Postcard from Norfolk - Llama drama

Ever wondered why there were so many churches on the North Norfolk Coast?  Apparently, it’s all to do with an ostentatious display of wealth.  Before expensive divorces and second wives, wealthy businessmen used to spend their money endowing churches.  This achieved the triple whammy of showing everyone how successful you were, ensuring your name is remembered for posterity by having a family pew (remembered for posterior?) or a stained glass window and, of course, getting on the Fast track to heaven.

Wool, it would appear, used to be big business and the North Norfolk coast is ideally suited to tourism, and stupid white things who basically just stand around all day chewing, well, anything.  It was also easier to get your goods to Europe than it was London, thanks to conveniently located sea.

Apparently, people also got rich by piracy, smuggling and subjugating the agricultural workforce, but sheep make for a better subject for a picture in a window.

Today if you want to get rich on North Norfolk you, as far as I can determine, paint your food stall or café that blue/green sedge colour that everyone round here is nuts for, write the word ‘jus’ after every dish on your menu, and charge a fortune.  By the way, ‘locally sourced’ does not, as far as I am aware, mean obtained at the big Tesco in Hunstanton.

But there is still wool here.  Not so much for the sheep, who are pastured in the salt marshes with a view to becoming essentially self-seasoning main courses, but from the llamas.  OK, so there are only half a dozen of them in a field in Wells, but they do make a sight.

Christ alone knows what they make of Wells.  You don’t get much more sea-level than North Norfolk and for an animal used to living at altitude, like athletes in training or chalet maids, it must be something of a surprise to breath the fragrant air of the coast.  Not that they seem to mind.  In fact they don’t seem to mind anything.  Not even people taking pictures of them.

I’m not a huge fan of wildlife photography.  I can barely get friends or family to sit still long enough to take a photograph, and have no patience, so my snapshots of wildlife essentially consists of animals wandering away disinterestedly (although, oddly, one of my photographs was once used in a book about animals, so it just goes to show there’s a market for everything, even pictures of shy pigs).

That said, I enjoy the llamas of Wells-next-the-Sea.  Watching their owner (or a really, really confident looking rustler) walking them along the pavement is a joy to behold.  And it’s lovely to see an elegant creature up close, and downwind.

Black dogs

Steerforth, Dickens’s dark and moody fatally flawed hero, referred to that not-quite-afternoon/not-quite-night period of a Sunday twilight as a dreadful, mongrel time of day.  Of course, Steerforth resided in an age when gentlemen spent their Sunday pms indoors in gloomy rooms, watching the sky gradually get darker, lounging on a sofa, and having floppy hair, all key contributors to a gloomy mood in an age when the only distraction available was poking the fire, and even then you had the servants do that.  (Poking the servants on the Sabbath was frowned upon).
In these more enlightened times, Sunday evenings mean ‘Countryfile’, where a gurning twat in a fleece holding a lamb is all the assurance you need that things go better when you’re perky.  For the modern gentleman, thanks to Jamie Oliver, the period of noon to bedtime is spent, if you really know what you’re doing, in the kitchen preparing, then cooking, then consuming, some sort of roast bird, whilst others are left to wonder why your marinade requires two bottles of surprisingly really rather decent Australian merlot.
Churchill fought depression as keenly as he fought the Nazis, calling his gloomier periods ‘black dog days’.  If ever a man had an excuse for being a little very dark blue now and again, it was surely the man leading the lonely fight against a truly evil foe in the darkest days of the war.  Churchill knew then what we all know now, if the Nazis had won, there would be no ‘Countryfile’.  The Nazis famously abhorred brightly coloured fleeces, lambs and perkiness of any sort.
It’s unkind, and unfair, to characterise depression as a canine feature.  Dogs may be many things, but they are not really an animal I associate with not being cheerful, especially when you show them a tennis ball.  In these days of NHS cutbacks, when people are seeing somebody they sincerely hope is actually their doctor via Skype, we’re probably a whisker away from having puppies prescribed rather than lithium as an antidepressant.
The most famous black dog is of course Black Shuck, the Norfolk Hell-hound the legend of which inspired ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.  Again, not an animal that one associates with depression.  Fear, terror and a tourist board wondering how to turn a folk tale into a plush toy, yes, depression, no.
Indeed apart from humans, it’s almost impossible to think of an animal that characterises depression.  Even that donkey from the Pooh stories has, thanks to the merchandising machine that is Disney, become a beloved toy cherished by toddlers everywhere.  Like all childrens soft-toys, as soon as it’s out of the carrier bag it becomes largely drool, but that’s a sign of affection surely.

