23 December 2002

on 23 December 2002 at 08:00

Adventures of wild boar end in lack of style

It is easy to jump to false conclusions when you come across a wild boar on Gorleston beach – even if the animal is dead.

The suggestion was made by the husband of the finder earlier this month that “it may have been brought by currents from a country where it is a native species”. Wise words, clearly – but are they true?

For years, people travelling near the east coast have reported seeing “large cats” or “huge dogs” crossing roads and fields in the wastes near, for instance, Haddiscoe. What if they were really wild boars?

Many have suspected that such animals may inhabit the wilder, unexplored reaches of the valley between Winterton and Hemsby, probably accompanied by the odd harbour porpoise. One of these has also been washed up in Yarmouth.

It was not quite dead, but it could reveal nothing of its origins before it tragically breathed its last.

Some have linked these strange events to global warming or, more likely, to paranormal events taking place in a hairdresser’s – also in Gorleston.

Eight workers at Mulberrys have reported seeing lights going on and off and doors banging, which could easily be the result of a wild boar blundering about, although paranormal experts put it down to the “spirit of an old fisherman from the turn of the century…shocked at the banter in his shop”.

The owner said it was the first time in 10 years he had noticed anything abnormal in the salon. A strange claim, indeed, for a hairdresser – and to my mind a clear indication that a wild boar is to blame. They tend to be extremely hairy and in need of styling.

Perhaps it gave up trying to make an appointment, shot off down to the beach and gave up the ghost.

Sad, really.

Forecast for holiday period

Here is the outlook for Christmas and the New Year. High pressure is still in charge, with showers of people ganging up and rushing round town and across the country, causing dangerous driving conditions.

There will be cyclists and pedestrians on high ground, and icy motorists in the valleys, but gradually things will settle down.

There will be outbreaks of churchgoing, but these are unlikely to have any lasting effect.

Later in the week we are expecting a series of small depressions to take over, but there will be some bright spells, especially on New Year’s Eve, accompanied by significant bursts of wind: the bars will be closely packed.

After that a return to normal for this time of year, with a number of grey days and poor visibility.

Great forgotten slogans for holiday resorts

Regular readers will have noticed the recent absence from these pages of Richard “Volcano” Meek, the Norfolk hills specialist.

He has been away visiting his great uncle, who was almost famous once. Apparently he came second in a competition to write a slogan for Skegness.

The winner, as older readers will know, was “It’s so bracing”. Quite memorable, but it could so easily have been the Meek effort that took the plaudits: “Skegness is quite nice when it’s not windy.”

Happily the gentleman in question was not put off by his narrow failure and wrote some superb slogans to publicise Norfolk resorts. Sadly, these were never used either, but I can reveal one or two at this late stage:

* Holt – who goes there? * Sea Palling and die. * Weeting just for you. * Holiday dreams and plans? Come to Wells and Burnham! * Wroxham – gateway to Hoveton. * Watton earth are we doing here? * Seething – you will be. * Diss appears in the distance. Any readers who can match these superb examples of the slogan-writer’s art should probably keep it to themselves.

Just the ticket for ambulances

Compliments of the season to Norfolk police, who have managed to issue no speeding tickets at all to the East Anglian Ambulance Service in the last 12 months.

This outburst of common sense, I am assured by a usually reliable source, contrasts sharply with the situation in neighbouring counties. The ambulances received 27 tickets in Suffolk, but that pales into insignificance compared to the 1050 they obtained in Cambridgeshire.

Apparently the tickets can be written off, but to do so the driver has to complete “between six and ten forms”.

I hope ambulance drivers in Cambridgeshire will not be slowing down in order to avoid this chore, but it is an understandable temptation. Especially if they have an injured ticket-issuer inside.

Houseago stunt ends in disaster

An attempt by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago to combine the religious and secular elements of Christmas ended in disaster, Norwich magistrates were told last week.

“Looking back, it was a mistake to try to stage the demonstration in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham,” said Houseago, 103. “I should not have trusted the local expert.”

Local expert Professor V A R Scheinlich had given the go-ahead after assuring Houseago, who was dressed as Father Christmas, that there was almost no chance of the notorious Hingham space-time distortion occurring in December, which is known to be a quiet month.

Houseago, using a hot air balloon instead of reindeer, had intended to hover above local rooftops, playing choral music intended to simulate hosts of angels, the court was told. This was to culminate in a broadcast to passing shepherds to go and find the baby Jesus in Watton, because there was no room in Hingham.

