Postcard from Norfolk – Farm Shop again

The final visit to the farm shop, to stock up on fresh, muddy, fruit and veg before going home. While I was there, fondling the apples so large one feels like a borrower, a delivery van pulled up. Nothing unusual in that but this was, if the sign painted on the side was to be believed, delivering 'rare breed cuts'. Getting rarer all the time I would say. I'm not sure if the best way of pressing a breed is to ensure that members of it are sliced up and served up with chips, but I guess the farmers know what they are doing. Maybe if we discovered tigers were delicious, farmers would rear them, although it would take one fucking tough dog to round them up.

Postcard from Norfolk – Burnham Market

The Hoste is a good English pub selling good beer in a good atmosphere with good free wifi. The pub derives a good income from the drinkers, the guests in the hotel, the visitors to the new spa (the hot tub did look like fun, what's better than drinking cold champagne in front of a warm fire? Drinking cold champagne in a hot tub!) and the diners, but may well be on some sort of commission scheme with the traders in the town. Certainly, my resolve was weakened with the three pints of lunch that I enjoyed there, and on leaving I strolled back to the second hand bookshop to pick up the two books I had decided not to buy earlier in the day.

Only cost me a tenner and I am looking forward to reading the books, but I wonder if the same thing happens with those who want back to the more expensive shops. This might explain how cashmere shorts are sold.

Postcard from Norfolk – Sheringham

A rare rainy day in North Norfolk. The principal attractions of North Norfolk are, if you like vast expanses of beach and waves, to be found outdoors. Indoor activities such as drinking are of course great fun, but can't be sustained beyond a few hours and are best enjoyed after a good walk. So when the rain came on, the alternative to soaking up the weather on a beach was to head for Sheringham for a trawl along the Hugh street.

Sheringham is the home of some rather excellent shops, although the second hand bookshop and the little grocers has gone, the former I don't know why and the latter probably a victim of the Sainsbury's that has opened up on the high street.

The town is also home to one end of the North Norfolk Railway. This is run by enthusiasts and runs steam trains up and down a length of line from Sheringham to Holt, although now that it is connected to the national network again, there is the delicious prospect of one day just steaming to Scotland for the hell of it. Certainly steam was up today, meeting with the low cloud. Despite the rain the sight of a steam train always gladdens the heart and the platform was crowded with, if I am honest mainly men, taking pictures of the train, the engine, the carriages and each other.

The NNR run specials, such as the Santa special and the Halloween special. Wheat I'd really love to see is the dinner special, where there is fine dining on a train rather than the usual grimly microwaved snack, or the thriller killer murder mystery specials here the whole train is a rolling whodunit mystery theatre. And what I'd really like to see happen is occasionally switching evenings around, so that half way through the soup course the diners are confronted with a body, and a selection of character suspects including a mysterious oriental gentleman, a femme fatal, an aristocratic big game hunter and a vicar. In the absence of a butler of course, the conductor would have to have done it.

Postcard from Norfolk – Postcards and bookshops

Writing a postcard, by which I mean a real postcard rather than a self indulgent and self referential blog entry about how I such the salt off my chips before eating them, if something of an art. You have a small space in which to convey much, so there's a quandary; does one go for wit, or brevity, or both? Or does one attempt to condense a best selling travel book into the space allowed? Should one confine oneself to a weather report and, if so, how truthful should one be? Or should one simply go for something the postman will enjoy reading?

Longer than a tweet, shorter than a letter, the postcard is, along with the Christmas card, the analog version of Internet communication. Essentially, the modern craze for forwarding pictures of kittens in hats with captions heavy on the use of the letter zed is just a cheap and lazy modern incarnation of sending relatives a saucy seaside postcard.

Given the utter dominance of texting and the ability to send e mails and pictures from your smartphone,it's good that postcards continue to thrive as a edits of communication. This is, I think, because that are considered to be the same as Christmas or birthday cards, something that are sent as well as a text rather than instead of. Nothing conveys the message 'we are on holiday and you are not' like a card depicting a handful of picturesque cottages on the front and a message on the back about drinking lots of tea. I always make sure that I leave a red wine ring stain on the back of the card, I am actually thinking about having a special stamp made.

There are two approaches to postcard sending. The first is to buy a shedload on day one, go to the pub and get it all over with in one mail shot. This is environmentally sound, as it allows you to recycle the same remarks over and over to different people. The alternative is to go for the episodic approach, which means sending a postcard a day and developing a theme, such as a beer forecast, reviewing a different beach every day or, my favourite, explaining how you are developing a relationship with the pretty girl in the post card shop by buying one every day.

As much fun as sitting in the pub writing is, sitting in the pub reading is even more fun, which is why, despite it lacking a fish and chip shop, Burnham Market is fast becoming one of my favourite places to visit; one spends half an hour in the Brazen Head book shop, then repairs to the Hoste to flick through ones purchases, while drinking beer.

The second hand book shop is the home of the unexpected treat. Visiting today I picked up a Tom Wolfe book that I've never even heard of, and a NEL edition of 'Assignment in eternity'. I really do hope that you can tell a book by its cover because this one is a corker, showing a rocket blasting off from a city, in a bubble, on the moon! It is the perfect science fiction book cover. Who could resist?

It also prompted something of a revelation - I like books more than I like reading. Peering over the shoulders of people on the train I have been very impressed by the kindle e book reader. The screen can be read in direct sunlight and it is pleasingly small and looks comfortable to hold. If I liked readying, I would have one and download books to it at a reasonable price. But I like books. A book is an artefact, not a stream of electrons. Maybe I am a showing my age but surely anyone who has written a book dreams of it one day appearing in print rather than on screen.

More than that though, will there be a second hand market for e books? Even if there is, even if we end up with an on line store curated by some caring individual who groups the books in a manner conducive to e browsing that leads one to unexpected treasures, it's unlikely that inside the front cover will be somebody's name and age, or, my favourite, a slip of paper explaining that this copy of 'A Pilgrim's Progress' was awarded to somebody as a prize for growing the largest marrow in the school garden.

