Postcard from Norfolk - Tune in, drink up

I love local radio.  If you are visiting somewhere, the quickest way to get a handle on the local character is to pick up a local paper and tune into the local radio.  Despite the apparent homogenisation of the UK, it’s still true to say that every postcode has its own qualities.  That is to say, peculiarities.

In North Norfolk, the radio station of choice is North Norfolk radio (surprise!).  There are a number of reasons to tune into this excellent station, and these were all evident in the two hours that I heard this morning.  The first is that they actually do do an island waterways forecast, it’s like the Shipping Forecast for toddlers.  I love the idea that some weekend sailor facing a degree of chop on the Broads gets his forecast, just like some trawler captain with a hold full of mackerel facing the fury of the unforgiving storm and the cruel sea somewhere where the cod have retreated to because they think it’ll be too inhspitable for humans to fish.

The second reason is the limerick competition.  Now, can there be any better way of keeping yourself amused as a deejay for two hours than having people send you filthy verses?  I think not.  Apparently the way they do it is to go with a different letter of the alphabet every week to get a place name, so ‘There was a young man from Stiffkey’ for instance, and just wait for the amusing rhymes to pile in, because if there is anything the great British public are great at, it’s making up names for moist and thankfully normally hidden areas of the body so that they can just about rhyme with anything.  (As it happens, ‘There once was a wreck called the Vera’ was completed in clean and tidy manner, and the challenge here was because there are no places starting with vee in Norfolk, except ‘Very Fucking Expensive’, which is Burnham Market’s post code.

The third reason is the local announcements, both paid and unpaid.  Unpaid come in the form of announcements for local events, like the book and jigsaw sale at Fakenham parish church.  This sounds like a fantastic idea but let’s hope that they remembered to keep the two separate, unlike that time in Bromsgrove when there was uproar after some genius decided to combine books and jigsaws by removing the end pages from a number of whodunits and selling them in kit form.  On the minus side, quite a lot of people were both angry and frustrated, even more so than the Bromsgrove norm.  On the plus side, the auction for the concluding chapters for the mystery thrillers in question the following week raised several hundred pounds for MacMillan nurses.

The paid announcements or, as I believe they are called on commercial radio, adverts, are fantastic.  When I was but a youth, I heard a C60 tape of American radio that a relative had recorded when over in the US.  Just some songs and a DJ and adverts that appeared to have been scripted by the Monty Python team but were actually for real.  Fast forward thirty years and I have the same sense when listening to North Norfolk radio.  This is not, I hasten to add, because the tyre dealerships that advertise on North Norfolk Radio advertise family fun days with ‘free balloons, candy and clowns’.  Around here, the only time that tyres and clowns go together are when they put the former round the neck of the latter and set fire to it and, by extension, Coco.  But the advert that captured my attention was for logs.  Logs delivered free of charge.

That’s right, the good folk of North Norfolk get through so much wood during the winter that not only do they buy it, not only does the supplier offer free delivery but they actually have the money to advertise.  This is like Ocado, for wood!

Have just checked the Ocado web site.  They do not do wood.  Yet.

I’m not sure I like this.  When I’m in Norfolk I like splitting my own wood.  One so rarely gets to swing a huge axe unchallenged at home.  If you can’t chop your own, then the next best bet is to stop by a sign at the roadside that says either ‘logs for sale’ or ‘woods, next left’.  That’s the thing about the countryside, it’s quite acceptable to have a bootliner and an axe in the back of the car.  Still, if one is rushed, I can see the sense in getting logs delivered.  The next step must be the web site and the various packages, from ‘value’ (a tree and a spoon) to ‘luxury’ (organic scented wood chopped for you by the regional X Factor finalist of your choice, safety gear optional).

Away from the radio, it was a beautiful day.  Walking into the Within Hill Cider shop in Wells-next-the-Sea I cautioned Gentleman & Player’s cookery editor ‘don’t say we’re just buying cider to cook with’.  Two things then happened, G&P’s cooker editor piped up ‘we’re just cooking with it, what’s the best one for that?’ and the planet earth neglected to offer up a perfectly timed seismic event to bloody well swallow me up.

Actually, as you would imagine, the chap was very chaming about it, especially after I had back pedalled like a clown on a unicycle faced with a mob holding a tyre and a box of matches and explained that, yes, a small amount of cider would be going in a pan but a large amount would be going down my throat.

There is, perhaps, something of a cultural divide in the town and the city about cider.  In the country, there are, according to the documentary made by Oz Clarke and James May, three types of cider, fighting, singing and sleeping.  In the town, cider is known as ‘trampagne’ and also comes in three varieties, farting, shitting and shouting.

This had been a bad year for cider (I withheld my professional condolences as the owner of a vine) and for apples.  The crop yield was down and the chap explained that he was ready to go to Sandringham to ‘beg, borrow or steal’ from The Queen.

This was, bluntly, fantastic.

The very idea that one would have The Queen’s Apples in your cider press, presuming you could keep her son’s Duchy mitts off them for long enough, would allow you to slap the word ‘jubilee’ on the label and charge an extra 20%.  Moreover, the idea that this might be achieved by scumping made me want to purchase an under the counter bottle of ‘Sandringham scumped’ at once.  Forty quid you say?  Bargain!

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.