Unfortunately Mr Houseago was only a few minutes into his flight when he was subject to a massive space-time distortion and disappeared from view, magistrates heard.

He reappeared in a snowstorm close to Norwich Cathedral some hours later, clinging on to the basket, which now contained an elephant.

The court was told by Len “Kissme” Hardy, prosecuting, that Houseago was unable to account for the presence of the elephant, but claimed the balloon had passed close to West Runton thousands of years previously.

Houseago was remanded for reports. He pleaded not guilty to being trunk and disorderly.

9 December 2002

on 9 December 2002 at 08:00

In love with pieces of paper

The newts and coypu who inhabit county council corridors really love paperwork. I mean, they’re hooked on it – to the extent that they go out looking for it even when they know they don’t need to.

Take county structure plans. The Government has made a decision to abolish them, but the legislation hasn’t gone through yet. So Norfolk County Council is going ahead with reviewing its plan anyway, and has sent out letters to parish councils and other organisations, asking them to fill in questionnaires on the Structure Plan Issues Report.

The Issues Report (in case you were wondering) is a 34-page document covering issues like transport, housing and the environment.

It contains 44 questions, all of which the conscientious parish councillor is expected to answer.

Reminder: the Government is going to abolish structure plans.

Parts of the Issues Report are quite straightforward, like “Are more wind turbines acceptable in the Norfolk countryside, and if so, where?”

Others are less clear.

For instance, the economic development partnership for Norfolk has a vision.

It is “for Norfolk to have a distinctive economy, characterised by innovative and dynamic businesses, where people are skilled and motivated with the opportunities to maximise their potential in a high quality environment”.

Bad news, then, for those of us who were hoping to live and work in dull, ordinary businesses, in a dead-end, low quality environment in an unskilled sort of way without any motivation.

But perhaps we can have an influence elsewhere and say categorically whether we would “seek to promote the designation of appropriate land for habitat recreation in advance of managed withdrawal”. Tricky. We’ll think about it.

But not long, because it doesn’t matter: the Government is going to abolish structure plans. In case you’d forgotten.

Swift solution to dump horror

I suggested last week that instead of shooting speed cameras, an even more humane solution might be to put a bag on them. There remains the question of what to do with road humps, cones and unnecessary signs.

University students already do us a service by removing a large number of cones and putting them into good homes – or at least halls of residence.

Since such students may soon be in need of large amounts of money thanks to the Government’s latest bout of madness, perhaps we could pay them for this service and ask them to extend their activities.

Bagging cameras is almost as wonderful an idea as the one conceived by the gentleman who became so frustrated by the road hump that the local council placed outside his home that he used a JCB to remove it.

Astonishing, some would say. Surely road humps are beloved by all and do harm to no one?

Not quite. The JCB driver had called his council more than 30 times to complain about the “hissing of air brakes as trucks slowed down, the banging of tailgates as they rumbled over and the revving of cars as they sped away”.

Naturally, the council’s only response was that “there will have to be a prosecution”. Aren’t we fortunate in having councils that are never wrong?

Meanwhile I understand that our own beloved council has been having fun with a “massive” hump installed on the car park outside the Adam and Eve pub in Norwich.

Presumably, having been frustrated in getting a hump installed in the Garden of Eden, they thought this was the next best thing. Snakes are like that.

A solicitor tells me he spent a few minutes one afternoon “watching people suffering whiplash as they tried to negotiate the obstacle”.

After a few weeks the hump was removed, but my correspondent’s joy was short-lived. “On my last visit I found a large but not quite so massive hump which caused me to reduce my speed from an outrageous 10mph to 2mph. What a triumph for the council,” he noted. Letter to the editor

Alert readers will have noticed that whenever I write anything about traffic, pressure group Transport 2000 demands a right to reply. To save it the trouble, I have compiled a letter in response to the above article.

Dear Sir Once again you have allowed Tim Lenton to speak freely on traffic matters. As you are well aware, we have the only possible view on these things, and our statistics are infallible; so there is no need for anyone else to say anything. Road humps are a wonderful method for cutting road accidents. The faster you hit people, the more likely they are to die. If you do not print this, we will take you to the Press Complaints Commission.

