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.

Postcard fron Norfolk - Quay Tea

Ponies on a beach.  A serene scene, one would imagine.

The thing about the countryside is that it is oh so very dark and oh so very full of strange noises, or rather, noises made strange by the dark.  Ignorance, imagination and some woodland creature innocently and nocturnally going about its business do not for a great night’s sleep make.  In the past I have been kept awake by, in no particular order; a banshee (turned out to be the wind), a badger in the bathtub (turned out to be rain on a skylight) and a fox apparently caught in wood chipper (turned out to be a fox caught in another fox).

This morning’s alarm call came courtesy of a pine cone falling off a tree and rolling down the roof.  So, the morning’s cardio routine out of the way, it was time for a walk on the beach.

But not before preparing a picnic.

I have, for several years now, been trying to track down the perfect picnic hamper and, like anyone in search of just the right something or other, have in the meantime been going without, while droning on at length about it.  I was coming to the conclusion that the only way to obtain the perfect hamper was to make one myself and had gone so far as to Google ‘basket waving’ and follow up with ‘not as therapy’, when I was fortunate enough to be given a picnic hamper.

I can tell it’s a picnic hamper because it is lined with gingham and has plastic glasses, plates and some cutlery inside, all cunningly secured with loops of elastic.  Gentleman and Player’s fashion editor did not appreciate the aesthetics of the thing.  It is, I have to concede, not a traditional picnic hamper, being made out of bamboo rather than wicker, but I think calling it ‘The Tenko Box’ was a little cruel.  Not unlike Tenko.

Now that I’ve used it however, I am developing a degree of affection for The Tenko Box.  This is largely, I recognise, affection by association, because it contained sandwiches and tea today and anything that produces sandwiches and tea is OK by me.

There was also a bold experiment in pic nic tea making, or rather, a return to the days of greatness.  Back in the seventies, I had an uncle whose idea of making a proper cuppa was to get out his camping gas stove, brew up some boiling water, and do the thing properly.  The man could brew up in the teeth of a gale and, as somebody who liked an al fresco cuppa on holiday in Scotland, usually did.  The decades gallop forward and I had got used to the convenience of flask tea, that is, tea in a flask allowed to stew and brew until when you drink it you can’t shake the suspicion that somebody has used the flask recently to store Bovril, or diesel, and has not rinsed it out properly.

Fast forward to earlier this summer and a long overdue breakthrough.  A large flask for boiling water, a smaller flask for milk and some teabags.  And so it was that with my two flasks and my teabag, I was able to brew up on the harbour wall what shall henceforth be known as ‘Quay Tea’.

Quay Tea was a resounding success, free of the tannins and criticism that formed so much of a feature of flask tea it actually tasted like, well, tea.

And very welcome it was too.  We had just done two hours on Holkham Beach, where the early start was put to good use in beating the crowd.  The beach was deserted apart from enthusiastic dog walkers, there enthusiastic dogs and horse riders with their skittish mounts.

I had not appreciated just how crazy horses are.  At least the ones on the beach were. Presumably they have seen water before, not least in troughs.  One would think from the reaction that splashing across a small stream provoked that their rider was urging them to swim the Amazon.  I thought it was just supposed to be witches that had a problem with crossing running water but no, apparently it’s horses too.  This may explain why witches ride brooms rather than ponies.

Out on the beach, back through the pines.  And what better way to get the old heart rate back up again then, in the middle of a lovely walk through the shady pines, suddenly recall every M R James story I’ve ever read.

Still, better that than Black Shuck.

Run!  Run back to the car and waiting Quay Tea and, if necessary, beat the spectral hound to death with the Tenko Box.

Site-specific folklore

But is there anything as deliciously British as site-specific folklore?

 Maybe pork scratchings.

Every country has its folklore. Britain is a haunted country with a spook and a story hiding behind every bush. Creepy old houses, stone circles and telephone boxes that smell slightly of wee and the paranormal are standard issue.

 Continental Europe specialises in grimmer folk tales, from the trolls of Scandinavia to the unhappy happenings in the dark forests of the interior. The United States has some cracking folklore, from native American superstitions those those from the modern age: crossroads, prairie campfires and spectral locomotives being especially popular.

As for the Far East, they have so many batshit crazy wailing ghosts that they have formed the lynchpin of the continent’s film industry.

That stories (or can we use the term ‘tales’ in this context? yes, yes I think we can) about strange events or weird happenings attach themselves to certain locations should be no surprise; let’s be pragmatic here, people are always looking for some way to attach fame to a location for sound commercial reasons.  If Queen Elizabeth I actually did sleep in as many historic houses, now conveniently converted into boutique hotels, as claimed in the brochures, it’s amazing that she found any time at all to get out of bed, put on a ginger wig and twat the Spanish.

