I have to say at this point that my editor, when I discussed the matter with him, was less than enthusiastic. He was not into 'hocus-pocus,' he said, and he did not think our papers should be, either. Still, he did also admit it sounded interesting - providing I kept a sensible lid on it. 
The chap concerned - an ordinary chap, as far as I could tell, and not at all an eccentric - lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of the city, and he described his work to me. Yes, he had helped people to give up smoking, but his main interest was regression. He would hypnotise someone and then draw from them, and in their own words, descriptions of their former lives. Indeed, he had tape recordings, many of them, and he played some of them to me.
Here were the voices of Roman soldiers stationed on Hadrian's Wall, Egyptian labourers toiling to build the pyramids, kitchen maids in 18th century stately homes. And so on. It was all terribly interesting and impressive. All you had to do was believe it.
I have to say that in some of my daftest moments I have envisaged the creation of a library to hold copies of all unwritten books, and the digging of a reservoir - something like Rutland Water, I thought - to contain and preserve everyone's memories. Now, it seemed to me, there was a need for a warehouse to care for and preserve all our former lives.
Back in the bright light of day, I have to say that things did not go too well. First, I went back to the bungalow to see if he would regress me. Yes, he would try. But his attempts to 'get me under' hypnosis failed, and it was entirely my fault. I think I got a fit of the giggles. So I never did discover what any of my former lives had been, or where and when I had lived them. And then, having written a couple of pieces about the whole affair, the editor finally said, 'That's enough,' and it all fizzled out. 
Oddly, this idea of regression did stick around for a time, and I did begin to draft a novel about it, but never completed the task.
Perhaps one day I shall unearth the incomplete manuscript once again in my library of unwritten books. Or more likely, perhaps another attempt at hypnotic regression will simply uncover the fact that, in at least one former life, I was a simple fellow who often started things and never finished them.

BLACKBURN'S ISLE

David Blackburn is a name not nearly as well-known as Vancouver or Cook, but he was an explorer in his own right in a sense that he travelled far, noted what he saw, and wrote letters home describing it all. More to the point, he had Norfolk connections, particularly through his mother, Elizabeth, a member of the influencial Martineau family, and a Norwich woman.
In fact, Blackburn was born in 1753 in Newbury, Berkshire, the eldest son of the Rev John Blackburn. Before little David was ten years' old, however, his father died, and his widowed mother moved the family back to Norwich, where she still had connections. Thus he grew up in the city, but by 1787 he had joined the Navy and was waiting for a ship, short of money and in need of a commission.
Then in April of that year he was summoned by the Navy Office and given a warrant appointing him Master of HM Armed Tender Supply - bound, with the First Fleet, for Botany Bay.
And there the story might have been buried and forgotten were it not for the good fortune that David wrote letters home, someone carefully kept them, and decades later, that a local writer heard about them and recognised their importance and their interest.
He was Derek Neville, wanderer, writer, poet and restaurateur, then of Itteringham, Norfolk, who heard about the pile of letters during a casual conversation with friends, duly borrowed them, did some research, and finally wrote a book on the subject. That, at least, helped prevent David Blackburn from being totally forgotten.
Blackburn's letters described the voyage and the scenes at the convict settlement at Botany Bay. Later, the Fleet sailed again to explore and survey the Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands, and it was here, in this remote locality, that a tiny island was named after him: Blackburn Island.
That was in 1788, but nearly 200 years' later - as Derek Neville discovered - modern maps had forgotten the association, naming the isle instead Rabbit Island. Neville sought to rectify the issue, and thanks to his campaigning over 2000 Norfolk people also subscribed to the cost of a new English oak seat which was duly shipped to Australia and installed on Lord Howe Island, overlooking Rabbit Island. He also campaigned in Australia, successfully as it turned out, and the name was changed once again to Blackburn Island.
The seat carried the following inscription: 'This seat was given by the people of England in memory of David Blackburn, Master of the HM Armed Tender Supply, who sailed with the First Fleet at New South Wales in 1787 and after whom Blackburn Island was named on the 12th of March, 1788.'
It is a fitting memorial, because Blackburn's letters are full of fascinating detail and worthy of their small place in history.
(Blackburn's Isle, by Derek Neville. Terence Dalton, 1975)  

GOOD GROUNDING

There has been much publicity recently surrounding the fact that Norfolk is now Top Place in archaeological ratings, simply because of the vast amount of stuff being discovered here. Quality stuff, too, of a sort which makes headlines and forces changes in the way we talk and write about the county's history.
To state things baldly, in 2014/15 Norfolk had the highest number of recorded archaeological finds and treasure trove cases in the entire country. In more detail, there were over 15,000 recorded finds and 119 treasure trove cases, many of them deemed to be of regional, national or even international significance. All in one single twelve month period, too.
Why is this? Lots of reasons, no doubt, but Norfolk's geographical position to begin with. Whereas today it is Metro-trendy to dismiss the place as being way off the beaten track, findings suggest it was once right on track, the place to be, a key territory right at the heart of all the trans-Doggerland too-ing and fro-ing. And it is still largely rural, or agricultural, and has thus missed much of the deep development blight some other counties have suffered. 
I am sure there are many other reasons, too, but that will do for starters. And I confess the news set me thinking about north-west Norfolk, and the north and east Norfolk coastal areas, places where archaeology lives cheek by jowl with second homes and tripper-filled car parks. Made me realise, too, how blessed we are at having so much history at our disposal, as it were. And we're not talking stately homes, either.
For example, there have been the two Seahenge circles at Holme, the timbers from the second circle having been felled in 2049BC, exactly the same time as those felled to construct the first circle. Then there is the chalk reef off Sheringham and Cromer, recently protected by legislation but known about for at least 40 years; and tree pieces from swamped prehistoric Doggerland forests scattered on the beach at Brancaster.
At West Runton, the fossilised part-skeletons of an elephant and a rhino have been dug out of the darkly significant Cromer Forest Bed, at the foot of the cliffs; and of course, there is the Holt-Cromer Ridge itself. Then there are the two Roman roads which reach today's coastline at Holme and at Holkham; and a wonderfully preserved Iron Age encampment at Warham. And the golden torcs found at Ken Hill in the Heacham/Ringstead area; and the long-term archaeological study programme at Sedgeford.
To cap it all, of course, the Happisburgh hand axe and other worked flints, dated to about 900,000 years ago, which are of European significance; and the fleeting appearance of footprints on the beach, also at Happisburgh, made by a tiny group of Doggerland hunter-gatherers and now of international significance.
And more besides, I have no doubt. It all makes it such an interesting place to live.