Nature Notes - Dogsitting

When I agreed to dog-sit my sister’s sprocker (springer/cocker cross) and springer, my first action was to scour the web for gundog training aids.  The dogs are, it’s fair to say, unrivalled as treat-seeking furry missiles but I wanted to see whaat they could do with something aa bit more interesting than a distressed tennis ball.

There are many gundog training aids, from realistic looking stuffed birds to the basic bean bags that I went for.  The bean bag is designed to let your dog learn how to carry a bird without ripping it to bloody feathery shreds and it’s fair to say that they were something of a hit.  Essentially they are nylon socks that are incredibly robust, with a lanyard at one end.  This allows the owner to pick up what very quickly becomes a muddy, drooly training aid, give it a couple of twirls and then slingshot it across the field with an over-excited dog in hot pursuit.  Repeat until your arm falls off.

The only moment when I questioned whether the bean bag was a good idea was when, after a particularly hearty throw, neither I nor the dogs could find the damn thing.  It was eventually discovered hanging from a tree branch.  Obviously, if it had had a treat sewn into the lining, the dogs would have been on it in an instant.

It’s not that they are greedy, although they can sometimes appear to emulate Greyfriar’s Bobby in their unswerving devotion to sitting beside the kitchen cupboard where their treats are kept (much in the same way that I will linger near a beer fridge), but they are proof positive that food can be used as a training aid.  In this case, they have both learned where the smacko’s are kept.

The golden rule of throwing the dummy was never to toss it anywhere where you couldn’t see it land.  The dogs are tenacious in their pursuit of the dummies and won’t let small things like ponds, or sudden drops , put them off.

There is an art to throwing the dummy, and an art to getting the damn thing off of the dogs once they have retrieved it.  This involves just the right amount of cajoling and shouting and, if all else fails, bribing them with a treat.

Now all I need to find is a fluorescent pheasant and the dogs will be ready for action.  With advances in GM food being made the way they are, I’m confident I won’t have long to wait.

Nature Notes - Catquisition

‘Catnapping’ is such an ugly, emotive word, don’t you think?  That’s why what happened over the bank holiday weekend can much better be described as ‘catquisition’. 

Simply put, we seem to have acquired a cat.  Over the past few weeks we had noticed that the neighbour’s cat was asleep on the roof of our shed, then on the garden furniture.  How it crept steadily closer to the house like some sort of amazingly lazy stop-motion amble I’m not sure, because prior to this weekend I had never seen the thing awake, never mind moving.  Then at the weekend I was walking through the kitchen, stepped over the sleeping cat, got myself a drink and walked out again, once more stepping over the cat.  The cat, it would appear, had decided that the back door being open was an invitation to spend some time out of the hot sun sprawled on a cool kitchen floor.

The morality of this is quite straightforward, it is obviously wrong to steal somebody else’s’ cat.  But is it wrong to, well, offer them a bowl of water on a hot day?  The golden rule was that we would never ever feed the cat.  That evening, we were explaining to our guests round a crowded dinner table over the traditional blackened meat barbeque feast why there was a cat perched next to one of their children, being stroked and purring like an exceptionally contented outdoor motor.  Wine flowed and conversation progressed, the cat, as cats do, wandered around a bit, circulating.  We were explaining the golden rule when one of the guests, who had been bending over in his chair, straightened up with something of a guilty expression, and half a sausage in his hand.