Kindle readers lack charm (the device, not the people). Worst of all, they lack covers - I like rockets, science fiction and cities in bubbles and I don't want to be deprived of looking at a dramatic depiction of same before opening up the book to continue the adventure.

Postcard from Norfolk – Amusements

My friends have car pets. A stuffed toy pig and a stuffed toy donkey. When they give me a lift anywhere it normally takes me between thirty and fifty seconds to annoy them by simulating intercourse between the two and speculating about the resulting pigley or donig.

They have decided that I need some car pets too, as the assorted coffee cups, old newspapers and magazines and paperbacks that adorn any of the flat surfaces of my car are not, they think, conducive to soothing travel. I point out to them that I am a bloke and that a glove compartment full of wine gums is of much gather importance to me than a soft toy, but grudgingly admit that in a snoozing emergency, a car pet can play the part of a piggy pillow.

So it's off into Hunstanton to win some car pets which is, I soon discover, nothing but a very thin excuse to visit the amusement arcade on the seafront. Mo properly, the amusements are on the stub, which I believe is the correct technical term for the area where the pier joined the esplanade, until salt corrosion and a particularly stormy night turned Hunstanton's premier attraction into a scrap metal bonanza.

I love amusement arcades and, at this one a little bit of Vegas comes to Hunstantion. A very little bit. The arcade is small, but they have managed to fill it with a truly fit-inducing collection of machines that flash, beep and chirp.


There are many varieties of the traditional seaside game here. Like the grab claw, except you have to win an arcade game first before you can activate the claw. It was actually a lot of fun, and not a little tense because the skill was to try and wring at least thirty seconds enjoyment from the machine for your fifty pee. I was concentrating so hard that I forgot to breath, it was great.

There were also the traditional copper falls, where the suspicion is that they use magnets so strong this is where the guys at CERN came to study. I was, for a shirt time, in the grip of 'copper madness' (not the medical complaint suffered by those who steal signalling equipment and suffer one electric shock too many as a result but rather a delight in seeing your two pee start a little fall of coppers), with my pot of two pences and my stupid gambler's grin.


They obviously believe in starting them young here, as helpfully the management had provided stools for toddlers to stand on and gamble away their parents' benefits. It's a shame though that even standing on a stool, the kids are not quite on eye level with the tiny 'gamble aware' signs that adorn the gloomier corners of the arcade.


It did make you wonder though, with the prizes in the copper falls constituting mostly of lollies, sweets and branded children's television character toys, if the amusement is not being a wee bit cynical. Are they exploiting children, or is a casino for toddlers actually quite cool?

Nope, it's sinister.

Of course, there is the suspicion that the professions wait Neil you have loaded the copper falls to the point where the bloody thing has to pay out big time...but stubbornly refuses to, and then swoop in when you huff off in disgust. Nothing adds to that arcade experience quite like hearing a waterfall of coin and the whoops of delight of somebody winning on the machine you just vacated. There should be a technical term for it but until I learn it 'coinbagging' will have to do.

It was, though, tremendous fun. OK so the falls are probably rigged but how much fun were they? And for a quid you could have about ten minutes entertainment, longer if you win. And I finally know what to do with all of my loose change. The days of carefully bagging it up and heading to the bank to change it up, or of using one of those machines in the supermarket that charge you the sort of commission normally associated with boutique merchant banks to change it into notes are over. From now on I am taking all my coins to the arcade on my annual holiday, the only flaw in the plan being that I'll need the money to pay for the petrol to get my consequently heavier car there.

Finally, once you stagger out into the sunshine after gambli the afternoon away in the beeping twinkly arcade of delight, you can continue the Vegas theme by going to Anzam’s seaside boutique for your hooker shoes.

Postcard from Norfolk – Cider and crabbing

It's common practice in Norfolk for any excess fruit to be left by your front gate on a little stall, with an old ice cream carton pressed into service as an honesty box. It was good to see this same practice extended to a grander scale when we visited Wells.

The Whin Hill cider shop at Wells is next to the town's big car park. I have parked many times but never been inside. This time, however, I was accompanied by some home brew enthusiasts. And when I say enthusiasts, I mean this chap will attempt to make alcohol out of anything. Cherries, pears, apples, all are rich sources of fermentation and eventual alcoholic delight. This is the chap who is turning my estate's grapes into 'shed red' this year, with the application of little more than ingenuity, yeast, a bucket and a shed. So naturally when he saw a real live car shop, he was off.

It was actually very pleasant, with that unpretentious air that surrounds any place that makes alcohol (does that explain whoso many places that sell it are pretentious, are they trying to make up for a perceived deficiency?), one shed held a cider press, the other a label printer. A third shed held a bloke, his dog, and some samples.

While my friends sampled the cider, swapped tales of booze making and stroked quite the fattest Labrador I seen in Norfolk (land of the vast beach and well walked dog), I took a look at the barrels of apples in the courtyard. This year has been, as all we wine makers know, a bumper harvest not just for grapes but for everything. The barrels were full of excess apples and a small sign invited you to help yourself. They were not for sale, just help yourself and if you want to make a small donation to one of the local charities, there are some collecting tins on the counter. I think that, apple for apple, I probably paid more for the half dozen I picked up that I've ever done in any supermarket. I think that, apple for apple, I've never tasted better.

We were in Wells to visit the chandlery, looking for toasty knit ware. To reach the chandlery, you walk along the quay, which was lines with crabbers. If there is any pastime that is the very definition of hope over expectation, it's crabbing. Standing there with a line dangling in the water and a bucket next to you, one wonders if, in the unlikely event of catching a crab, it would be a wise course of action to go on to convert the little fellow to a sandwich filling. Or possibly a hint of maritime diesel would provide zing. Or tang.


Or maybe I'm missing the point. I concluded long ago that fishing is less about landing carp and much more about sitting by tranquil water, listening to the rain pitter patter on your umbrella while drinking flask tea. Crabbing is, obviously, the seaside equivalent. It's just that I've always thought the bright orange crab line added a touch of excitement not normally associated with fishing.

