Postcard from Norfolk - behind the scenes at Wells-Next-The-Sea

Obviously, I’ve always known that Wells-next-the-Sea is a working port.  The clue is all the fishing boats in the harbour, occasionally one putt-puttering along the channel and out to sea.  Then again, most of the time I see the boats I’m looking down on them as they lay beached, thanks to a vertigo-inducing low tide taking them far, far below the harbour wall.

The tide, it would appear, is anti-social, and usually puts in an appearance in the early morning, meaning that fishermen have to get up very early to get their floating boats out there, catch some fish, then back in time for market, breakfast and bed.  No wonder they are all such grumpy bastards when they are interviewed on telly, and it can’t all be the fault of the EU.

More than the boats, it is the crab and lobster pots stacked up in the harbour that reveal the port of Wells to be working.  Downwind, you can tell that a few hours ago, these were immersed in the sea and probably home to a clacky, annoyed and ultimately and unfortunately for the resident, delicious crustacean.

Today though, we walked past the harbour and instead of taking a left at the chandlery and looping up past llamas to the pub, walked on.

Wells has a sailing club!  I mean, of course it does, why wouldn’t it? but they have boats, all varnished and shiny and everything.  And a club house, with a little marquee attached to it which simultaneously announces to the world ‘barbeques are a frequent occurrence here’ and ‘our members like to smoke’.

The racing dinghy’s of the club, uniform in colour, were an incongruous bookend to the fish crates stacked along the harbour, looking for all the world like somebody who was playing Tetris as art.

Yet somehow both were Wells, and epitomised the very picture that everyone has of Wells, the beach huts.  No two exactly alike, but all the same basic design, a shed on stilts, the sort of thing an Englishman exiled to Indonesia or some other flood-prone country would have in his back garden to ensure his mower and trowel stayed dry, yet all different colours.

Past the club house, you come to the real working area of Wells, far (well, twenty steps but metaphorically far) from the whelk stands and rock shops, here are the sheds and warehouses of the fishermen.

I love industry.  Proper industry.  The sort of industry that is all about a proper workshop, home to about seven or eight chaps, who are simply superb at what they do, and smell of swarfega.  You can stick your robot assembly lines right up your arse, if you want something done right, you get a craftsman with a regional accent.

I got the same feeling here.  This was a place of serious toil.  There are some who would say that this sort of thing is unglamorous, and maybe that’s why you have to peek behind the curtain, or at least walk past the pub, to see it.

I wouldn’t agree.  I think there’s a sort of beauty to be found in places like this, where people work hard at difficult jobs, especially when they are not around, when the buildings themselves seem to be resting.  The sheds may be weatherbeaten, but there’s not a stray rope or a scrap of litter to be seen; untidiness and fishing, or industry, do not mix.

Well’s beach huts line up in the sand like sentinels.  Red, white, blue, sometimes red white and blue, they are colourful and characterful.  No less colourful and characterful are the boats bobbing at anchor or, more accurately, by the time I get down the harbour, the boats resting at anchor.  But how good, how reassuring, to know that behind the colour and the character is the substance.

'Chatsworth House'

Ah, the internet.  It has given people such an opportunity to express themselves, and not just through posting porny selfies or demonstrating their mad skillz creating cute costumes for their cats then posting pictures of pets dressed as former Communist party leaders and captioning them ‘Chairman Meow’. 
Occasionally though one finds a fine example of that dry English wit that typifies the nation in the most unexpected of places, and just has to be celebrated.
I have recently taken possession of a fish pond.  No problem, I know what to do with fish ponds, you fill them in and plant barbeques on them.  However, a quick consultation with the Internets reveals that this is ‘likely to cause distress’ to the resident fish.
Putting fish up for adoption is also trickier than it first appears.  The traditional way of disposing of fish, by setting up a bent funfair stall that requires the average punter to spend roughly the cost of a Koi before winning a fish in a bag, is now frowned upon.  One solution is to give the fish to pet stores for ‘rehoming’, although when you read on you discover that they can end up being rehomed in the digestive tracts of other pet shop residents, which I sure as hell hope means other pets rather than Crazy Phil behind the counter.
Accordingly, I have to take care of them before I work out what to do with them. 
Step one, food.  No problem, the local hardware store sells what appears to be vastly overpriced confetti that the fish seem to enjoy.
Step two, oxygenating the pond.  Did you know that fish need oxygen?  Strange, given their choice of environment.  But as it would appear the fish are not going to make a great evolutionary leap any time soon, the oxygen has to be introduced to the water.  This is done by splashing the surface of water surface.  Thankfully, the English weather has managed to do this on a grand scale recently by the simple means of rainfall by the budketload.  The Internets also recommends a wee fountain.  (That is, a small fountain rather than one styled along the lines of Brussels’s most famous spurty splashing feature).
Ever the optimist, I reckon a solar powered one is the best interim fix and hop on B&Q’s web site to see if they sell them.  They do, so check the comments section.
And there it is.  A five star review in every sense that explains the product is, essentially, a little fountain that spurts a three inch jet when the sun is out.  However, it’s the opening sentence that steals the show, encapsulating in five words the aprirational essence of the back garden water feature, the mentality of the gardener and the self-effacing humour that typifies the English condition. 
The review begins…’It’s not exactly Chatsworth House’.
Genius.