I freely admit that until this point, most of my knowledge of cats came from Tom & Jerry cartoons so, sure, keep them away from frying-pan wielding mice, bulldogs and sassy black maids with brooms, but now that the cat had tasted free range pork sausage, I thought I had better learn a bit more, starting with are cats allergic to free range pork sausage. In case you are wondering, they are not, although they do get very agitated if you try and take their free range pork sausage away from them, but then so do I.  

The Field

Right!  This is it!  I’m serious this time.  I am absolutely not going to buy any more new books until I have read the ones I have bought but not read yet.  

That includes the ones that I purchased because I was going to read them on holiday.  In 2011.  Not only do I have a variety of books lying unopened and unread that I am looking forward to reading, I have also received books for Christmas from generous family.  I need to institute a strict reading programme and not get distracted by going into bookshops, coming over a bit giddy at the smell of the print, and exiting with an armful of new paperbacks.  Nor will I get pissed and go on Amazon.  These are distractions.

But that doesn’t apply to buying magazines, does it? 

No? 

Great!

That’s why it was quite legitimate to buy a copy of ‘The Field’.

‘The Field’ is an absolutely astonishing magazine.  It is all about hunting, shooting and fishing but, and this is the astonishing bit, it is unironic and unapologetic in its coverage of these matters.

I’ve long believed that because of a combination of desktop publishing and the cheap costs of printing, there is pretty much a magazine about every subject. 

Back in the day, there used to be things called ‘fanzines’, small circulation magazines produced by enthusiasts about various subjects (most famously music but also genre literature) printed on hand-operated presses using chemicals that, if used today, would get you onto some sort of watch list and, as I recall, used to result in an experience that made reading a fanzine one step away from glue sniffing. 

The advent of the internet allowed many people to move their interests on-line while the advent of computer composition for magazines enabled there to be more than one magazine published about, for instance, quilting, when one might reasonably assume that the natural number of magazines about quilting required in the world is one.  If that.

Depending on the social circle you move in, hunting shooting and fishing are either cruel, a bloody good weekend, or an excuse to wear a lot of tweed and drive a 4x4.  ‘The Field’ is for people who like their lives uncomplicated by moral choices about killing things.  This is because the people who read ‘The Field’ probably live in the country, and realise that in the county, things are red in tooth and claw to say the least and everything is out to get you.  When faced with an angry badger, shoot first, or the little bastard will savage you long before he manages to cough on you, infecting you with bovine TB and condemning you to life as a poet.

It is a little odd to read tales of slaughter told with such relish, and yet somehow attractive too.  It might be something of an exaggeration to describe a brisk bout with a trout as a ‘battle’, but it does readily convey the image of three hours in the blazing sunshine flogging yourself up and down a river with several pounds of angry fish on the other end of the line and nothing but upper body strength and, if all else fails, something your mate brought back from Afgan for you to fall back on, but it paints a picture.

My favourite article, even better than the pictures of naked posh birds taken from the type of charity calendars that young farmers like to crack one out to, is the reviews of the guns.  Guns are reviewed in ‘The Field’ the same way that cars are reviewed in other magazines, and cost about the same.

Reading about something written by an enthusiast is always a joy, and there’s a neat counterpoint when it’s written by people who think (rightly) that their way of life is under threat and yet shows, at the same time, that huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ are as alive and well today as they always have been, at least between the pages of the magazine.  One gets the feeling that people who own guns are rarely ambivalent in their opinion.  When you’re facing down a charging boar, it’s deeds, not thoughts, that count.

Postcard from Norfolk - Llama drama or other matter?