The chandlery at Wells-Next-The-Sea sells all sorts of maritime essentials, from lengths of rope to belaying pins to attach your rope to. It also sells shiny brass instruments like barometers so that you know how much rope you are likely to need when hoisting things, ideal really because you can tap thee glass while you’re there and buy a few extra yards if needs be. It also sells cloths and, because these are maritime flavoured clothes, it is essentially just one bog dressing up box.

There are serious clothes with a serious price tag. Anoraks and outer layers that are designed to keep you dry in the sort of conditions that fish would think damp, made from the same sort of material they make deserts out of, so good are they at repelling water. Of course, not being stupid, the chandlery also sells authentic clothing in sizes other than ‘huge fisherman who has shoulders like a tractor from hauling on nets in storm force winds and the circumference of a family tent because of all the layers he’s wearing, due to his workplace being the North Sea, at night, in winter’. This also explains why the anoraks are available in colours other than ‘easily visible from the boat when worn by somebody flailing about in the sea and quite anxious to attract attention’, such as pink, for dainty ladies. Still, they do keep you snuggly on the beach.

In among the treasures of the tightly packed shop (including, in an adjoining room, a display of scale model traction engines) were sou’wester hats. (Hats rather than bonnets, Jane Austin heroines never set sail in search of mackerel).

Sou’wester hats are great, was there ever a piece of headgear so utterly associated with a single profession, other than an Imperial Stormtrooper’s helmet? Sadly, I was prevented from purchasing one by an attack of common sense, as my day-to-day life does not involve fishing from an open boat in a storm on anything like a regular occasion and, although undoubtedly the last word in practicality when it comes to waterproof hats, yellow can be a difficult colour to pull off. And it would make you look like a nutter.

I wasn’t even allowed to take it off the shelf, model it and take a quick photograph, as that sort of thing goes down ill with shopkeepers. Also, one does not wish to be accused of looking as if one makes a regular habit of sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend.

The thing to do, of course, was to buy the thing and to wear it constantly, until it no longer appears eccentric, or it starts a fashion. Possibly to lend that air of authenticity you could ask your friends to toss buckets of brine at you, and hurl herring.

The chandlery also has a notice board advertising boats and other nautical stuff for sale, like boats, all in various conditions but all offering the chance to be the master of your own craft and destiny. It also advertised Wells beach huts for sale, which is how I found out that they cost sixty grand a pop. Sixty thousand pounds. For a shed. On stilts. For sixty grand I'd expect not just cooking and sanitations facilities, I'd be looking for broadband and a butler.

Postcard from Norfolk – Farm Shop

A few minutes' drive from the cottage is the local farm shop. One one side sits the orchards that grow the apples sold in the shop, on the other side are the Pick Your Own crops, with strawberries thoughtfully grown on tresses so one doesn't have to bend over.

The fruit and veg on sale looks good. It looks different to that sold in the supermarket for a few reasons. The first is that, like all farm shop food, there is the occasional vegetable that does not conform to the supermarket aesthetic, looking either like a prop from a sci fi film, or a prop from a porn flick.

The second reason is that the fruit and veg is authentically dirty. My tip is to make sure that you knock the larger clods of muck off of your potatoes before you get them weighed.

It was very busy, with folk pulling in and stocking up on this and that. A group of very posh looking blokes travelling in a BMW (middle class fancy gentlemen rather than gangsters one thinks) were ahead of us in the queue and the shopkeeper managed to keep a straight face when announcing that the bill for their two bags of shopping was 'three hundred pounds please'. Oh the hilarity.

The owner did, however, redeem himself with a small notice he had placed next to the RNLI Christmas cards on sale, apologising for having Christmas cards on sale in October, but explaining that it was a good cause.

On weekends, a mobile fish shop parks up in the car park of the farm shop. Naturally, I ended up purchasing quite a lot of cockles. Of course, one could purchase 'the kit' in any garden centre, a fork, some wellies and a bucket, but cockling looks like something of an art, the art being knowing where he cockles are. Moreover, my pace when walking the beaches of Norfolk is a cross between 'amble' and 'meander', what ive observed of cocklers leads me to believe that one must stride out with purpose.

Returning to the cottage, I collected some kindling for the woodburner.

I do not get on with woodburners. There is no point in having a fire that you cannot poke and, whatever safety or efficiency measures putting doors on the front of a fire might add, what they detract in terms of pokability make them more a frustration than a feature. When in Norfolk on a cottage holiday a real fire is important, when I unpack after the holiday I expect all of my clothes to smell of woodsmoke and I expect myself personally to reek like an Arbroath smokie. Woodburners are not romantic, one may as well cuddle up in front of a radiator, which produces an unfortunate, and not terribly romantic image, for anyone familiar with the Beirut hostage crisis in the eighties.

As it was, we were lucky to get the thing working at all, some genius had removed the handle that opens the front of it and it took the holiday cottage people a week to sort the issue. Luckily, last week was the week of the unexpected heat wave and so the fire wasn't needed. But it's the principle.

Kindling is, I should say,available for sale everywhere. But I balk at having to pay for the stuff when it's available for free on the ground if you can be bothered to stop, bend over and pick it up. Firewood is a little more problematic, but we do have a building site a few cottages away an I've noticed plenty of pallets stacked up. This might be an option for a dead of night pallet raid, although one has to be prepared to put up with watery eyes from the creosote burning.

Postcard from Norfolk – Hoste party

The Hoste pre-pre-pre-pre (sounds like the call of a sand warbler) Christmas party is, essentially, a glamorous way to bridge the gap between sitting outside getting hammered on wine and sitting by a cosy fire inside getting hammered on gin. Last year the party was to raise money for Burnham Market's Christmas lights, and nothing sends people to the bar as regularly as drinking in a good cause. This year there was no good cause, but there was drinking and there was a theme.