THREE AT THE BACK

Even though most football managers say it is the team and the players - and not the tactics - which dictate levels of success, most fans have long been fascinated or even obsessed by formations. My early football-watching 'skills.' such as they are, were honed on old-fashioned WM structures, essentially 3-2-2-3 which, by the early 1960s (and after the Hungary debacle, of course) had gradually morphed into 4-2-4, or 4-4-2, and then 4-3-3.
Mind you, no-one cared much about formations in those days, anyway, for it was not until the invention of TV pundits that the public at large began to take much notice of this aspect of the game.
Inevitably, this latter (4-3-3) formation echoed England's success in the World Cup in 1966, but as many clubs at the time still had players immersed in the old ways (ie, wingers and inside-forwards with an in-bred reluctance to track back or even labour for a full 90 minutes) it did not work for all. Thus Mr Ramsey's 4-3-3 was not actually a glimpse of the Promised Land, but yet another transitional stage.
Nevertheless, it has been interesting of late to see several Premiership sides, which last season included Liverpool, Hull and even Manchester United, flirting with three at the back - with varying degrees of success.
It was not a new manoeuvre, for I can recall a European Cup Final back in the 1960s in which one of the sides (Italian, I think) played 3-3-4. It caused a lot of sniggering in the admittedly insular Pressbox at the old Wembley, while the match itself was largely written off as a pedestrian spectacle,
as one of those Continental 'chess' contests, all passing and little passion. I dare say it was our mistake.
One of the problems of three at the back is making it work. British players are not used to it, or brought up with it, and what the devil do you do about the full-backs? Or wing-backs, as they are called. Previous forays with three at the back often failed because the opposition twigged early on that if they pushed up on the wing-backs, forcing them into a defensive frame of mind, they were also denying the opposing side width. So the idea, occasionally tried and tested, was mostly found wanting.
It is a different matter altogether, however, if you can make it work. And in this context I have to say that Liverpool looked very comfortable with it the last time I saw them on TV experimenting with the system, having (a) found themselves some players who could actually deal with the defensive situation, and (b) using attackers in the wing-back positions.
It has been a long journey to get there, however, but it does, if successful, allow sides to make use of the extra man further upfield. So we may soon be seeing more formations like 3-4-3 or 3-5-2, depending on the blend and the whim of the manager.
On the other hand, and as many managers point out, it's not the formation, it's the players that matter most. Still, I have to say that experiments with three at the back do also follow the modern trend of adding more and more players to mid-field. Perhaps formation buffs will find that 2-6-2 or even 2-7-1 are not so very far away, after all.

WIDE HORIZONS

The Second World War managed to inspire some very popular books and films, many of them, because of the situation at the time, fairly obvious propaganda platforms carrying fairly obvious messages. I'm thinking particularly of works like Target for Tonight, Mrs Mineva and Went The Day Well?  
A decade or so later the mood had changed somewhat, or levels of tension had lessened. Anyway, a certain layer of fiction and even sentimentality applied to the conflict was now seen to be perfectly acceptable, leading to Love Is A Many Splendour'd Thing, for example. The two book titles listed below, little known and probably largely forgotten today, belong to this later, softer genre, but they still managed to make a big impression on me when, as a relatively young and certainly impressionable chap, I read them for the very first time.
The story of the first one goes something like this. On March 7, 1951, The Daily Telegraph cried an announcement in its Personal Column which read: 'SEA-WYF. Am certain you are alive. Please get in touch. BISCUIT.'
Simple enough, you may say, but over the next few weeks there followed a steady stream of simularly intriguing notices - by which time the author JM Scott had become interested - including one, on April 11, which said: 'Publisher required for war story of three men of authority and one woman adrift fourteen weeks on float in Indian Ocean. Survivors parted with nicknames only and compact to forget.'
Well, Mr Scott did eventually get to write the story, and a cracking yarn it is, too. 'Violent and strange,' said one reviewer, 'this is  a most entertaining book, and the final explanation is too good to give away.' Quite right, and I won't. But I will add that 20th Century Fox later made a film of it. Titled Sea Wife, it starred Richard Burton, Basil Sydney, Cy Grant, and a youthful Joan Collins.
High Barbaree is a beast of a slightly different ilk, being even more wistful, for it pours on sentimentality with a very large spoon. Nevertheless, I liked it when I first read it, finding it puzzling and dreamy; and while I have no knowledge of a film ever being made of it, it still remains a fascinating yarn.
It goes like this. During the war in the South Pacific a Japanese submarine fires on a Catalina floatplane, and brings it down. At the same time, the plane scores a direct hit on the sub with a bomb, which duly sinks, leaving two surviving aircrew abroard the drifting seaplane. But as they drift, and as they begin to lose their grip on reality, one of the crew dreams he is being carried towards Turnbull's Island, a childhood obsession of his, and an island of mystery.
Of course, books like this are scarcely popular any more, now that grim reality tends to hog all our screens. But they are still worth a look. If you can find them.
(Sea-Wyf and Biscuit, by JM Scott. Heinemann, 1957. High Barbaree, by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall. Four Square Books, 1960)

MARCUS LA TOUCHE

Getting on for two years' ago (November, 2013, if you want to check) I wrote of Marcus La Touche, former circus Clown Roma and children's entertainer, who a couple of decades before had rested his tiny homemade caravan on a riverside meadow in Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk and, with his dog Viscount, declared himself retired from show business.
Marcus, who died several years' ago, was a gentle, approachable man who deliberately and contentedly lived a life of great simplicity, but who had nevertheless lived an actual life which had been far from simple - circus in South America, filming wild animals in Africa, Hollywood, children's entertainer back in Blighty, and so on.
At the time I also lamented the fact that I'd found little additional information about him. I believe many of his scrapbooks and souvenirs were destroyed in a caravan fire, too. Well, thanks to the internet, now I do know a little more.
His real name was Arthur Edward La Touche Aston - a surname, hitherto unknown to me, and a fact which had thrown me right off the scent - and he was born on November 12, 1909, to Helen Edith Johns (nee Buck), an actress, of 27, Mount Pleasant Lane, London, who in 1908 had married John Edward La Touche Aston. In 1911 the family of three moved to 50, St Leonard's Road, Mortlake. They also had links with Greenhead Farm, near Cheadle, and Mill Street, Macclesfield. 
First piece of this fresh info is a very short British Pathe Studios film showing Marcus, in smart blazer and flannels, with his dog Viscount. Marcus asks Viscount simple mathematical questions, and Viscount barks the answers. The film is dated 1939.
Second is another short Pathe film from 1940, titled Good Dog, showing Viscount - very much with the War in mind - collecting 'important' messages and racing across fields and roads to deliver them to a police post.
Then in 1943 another Pathe short, filmed at Greenhead Farm, Kingsley, near Cheadle, Stoke-on-Trent, showing Marcus and Viscount - he had a succession of dogs which took the same name - performing their outdoor act in front of a female audience. This was evidently filmed at harvest-time, so the audience may have been Land Army girls working on the farm.
Yet another item of interest is a poster from the V&A collection, dated 1970, advertising 'Clown Roma's Fun Time,' autographed by Marcus (Clown Roma) at the time. Scenes in the show evidently included Crazy Camping, The Birthday Party, the TV Studio, and Road Safety.
Also, I have a faint recollection of Marcus telling me that he intended to donate his clown's costume to the Strangers' Hall Museum, in Norwich. But I have no knowledge of what happened to it.
A final echo of Clown Roma's life and times comes with the realisation that he had, for over 20 years, been caught up in 'hostilities' surrounding the performing animals controversy. In December, 1942, Marcus appeared on BBC radio in a debate about 'performing animal cruelty,' arguing among other things that cruelty in training was not necessary.
Then on January 7, 1960, a 'cruelty' campaigner demanded of the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire that he charge Marcus - whose dog had died in another caravan fire - for having an out-of-date dog registration form. I have no idea of the outcome, but clearly hostilies had not subsided. 

