Norfolk notes - parking

As well as large buses on narrow roads, the other thing we encountered with the car was the posh car surcharge. While the majority of beach car parks are standardised pay and display jobs, there are one or two independents who vary their price according to season, weather, time of day, whim and, of course, whether they can be arsed spending the day in a shed. Examples of fluctuating prices include one where the chalk board announcing the discounted parking price included 'end of season sale'.

Ah, and a car park near some golf links. Since I've been coming here it's been looked after by a bloke in a caravan. The same bloke. The area is also home to, arguably, the best golf links in the world and I recall the time he advised me 'not to park at the far end, because that's where the helicopter will be landing because some golfers want to play this afternoon'. In that sentence the word 'tossers' is silent, but he managed to convey it.

Normally, my ride of choice is an ageing three door job. Nothing special. What it does do, however, is get you a discount. Discount is also available if you have a couple of cars, where he offers a group rate in exchange for the first one always offering to pay for both cars at full price. Such offers of generosity are rewarded. I've also seen posh cars (of which there are many in this part of the world) turn round rather than pay full price, I guess you get a posh car by being tight.

When we rolled up in the Beast, we got whacked for the full charge for the day. Luckily I had my wee bag o'change and was able to stump up, but wondered if I would have been charged the same had I been in my little motor. Maybe he charges by the foot, like they do with canal moorings. In which case God knows what the driver of the coach that delivered the school geography party would have had to pay.


Mostly though, it was standardised charges, paid for at a sort of parking totem that depending on your point of view and location, either ripped you off totally for a short brisk walk on the beach, amazed you by allowing all day parking for a florin or was shameless in trying to attract custom to competing seaside towns by giving you the first half hour for tuppence, just long enough to visit the bank, post office and many tat shops the place boasts. Somebody, somewhere is making an awful lot of money (a lot of it mine) out of owning a patch of gravel that just happens to be near a beautiful beach.


At least now they've stopped all that 'enter your number plate' nonsense, meaning a return to the charming scenes of people with ninety seconds left on their ticket trying to give it to somebody who has just arrived and hence score a small but important victory over those that, despite our most charitable instincts, we still can't help but suspect are ripping us off.

More important than the charges though, more important than the opening and closing times, more important even than knowing if anyone is in the little shed today collecting money or if you are going to thrillingly park for free is the small sign at the start of the beach road that you ignore at your peril and states 'beach road floods at...' then gives a time. This is certainly a reminder that one is a visitor to strange parts. This isn't 'road liable to flooding' or even a temporary sign reading 'flood', this is a sign telling you that this road is going to flood tonight and you had better be gone by then. You had also better hope that the guy in the shed is not nursing a grudge against all you folk in your posh cars and that he can read tide tables correctly.

Norfolk notes - the rented car

This holiday, I decided, would be one where we travelled in style. This was to be Norfolk in October and so I wanted something that would accommodate the entire family and a wet dog with half of the beach clinging to it in comfort, where we could all sit together in damp anoraks waiting for the rain to cease and not have to worry about catching Legionnaire's disease from the condensation running down the inside of the windows. Also, it allows family members to be a comfortable distance from one another during any cooling off period following disputes about who gets to sit up front, choice of music and so on.

As it happened the weather was great, but having a big car brought other benefits, like legroom, being able to take a mountain of picnic with us and using a single car all the time, thus saving at least a tenner on parking, which was useful to offset the exorbitant cost of the rental.

The Chrysler Grand Voyager is, as the name suggests, big. It's so big that the rear passengers are in a different time zone to the driver. So big that the people in the back have their own climate controls, although what's really required is an intercom. It's so big that the middle row of seats fold down to form a picnic table and that, for me, sealed the deal.

There are other interesting features. For instance, the rear doors slide open instead of swing open and are electric, operated by the key for or buttons inside the car. For years, I have been opening and closing my own car door manually, like a mug, like a second class citizen. The Americans have realised that this, like any exercise that you don't pay to do, is demeaning and have simplified the whole process. Of course, a contributing factor to this labour saving luxury is that the damn doors are about as heavy as barn doors and to open them manually you need either a team of horses or a bloody good run up.