And the theme was: old and new. The middle class, middle aged folk had arrived in good time to sensibly secure seats as far as possible from the excellent live music so that they could converse and drink freely. The younger crowd, who appeared to be local girls in spray-on dresses, stood around in groups listening attentively to the live singer, drinking blue cider and waiting until the DJ started before heading to the dance floor to bop enthusiastically to the sort of music they play on Radio 2, but played LOUD! I love a disco in a village, nothing appears quite so loud, not a metal festival, not an accident in a bell foundry, not the sort of seismic event that causes birds on the neighbouring continent to take flight. The music was pleasingly thumping and set off feedback howl in the hearing aids of the older folk.

This was also the first night to get some patio heater practice in. Patio heater proximity placement is something of an art, and one I have not mastered. Essentially one has to stand so near them to get any benefit that simply by turning your head towards them you can light your fag, while the side facing away is simultaneously chilled by being on the dark side of the patio heater.

Folk had dressed up for the evening, and I saw my first pair of cashmere shorts on a live person. Hitherto, I had only seen them displayed on mannequins in shop windows. Leggy mannequins, long mannequins. The lady who had chosen to wear them was not, I fear, what the designer had in mind; a tall teen with one of those sets of legs that don't touch until they connect at the pelvis. Shall we just say 'brave' and leave it at that.

Also wearing shorts, small silver ones, were the male staff of the Hoste, who joined in the fun on the dance floor and shook their thang with the guests. It was very much last days of Rome meets disco.

All in all a corking night. Disco, drinking, shorts and, also, shots. Last year the jelly vodka shots were a pound a shot and handed round by girls in Vegas showgirl costumes. This year there was no money raising so instead they were arranged in a pyramid shape, dozens and dozens of vodka jelly shots available for free, and because they were free, nobody was touching them - or maybe it was because they were not being handed round by Vegas showgirls. Once you've been handed your vodka jelly shot by a Vegas showgirl, it's very difficult to go back to having to serve yourself. Difficult but, I can assure you, not impossible - and it gets easier with practice.

Postcard from Norfolk – Holme-Next-The-Sea - night of the otter

Lying in bed, in the dark, sensations, and fears, are somewhat magnified. As once wisely stated by Bill Watterson, night time is dark to allow you to worry without distraction. My particular concern last night was that the cottage was going to blow over. While the wind did not quite howl and shriek like a banshee (I understand Irish cottages have the monopoly on that) it did moan like a sulky teen, and there was the occasional high pitch whine as a gust picked at the vents in the double glazing.

I was wondering for a few moments if this was the Norfolk version of the end of the world. This is an area famous for flooding and a stiff onshore breeze combined with a high tide can be trouble. Luckily, despite the darkness and the holiday quantities of wine I had taken on board, I was able to make the connection between the view directly out to sea, the exposed position and all of the bloody wind farms dotted around the horizon and realise that this was, in fact, situation normal.

The only excitement came when, from the bathroom, came a noise exactly like little mouse claws scrabbling on the sides of the bath. Oh no! Scrabble scrabble! Upgrade from mouse to rat. Scrabble SCRABBLE! Crikey, sounds like an otter. SCRABBLE SCRABBLE! Badger, there's a badger in the bath! I sprang into action, ready to set to with a brush, mop or TB, whatever it is that badgers are intimidated by.

Putting on the light convinced that something was in the bath, I was surprised to see it empty. Oh no! The badger is out! Then rain-pitter pattering against the velux window with, in my defence, exactly the sound of a scrabbling rodent, solved the mystery. All that remained was to head back to bed and wait for my heart rate to return to normal. This took until dawn.

The next day was ideal for a stroll round the village. Holme qualifies as a village because it has the trinity of village requirements, pub, post box and telephone box. Oh, and a church.

The church was in fact rather lively, it was reached by walking past the pub's garden, where the winds of last night had redistributed the gaily coloured plastic patio furniture on the green grass in quite an attractive fashion.


We were all set to take a look inside the church when the Wedding March struck up, and then the bells began to peal, and then the bride and groom exited the church! It was a fabulous day for a wedding and everyone looked very pleased and excited, just as wedding parties should.


Wandering along the lane, we heard behind us the distant buzz of a scooter, turning, we were confronted by the vicar astride his moped, crash helmet on and cassocks billowing as he sped past at a mighty twenty miles an hour. From the look of expectant determination on his face one can conclude that nothing gives a priest a thirst quite like a wedding.

Looping back to take a look at the now empty and rather gorgeous church, I hit upon a realisation - if you are going to get married, make sure you do it at Harvest Festival time, because the church looks fabulous. As long as you don't mind the odd vegetable wound into the flower arrangements, you won't have to worry about anything apart from bouquet and buttonholes, and if you make sure your florist knows to weave some barley into the arrangements, you'll co-ordinate beautifully and save yourself a fortune.

If you do need fruit, it's available from many of the roadside stalls that line the roads in the village. Many of them have little roofs to keep the worst of the elements off and remind one a little of those roadside shrines that one sees in Greece, except they lean less to candles and rather more to honesty boxes made of Tupperware and cox's pippins in plastic bags.

Steve Jobs R.I.P

Sad news today that Steve Jobs, top man at Apple and Messiah figure to the high priests, acolytes and devotees of the cult of Apple, has passed away. I wonder how many people, like me, found out the news while browsing the internet with Safari on their iPhone.

Film fans have their screen stars, music fans have their pop stars, geeks had Steve Jobs – who was a film star, a rock and roll god and techhie guru rolled into one. There’s no doubt that the Apple brand is, at the moment, all conquering, given the expense of the iphone their ubiquity is astonishing. Less expensive but more common is the iPod in its various guises. These days it’s odd to see somebody on a train without the tell-tale white wires disappearing into a pocket.

The close association between Jobs and the creation, and then revival of, Apple means that he’s probably linked more than any other individual to something that it would appear everyone carries around with them, whether they realise it or not.

