Postcard from Norfolk - Daffy and Dickie

  

An association is rather a good thing for a public house.  Fame and infamy can equally add character to a pub and, pubs being pubs and human nature being human nature, any pub of a decent age will be more likely to be infamous than famous.  Pubs, you see, even respectable ones with coffee machines and a breakfast menu, are less likely to be the place where a National Treasure hung her bonnet when writing the sort of fiction that is adapted for Sunday night viewing, and more likely to be the place where a laudanum soaked poet wrote his last before drinking himself into an early grave.  Alternatively, they were frequented by a bloke with the charming name of ‘Mad’, ‘Chopper’, or ‘The Lathe’, once to be avoided and now on a Gangland Walks trail.  Many pubs have Blue Plaques, more still have stained carpets.

Indeed, companies exist that can create character in a pub for you.  They scavenge skips (or to give them their full title rural action houses) and can transform a former car showroom into Ye Olde Something Or Other with the addition of only a few antique agricultural implements and a pine-effect condom dispenser.

However, it takes more than a few antique cigerette or Fry’s chocolate machines converted to dispense vape-sticks and pistachios to give a pub atmosphere, especially since the smoking ban came in.  What a pub really needs to do is a holistic historic makeover, setting up web-sites that will convince you that your local boozer has that most attractive of qualities, a pool table (just kidding, I mean A Past).

I used to drink in a pub that was featured on Crimewatch.  Everyone suspected that the landlord had done his wife in because a) she disappeared and b) the cellar acquired a new concrete floor.  The thing is, he kept a good pint.

Tricky moral decision, but when asked if one wanted a quick one ‘up the murderer’s?’, the answer was usually ‘yes’.  In his defence, I don’t think he served Stella, so he was obviously anti-violence to women.

Many pubs have, of course, been around since pilgrims needed somewhere to stop off for a quick drink before visiting Jerusalem.  Given the state of the Middle East today, that remains a good idea.  The older the pub the ‘richer’ the history, usually featuring, appropriately, claret.  But stabbings, gangland slayings and poetry is the least of it, given the amount of former entertainers, a trade that traditionally like a beer, now being locked up, it’s a wonder the police don’t just visit every pub called ‘The Yew Tree’ and throw a net over the regulars.

Of course, the best a Bristish boozer can boast is a resident highwayman.  Bierkellers are an efficient, mechanised, German pub and, if grainy black and white newsreel footage is to be believed (and why not) most of them were frequented by Hitler.  Not so much a Blue Plaque, more a brown shirt moment.

Britain’s pubs are richly decorated, and not just at chucking out time.  The walls of pubs in Britain are adorned not just with Sky Sport posters but with everything from hunting prints, to tabloid front pages, to wanted posters.  Look closer still and you will see why, in Britain at least, pubs remain haunts of gentlemen; photographs of regulars who may have stepped out, but who remain in spirit.

The Hoste Arms in Norfolk remains one of the best pubs in Burnham Market.  It remains so in rthe face of significant challenges, such as having a spa on site, and being frequented by very wealthy people.  It remains a good pub because the staff are quite, quite lovely and the place is at the same time the last word in excellence and not remotely pretentious.  I have had some great times there and sitting in the October sunshine with a glass of champagne and a springer smelling faintly of beach is one of life’s great joys.

The walls of the bar are adorned with original cartoons by Annie Tempest of her weekly strip (ooh er!) in Country Life magazine, ‘Tottering by Gently’, featuring Lord Tottering (‘Dicky’) and his wife, Daffy.  The strip concerns itself, as far as I can determine, with the upkeep of Tottering Towers, their stately home, red wine, dogs and, bizarrely, social media.  The strip is very ‘Country Life’, a magazine slightly up its own arse, more usually up a fox’s arse, but amusing.

All very lovely and slightly more original than a Space Invaders cabinet converted into a wifi booth or whatever.  A recent addition though are busts of Dicky and Daffy.

It’s always tricky to pull off a likeness of a cartoon character.  The last person to do it successfully was Michael Keaton.  However, one you get over the initial shock, they are actually quite fun.  Daffy is just as you would imagine her, although worryingly close to the red wine.

Dicky is fantastic.  That he does not resemble the cartoon character so well is fortunate, because the bust is an incredible likeness of the late, much missed, Professor Brigadier Richard Holmes.

Possibly the sculptor captures the likeness of the wrong Dicky.  Probably he captured the right one.

And if you were playing pub heritage top trumps, military history beats everything else.  From faded photographs of local lads in kaki, through oil paintings of Spitfires, through to bright photographs of local lads in desert gear, and never forgetting the gentleman in the red jacket, every pub should have a military connection.