SHANTY TIME

During the eight years or so that we have lived beside the sea and most usually, but not always, when the weather is good, we have developed a habit of driving to the seafront in the early evening to enjoy the air, the view, and in certain conditions, the sunset, which can be wonderful. This is often a much better prospect than going to the prom during the day, because in the evening there are likely to be places to park while most of the trippers have gone home, or at least back to their cars or the railway station.
Sometimes we even have the promenade largely to ourselves. Most often, there are just a few people about, strollers, like us, enjoying the atmosphere.
Of course, eight years is not a long time, and we would still be classified as newcomers by some long-term residents. It is a side issue, I know, but we realised only quite recently that some folk, who may have lived here for many decades, hardly ever go to the seafront, anyway. When we say we've been to look at the sea, they look at us with a decidedly odd expression. Is it something to do with familiarity breeding indiference? I don't know.
Anyway, one evening a short time ago the weather was fine, and so we parked the car near the West End of the prom, took a short stroll, and then found ourselves seats overlooking the incoming tide and affording distant views of the cluster of wind turbines several miles offshore. There were also a couple of ships at anchor.
And it was then we caught the sound of singing, wafting in the breeze. A short stroll towards the sound confirmed that it was the Shantymen, twenty or so of them, performing songs in the open air at the fishermen's slipway, surrounded by dozens of supporters and spectators.
They were marking not only the recent refurbishment of the slipway but also the choir's 25th anniversary. The Shantymen first got together in 1990 for a couple of one-off concerts, and they have not stopped since. Some of them are former fishermen or lifeboatmen, plus a mix of engineers, social worker, electricians, surveyors, ex-policemen, and the like, all brought together by a love of the sea, and sea songs.
Now they are known throughout the country, having performed at many different locations and on television, and they have even made their own CDs. Locally, of course, they are exceedingly popular, for they make such a happy sound. So we stayed, transfixed, and listened to them.
There were songs of ships and sailing, of faraway places and voyages to South Australia and Botany Bay, and of family and girls left behind. And it was magical. For here was the open air, fishing boats on the slipway, the shrieking nd swooping of gulls, and the hiss and churn of the incoming tide. And voices in the wind, making themselves heard.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when I was a boy on a bike with a desire to explore hitherto unknown territories, I used to collect the names of public houses. I have no real idea why, yet I would carefully write down any name or sign I saw, and hadn't already noted, and then inscribe it into an alphabetical ledger which my father had obtained from somewhere or other and given to me. After a time, of course, the numbers of names ran into hundreds, which was impressive but quite, quite useless for research or reference purposes.
I certainly liked the idea of collecting pub names - even though I had never been inside one - and enjoyed recording them, I suppose because it was something to do in the long, dark, TV-free evenings. But I didn't do it properly. I didn't write, next to each name, the address or location. Just the name. Years later, of course, it dawned on me that all I had got was a list. Nothing more. And a fairly boring list, to boot.
The odd thing is I still tend to glance at pub names, hoping to spot something unusual, and I have even been inside a few. But one that I have glanced at more than most is the Sir Garnet, a picturesque pub which famously overlooks Norwich open-air market. Glanced at it, not because it is so obviously unusual, but because I didn't know much about the chap it commemorates, and guessed that not many Norwich people did, either.
Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913) was a heavily decorated Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army. Educated in Dublin, he worked for a time in a surveyors' office and then obtained a commission, in 1852. A year later he was wounded in the Anglo-Burmese war, but the following year (1854) he still managed to accompany the 84th Regiment of Foot to Balaklava, and was present at the Siege of Sevastopal, where he was wounded yet again and this time lost an eye.
Undaunted, and already decorated, he then distinguished himself at the Relief of Lucknow, and in 1860 accompanied British troops to China. In 1862 he took leave to investigate the American Civil War, meeting both Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, after which he busied himself in Canada, wrote a handbook for the troops, and in 1870 commanded the Red River Expedition, leading his men through hundreds of miles of wilderness.
He was appointed Adjutant-General to the Forces in 1882 and later raised to the peerage as Baron Wolseley. He became Field-Marshal in 1894, died on the French Riviera in 1913, and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. I believe there is an equestrian statue of him in Horse Guards Parade. Phew! And I haven't even mentioned his input into the Ashanti Campaign in the 1870s, the Nile Expedition in the 1880s, or his becoming Commander of Forces in the 1890s. Another time, perhaps.
Si Garnet Wolseley was an unstoppable force, a real Victorian and Boys' Own hero, and indeed, there was once a saying that, 'Everything's Sir Garnet,' meaning that everything was in order.  He was even caricatured by WS Gilbert in The Pirates of Penzance as, 'The very model of a modern major-general.'
Norwich's pub opened in 1861 and adopted his name in 1874, when he was at the absolute height of his fame.
  

BEAR FACTS

In terms of overall or even specialist knowledge, it is hardly at an Einsteinian level. I acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that it is not the sort of general information most people might want to garner, anyway. But I do believe I know - roughly speaking - the Norfolk locations of two graves in which are interred the remains of bears.
Now, Norfolk is not your average sort of bear country. Deer, yes, in surprising abundance. And rabbits. And in the past any number of famous escapees, including coypu and mink. But not bears, because by and large they are too big and there is nowhere for them to live. Nevertheless, bears the county has had, thanks either to private enterprise, or zoos.
The first bear grave is in the grounds of Bessingham Manor, not far from Cromer, a large and previously derelict building now in the process of being re-built and restored.
The original manor house, complete with thatched roof, was built by John Spurrell (1779-1837). On his death it came into the possession of the Lord of the Manor David Spurrell, who married in 1848 and had seven children in ten years. He built the present Bessingham Manor in 1870, and when he died in 1906 the estate was left to his youngest son, Edmund Denham Spurrell (1858-1952). And he was the bear man.
In 1906 Denham returned from India with a brown bear which was kept in a stable near to the house and brought out occasionally to entertain guests. Indeed, I have seen a photograph of a group of ladies and gentlemen relaxing beside the orangery at the back of the house with the bear, being regarded with great suspicion by a little dog, rearing on its hind legs in the background.
It was an eccentric atmosphere which was not to last, alas, for one day the bear escaped from its cage, injured a housemaid, and was shot and buried in the grounds. Denham, however, was not entirely finished with 'doing different,' as they say in Norfolk, because he learned to fly an aeroplane at the age of 91.
The second bear grave is slightly more problematical, for the tale is largely based on heresay. Anyway, several decades ago I was told that when a bear died in some zoo or other, the carcase was delivered to Norwich Castle Museum and duly and quietly buried in the Castle gardens not far from the footbridge. Apparently it was all part of some research progrgamme into the effects of prolonged burial on animal bones. At least, that is what I was told. Meanwhile, I have never heard that it has ever been dug up, so it may still be there.
Graves are not normally my thing, but I did once become interested in Pigg's Grave, near Melton Constable, wondering why (a) it was often put forward as a candidate for the highest place in Norfolk (it isn't), and (b) why on earth a pig might have been buried there in the first place. Wrong again, I think. Pigg was evidently the name of a man, and the place was once the site of a gibbet.
Best stick to bears.

UPSIDE DOWN

I love maps. One of the earliest I actually owned, acquired from goodness knows where, was a sheet of eastern England printed on stiff paper which had been coated with some sort of waterproofing agent. It showed all the main roads at the time of printing - probably the late 1930s - and had evidently been produced for the benefit of motorists. But I used it for cycling. It fitted neatly into my saddlebag, and because of its stiff resilience was ideal to use in wet or windy weather. Whereas ordinary maps in these conditions tended to degenerate into lumps of pulp, this one simply shook itself off, folded itself crisply, and shrugged off the effects of inclement weather.
For all that I am not a collector, though I do have a few map books on my shelves which relate mainly to Norfolk, rather than to Lincolnshire, including Faden and Bryant, copies of one or two early Ordnance Survey sheets, and even a copy of Ogilby's strip maps of England and Wales, dated 1675. The original, that is. Not my edition, alas.
To an extent my interest was further enhanced when I began 'serious' leisure walking which meant, in the early days, walking the Peddars Way. There was something about this Roman road which puzzled me, for although we invariably began our walks at the southern end (near the Suffolk border) and gravitated towards the sea, my instincts suggested this was the wrong way round in a sense that the Peddars felt much more like a route which drove inland rather than merely leading to the sea.
This largely flew - and still flies, for that matter - against the grain of most archaeological advice, which usually suggests it was built to enable Roman troops to gain the seashore was rapidly as possible to enable a crossing of The Wash by ferry; whereas I was beginning to see The Wash and some of its neighbouring beaches, particularly in north-west Norfolk, as anchorages and landing areas, with people and supplies being offloaded and moved inland, possibly along the Peddars Way and, for that matter, along the Holkham road, too.
My conviction was further underlined when, looking at a map of Roman roads in Norfolk some years' ago, I inadvertently turned it upside down (with north at the bottom) and glimpsed the network for the first time as a captain out at sea might have done. Several other of these Roman roads which led directly to flat beaches also suddenly looked like tempting places to bring cargoes ashore.
Something similar occurred years' later when I was looking at a map of Britain and some of the countries bordering the North Sea, contemplating the voyages of the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons, and wondering why they bothered with us in the first place. Then I turned it upside down, and suddenly the old haunt of Doggerland and the Dogger Banks looked like a sort of 'inland sea' with an outlet corridor (the English Channel) at the top and another, larger outlet at the bottom.
It also suggested an 'inland sea' surrounded by tempting shorelines which any curious sailor in, for example, Denmark or Norway, would certainly want to explore or exploit.
Almost all modern maps are orientated with north at the top, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is standard practice. So we have grown used to the format, and expect it. But there's nothing wrong with turning a sheet so that south is at the top. Sometimes, upside down can be good.

