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.







 

Whereas it is certainly true I said I was going to stop blogging, I did also add that I was stopping 'for the time being.' This loophole therefore allows me to begin again following a four-month sabbatical, this time intermittently and certainly not at the same volume as before. We shall see. But I will continue, for as long as I can.

SHORT HORIZONS

I didn't take up leisure walking until I was nearly 40, and even then it was an occasional business most often restricted to a particular week once a year. Even so, and accompanied by various intrepid companions, we usually managed ten or twelve miles a day carrying heavy rucksacks, and all the rest of the camping kit, or 23 or 24 miles a day travelling lightweight on things like the then annual Forest Walk, from West Stow to Didlington. Horizons seemed satisfyingly wide. Only hill-climbing seemed out of our physical reach. 
Such was the thrill of taking off into the countryside that we did it as often as possible, one of the greatest being the start of Day One of a new week's walk. Hauling on a rucksack and setting off. To what? Something different, that was for sure, even if we were planning to walk precisely the same route we had walked the previous year. No two expeditions were ever the same, each being an adventure in its own right.
In later years my leisure walking evolved into short-distant yomps with small groups; two groups, actually, both based on our workplace. We took it in turns to choose a route, arranged a date about once a month, and set off with the simple intention of walking four to six miles during the morning, eat our packed lunches somewhere along the track, and end at a pub for a pint before returning home to prepare for an evening or night shift at the Press office.

Then  a few years' ago I began to be affected by an ailment known as peripheral claudication, which meant that the arteries of both legs were clogging up. It was becoming painful to walk very far, and indeed, it was suggested by one of my companions that I was a walker with three speeds: slow, slower, and stop.
There were treatments, of course, such as a sort of Dyno-Rod job on the arteries. By and large, however, my 'glory' days were over. From a 25-mile yomp through the forest to a leisurely five-mile stroll, I was now restricted to a circuit of the main shops in town.
Shrewd readers will already have spotted a theme here. Shortening horizons. The boundaries of a world drawing forever inward. And that is the reason for this lament. No longer can I contemplate a day out with a rucksack. So there are many tracks and trees, fields and woodlands and landscape nooks and crannies I shall never see again, because my legs no longer work properly and energy levels have dipped.
More recently a fresh difficulty has emerged: low energy levels and a lung fibrosis problem which sometimes leaves me puffing more vigorously than a Poppyland Line locomotive. Now, a short, slow stroll from the car park to the main shopping area is about the limit before I have to stop and 'admire' the display in some shop window or other.
In other words, I've gone from 25 miles to about 75 yards, and if that isn't a case of shortening horizons I don't know what is. Mind you, at my age it is something I know I have to accept. But I tell you what. I don't half miss the walking. I miss it a lot.