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)