ALL AT SEA

The writer Nicholas Monsarrat, whose popularity came to the fore in the decades after the Second World War, was one of those people fortunate enough to have been born with film star good looks. Indeed, a suitably Hollywood-style photo of him, smiling, standing firm and looking directly at the camera, was duly chosen to adorn a commemorative plaque which marked his birth - in 1910 - and birthplace, in Rodney Street, Liverpool.
Monsarrat had a somewhat unusual career. Educated at Winchester, and Trinity, Cambridge, he might well have entered Law were it not for the fact that it was writing that actually attracted him like a magnet. A pacifist, he served first as a member of an ambulance brigade and then, as War loomed, joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He actually ended the War as the commander of a frigate.
Before this last commission, however, Monsarrat also served and learned his naval trade as a First Lieutenant on three different corvettes.
And there is that Rodney Street image again. This time used as a three-quarter page frontispiece in his fascinating contribution to War-time (it was first published in 1945) 'faction.' These were his notes, in effect, for the sea drama he was planning to write after the conflict was done and dusted. In his introduction, Monsarrat actually apologises for the fact that the book, Three Corvettes, 'is not a masterpiece.' Which may be true, but that does not detract from its quality.
What it is, I feel, is an honest collection of notes and jottings and reminiscences about the War at sea, written with a touch of humanity and a wry smile, a faithful record of the daily routine and trivia, nuggets of information which were to prove so important to him later on. In other words, he was seeding his writing imagination.
You will doubtless have heard of some of the books Nicholas Monsarrat produced during his post-War writing career: The Tribe That Lost Its Head, The Ship That Died of Shame, and in 1951 the novel - and subsequent film - that made him a national figure, The Cruel Sea. A year later, he published another popular novel which turned out to be somewhat controversial at the time, The Story of Esther Costello.   
I watched the film version of The Cruel Sea again recently and it was still, in its black-and-white sort of way, every bit as gritty and sea salt-laden as I remembered it. And Jack Hawkins was every bit  as good a strongman as John Wayne, in a wonderfully English sort of way.
In later life, Nicholas Monsarrat served his country again by entering the diplomatic service, this time being posted to South Africa and then Canada. Later still, he settled in the Channel Islands and, finally, Malta. He died in 1979.
Three Corvettes survives, however; and in my particular case serves as a reminder of an increasingly bygone period, an echo of another age; bought for a pound in a charity shop.
(Three Corvettes, by Nicholas Monsarrat. Cassell & Co, 1953)

FUN OF THE FAIR

My late father, discussing TV, once told me he saw his first moving image on a screen as a boy at a funfair. This would place it at around 1908/10 and put it in the same vague time slot as he saw his first aeroplane, which had landed in a field near Bloxham in Oxfordshire, and caused such a stir they closed the school and let the pupils go to see it. It must have been an exciting time for a youngster. Whatever would these flying machines and moving images lead to? Imaginations must have boggled.
Despite my promptings, however, he could not remember the name of the fair. The fairs of my youth invariably involved the names Fendick, Thurston and Gray, and they came to our town and set up on a field known as Cinder Ash, next to the football pitch. There weren't too many neighbours to complain at the noise there, for they were always a great attraction. Coloured lights were a magnet to folk emerging from the blackout years, when everything was dark and dull.
As to the moving image my father saw, had that funfair been in Norwich then it might well have been Thurston. It probably wasn't, but the Thurstons were on to the magic of the silver screen very early on. Charles Thurston opened at Norwich's Easter Fair in 1901 with an ornate facade of gilded carved-work decorating a tented auditorium, and dancing girls to entice patrons, all to witness a display of the 'cinematograph,' or 'living pictures.' It must have seemed so new and exciting, because the cinematograph had made its local fairground debut only five years' earlier, in 1896, when showman Randall Williams staged a demonstration at Lynn Mart.
Films soon began to appear on village greens and in town squares. Then music halls took them on, and the clips of film developed into filmed stories. In 1908 one of the first picture houses, known as The Gem, was opened at Great Yarmouth, and in 1912 Charles Thurston opened his own Cinema Palace in Norwich. This was followed by Wisbech estate agent Frederick H Cooper, who developed a chain of cinemas in East Anglia.
The Thurston story ran almost parallel. In 1868, and tiring of his work in a Cambridge brickyard, Henry Thurston obtained a hand-operated children's roundabout and launched himself on a new career. Ten years' later he had not only adapted the roundabout to pony power but had also purchased a set of 'four abreast galloping horses and ostriches' built by Tidman of Norwich and powered by a Hornsby traction engine.
By 1906 Henry had also acquired a Savage spinning top gondola and switchback, and a Gavioli organ. But it was his son, Charles, born 1870, who saw the potential of vaudeville and the bioscope and anticipated the arrival of the static cinema. 
I can recall in the 1950s a funfair gamely trying to help a football team, which wanted to rig up some lights to enable training on dark evenings. In teeming rain, a group of volunteers struggled to erect posts and cables around one end of the playing pitch, but the system produced only the merest glimmer of light. Then the funfair on nearby Cinder Ash came to their rescue. Their chaps relaid the cables, hooked them up to a trailer generator, and thrummed new life into the lamps. Better, but still not bright enough, alas.
In early 1974 I met Charles' son, Charles junior, who told me about the family background and talked about their preparations for Lynn Mart, traditionally the showman's seasonal opener. Not exactly life on the open road, but mobile enough.

DWILE FLONKING

How odd is odd? Or more accurately, perhaps, how old is old? In the past I have seen written claims that dwile flonking is a quaint and very ancient Norfolk pastime, most obviously and publicly dragged out of the undergrowth for performances at village festivals. Which, if true, would place the ritual in the same sort of odd-ball category as ley lines and flying saucers.
But of course, it is not ancient at all. In fact, dwile flonking is demonstrably modern, having been 'invented' by some thirsty enthusiasts in Beccles in the mid-1960s. Nevertheless, it has helped keep several pubs and breweries in business ever since.
So, rather than place it alongside ley lines, perhaps it should be seen in the same, or similar, category as snail racing and ferret-legging, other honourable pastimes which have entranced Norfolk participants and spectators in the past.
Dwile flonking actually evolved as a charitable stunt and as a means, or excuse, to drink large quantities of beer, something which once caused a worried North Norfolk District Council to at least consider banning it on the grounds that it did indeed encourage excessive drinking. Not a good example to the young, then.
Some say it originated in a Michael Bentine TV programme broadcast in the early 1960s. Which may or may not be true. But in essence, two teams (usually but not necessarily made up of lads) take it in turns to dance around each other while trying to avoid being hit by a beer-soaked dishcloth being twirled around, and finally flung, by another chap in the middle. There is a scoring system, and there is no limit to the amount of alcohol which can be consumed.
More prosiacally dwile flonking, which occasionally pops up on village social calendars - and which once popped up at a public demonstration in New Zealand! - and often pulls in more spectators than it probably deserves, did also introduce a dialect vocabulary, or list of words, into the local dialect: girter, flonker, driveller, swadger, wanton, jobanow and snurd, some of which do actually have a pedigree.
A dwile is Norfolk/Suffolk dialect for a dishcloth. As for flonk, well, a flong is a mould in the printing profession. But these things are ephemeral, and all things pass.
Meanwhile, I see that the Dog Inn at Ludham seems to have taken over the mantle as HQ of the flonkers, and indeed, the Annual Dwile Flonking World Championships are evidently to be held there this coming August. They are still looking for sponsors.
But if you don't believe me, then do ask your favourite search engine for particulars about dwile flonking. Or look it up on http://www.thenorfolkbroads.org/Dwile%20Flonking.html It is all there, including the so-called rules.