From the images that accompanied the headline it appeared that little shrines had sprung up outside Apple stores. Apple fans are. Of course, no strangers to keeping vigil outside a store, although usually it’s because of the birth, or at least the release, of something rather than the demise of somebody. Rock and rollers have their shrines, like Jim Morrison’s in Paris, they even have their temporary shrines, like the bouquets, bottles and fags and candles left outside Amy Winehouse’s flat so it was entirely appropriate that Apple fans should leave offerings of apples with bites taken out of them or even messages written on them, along with their candles flickering on the screens of their iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

Of course, everyone knows that geeks have a strong sentimental streak. Want to make one cry, just say ‘you have been, and always will be, my friend’ and have the tissues ready.

Goodbye Steve, and thanks for some truly amazing gear that really did transform lives. I’m not saying that the decision to ask my wife to marry me was entirely related to her buying me an iMac…but I’m not saying it was entirely unrelated either.

Postcard from Norfolk – Holme-Next-The-Sea

An entire day spent in the cottage. That's right, given that we have endless beaches, shopping opportunities and not one but two enthusiast run steam railways within easy reach, we decide to spend the day in the cottage.

This is, in part, due to a new mania for jigsaw puzzles, or rather, one particular jigsaw puzzle that we took on holiday. I've never really seen the point of jigsaw puzzles, if one likes a picture, I can't see why having to assemble it from a thousand different components adds to the enjoyment. As an act of creation for an artwork, it seems to have all of the frustrations of actually painting something, without the benefit of that past time being a legitimate excuse to study naked women (although one can stretch this too far I guess, as having a pad and pencil is no defence after being discovered wedged into a locker in a woman's changing room at the gym).

Of course, after clicking the second piece into place and confidently predicting 'I can do this in an hour', the competitive juices start to flow and that gaming see-saw of frustration/accomplishment/frustration/accomplishment that has made Nintendo and others an awful lot of money takes over.

I have learned to greatly admire the elegance of the jigsaw. This one is of a painting of London, looking along the Thames. There are famous bridges and famous buildings and flags and cabs and red busses. It's rather marvellous to place the Union flag in the right place, and oddly satisfying to fit together four pieces of uniform blue sky.

So the day was spent gently clicking. And listening to albums. It's been years since I have listened to an album. Back in the days before the iTunes Store allowed you to cherry pick good tracks off of albums, iTunes let you build playlists. Before that one could use the track select on CDs to play the same track over and over - 'Low' by REM about 147 times if you had just broken up with somebody was I think the standard against which all other 'just one more time' plays were judged. But before that to select a track that was not track one, side one or two, meant carefully lifting and placing the stylus on the record, and who had the patience for that?

Tape counters? Yea, right, who had the energy and skill to whizz the tape back and forth looking at a counter? No, it was lift and play or nothing.

So it was really refreshing to listen to entire albums, a real luxury.

Finished the jiggy at half one in the morning.

During the day there was activity. The cottage is reached by a gravel road that runs on to a bird watching point, and there was a steady scrunch of bird watchers going back and forth, that intensified around six and at dusk (dawn and seek being the best time to watch birds as they are at their most active, six being a time everyone is out of work and doing a bit of birding before heading home).

We, meanwhile, we're busy watching the birds in the back garden, when we were not making tea, puzzling or bickering about who's choice it was to select the next album. The main residents seemed to be a pheasant and his harem, who spent the day lazily wandering around, waiting for the next pear to fall from the tree in the back garden, and some sort of sea bird that was so large that when it perched on top of the shed, I was simultaneously worried about whether the thing would keep standing, and excited about cornering the market in kindling.

There was also much excitement at the arrival of the post man, who dropped off letters at the house next door, racing along the gravel road in a manner that suggested he had a crash helmet, sponsorship ('Royal Mail' was written on the side if his van) and a bloke next to him bellowing 'left, right, easy left, hard right, fuuuuuuuuuucccccccck-tree! in Norwegian.

Postcard from Norfolk – Cley-Next-The-Sea and Holt

Cley-Next-The-Sea is a small, charming village sitting on salt marshes on the coast. It's home to some locals, a pub, a pottery, a smoke house, an art gallery, a remarkably overpriced deli, a windmill and a bookshop with an owner who is a registered pervert. It's very popular with bird watchers, because the shingle beach and marshes are very popular with birds. Both flock to the village.

It's also the village I normally stay in when I'm in Norfolk, so it was odd to return as a visitor rather than a resident. Parking up at the village hall, it was good to see that the Scottish country dancing was still going. Scottish country dancing is to villages in England what salsa classes are to the cities, something that combines exercise and movement to music and has that exotic touch of foreign glamour and danger.

It was odd to park up at the village hall rather than just continue on to our usual cottage and there was an urge to see what interlopers were staying there (and possibly spend a relaxing few minutes chopping wood. There's nothing like chopping wood to relax you and relieve stress. If ever I get round to opening my man-spa, it will have a wood chopping room), and demand tea...and explain that one builds the fire just so, and pokes it there, there and the for maximum satisfaction.

If one has a lot of money to invest, one can visit the gallery. If one has an awful lot of money, one can visit the deli and discuss the purchase of a loaf of bread or, if your occupation is 'oligarch', open negotiations on a pork pie. But I always head to the pottery shop 'Made in Cley'. Is this the only example of a middle-class shop name pun? Such puns are normally encountered with hair salons, where a stylist running a business on the first floor of a parade of shops might call their store 'a cut above' and consider it Wildeian. I suppose in comparison to somebody called 'Carol' calling their place 'Carol's', it is. And it made me titter. Then again, so does 'a cut above'.

The place sells some pretty stuff, and some pretty ugly stuff. The thing about pottery is that for a lot of people, it mans 'traditional'. And 'traditional' means something looking like it has been dug up on an excavation of a monastery, and currently sitting on a table awaiting cleaning by a student with a toothbrush.

I bought a couple of goblets that did not look as though they had ever been used in a monastery, but might have spent some time in an inn in Middle Earth. They are from the light blue and white school of colouring, rather than ecclesiastical dark brown covered in privvy clay, with the three bands of blue reflecting the sky, sea and landscape that makes up any Norfolk horizon.