Wells is home to a small herd of llama, or alpaca. For most of the day they sit in a contented huddle in a field behind the church, looking exotic but, at five o’clock, their owner leads them from their pasture to, presumably, their overnight accommodation. This requires him to lead five haughty and frankly surly looking creatures along the pavement next to the road.

To say that the llamas (or alpacas) look skittish is an understatement. He does do a very good job of holding on to the reins of all five but one feels that if there was a concerted effort and a five way bolt for freedom, it would be chaos, South American style. The creatures manage to look both haughty and mad as a bag of bats at the same time and one feels that the whole herding process could get, literally, out of hand any moment.

For instance, if there were a problem, it would be a llama drama. If the problem caused upset to the beasts’ owner, then it would be a llama farmer in a llama drama. If somebody, in the midst of a stampede, attempted to hurt the beasts and the owner retaliated, might this not be a llama harmer and llama farmer in a llama drama? And off course, if a prominent television historian and a famous film director were visiting the region and were somehow involved in some sort of altercation with the beasts and their owner, then it would be Simon Sharma and Brian De Palma in a llama drama with a farmer.

If they are not llamas, then any unruly behaviour would merely be an alpaca fracas.

Awards, rewards, honours and disgraces - people of the year

It’s traditionally still just about the time of year where there are reviews of the past twelve months, and awards and honours are handed out to those that have made a positive contribution to society in general or the lives of the rich and influential in particular.

Here at G&P we, perhaps ironically, perhaps not, take a more egalitarian view about who and what should get an award or, shall we say, recognition. We are always pleased when somebody is honoured for outstanding contributions to the world of science, medicine or just having great hair, but do feel a little uncomfortable at the meaner awards and recognitions handed out by those who want to throw a spotlight on badness. This year, in particular, no such spotlight was needed, as bad behaviour was exposed in the full light of day.

So, in no particular order, the G&P awards for people of 2011 are:

Man of the year – lots of competition here, mainly in the shape of dead tyrants and terrorists who’s passing made the world either a better or simply a better groomed place. But without doubt G&Ps man of the year is Sconald MacDoon, the genius Glaswegian chef d’celebe who this year introduced the world to the hot scotch egg, a core of piping hot haggis surrounded by an egg, surrounded by whatever the hell it is that surrounds a scotch egg, and deep fried. The science has something to do with using the same technology that allows egg to be placed inside square pork pie and we understand that the hot scotch egg is to be official snack of the CERN team for 2012. Official snack for 2013 – Rennies.

Woman of the year – again, a year where women took centre stage, be it in CCTV footage showing a cat being placed in a wheelie bin (much more entertaining was the footage of the enraged cat being released) or Rebekka Brooks showing that you didn’t need to be smart or good looking in order to edit a national paper, all you needed was a readership slightly dimmer than you are. But the G&P woman of the year is Delcasier Fernandez, the Chipping Hombury housewife who, after a three year battle with her local council to have the street lights stay on longer and later to make the streets of her village safer for women, finally threw in the towel and instead opened a taser shop in the village. Sales have been brisk and in just three short weeks two flashers and a bloke who was out late hoping to see owls have been tasered in the goolies.

Animal of the year – while wheelie bin cat and Fenton (or to give him his full Kennel Club name ‘Fenton Fenton Jesus Christ Fenton Fenton Jesus Christ’) snatched headlines, G&P prefers to recognise working animals, be they the sniffer dogs that protect our troops in foreign parts, gun dogs of a different type that bring back the bird after a shoot, faithful hounds that savage hunt saboteurs or the weapon dogs that guard their masters’ crack dens. This year’s animal of the year is the regimental goat adopted by the Second Afgan Regiment of Foot as their mascot who, thanks to being tethered too close to a field kitchen one evening, was not just a source of regimental pride but also a sauce of regimental pride as, thanks to a bit of a cock-up in the catering department, ‘Belzie’ was served up as the winning dish in the regimental Masterchef cook-off the next day. Recipe available at www.passthesalt.co.af