TIME OUT

Political watchers of even tender years will doubtless remember when 'choice' was the top Wetsminster mantra. 'Choice' - in the NHS, for example - was what everyone evidently wanted, a choice of hospital, consultant, or GP. Then it became apparent that most people did not actually want choice. What they wanted more than anything were top-class facilities close to home. So instead of 'choice,' the mantra was changed to 'privatisation.'
Now in my book, and again relating to the NHS, 'privatisation' is as dodgy a label as 'choice' or 'PFI.' None have been howling successes, and indeed, it is not too difficult to make out a case that they have been disasters. Most privatised services, from nursing homes to medical and social services, seem to run with minimum numbers of staff earning minimal wages, with the profits going to the shareholders.
So it was no surprise to hear during the last General Election that the top mantra had changed once more, this time to 'hard-working families.' Something designed, no doubt, to take the microscope of bad publicity away from choice and PFI and privatisation.
Meanwhile, the poor old NHS stumbles on, doing its best despite the interference of politicians, coping with increasing demands for its services, and monetary limitations and squeezes. Mind you, various solutions have been promised, including injections of extra cash and other knee-jerk suggestions. But none of this, it seems to me, actually fits the bill.
It has been general knowledge for several decades that the average ages of the population at large were increasing and that there would be a tidal wave of elderly people seeking care and treatments at some point in the future. Say, around 2015? And yet when Norwich's new University hospital was in the planning stage the original idea was still to close two old hospitals and build a new one containing even fewer beds than the previous pair put together.
So what was actually put in motion, decades ago, to plan for this deluge? Not a lot as far as I can see. And yet this is what the NHS needs most of all : not knee-jerk responses, but long-term planning. And this is also where the difficulties really start.
A new Government is elected for a five-year spell. It will often spend the first few months sorting itself out, and the final 12 months preparing for the next election, leaving a space of about three years in the middle in which to fomulate plans and put them into operation. And if the Opposition, with an entirely different approach, actually win the next Election, then all those three-year plans will have been wasted, anyway.
Surely something as large and complicated and vital as the NHS needs at least a 15-year plan, subject to checks and balances as time passes and in light of new discoveries and techniques. You could only do this, however, by taking the NHS out of the political arena and working with some sort of political consensus.
So lets have consensus on the NHS. Take it out of the bear-pit of Westminster politics and put it into the hands of people given a mandate to formulate and initiate long-term strategies. And if the system worked, how about taking education out of the political arena, too?
Come to think of it, if further powers are to be devolved to major cities, and if the NHS and education were being run from elsewhere sensibly and successfully, would there actually be anything for Westminster to do?

ALL THAT JAZZ

For a brief moment in the early 1960s traditional jazz enjoyed a boom, and one of the places that experienced the excitement was Norwich's Studio Four, a converted terraced building at the rear of the Anglia TV headquarters. Fans would flock in, grab a drink, and force their way up a crowded staircase to one of the equally crowded upstairs rooms. It didn't really matter on which floor that night's band had set up their kit, because you could hear them all over the building. Thus a seat on a between-floors step was an adequate reward.
And what bands. I seem to remember The Riversiders, Alex Welsh, Ronnie Scott, The Collegians and the Mustard City Stompers. It was loud and it was exciting, and somehow it expressed the mood of the time, because the city was also in transition, throwing off some of its War-time dreariness and doffing its cap towards a new era.
Most of the bombsites had been repaired and re-utilised, the old cattle market (under the gaze of the castle) was being shifted to the city fringe, London Street was to be 'out of bounds' to traffic and re-invented as a foot street, and the city's first Chinese restaurant arrived to challenge the established eating orthodoxy, which by and large meant the Royal Hotel, the Lamb, the Castle Hotel and the Maid's Head.
Nevertheless, anyone passing by the former Studio Four building today would have very little idea that such ground-breaking things once happened inside. There is no commemorative plaque or brass plate. On the other hand, plaques are missing from a number of other sites, too.
It galls me that whereas the Sex Pistols are glorified at the West Runton Pavilion, it is hard to ascertain that musicians such as Humphrey Lyttelton, Jack Parnell, and the great Count Basie band all graced the old Samson & Hercules ballroom in Tombland. It is even claimed by some that Glenn Miller played there, too. 
Again, the Ray Ellington Quartet and Ivy Benson and her band played the former Norwood Rooms, in Aylsham Road, the same place and on the same rostrum that saw Hollywood great James Stewart - on this occasion a member of a party of 8th Air Force veterans - take to the stage and chat to the audience and then conduct a band through Moonlight Serenade, signature tune of the man he played in one of his best known films. Glenn Miller again.
As for the Orford Cellar, which in the early 1960s featured mainstream and modern jazz, it has so slipped from my conciousness - and nearly everyone else's, too, I wouldn't wonder - that I can't even recall where it was.
Why is this? Perhaps it is because more recent generations have such very short memories, or short information spans. Modern polls of 'favourite' or 'best ever' footballers or musicians or film stars are invariably top heavy with people from the last 30 years. Anything else is, more often than not, 'before my time.' Well, I switched off from pop music the first time I heard Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock. Ghastly, I thought. Awful. Not for me. So, having been brought up on swing bands and trad jazz, I turned instead to classical music. Therefore, and particularly at quiz nights, I tend to deem every question about pop music 'after my time.' It's a tit-for-tat thing, I suppose.
But you can't always win. I remember once talking to my editor and extolling the virtues of Norwich City's goalkeeper of the moment, Kevin Keelan. 'He must be the best Norwich have ever had,' I said. He looked at me kindly, and said, 'Ah, but you never saw Ken Nethercott at his peak, did you.'

ON BEING 80

The first thing to be said about being 80, disappointing though the revelation might be, is that for the time being at least 80 seems a lot like being 79. The rhythms and rituals of each day are still seriously familiar.
I continue to take my daily tranche of pills and potions; Felix the cat still waits until I have sat down with the newspaper before he begins to demand food or attention; and quiz show questions about pop music and celebrities, post-Cab Calloway and Donald Peers, still give me the same sinking feeling. And although I haven't tested it yet, I dare say I shall still walk about 75 yards in town before stopping to admire the goods in a shop window, look at the view, or pause to speak to someone; pretexts, all of them, to enable my legs to stop aching and my breathing to return to normal.
Routine service maintained? Well, not quite, because memory can play tricks, and because some people delight in regarding me with new found amusement. Got your walking-stick, have you? Dentures OK, or are your seaside rock-eating days over at last? Joined the geriatric brigade?
In fact, and although I don't talk about it much, the acquisition of an electric buggy is only just on the other side of the horizon.
Mind you, there are also defensive devices I can use in return. For example, I have been working hard at trying to maintain a form of indifference, a regal, cathedral-like calm in the face of any sort of hurly-burly. There's a panic on? Hadn't noticed. Got to hurry, have we? Sorry, I don't do hurry. I do stoicism instead.
A newish level of grumpiness is allowable, too. With more to look back on than look forward to, it is fashionable and comforting, to a degree, to be able to adopt irritation and a certain misery-guts form of outlook. One is always in good company with this. And there is also the air of superiority one can cultivate over, for example, politics or general knowledge. Or even football. You know something is wrong, or that it won't work, because you have seen and heard it all before, and it was wrong and didn't work then.
I can also work a little harder at recognising irony, because now there is a better chance my utterings on the subject will be interpreted as the mere meanderings of a geriatric. Such as, our erstwhile Prime Minister at the Magna Carta anniversary ceremony, singing the praises of Human Rights even while planning to eradicate some of them. Was I the only one to spot that?
Mind you, I dare say that in the weeks to come I will discover something specific to being 80, even though it might be difficult. I've already got my free TV licence, my free prescriptions, my designated doctor and my winter fuel allowance, and I could have a bus pass, because they all appear in the late 70s.
In the meantime, I have decided to carry on as before, doing the same things, wearing the same clothes, disliking the same foods and music. For as most coffee mugs seem to scream nowadays, the important thing is to keep calm and carry on. 
Now where have I heard that before? Eh . . .