Finally, the Hoste has it all.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fret ye not

On holiday, the weather may be ‘brisk’ or it may be ‘bracing’. One is on holiday and so holiday speak is employed. ‘Wet’ is a word reserved for the condition of your glass at lunch time, the only acceptable use of ‘damp’ is to describe the bottom of one’s trousers after over-enthusiastic paddling and insufficient rollage. Along the coast what others would call ‘fog’ or ‘mist’ is more accurately described as a ‘fret’. A fret is where the warm sea touches the cold land, or possibly where the cold sea touches the warm land but whatever the cause the opportunity to use the word ‘fret’ is seized upon by one and all, usually incorporating it into a sentence such as ‘I am fretful that it is going to piss down all day today. What?’

In truth, it’s not raining, although there is something of a breeze or, more accurately, a ‘breeze’ of the sort that would allow a wind turbine to power every intimate massager in Holloway, before ripping the sails off.

To get out of the fret, took a trip to Burnham Market. Mid-week one can just about find a parking spot, if one is prepared to circle endlessly like some sort of car shark or just do what I do, which is [do you really think I’m going to say?]. There is an art exhibition put on by a local art club in the village church. As with any art club exhibition, the hang reveals a mixed ability. The very best painting were N.F.S. as the painter has just has a stroke and the family want to hang on to them in case they are the last paintings the chap is ever going to do.

Elsewhere in the exhibition there was some talent and some quirk and, unfortunately, the level of talent in the quirky entries was not always enough to bring off the intent.

Naturally, signed the visitors’ book with gushing praise and told the two lovely Burnham market ladies how wonderful it all was and how lovely the church was (which it is). I like art in churches, it makes one feel less of a penitent and the occasional landscape is a welcome distraction from all the stained glass and scenes from the bible stuff.

Stopping off at The Ship at Brancaster, it made a stab at redeeming itself after not serving chips on demand earlier in the week by coming up with simply the best hot chocolate ever. It wasn’t so much the hot chocolate but rather the sheer amount of whipped cream and marshmallow that they crammed onto the top of it. Any more and it would have had to come in a separate bowl.

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.

Norfolk notes - Burnham Market

Burnham Market, home of the Hoste Arms and, I hope, at least one outstanding Christmas light bulb, is also home to lovely shops selling lovely things (including, and I can't understand why I didn't buy this, a picnic decanter! That's right, a decanter made of plastic that you take on your picnic, when you simply can't bear the thought of pouring port from the bottle yet you want to save on weight. Actually I know why I didn't buy it - I refuse to compromise on these sort of things. If one decants, one decants from crystal, or on a picnic glass is acceptable.) at great expense.

There are also a couple of book shops. One selling new books, the other, much more interesting, selling second hand books. Second hand books are a treat. Not only are can you stimulate your mind with their contents, but with certain books you can speculate about the previous owner, like did they die of an exceptionally contagious disease that incubates in Agatha Christie novels?

Unlike charity bookshops which, although excellent, rely on donations, the owner of this shop obviously spends a lot of time at everything from car boot sales to book fairs, which is why the shop sells everything from a crisp new looking Dan Brown to a foxed-to-the-point-of-hounded innocuous looking wee hardback that turns out to be a first printing of a classic that contains a rare misprint - like the entire chapter in 'The Pickwick Papers' when the Pickwickians visit a whorehouse, complete with illustrations. Quite a misprint, quite a curiosity.

Instead of a coffee shop, the space has instead been devoted to cramming in yet another book.
Or map, because the shop sells old maps also. And if you are wondering who the hell would want to buy an out of date map, can I point you towards the Ordinance Survey vintage series, or any bloke (and it's usually blokes) that have old maps of some forgotten rural shire that smelled predominantly of dung and onions hanging proudly on their walls.

The Brazen Head sells everything from the Sex and the City 2 novelisation (which surely must be worth flicking through just to see if it's annotated - wouldn't that be excellent, to see comments in the margins along the lines of 'stopped reading here, too much like self harming') to penguin classics. This is a home of curiosities, delights and the occasional surprise.

Like a paperback first edition copy of 'The Wicker Man', which I didn't even know was a novel!

Obviously I know the film. This is the movie that set my expectations of both the mentality of islanders (which I think has been proven. There's just something about living on a small island that makes the folks suspicious of outsiders, modern life and any religion that does not involve crop worship of some kind. To be fair, this sort of mentality exists in isolated rural communities too and, with bus and rail links being what they are, we shouldn't look for improvement any time soon.) and small hotels (which has not. While small hotels may finally have embraced the idea of the mini-bar, none that I know of offer a complimentary writhing naked witch in the next bedroom. Not even the self styled 'boutique' hotels. Don't get me wrong, I think the advent of the boutique hotel is a fine thing; essentially the establishment of a boutique hotel involves taking a small B&B, redecorating with a theme (taking care to avoid 'run down 70's kitch'), going to half-board, realising that a glass of fruit juice is not a starter option and beefing up the soundproofing so that the sounds of passionate lovemaking, anguished sobs or that perennial hotel favourite, the single gunshot and scream, do not disturb the other guests).

But I never realised it was a novel first. It was in very good condition and priced at a tenner, exactly the price point to make certain folk blink at anyone having the chops to ask that for a second hand paperback but for any passing cult horror film fan to be consumed with that 'I must own it' sensation.