While the size was a bonus, I'm not sure it was a great idea in retrospect to. Choose that car for a trip to Norfolk that entailed daily jaunts along the narrow and winding road that runs along the coast, especially in the 'Stiffkey squeeze' and especially not at harvest time with so many tractors and other really, really large bits of agricultural machinery sharing the roads. It's when you hear all the passengers breathing in at the same time that you realise you've just had a narrow squeeze. That, and the fact that the wing mirror has been folded flat back against the car when you brushed that wall. Mirrors are like cats whiskers, if you can get them through a gap, the rest of the car will follow. Of course that's buggger all help if you've already firmly wedged the bonnet of the car be teen a wall and a chap on a mobility chariot.

With the wide seats to accommodate the larger posterior and the electric doors that hinted at a certain idleness, it comes as no surprise to learn that the car was designed by those conspicuous consumers, the Americans. Wide seats, lazy doors and it being an automatic rather than having manual gears I can deal with (even if I did try and change gear with the hand break for the first half hour) but even I was surprised by the number of beverage holders the thing had. There was even a beverage cup holder that flipped out of the side of the rear passenger seats! Is dehydration a feature of travel by road in America? I can understand if you want space for your big gulp if you are, say, driving across Death Valley, but how much fluid does one person need when they are popping to the shops.

Norfolk notes - the Hoste Arms party

Burnham Market, known as 'Chelsea on sea' because so many bloody well-heeled Londoners have second homes there, is home to The Hoste Arms. This is a pub, hotel and restaurant (I think the appropriate word is actually 'Inn' but this conjures up images of some ghastly corporate attempt to recreate an 'Olde Worlde' atmosphere through the simple application of horse brasses and wittily placing a picture frame around the wide screen plasma telly showing the footy or, alternatively, something from either the middle ages or Dickens that features a wood-smoke fug and rushes on the floor).

Actually that second image is not a bad description. Some bloke in a stove pipe hat, a disturbing moustache and far too many syllables in his name to be taken seriously would probably feel at home in the bar at the Hoste. They do a log fire, a comfy seat and good beer.

And champagne by the glass. And that's when you start to notice the differences. Because the Hoste is not a gastro pub, or even a pub. It's quite simply, to quote my sister, in a class all of it's own. There's the bar, which is lovely, then there's a lounge bit, where you can have a coffee, then there's the restaurant, then the rooms, then the garden, then the courtyard, each growing progressively posher in an understated way.

Because it's like a great boozer. What makes a great boozah? It's more than the beer and the etched glass and the tiles and the bar staff and the locals and the quiet and the peace and the sense of there being no place more perfect than this; it's all that and gin too, wrapped up in a warm sense of being safe and with friends. And that's just when you've popped in for a cheeky half at lunchtime. Imagine that perfect understated boozah atmosphere, but extrapolated out across an entire inn! In a word, special.

So, when we stopped by and found out that they were doing a party in aid of the village Christmas lights, a ticket sounded like a sound investment. We were promised a glass of fizz on arrival, nibbles, a charity auction and a disco.

OK, so let's set our expectations, we might, might we not, plan to turn up early because the nibbles always run out early and the disco will be a bit crap and the do will be in a marquee that has seen better days and might possible double as one of those white 'scene of crime' tents that the police use.

Not quite.


Although the stamp on the hand was proper, classic school disco, the two six foot tall (seven foot with the feather head dress) Vegas show girls bearing trays of vodka jelly shots and wearing, essentially, sequins, was very much not. It takes a lot to persuade me to down a vodka jelly shot, but having it proffered by somebody in a sparkly bikini and feathers will do it.

And there was something for the ladies too! The Hoste has one of those 'calendar girls' type calendars on sale to help raise money for the Christmas lights also. Lots of pictures of blokes grinning from behind strategically placed marrows and women standing behind trays of plump looking food.


It struck me that the bloke circulating with the mini-burgers was wearing an apron and no shirt. When he tured round I realised that he was in fact wearing an apron. The view was an excellent advert for buns.


The food, served thankfully also by staff who were senior enough to be allowed trousers and a shirt, kept coming all evening, bite after bite of conventional and unconventional party food. The chicken nuggets were superb and their coating was volcanically hot, which is no doubt why a lot of folk uttered the name of that Icelandic volcano - 'arglebarglehittleargle' - upon tasting them. Top snack of the night though was fish and chips. A single nugget of battered fish served with a handful of fries and some tartar sauce. Stupendous.