PHRASE & FABLE

Every library should have one. Every reference section, that is. A copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, sitting alongside a dictionary, encyclopedia, and a good edition of international biographies. For the simple reason that should you ever need to know the meaning or derivation of, for example, 'bell, book and candle,' or 'drink like a fish,' then this volume is the best place to go. By far the best place to go.
Of course, the aforementioned dictionary is one thing. But who was Brewer?
His full name was Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, latterly known as Doctor Brewer, who was born in 1810, the son of a Norwich schoolmaster. Brewer senior was also associated with the Baptists of St Mary's chapel in Norwich, and for a time Ebenezer helped his father at the school. Then, in 1832, he took himself off to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read for a degree in Law.
It was during this period that the young man displayed admirable self-reliance and determination (he financed himself through Cambridge), plus a magpie-like ability to seek out and record facts and details. If he read a book then he made notes of interesting details. And he soon demonstrated an astonishing grasp of the Classics, literature, the Bible, ancient authors and eminent Victorians. Eventually, he put it to very good use.
In about 1840 he wrote A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, which was published by Jarrold, the Norwich printers. Ten years' later he was working in Paris, possibly as a journalist, and in the 1860s became associated with Cassell, the publisher, and may even have been on their staff. In any event, his Popular Educator, launched as a penny-a-week part-issue, quickly became a major factor in the field of adult education.
And this was a key to Brewer's thinking. He wanted to advance the education of the poor and help them, at as low a cost as possible, to reach university standard.
Between the 1840s and 1895 Brewer wrote and compiled about 45 educational titles, many of them published by Jarrold, covering a huge span of knowledge: science, poetry, arithmatic, book-keeping, history, composition, literature, the scriptures, politics, and so on. And he produced a dozen titles in his My First Book of . . . series, which included spelling, geography and astronomy, along with histories of Germany, the Romans, Greece and France.
Even so, his Dictionary of Phrase & Fable reigned supreme -and still does - and by 1886 it had been reprinted 18 times. By 1894/5 the publishers could claim sales of over 100,000 copies.
I love it because it is such a good 'dipping' book, one you can dip into and out of during otherwise idle moments. And it is stuffed with interesting facts.
Dr Ebenezer Brewer of Norwich made a major contribution to the education particularly of the poor, and there is a final glimpse of him, aged about 80, in his bed sitting-room in Nottinghamshire, working far into the night, collecting facts and jotting them down - often on the wallpaper, for he deliberately had the walls of his room papered plain white - and hoarding them. He died in 1897.
(Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Guild Publishing, 1985)

GETTING ACROSS

In the midst of a seasonal sort-out the other day I came across some notes which suggested I had once attempted to count how many present-day places in the Eastern Daily Press circulation area had the word 'ford' embedded somewhere in their name, and had got to 17 before I stopped. The idea behind it was the vague notion that perhaps our catchment area had more 'ford' names than other counties. But I confess, I never resolved the matter.
Once upon a time fords mattered hugely, not only because they provided crossing points but also because they became gathering places and focal points. Some settlements actually grew up around them. Other fords were strategically (economically, socially, or militarily) important. So the best place to cross water became a most useful piece of knowledge.
They were also something of a financial necessity because they were cheaper to construct, if construction was required, than building bridges; and anyway, there was little or no suitable stone available. Not in Norfolk, anyway.
How many of these ancient fords - including those which appeared during the Roman period - were actually paved is unknown, for although logic suggests some of them might have been hardened in some way, actual evidence is also in short supply. Again, a lack of suitable stone, and the cost, may have been among the reasons. Where fords were not hardened, then some of them may have been 'staggered,' in the fashion of a Z, simply to widen the disturbed crossing area and thus lessen the impact. But that is also conjecture.
Why were fords so numerous in the Norfolk landscape? Well, in the Bronze and Iron Ages rivers were wider and larger than they are today and, of course, unbanked. Flood plains were common and progress was difficult, particularly when travelling in a north-south direction. This was because so many of our watercourses and rivers flow in a rough east-west direction. Hence, for example, Pickenham Wade, on the old pilgrim route from London to Walsingham. The name Lenwade also suggests many travellers got their feet wet. One thinks it may have been easier by sea.
In the 1970s, when a group of us first began to investigate a walking route along the Peddars Way, the two rivers at Knettishall, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, and at Thorpe Farm - the Thet and the Little Ouse - presented barriers which took time to overcome. These were the sites of the old Blackwater and Droveway fords, both on the line of the Roman road, and without handy bridges to expedite our progress we had to resort to wading across.
In both cases the water came up to our thighs, but the beds were surprisingly soft and muddy and holding. However, any movement at all sent clouds of disturbed, muddy water slithering downstream to the extent that it made me wonder if the name Blackwater - a popular label for watercourses of various sorts in these parts - had some connection with disturbed water, and thus crossing places.
And the 17 on my list? Alderford, Barford, Billingford, Blyford, Brockford, Coxford, Cringleford, Glandford, Lackford, Langford, Rushford, Shereford, Stanford, Tatterford, Thetford, Thursford and Wayford. No doubt there were hundreds of others.

FAMILY MATTERS

Late last year I lost my only sister, aged 87, one of the consequences being that a large cardboard box containing family history records came into my care. I had seen some of the material before, and had copies of much of it, but a lot was new because my sister, even though she did not use a computer, had done much research herself.
It took me several months to sort it all and compile new family trees, but I found it a worthwhile experience. What I have now is a still incomplete picture, but the good news is that we seem to have been a fairly steady lot. Farmers, brewers, carpenters, shopkeepers, teachers, housekeepers, and so on. And while perhaps half a dozen left for the far horizons of Canada, America and Australia, the remainder seem to have been well-rooted, largely in Oxfordshire and thereabouts.
There are one or two stand-out characters - and some who overcame hard times during the various economic depressions - including a former curator of the Shakespeare Birthplace Museum and a lay member of the Cowley Fathers. But the man who interested me most was Henry Baker, who married into the maternal side of the family in 1897.
According to my sister's notes, he was a 'wholesale grocer in Canterbury, and circus owner.' The reason this chimed with me is that, some years' later, my paternal grandfather actually ran away with Baker's circus - for a very short time, I hasten to add - and because the lure of the circus ring has persuaded me, for some reason, to keep and preserve some Bertram Mills circus programmes dating from the late 1940s and 1950s.
But there is a puzzle. I cannot fit Henry into the history of Baker's circus. I know the circus itself closed in the late 1930s when the Bakers were offered a contract by Bertram Mills, and I know the Bakers formed a horse-riding act called The Cumberlands. Indeed, as a lad and at the time unaware of family connections, I saw them perform several times. But the mystery deepens, because most histories suggest a Baker's circus lineage leading back through William (Bill) Baker and his father Thomas (Tom) Baker, who died in 1932. So far I have not been able to establish any link between Henry and Tom.
I recently managed to acquire a copy of Circus Company (Putnam), written by the artist Edward Seago and published in 1933. He spent some time travelling with Baker's circus, although he calls it Bevins in the book, and he actually dedicated the volume to Tommy Baker. It is a fascinating tale, but Seago makes no reference to the history of the show.
It would be interesting to know more, and one day I would like to discover how 'our' Henry fits into the scheme of things. Or not, as the case may be.
Purely as a sideshow, there was also an interesting detail about the book, for between pages 148 and 149 I found a small tissue-thin ticket tucked carefully away which turned out to be a sweepstake voucher for the Irish Baldoyle Chase. The sweepstake was run for the benefit of Irish Hospitals, and a 'subscription' cost five shillings. The draw was to be made by the Commissioner of Police in Dublin three days before the actual race, and the number of the ticket was AV31748.
Someone bought it and then hid it, or forgot about it, and there it stayed all those long years. Alas, I can only think it was a loser, a non-winner, because the Baldoyle Chase on this particular ticket was actually run on February 12, 1944.