All that shopping works up a thirst. Recommended is 'The Feathers' in Holt. This traditional in sprawls across a number of levels and offers that most traditional, and least common, of English pub services - a warm welcome. Folk suck down pints or a coffee with equal pleasure. There is always somebody eating a bowl of hot chips and, most traditional of all, there is free wi-fi. I'm not sure if it's the pub's own wi-fi, because the pub is situated on the high street and backs onto a courtyard with lots of little businesses meaning that when you open your settings function to detect wi-fi options, you are presented with half a dozen options. Just go for the one with no password and away you go. 'Good beer, good food, good connectivity' as they say.

Finished the day with afternoon tea at Morston Hall. One has to book ahead and I was wondering just how much trouble it can be to arrange a pot of tea, an egg sandwich and a scone until afternoon tea was brought to our table and realised there was a little more to it than that. On a triple-decker cake stand the top plate contained the triple-decker sandwiches, the middle plate the tea cakes and scones (separate plate for jam, cream, butter, defribulator and so on) and the bottom plate the tarts and indigestion remedies.


The afternoon tea was something special. Morston Hall was lovely, and very posh - when you turn on the tap in the gent's loo a blue light shines out of the tap illuminating the water and your hand - to think that all these years I have been washing my hands without the benefit of a blue light playing on my fingers. The only issue is that the average age of the clientele can only be determined by carbon dating. There are other places to go with a younger, (i.e. middle aged) customer base, and one can't help but thinking that such places (like the Flying Kiwi chain) are more likely to do adventurous things with oysters...although not in a bad way.

Postcard from Norfolk - Wells-Next-The-Sea

Wells-Next-The-Sea is experiencing an emposhment. It's the reverse of the process where high street shops close, or turn into charity shops, or fried chicken places that claim to be from southern states other than Kentucky. If a shop closes down in Wells, it is quickly replaced by one selling something lovely. The place has a (appropriately) tiny wee shop that sells doll house furniture, it's been there for years. What kind of a model business model works that well? Actually the shop is charming, as well as all the period stuff that people imagine in a dolls house, it's got little model plasma wide screen tellies and so on. I love the idea of a modern dolls house.

It's got everything a small town needs. It's got a grocery that sells everything, it's got a butcher, it's got two delis and loads of pubs, it's even got a shop that sells fishing tackle, crab lines, and guns! Fantastic, frustrated at not having caught anything? Pick up a pistol and unload that bad boy into the harbour like some piscine gangland drive-by.

It's home to French's, which is the best fish and chip shop in the world, and the Crown, which has seen off some pretty stiff competition to become my go-to pub of choice when in the area. It's big which means it doesn't get crowded, it's posh which means there is champagne by the glass and it has a huge sofa where one can stretch out and relax, all that's missing is a remote and a telly.

And because it's Norfolk, everyone has dogs, meaning that all of the pubs and the shops have dog bowls outside them so that when the dog owners are inside, the dogs tethered up outside an have a drink. The only place that doesn't have a dog bowl outside it is the pet shop, which has two dog bowls. In addition, the pet shop had the usual pet stuff for sale lined up outside the shop, which is what the merchants do with their wares in Wells. Placing a bird feeder along with the stock had probably seemed like a natural thing to do, sending a firm 'bird feeders for sale, more inside' message. To the local bird population however, the message was 'free food!'. Maybe the pet shop owner was counting on the crowds in the high street deterring the timid wildlife, in which case she had miscalculated just how bold the local avian population can get if there's the chance of a free meal, and then a bathe in a handy dog bowl.

The high street was busy though, everybody doing a sort of slow wander up one side, then down the other, or zig zagging from shop to shop, drawn to the displays depending on whether their interest is in art, books, meat or really large wheels of cheese. The high street is a jolly place to wander in generally, stretching as it does from the quay up a hill to the buttlands, that small square of green where folk used to practice their archery and home to three excellent pubs. Obviously feathering beer barrels gave you a thirst. The high street was festooned with bunting when I visited, no special occasion that I could work out, just bunting for the hell of it. Bunting does make a street look jolly and it makes you wonder why you don't see more?

Wells is also home to a fabulous beach and a string of beach huts. These come in a variety of shapes, sizes and ages and many, many different colours but all conform to the 'shed on stilts' school of architecture. A new feature this year is a 'to be raised' sign adorning the sheds that are apparently not on stilts. Obviously there are stilts under there somewhere, but the beach has risen and the sand now creeps around the doorway. New huts are put up to replace those that have finally fallen victim to the elements and one wonders how long it is before these will have to be raised too, the alternative is to mount them on stilts at some nosebleed inducing altitude, not really an option as nobody wants to spend their day at the beach in a beach watchtower, knackered from the climb up the steps.

Still, keeps the local beach hut specialist restorer and builder busy.

Postcard from Norfolk - Burnham Market

Just driving over the parish boundary into Burnham Market increases your social class by several tiaras*. It is home to quite a lot of weekend people, but during the week the bustle is provided by shoppers drawn to its lovely shops, selling lovely things, at lovely and occasionally eye-watering prices. Make no mistake though, the shops are also catering for the locals. While you can buy lovely shiny twinkly things in Norfolk Living you can also buy a lovely shiny washing tub in the local hardware shop. It has to be said though, the opportunity to blow a load of cash quickly exists here.

Take Wellington boots. Wellington boots should be purchased from a tub out front of a shop. They should be plastic and be good for standard Wellington boot use until one of two things happen, either they spring a leak or, as a result of an over-ambitious or incautious paddle, they are swamped and they never quite dry out or smell the same afterwards. They should not cost a hundred quid, not even if they have little straps on the side to aid pulling up. The only time a pair of Wellington boots should cost a hundred quid is when they are attached to the hooker you are playing out your Jilly Cooper fantasies with.

It's a lovely village with lovely shops, many of which still have the lovely habit of closing for lunch. It is interesting to wander over to the door of a shop that looks like a likely place to pick up a twinkly trinket or panoramic postcard and be confronted by a locked door and a small cardboard sign explaining 'closed for lunch, back at two'.

