Norfolk Nuances

Out across Norfolk to try on some trousers in Holt, and thence to Wells-next-the-Sea to eat fish 'n' chips in that place that gets around VAT by not giving you a plate or cutlery to eat them with. Norfolk is full of surprises, and on a day like yesterday the low bright winter light pinpointed many things for me. Bayfield Hall sits above the River Glaven between Letheringsett and Glandford, an Elizabethan house with an 18th century frontage sharing the landscape with the ruined church of St.Margaret's. The sort of scene that would've got John Piper's paint brushes working overtime. And then I saw the pale brick entrance piers on the driveway, and this rusty fastening on the open gate. That's what I love about the county. Telling detail in the shadow of trees one minute, bleak atmospheric visions the next. The wooden landing stages mark the course of a creek winding through from Brancaster Bay to tiny Thornham. Treacherous marsh intersected by gurgling channels hiding their deep sucking mud from the unwary, and all the time the incessant cry of a curlew settling down for the night. Listen to their haunting cry here; so essential to any unfolding drama on the wireless that's set on these lonely wind-buffeted margins.

Railway Echo No 11

Unmitigated blogs passim have frequently explored the peeling paint impotence of abandoned railway rolling stock. Some are known to have had the indignity of travelling their last miles on the back of a low-loader, and in south east Leicestershire there are enough phantom wagons leaning against hedges to make up a sizeable freight train. Many others, however, don't appear to have strayed very far from where they made their last creeking journeys. The Dungeness Peninsular is famed for old carriages gradually metamorphosing into respectable shacks, many towed here in the 1920's from the Southern Railway (who used the shingle as track ballast all over the south). Others were brought here in the 50s to serve as homes for the constructors of the nuclear power station. But this pale ghost is slightly off piste, within yards of the little branch line that ran from Rye down to Rye Harbour. Opened in 1854 the track was only ever used for freight, mainly for bringing flints from Dungeness to a neighbouring oil firm and chemical works. By 1955 it was almost derelict, but traces of its passage can still be seen. This carriage never became the long-corridored backbone of a larger dwelling, and when I first photographed it there were lacy net curtains at the windows. I must bow to more local knowledge to tell me if it's actually still here.

Sunday Wobble

I don't think I've had much to do with jelly making since my mother waved a dark green box of Rowntree's at me, the one with the picture of a big pile of fruit on it, and allowed me to separate out the gorgeously malleable cubes of jelly and stir in the boiling water. Equally it could have been Melba's Jelly, Viota Jelly Crystals (with the empty box designed to be an alphabet cube afterwards) and of course Chivers, the same as on my Dinky Trojan Van. But Rowntree's was the one I remember, another much-loved classic name now slowly disappearing from our pantry shelves. I don't know what prompted the bout of jelly making this morning- someone eating it on television I expect or more probably an airbrushed ad. in a 1950's Good Housekeeping magazine. Of course I've hung about for weeks trying to buy a metal mould, copper preferably, but could only find plastic, and none in the traditional almost architectural and archetypal shape so necessary for the Unmitigated Dessert. Then the Mother of My Children took pity and said "Oh for goodness sake" and brought round a carrier bag full of metal moulds. Youngest Son separated the Hartley's Jelly cubes (not sure if a raspberry had actually taken part in their manufacture) and stirred in the boiling water, gently carrying his own little rabbit mould to the 'fridge. What should also be heartening for Hartley's is just how quickly their bright pink box was incorporated into the castle being built in the living room.

Creature Feature No 4

I woke up at four this morning. Very dark, very cold. So I made coffee and scurried back to bed with Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, the wonderful book by the late Roger Deakin that is now the third book of a superb trilogy that includes Waterlog and Wildwood. And I read:

The naturalness of an unnatural product. The great chrome Jaguar over the entrance to Marshall's garage showroom opposite the airfield at Cambridge. The early motor car names were all about grace and speed: Swallow, Jaguar, Alvis Silver Eagle, Singer Gazelle, Humber Super Snipe (Reliant Robin or Reliant Scimitar, you take your choice).