WOBEGON DAYS

One day in the spring of 1974 the American writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor, along with his wife and small son, boarded a Pullman train and left Minneapolis bound for San Francisco to visit friends. Keillor had just received a pleasingly large cheque from the New Yorker magazine as payment for an article, and he also had in his briefcase a couple of completed stories and other  literary bits and pieces which he hoped to sell. But in a place called Sand Point, Idaho, the train derailed, in the dark, in a freight yard.
Thankfully, it did so slowly and gently and with little fuss. Nevertheless, the Pullman would not be going anywhere else in a hurry, and so the Keillor family clambered down and boarded a coach for Portland, where they hoped to find another rail connection to San Francisco.
Some time later it duly deposited them in Portland, and father and son went to the men's room to freshen up, and then they all went to a cafeteria for breakfast. A few bites into his scrambled egg, Garrison suddenly remembered he had left his briefcase in the washroom, and rushed back to get it. Alas, it was gone, and never a trace was ever found. It was the worst thing that could happen to a writer. I believe it also happened to Hemingway. 
I tell the story only because it forms a sort of backdrop - and perhaps an explanation - for Garrison Keillor's subsequent best seller and American classic, Lake Wobegon Days, a book which has entertained and fascinated me ever since I first acquired it, by accident, about a decade ago. It tells the story, or rather the stories, of the mythical and mysterious settlement of Lake Wobegon (population 942), its people and traditions.
Wonderfully funny, tongue-in-cheek stories, too. Of the Living Flag, and the Sons of Knute Ice Melt contest, of Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Store and the Chatterbox cafe, Clint and Clarence Bunsen, the Lutheran church, and the Norske Folke Society, the grain silo, and a bagfull of other Wobegon worthies and places. The Tollerud farm, the Ingqvist crowd, Carl Krebsbach and Father Emil. Tales of a town - one inhabitant says - where the main industry is speculation.
I don't know why these almost-believable tales of Lake Wobegon so tickled my fancy, but they did, and still do. Later, I acquired two other titles which carried Keillor's stories and storylines forward, but for some reason they didn't quite gel in the same way. Thus if I ever feel the need to return to Minnesota just to wallow, temporarily, among some of the Wobegon folk, then it is to this first book that I return.
Keillor is perhaps better known as a broadcaster in America, and much of his writing begs to be read out loud. As I have no doubt it was originally. As for the question as to whether Lake Wobegon is a real place, well, all I can say is that during my one and only trip to the East Coast of America a few years ago, and finding myself with half an hour to spare, I went into the Harvard University bookshop for a browse and, intrigued, duly found the book under Fiction.
So I bought another copy and gave it to one of my sons. I hope he gets to read it and enjoy it as much as I have done.
(Lake Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor. Penguin Books, 1985)

Mr VERSATILITY

How quickly fame can fade. The thought originally occurred to me when, way back in the 1960s, the former Charlton Athletic goalkeeper Sam Bartram, then retired, turned up in the old wooden Press Box at Norwich City's Carrow Road football ground - ostensibly to cover a match for a Sunday newspaper - and no-one knew who he was.
Well, I knew who he was, because I had seen him play and because he had been my sporting hero. Sam played hundreds of games for his club, was never dropped, and even played in four successive FA Cup Finals in the 1940s. Two of them were during the War, however, and didn't really count for record purposes, but the other two certainly did. One Charlton lost and the other they won, so Sam got his medal. But it was still disappointing to realise how quickly the public memory had let things slip.
Thoughts of a similar nature occurred to me again when I read recently that another Charlton hero of mine, John Hewie, had died at the age of 87. 'John who?' I can hear most of you saying. John Hewie, that's who.
I remember him from the 1950s, when I also saw him play several times. Tall, lean, athletic, John had arrived in this country at the age of 21 from South Africa, where he was born to ex-pat Scottish parents. Over here, he played tennis and hockey and turned out for his works' football team, and in 1949 Charlton came calling. He duly signed for them, joining the club's already famous 'South African contingent,' along with Tocknell, Kinsey, Kiernan, O'Linn, Firmani and others.
John had 19 good years at The Valley and played in almost every position, though full-back or centre-half were his best. He even turned out as goalkeeper on four occasions. This was in the days before substitutes, of course, and if the 'keeper was hurt and had to go off then John took over between the posts. He was as versatile and he was doggedly determined, and he duly made over 500 Lague and Cup appearances.
In 1958 Scotland also came calling, and he made his international debut against England at Hampden Park. In all, he was awarded 19 Scotland caps, including those won during Scotland's World Cup campaign in Sweden in 1958.
He rerired from Charlton when he was 39 and returned to South Africa to manage a team there. But the family came back to the UK when the political situation in Africa worsened, and in the 1990s they settled at Donington (Lincolnshire), where he was still playing tennis at the age of 70.
There is a small tailpiece. In 1997 I wrote and published a book called Passing Seasons, which I had compiled to mark 50 years since I first started to watch football. An article about it duly appeared in a Lincolnshire newspaper, and the title sold modestly well.
About a fortnight later the phone rang at home and a voice said, 'This is John Hewie speaking.' He'd seen the article and got the book. Now, I had never actually met John Hewie before, or even spoken to him, and he would not have known me from Adam. But he was friendly and chatty and we spoke for ten minutes or so about the old days, and of course I told him how, as a football-mad lad in the 1950s I'd made the long journey from Lincolnshire to London, and to The Valley, to see him play on several occasions. He seemed pleased to be remembered.
A fine sportsman, John Hewie, and modest with it.