It’s when the locals seek to play down a place’s association or reputation that the stories are likely to be authentic.

Britain leads when it comes to the sheer volume of weird tales in the haunted landscape. Sometimes you are forced to conclude that every postcode has its own legend. Possibly this is because you can’t go far in Britain without seeing a spooky house, an oddly shaped tree or a sinister looking alley, country lane or bus stop. But more likely it’s because of the proliferation of public houses and the treasured local custom of talking bollocks and teasing tourists.

There are places though, both ancient and modern, where it doesn’t take much to imagine strange or sinister things happening.  This can be a crooked country lane at dusk but can just as easily be a grimy underpass, especially if it smells of cider-pee and hoodie.

Deserted rural landscapes provide a happy home for local legends, like Black Shuck, the devil dog of the Fens.  Black dogs are a popular myth in East Anglia, seen as harbingers of death, but Black Shuck, an enormous spectral hound that haunts the North Norfolk coast, has the distinction of being the legend that, when recounted to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he was staying in Cromer, inspired him to write ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, although SACD relocated the action from Norfolk to Dartmoor, possibly at the bidding of the Dartmoor tourist board, or the Norfolk tourist board, it's not clear.

It’s natural enough to imagine a landscape soaked in blood and history as the home of spooky tales, real or invented, but because all folktales have to start somewhere I don’t see why modern landmarks shouldn’t have their own gruesome tales attached, even if there are fewer ‘heritage and culture centres’, or ‘pubs’ as they are also known, than there used to be for those stories to be invented, told and retold.  

For instance, canal towpaths are more than places where condoms are discarded and fishermen take refuge from their unhappy marriages, they can be genuinely spooky places when deserted at twilight, even if they are only a graveyard for shopping trollies. A road laybys can be spooky too, and not just because they are the evidence disposal site of choice for lorry drivers.  I know of at least three laybys where the smell of bacon sandwiches has been reported, even though there are no cafes present.

It takes a certain something for a site to cross over from being sad to spooky. Caravan sites, children's playgrounds and concrete corners that are strangers to sunlight can all seem forlorn, and can even be tipped into tragic through the simple edition of half a dozen petrol garage bouquets left there, but to become spooky they need time and imagination. Or maybe just an unexpected creak.

Norfolk notes - The Coast Hopper and other roadside advertising

The long ribbon of coastline that runs from Hunstanton in the West to Cromer in the East is well serviced by the busses that run back and forth along it, stopping at the villages, hamlets and occasionally just apparently hedges that dot the route.

There was, on this trip, ample opportunity to check out the front of the busses, usually when trying to squeeze round one at a coast road pinch point like Stiffkey, where one focusses very hard indeed upon the front of the bus currently just inches from your front bumper. Unusually for busses, there was not that much of an opportunity to check out the back of the vehicle, as the drivers subscribe to the 'foot down' school of motoring.

What I first took to be commercial advertising on the front of the bus, or even the name of the vehicle, was in fact tourist advertising. Just a couple of words and a sentence about some local attraction, personality or legend. The moment of realisation came when, after considering that Thomas Coke may well be a firm of Cromer Solicitors, it's unlikely that any such organisation might decide to call themselves 'Black Schuck' (the phantom dog of the fens). Also good to see devilish folklore making it's way onto public transport.

The coast road was actually a rich source of entertainment, and not just in terms of wildly swerving to avoid the twitchers that seemed to lurk in every hedge and thicket. Apart from walkers there are lots of things at the roadside, not just the roadkill that, depending on how 'successful' it have been in its attempts to cross, are near the centre of the road rather than at the side. No doubt some wag will compile a roadkill spotters book with different points depending on how exotic the creature concerned was, with bonus points for artistic impression or, to give it it's technical name, splash pattern.

As well as the roadside shops, there are roadside stalls. Just as in warm foreign parts with scooter hire every bend brings a little shrine with some flowers and a faded photograph of some bloke who thought that he could overtake on a blind corner on a road regularly used by lorries doing the run from the local cement works, so there are little stalls with fruit for sale. These are based on the honour system, you take a bag of apples and put twenty pee in the tin. You can tell the visitors to the area because they all first remark upon the refreshing honesty of the system and then start bleating about the lack of credit card payment facilities and loyalty card schemes at such roadside stalls.

It's not just fruit though. Every day on our way to Wells we drove past a sign advertising kittens for sale. I'm not sure how long kittens stay kittens, but we were there for two weeks and by the end of the holiday I was expecting to see the sign amended to 'cats for sale'. The sign showed quite a lot of optimism. This is dog owners' country, where one feels underdressed without at least one gun dog and a telltale bag of poo that marks you out as a responsible dog owner.