The charity auction included rounds at local golf clubs, which allowed all the single women to identify who all the men were with lots of money and too much time on their hands. Other lots included use of a carpenter for a day and helicopter rides (which went for a fortune - well, can one really put a price on turning up in Waitrose car park to do the weekly shop in a helicopter? Yes, it's two grand).

Finally the disco. I like to think I distinguished myself and it also marked a watershed moment when my track of choice for hard core uproar on the dance floor changed from camp classic 'Dancing queen' to the Black Eyed Peas's song about having a good night tonight, whatever the hell it's called. All I know is that all those Friday nights leaping round the kitchen unwinding with a glass of something and some banging tunes finally paid off and, from the looks of fear and wonderment that greeted my moves, I feel I impressed.

The only thing to do now is to try and return some time between the lights being turned on, and Christmas, so that I can see the bulb I sponsored.

The Big Society

Our council is, apparently, a Big Society pilot area. I have no idea what Big Society is but I know what a pilot scheme is; it's where you don't have enough confidence tho roll out an ill-conceived scheme nationally and so do it in a few backwater areas and, when it bombs like a fat kid jumping into a swimming pool, explain that either the idea needs work or the bloody yokels in charge of the pilot couldn't be trusted to run a car boot stall, never mind a complex social experiment and anyway, next time the posters will be better.

So what, exactly is the Big Society? Well, it's the lynchpin Conservative policy that is, apparently, so brilliant that nobody can quite explain it. I think the gist of it is however that English people, who by tradition would all like to live in castles with moats far from any neighbours and by practice only really talk to their neighbours if they are caught dumping their garden waste over the fence, are supposed to take a community approach and look after things like keeping the streets tidy and, no doubt when the cuts to public services really start to bite, policing them too. You can tell that Big Society is a policy and not just an idea because it's capitalised, which ironically much of public spending is not.

In short it's an idea for avoiding a bloodbath following the spending cuts by expecting volunteers to do all the work. Crucially, this ignores the fact that most people who try to organise things in neighbourhoods are self-appointed irritants, usually in cardigans, with very fixed ideas about serving booze at street parties.

The Big Society (and it really is a load of BS) pilot has manifested itself on the streets with the arrival of, of all things, grit bins. That's right, every street now has a large yellow receptacle full of salt.

And each one is numbered. My first reaction, I'm ashamed to admit, was not to applaud this initiative (remembering last winter I realise that ready access to grit is a bloody good idea, but in all honesty I rather like the idea of it being sprayed from the back of a lorry or shovelled by a couple of blokes with fluorescent jackets while I observe proceedings from the safety of a pub while 'working from home' on a snow day), but to think what a good little project it would be to photograph them all, collect the set as it were.

This is as close to autism as you can get without actually being called 'Rain Man' by your friends, but let's not worry about that now.

The idea, of course, is that come the first snowfall, everyone grabs their shovel and heads for the nearest bin. We grit our own paths and roads and the transport infrastructure is safe. Hoorah. Of course, the thing to do is to get out there now, in the dead of night (currently 4.30pm in these wintry days) and load the contents of the nearest bins into a bin bag for stockpiling in your shed. This can then be sold on to neighbours for a pound a scoop when the first flake hits the floor and the inevitable panic starts or, even better, sold back to the council when their grit stocks expire, probably on day two of any snowy weather.

So that's big society; hoards of happy residents gritting their drives and the areas of the pavement just outside their drives where they accidentally spray grit in their enthusiasm, and looking at the pristine snow that covers the world beyond their drive, muttering darkly about council tax and whiling away their time mentally composing outraged letters that froth with indignation for the local paper.

But why stop at gritting? Other jobs currently undertaken by trained professionals that could be done by the public include maintaining parks (we can graze our sheep on them when we're all reduced to subsistence level living), health care (who needs doctors now we have the internet - what's easier, seven years at medical school or Googling 'nasty cough'?), or air traffic control.

Council grittier used to be grossly inappropriate rhyming slang for posterior, now it's not even an occupation or vocation, it's recreation.