THE MILK RUN

I read somewhere recently that the nuclear Hot Line between the West and the Kremlin had been re-connected, and noticed on TV that missiles were back in Russia's big military parade. Both of which sound faintly familar to an old National Serviceman, because up to thirty and more years' ago this was routine, daily stuff. Which reminds me, there have also been recent news stories of Russian (ie, non-Nato) aircraft flying over the English Channel, and generally sniffing around.
This certainly brought home to me the day I spent at RAF Neatishead, the early warning radar station, during a time when it was fully operational and deadly serious in its daily intent, when red (or non-Nato) markers - looking like wriggling tadpoles - could be seen all over the radar screens and British fighters were on full intercept alert at several bases.
With the Cold War at its chilly height, and arguments about Cruise missiles rumbling around outside, I recall asking the military Press officer, who was showing me around, what would happen if the balloon suddenly went up and the screens indicated an incoming nuclear attack.
'Well, he said, 'we would have about four minutes.' Four minutes to do what? 'Four minutes to alert everyone - including the intercept fighters - before we were annihilated.' The expectation at the time, of course, was that Neatishead, like Lakenheath and Mildenhall, would on a high priority hit list.
I was also shown the 'current position' screens, which prompted another question: where exactly did the Soviet aircraft go? Because even I could see on the screens that a majority of planes in the air at the time (it was said to be a quiet day, incidentally) were green (meaning Nato), but with a significant sprinkling of red.
It was explained, first of all, that included among the many reds were Soviet civilian aircraft flying regular scheduled flights into and out of Heathrow. Then there was what the screen operators called the daily 'milk run' through the Faroes Gap north of Scotland, usually freighter aircraft flying from Russia to Cuba. And there were 'probing' flights, seemingly designed to test the timings of the UK intercept aircraft (how long to get airbourne, and so on). And lastly, I was told, there were the occasional flights the Soviets sent over the North Sea and the Channel to stooge around generally and to 'take a look at the oil rigs.'
It was all very unnerving. Pin-pricks designed, no doubt, to let 'the opposition' know they were around, and to keep them on their toes. Whether we were involved in similar pinpricks in and around Soviet airspace I do not know, and did not ask. They would not have told me, anyway. But I dare say there was a tit-for-tat element about it all. 
Is it starting all over again, the whole Cold War business? Hopefully not. But there is, for sure, a great deal of tension in the world at the moment.
Closer home, RAF Neatishead is now a museum, its original work being done elsewhere; and there is also a slight feeling that, militarily at least, some countries are winding down rather than up. But Russia has been a mischief-maker for a long time. So I won't be the only one casting an anxious eye on those occasional Channel and North Sea incursions.

PEDDARS PIRATES

Neil Holmes' book, The Lawless Coast (Larks Press), full of tales of piratical derring-do and anarchy, particularly in north Norfolk in the 1780s, was published in 2008, but I have only just managed to lay my hands on a copy.
It is a splendid piece of work, and I was particularly interested in his summary of the life of Thomas Franklyn, who by 1779 had established a formidible zone of authority along the coastline of north-west Norfolk. Born in poverty in King's Lynn, and without any education, Franklyn quickly became involved in the smuggling trade, and by the 1780s actually employed hundreds of part-time carriers recruited from villages close to the coast. At one stage he claimed to have on his pay-roll 200 men in each of the villages of Old Hunstanton, Holme next the Sea, and Thornham.
According to the author, the final stages of Franklyn's operation involved moving the smuggled consignments inland, and this operation took place as soon as possible after the landings. And the inland route he favoured most was the old Roman road, the Peddars Way.
The various groups, with the contraband, would assemble at Ringstead, and after a long night march of over 40 miles they would meet up with dealers somewhere east of Thetford - on Brettenham or Roudham heaths, perhaps - close to the Suffolk border. 
No-one in nearby villages dared intervene as the long convoys and hundreds of armed men rumbled through, and even the Customs & Excise officers, patrolling with a small number of cavalry, kept their distance, being completely outnumbered.
The destination for the goods from thereon was most usually London, and the London gangs, though some of the consumables evidently found their way back to Cambridge and Norwich.
This use of the Peddars Way as part of a route leading to and from London has occurred to me before, and I have often wondered if Swaffham's famous pedlar, who travelled to London to seek his fortune, actually made use of the same green way, too.

AFFORDABLE HOMES

There was a great deal of pre-General Election fluff about the need for - among other forms of domestic habitation - affordable homes. But in my case, this sudden and new-found Coalition desire to provide such facilities for the young and less-well-off had a more than hollow ring.
What cannot be contradicted is the actual need for affordable homes which is as great, or even greater, than it was before. What had changed, hopefully, was the attitude of the political parties, because two years' ago, and for nearly a decade before that, many of them would have manned the barricades at the very thought of affordable homes coming to their village. One reason, it became clear to see, was widespread concern that they would affect their own property and site values.
Until a couple of years' ago we part-owned a small field in south Norfolk, bordered by a roadway, the village school, a row of houses and bungalows, and farm fields, much of it hidden behind hedges and a small shrubbery. Then, knowing that we would within a few years be looking into the possibility of down-sizing, and thus leaving the village, we began to ponder the legacy of the field. Affordable homes seemed the right solution.
The financial rewards would not have been great (not as great as that from the construction of 'ordinary' or 'luxury' homes, anyway), but it seemed to us to be right for the village as there was little prospect of hardly any of its young ever being able to afford the £300,000-plus homes which were popping up on other bits of land.
So we put a scheme in train. A survey was carried out which demonstrated a genuine need for cheaper housing, a Housing Association happily became involved, and architects' plans were produced. Then the fun started.
There were protests, and a meeting at the parish hall where fears materialised that villagers might not be given the priority, 'people from away' might move in, and some of them might be on drugs, and the planned homes were too close to the school. Newcomers, some said, would need to be vetted, apparently. Not that those buying the £300,000-plus homes were vetted, of course.
The parish council, with its high percentage of local landowners, prevaricated and kept forgetting to put the matter on the agenda, and then, finally and furiously, they decided to oppose the plan. Local elections came and the Conservatives gained control of the district council. They also opposed affordable homes, and anyway, they were about to carry out their own surveys in order to produce their own housing plans for the area.
Ultimately, another Housing Association picked up the idea. More prevarication, more protests and bad feeling, more foot-dragging. And so a second scheme for affordable homes, and then a third (the cost! the waste!) fell by the wayside.
Eleven years went by. At which point, and largely because of our impatience and because of the hostility, political and otherwise, we decided to give us the quest.
The field, I should add, was subsequently sold, but the village, and the village's young, still do not have any affordable housing.

THE NAME GAME

Archaeologists working on the excavated site of a Roman cemetery in Cirencester have unearthed a 2nd century tombstone dedicated to a lady named Bodicacia. According to Current Archaeology, issue 302, the upside-down stone was protecting a grave - the skeleton of which turned out to be male - and had thus been reused.
Once the stone was turned over, however, some fine carving and decoration was observed, along with a five-line Latin inscription which read: 'To the spirits/memory of Bodicacia. Wife. She lived 27 years.'
The conclusion seems to be that Bodicacia was a Celtic name, which in turn implies that the stone was originally carved for a young British woman, perhaps local to Cirencester, who had married a man rich enough to have commissioned an elaborate tribute. Bodicacia, and the male name Bodus, are thought to have shared the same language root was Boudica, the original meaning of which was 'victory.'

It is possible the gravestone was re-used even as late as the 4th century; and while the inscription itself, along with the name, may have been carved two centuries or more after the Boudiccan revolt, it does suggest that the name might still have been in occasional if not general use all those decades and generations later.

ON THE TABLE

I was nine years' old, pushing ten, when the Second World War rumbled towards its end, and the odd thing is that the actual moment peace broke out seems to have left little impression on me. I cannot remember Churchill's famous broadcast at all or recall any outburst of public or even familial joy, and there was certainly no dancing in the roadway. Not in the road outside our house, anyway. What I do remember, however, are the plans for the town's official celebratory outdoor tea which was to be held in the Market Place.

It is necessary to explain that at this time I was a somewhat solitary boy, one who preferred to play on his own, or read books. My greatest agony would have been an invitation to another boy's birthday party. I wouldn't go. Loathed parties, you see. Couldn't see the point of them. And the planned VE-Day party, to which the town's children were invited? Certainly not. I refused to attend.

In the end my constant complaint and off-handedness seem to have won the day, and I was officially excused. And so while the rest of the town's kids sat at trestle tables in the open air, surrounded by bunting, and tucked into corned beef sandwiches, cakes and jelly (garnered from goodness knows where), I sat patiently beside my father in the upstairs window of an ironmongery store, which happened to overlook the joyful panorama, while he attempted to a watercolour painting of the sunlit scene.

Thus while I have lots of memories of the Second World War, I have little recollection of the moment it came to an end. But I do have a copy of my father's unfinished picture.