I exclaimed "I know that Jaguar! I've got a photograph of the very one!" (It's amazing what'll get you going in the cold, dark, early hours.) So obviously feeling very smug and self satisfied I fell asleep immediately.

Apocalyptic Golden Syrup

I have to be very careful about this one. If I start recommending Wolf Solent (1929) by John Cowper Powys, I run the risk of people pushing its burnt ashes through my letterbox. I've never known such divided opinion over reading matter. One girlfriend said she didn't want it to end, another threw her copy at me and told me never to waste her time with him again. But she still persevered to the end, and has subsequently told me she thinks it's a Bloke Book. The Penguin blurb on my Modern Classics copy (with its wonderfully appropriate John Nash painting on the cover) says that Wolf Solent has been 'described as one of the few great apocalyptic novels of our time' and the Spectator said it was 'A stupendous and rather glorious book...as beautiful and strange as an electric storm'.. What's it all about? Well, a young man returns to Dorset after ten years in London and works as a literary assistant not far from the school where his father had been the History Master. Its narrative is sometimes overwhelming, but underneath it all is a sense of unease that starts you thinking 'I've seen / heard / felt / experienced that somewhere'. And he mentions a Lyle's Golden Syrup can. But although it was written in the USA, it is a very, very English novel. An Unmitigated English novel in fact. Here's just a little taste:

He loved the muslin curtains over the parlour-windows, and the ferns and flower-pots on the window-sills. He loved the quaint names of these little toy houses- names like Rosecot, Woodbine, Bankside, Primrose Villa. He tried to fancy what it would be like to sit in the bow-window of any one of these, drinking tea and eating bread-and-honey, while the spring afternoon slowly darkened towards twilight.

Sirens, Deightons & Mustard Gas

Sometimes I amuse myself by making notes for a book comprised of photographs of all the buildings I've lived, learnt and worked in. And then I stop because so many are uninteresting and there are obvious gaps where stuff has been pulled down. Like one of my C of E schools, even though it was designed by the Goddards of Leicester. But the location of my very first job is still remarkably as when I cycled nervously up to it in the mid 1960's. This is the Southfields Library in Leicester, known affectionately as the Pork Pie Library. It sits on a road junction between two vast housing estates and was designed in 1939 by Symington, Prince & Pike. Looking like a London Underground station, the plans could very well have been influenced by Charles Holden's design for Arnos Grove. I like it so much I photograph it nearly every time I go by, if the light's as good as it was yesterday. So many memories are locked behind the brick and glass. Here I not only rubber-stamped books, but also discovered playwright Joe Orton's old library ticket (with 'default' stamped on it), Len Deighton books and an old man coughing his lungs up in the reading room because he'd been gassed in the First World War. I also got to work the wartime siren on the roof for practice alerts (there was a nuclear attack warning device in the cellar), ate a bar of Bournville Chocolate with my morning coffee and read the very first copy of The Sun newspaper. All this for £7 a week and the chance to chat up the girl assistants on the evening shift.

Compartment Art

Some years ago I took these quick snaps of the pictures on the wall of a Southern Railway carriage on the Bluebell Line. They are both by Adrian Allinson (1890-1959), who produced posters for the GWR, SR and BR. The top picture is entitled 'Cornish Vale', painted sometime between 1945-8, the bottom one is called 'East Devon'. Both are in the soft medium of pastels. I know all this because of Greg Norden's book Landscapes Under The Luggage Rack, probably one of the most heartwarming and enjoyable books on this kind of thing in recent years. The subject of carriage prints is yet another timely reminder of just how brilliant a train journey could be, and I promise I won't go on again about how we're treated so appallingly by today's franchisees, ripping off everybody with criminal fare structures and red hot microwaved sausage buns. We won't see the likes of these gentle pictures in carriages again. We won't even see compartments again because we must be protected from the rapists and murderers that are on every train. But at least we can still trundle up and down the Bluebell Line, our Globetrotter suitcase on the string rack above us, our newspaper illuminated at the click of the switch underneath the little shaded lamp. (Pulls down blind, falls asleep with mouth open.)