One purchase later, it was best speed to the Hoste Arms, home of fine wines and wi fi, to ponce off of their internet connection and see if I had got a bargain or been ripped off. Fired up Abebooks and, ah, that warm glow of satisfaction. I had nabbed a rarity and paid a reasonable price. Not that any of that mattered of course. But fans of cult horror films set in remote Scottish islands and staring Christopher Lee are rather a niche market and notoriously east to exploit.

It was, I suspect, a never to be repeated moment of paperback madness but I reckon I actually did rather better than others who indulge themselves on holiday and bring back something impractical, like an STD.

Norfolk notes - the Hoste Arms party

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not quite.


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

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


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


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

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

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

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

Postcard from Norfolk - Market day

What’s your favourite bookshop? Probably the bookshop I buy most of my books from is Amazon. But that’s not really a shop, is it. The mental image I have of Amazon, the vast warehouse from the final scene of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ is probably hopelessly quaint; Amazon is probably a vast network of vast warehouses, based on the moon or something, or the Isle of Man, as that’s where most of the DVDs I order from Amazon come from.

I’m not a total luddite. I’m not, for instance, wholly against the idea of coffee in a bookshop. It’s good to be able to take a stack of books to your table, have a coffee, brows, decide which one you want and put the rest, now with coffee rings and biscotti crumbs evenly distributed among the pages, back on the shelves. The day some genius puts a wine bar in a bookshop, I’m there!

But for me a bookshop sells books. Calmly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss. The problem is that a lot of big chains are about as soulful as supermarkets (which is where you can also buy books, in between buying dog food and tampons, you can slip the latest beach-read bonkbuster into your basket). A good bookshop needs some sort of indefinable charm.


Much has been written about the perfect bookshop, most of it by Terry Pratchett in the novel ‘Good Omens’, so I won’t repeat it here. I will add though that the perfect bookshop is well stocked, has lots of books in the windows which, together with high shelving, cuts out harmful UV and, er, light, leading to the feeling of the creation of a literary womb or cave. Any hermit taking up residence would at least have plenty to read. It will be run by an eccentric proprietor who will make favoured customers tea and offer them rich tea biscuits (never digestives, as these crumble too easily having been dunked). His hours will be erratic, his footware will be slippers.

Top three fictional bookshops? Black Books, Bernard Black proprietor, from the television programme of the same name. The Eloquent Page, the science fiction bookshop run by Uncle Rogi Remillard in the novels written by Julian May. And the bookshop in ‘Before Sunset’ where Ethan Hawke meets up with Julie Delpy again. Okay, that’s actually a real store (Shakespeare and Company, Paris), but in this case it’s fictional because hey, it’s in a film.

But it brings us on to real actual bookstores. Okay, top three. In third place, Toppings and Company in Ely. Toppings is probably the last place in this dimension to be selling books at their cover price. How do they get away with it? Well, many of the hardbacks are signed by the author and come sealed in little plastic bags with an attractive band wrapped round them proclaiming ‘signed first edition’. Not something you get at Asda or Amazon. In addition, it’s a shop of great physical charm. The staircase up to the first floor is steep and twisty, but worth the climb to access the books on mountaineering – handy in the fens. Having recently moved Mrs Rochester out, they’ve opened up the attic and you can now have a coffee (free, there’s no Costa or Starbucks up there) and read a book while looking out the attic window at the cathedral lantern. The state of semi-hypnosis that this generates results in you splashing full price on books and not resenting the hell out of it.

Okay, second favourite (previously favourite). The Brazen head bookshop in Bunham Market, Norfolk. Exactly what a proper second hand bookshop should be. Crammed with books and with an enthusiastic owner. The last time I was in there he had just acquired some new stock and was looking through it, he got very excited about a ‘Biobull’ – a Gaelic bible. I should have bought the thing there and then, despite not being able to understand a word. They make their faith like granite in areas where Gaelic is spoken and this appeared to me to be just the sort of religious artefact to take comfort from in a faith emergency or vampire attack.

But my new number one favourite bookshop? It’s not a shop at all, it’s a stall. The Wednesday market at Sheringham in Norfolk is host to stalls selling everything from screwdrivers to football team themed duvet covers. Also, there’s a book stall. It’s fantastic. The chap who own it has his books lying flat on some tables in fruit boxes (if ever you need to transport your library, these are the carriers of choice) and also – and here’s the genius part – stacked up in ‘shelves’ by halving the fruit boxes and stacking them one on top of the other.

The stall sells second hand books – everything from the latest beach read that’s been read once and still smells faintly of tanning lotion where it’s rested on a baking tummy somewhere along the shores of the Med all the way to old penguins that have obviously spent a lot of time travelling in the pockets of various chaps.

The sheer variety is breathtaking, you could become ridiculously well-read by visiting once a week with a fiver. And you leave with some paperbacks in a paper bag, a lot more cheerful than you arrived and usually with a surprise buy. Now that’s a shopping success and that’s a great book stall.