The quality of the cardboard signs vary. The one in the stationary shop was, as one might expect, on lovely white card, while the one in the window of the counter of the post office situated in the newsagents was a classic of its kind, a flap ripped from a brown cardboard box, with the corrugation showing along the edge and the message written in biro, with each line of each letter stroked a few times for emphasis and legibility. Both signs share one characteristic, one corner so slightly discoloured from daily handling as, at twelve fifty nine, they are fetched from their resting position and popped up against the glass.

In such circumstances the only sane response is to repair to The Hoste Arms for a pint or two of lunch yourself.

When the shops are open, the shopping is good. There's a good fishmonger, a great butcher, a fabulous second hand book shop and the opportunity to buy some great clothing. One of the shops persisted in selling cashmere shorts, but my interest was in shop selling hats, appropriately, upstairs. While I was distracted for a moment with a fur lined flying helmet/deerstalker combination, the greatest temptation came in the form of a Stetson brand hat, more or less like the one Indiana Jones wears. Not sure if my eventual decision to put the hat back and back away slowly was the right one, but it was informed by the fact that I have an almost identical one at home.

Of course I should have bought it. One cannot have too many Indiana Jones style hats.

The village is the home of the Brazen Head book shop. If one were to picture a second hand book shop, this would be the image called to mind. At the front of the shop are the old childrens' books, Rupert the bear annuals and Enid Blyton, then through to penguins and on to genres, upstairs for non-fiction. Books stacked up higgildy-piggledy, newish, oldish, antique. Careful browsing yielded a really rather nice Pan edition of an M. R. James book, and a book by Tom Woolf that I'd never heard of. The 1970s cover of the Tom Wolf book is of a pair of ladies legs, crossed. Nothing quite like a cover like that to suggest to everyone on the train that you are reading vintage porn.

Books in one hand, laptop in the other, it was time to sit outside the Hoste and have a refreshing pint of lunch. It was another very mild day, though not so crowded as everyone was now back at work. It used to be that one sat outside the pub to enjoy the fresh air but now, of course, one has anti-smoking laws and the tables outside are where all the puffers come to indulge their filthy little habit, secure in the knowledge that anyone drinking at lunchtime is unlikely to look down on anyone indulging a craving.

The tables were thankfully free of smokers, who were presumably in the pub getting their fix from the secondary smoke of the wood fire, and I sat there reading and poncing off the pubs wi-fi in the traditional manner before a few spots of rain drove me inside.

As per usual, there was a dog owner in the bar, unusually the dog in question was a pug. Is there any dog as ridiculous as the pug? This example was one of those with a one-dimensional face. Eyes, nose, mouth, all occupied a totally flat plane. Even its tongue did not poke out or loll, but curled backwards like an unblown party streamer, it had that asthmatic pug breathing that leads one to believe that the breed actually breath through their arses.

Burnham Market is lovely. It's so lovely that it makes Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds look like a sink estate. It's true that it's full of cars, and tourists and people who only occupy their second homes at the weekend, but the are real people here too, real shops and real shopkeepers with a real need to eat lunch. I think as long as it retains that, and the pub, all is not lost.

* The tiara is the unit social class is measured by. Can’t be cars or property or, god forbid, money. Comes down to this, can you wear a tiara and carry it off? Yes, congratulations, your social class is measured at one tiara and you probably have a title, some land and pretty firm views on immigration. The tiara scale is different to most units of measurement in that the vast majority of it is firmly at the minus end of the scale.

Postcard from Norfolk - Hunstanton

Saturday saw Wells crowded with folk enjoying one last weekend of summer sunshine (in October!) before the onset of winter, heralded by the first appearance in supermarkets of Christmas advent calendars. I have no issue with Christmas stuff going on sale early, it helps families spread the cost of an expensive season but, if you are going to sell advent calendars in October, have ones with three months worth of countdown doors on them, let’s start building the excitement and winter-weight early.

So, hoping to dodge if not the crowds then at least the traffic, I headed west for a few minutes into Hunstanton. ‘Sunny Hunny’ is famed on the coast because through a quirk of geography, it faces West, meaning it’s the only resort on the coast you can enjoy the sunset from without having to turn around or something. Certainly, the sunset last night was spectacular, I enjoyed it through the bottom of a wine glass in a desperate attempt to keep cool through constant application of cold white wine from the fridge. It worked. I think. Consulting the notes of my experiment my handwriting deteriorates sharply after a few glasses for some reason.

Hunstanton was, to use a tourist board term ‘busy’. The seafront was lined with cars and the sunbathers were lined with tattoos. In part, the cars were parked on the seafront because parking there is free, but also because all the car parks were full. In the end, we parked up at Tesco (as it was free, I was expecting the parking bays to be marked out with blue and white stripes; every little helps!) and walked into town.

The grassy parks, normally picturesque triangles of green in the centre of town, were now a modernist mix of green and pinky red as those who did not have enough energy to get to the beach, or who decided they wanted to be close to the attractions of the town (chips!) chose to relax in the parks and gardens along the seafront.

In Norfolk, everyone has a dog. This is because walking is the regional pastime and its best enjoyed with a dog, not because a good walk is made better if you have to carry a small bag of dog poo with you to the nearest red bin, but because walking on your own makes you look like a serial killer, a rambler, or a rambling serial killer.

Gundogs and hounds are favourites, they come when they are called and lope in an attractive, relaxed way when on the beach. Before depositing half of it in the back of their owner’s car. I know some dog owners who have to empty the sand and seaweed out of their cars with a trowel after a week of walking their dog on the beaches here. Terriers, too, find favour and not just with women but with men who are not afraid to be seen with them, because while a terrier in an urban environment is basically a yap on a lead, out here they fly across the beach like wind-up toys, bark with alarm at something (such as a wave, a seashell or a washed up bottle) and then bolt back to their master before doing it all again. They are also excellent for sorting out anything nasty in the woodpile.

In Hunstanton though, the locals and visitors seemed to favour breeds more muscle than brains, the sort of thing that one normally sees guarding a crack den, or fighting in a gypsy encampment.

Like Wells, Hunstanton has a little train. Unlike Wells, theirs does not run on rails but rather is some sort of converted milk float affair, painted a jolly, and very bright, yellow, pulling a train of carriages that also resemble milk floats, but with passengers rattling round in the back nested of bottles. Like Wells, the owners could have benefited from adding a couple of carriages. Hunstanton has a long sea front and it's a pleasant walk but an even more pleasant ride.

The bright yellow road train is something of a local landmark, even featuring on postcards. Obviously, when something is that striking (and that yellow) the only reaction is to embrace it. Hunstanton used to have a proper railway station, it's how the hoards of tourists used to get here for their holidays before the car became the popular mode of transport and unpopular clutterer of villages that it is today and so any link to that heritage, no matter how tangential, remains popular, this explains the little train and the signal in the town car park where the station used to be.

So popular is the train that I think for the next season the should think about developing it, nothing creates a profit on a train quite like first class accommodation, although a sleeper service along the coast to Cromer might be pushing it a bit.

It was good to see the town so busy, with the traders making the most of this unexpected end of season trade. As the tourists made the most of the late sunshine, the traders made the most of the late rush and anywhere that sold coffee or chips was doing very well. The little corner bakery that I stopped in at had a coffee shop tacked onto the side, and onto the pavement, and had discovered that core requirement of all good coffee shops, the twenty first century equivalent of a teenage girl in an awkwardly formal waitress uniform (although it had those too); free wifi. The password to the network for customers was, charmingly, not handed out like some secret code or printed on a till receipt (a hangover from the bad old days of having to buy your Internet by the half hour) but chalked on the blackboard along with the specials of the day. Casual passers-by who were not customers were deterred from using it by the simple feature of it being about fourteen characters long. Genius! By the time I had entered it correctly on my third attempt, I was more than ready for my coffee.

Hunstanton caters for the bucket and spade brigade, there’s plenty of shops selling beach essentials (windbreaks and so on), and the fun-fair was in full swing, the thrill rides being enjoyed by those unaware or uncaring about the effects that salt corrosion can have on the load bearing metal struts of a roller coaster. The odd thing is that there’s no tat end and posh end, rather the two co-exist in the town with a seasidy atmosphere that is the result of more than a receding tide and vinegar splashing on hot chips. The rest of the coast may be painted a soft sedge green, but Hunstanton is pink lit by neon and funfair bulbs, and gloriously so.

Postcard from Norfolk - Wells-Next-The-Sea

The first day of October 2011 and the British weather is unseasonable to the point of unreasonable. Shorts and sandals are pulled out of the wardrobe for one last outing, barbeques are pressed into service once again as the air is filled with the smell of lighter fluid, charcoal and the smell of a million grills that were put away uncleaned after their last use, as temperatures reached those more closely associated with sunburn, binge-drinking and ill-thought-out holiday romances in some Mediterranean resort.

One of the great pleasures of being on holiday in Britain in October is that you get the place to yourself. That’s the deal, you will put up with occasional ‘dull’ days (on holiday lashing rain pushed ahead of gale force winds is never ‘foul weather’, it is simply ‘dull’) and in return not only do you get to see a different side of whatever resort you are visiting (that side usually being the ‘closed’ side of any seasonal attraction’s welcome sign) but you have your holiday experience heightened because you know that every other bugger is hard at work while you rise at the crack of ten, have a bit of a scratch and wonder what pub you are going to visit for a pint or two of lunch before fortifying yourself for the evening’s revels with an afternoon nap. There are no queues, no crowds, no parking problems and no issues getting served at the bar or the chippie.

So, in holiday mode (not thinking), I set off to Well-Next-The-Sea with the intention of topping up on some shopping and taking a walk on the beach.

The first sign that something was out of the ordinary was the crowd at the ‘station’. Wells beach is reached from the town by a charming little narrow gauge railway, which if it were any smaller would be mounted on chipboard in some lucky boy’s bedroom. This takes the tourists who cannot be faffed with the half hour walk from town to beach out to a little station situated in the caravan park by the beach. In October, it doesn’t run. Odd then that there are many, many people waiting, like the world’s most relaxed and ill-dressed commuters.

The little train was running. There were crowds walking along the path to the beach. Wells was mobbed.

In retrospect, I should have guessed that record high temperatures would have drawn everyone in Norfolk and, by the look of it, everyone in East Anglia, to the seaside. Still, there was a huge car park on the beach, surely that couldn’t be…ah. The car park was beyond full, there was a queue down the beach road to get into it. This is a car park that is usually so empty you can practically park on the beach.

Taking the attitude that I did not come on holiday to wait for a train, queue in traffic or endlessly circle a car park looking for a space (all things I come on holiday to stop doing), I turned around and we headed back to the cottage, where there was a beach three minutes walk from the front door that did not require queuing in traffic or a fixed light rail route to reach.

Thinking about the railway, the operator missed a trick this weekend. Looking at the crowds on the station and those who took the option to walk, it was clear that anyone who felt they could walk to the beach was already lithely striding along the headland, while anyone who waddled rather than strode had decided to take the train option. This means that all it took was one or two passengers to get into one of the wee carriages and there was already an overcrowding problem. The train people should have thrown a couple of extra carriages on to the end of the train (possibly requiring another engine) and, more importantly, stuck a dining car on there too, ideally selling chips. They’d have made a fortune.

We didn’t see the queue for the chippie but I strongly suspect it was like one of those you see in emerging democracies when all of the population turns out to vote for the first time.

Back at the cottage at Holme-Next-The-Sea, our holiday home really is next the sea. Three minutes takes you from the front door to the beach, and that’s the indirect route, respecting the back garden of the people next to the cottage. The route to the beach takes one between the 10th and 11th hole of Hunstanton Golf Club’s course. Signs implore you to check left and right for low flying golf balls, experience suggests that one should also check for golf clubs being hurled in anger by golfers swearing off the bloody game forever. This adds a certain charm and danger to the beach walk, and that to a certain extent is what sets Norfolk apart.