Warning - ostriches, sand and sick buses ahead

You might think that as we progress into the 21st century we would gradually be getting the hang of how to deal with our transport problems.

But no – they just keep getting worse. Anyone misguided enough to want to drive from Norwich to Ipswich is going to be faced with Suffolk County Council continuing its ostrich impersonation for the next 10 years: it has earmarked nearly £84,000 a year to make it safer, a piffling amount that might possibly pay for some sand and the odd layby.

Still, this was after extensive research, so it must be all right. According to traffic and safety manager David Chenery it reflects the council’s current transport policies, which presumably must be to stop anyone in a car wanting to come into Suffolk.

Mind you, Norwich is not much better. Roadworks grind on so slowly that citizens are bound to question whether the council and contractors can be quite that incompetent, or whether they’re doing a Ken Livingstone and deliberately making life miserable for motorists. If so, they’d better hurry up and create a genuine alternative – instead of a bus service that appears to have too few buses, too few drivers and too few mechanics. Or if not too few, in the wrong place.

The other day I stood at the university in mid-afternoon waiting for a No 25 bus into the city while no fewer than five No 25s passed in the opposite direction on their way to the hospital.

Perhaps the hospital is stockpiling buses, which raises two questions: Are they sick? And is there a huge waiting list?

The answer seems to be yes and yes. And the same goes for the passengers.

Homes shortage hits rabbits

Fears have been voiced by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, that the shortage of homes for local people in North Norfolk is being reflected further down the food chain.

Mr Houseago, a well-known friend of local rabbits, has noticed that prime burrows are going for inflated prices to fatter rabbits from further south.

“It is too much of a temptation for a rabbit in, say, Blakeney, when it can get a huge stock of carrots for its burrow from one of these well-heeled animals,” he said. “But it’s a short-sighted view. And local rabbits are out in the fields with nowhere to shelter. Local communities are being decimated.”

A spokesman for North Norfolk District Council said it was good for the local economy.

11 November 2002

on 11 November 2002 at 08:00

Horse power is blamed for fatalities

Surprisingly, it is possible to exaggerate the effects of cars and other modern vehicles on road accident fatalities.

Of course, 3443 road deaths last year is a figure that is roughly 3443 higher than anyone in their right mind would want. Sadly, it is also higher than the year before; so much for the inundation of magic speed cameras.

But it is, I am told, a long way below the number of deaths occurring as a result of infections contracted in hospitals. Perhaps we should introduce speed cameras into hospital wards.

It also apparently compares quite favourably with the figure of transport deaths for London in 1840. Since I was not there, I have to rely on hearsay for this, but I am reliably informed that it was in the region of 1000.

There was also a huge transport-connected pollution problem at about that time, with about 50 tons of horse manure a day being removed from the city’s streets, and clouds of flies contributing to global warming, I wouldn’t wonder.

Detailed research by this page has revealed that there was for a short time an organisation in existence called Transport 1850, backed by the Fewer Horses Initiative, which tried to persuade the government to introduce traffic calming measures like trough reduction, a high tax on hay, road humps (called cobbles at the time) and taking drivers out and flogging them.

The group tried to promulgate its hatred for horses by inundating editors with lengthy letters and trying to prevent anyone else from putting a different point of view.

But it did not command public support, except in Suffolk, and eventually collapsed after failing to convince the prime minister that “cars could be worse than horses”.

Some scholars have cast doubt on the existence of Transport 1850, saying it is a “figment of a reactionary journalist’s demented imagination”. They could be right, I suppose.

Same sentence for golf and bogey town

Great Yarmouth is a bit of a bogey town for many readers. I could never work out why, but distinguished local historian Bruce Robinson may have stumbled on the reason.

He tells me that the golf term “bogey” was invented there.

In recent times golf and Yarmouth rarely appear in the same sentence, except with the qualifying words “crazy” or “Volkswagen”. But apparently, back in 1890, two gentlemen were playing proper golf in the town when one of them, a Major Wellman, remarked that his near-invincible opponent was a regular bogey-man (after a popular song of the time).

The opponent was Dr Thomas Browne, respected secretary of the Great Yarmouth Golf Club – which may explain why the term caught on, coming to mean someone who could score the ground score at every hole.

According to Mr Robinson, “the Americans began to use ‘bogey’ for one over par in 1898.

“Later, the British lowered their bogies by one stroke a hole, and kept the term; the Americans began to use the word ‘par’, keeping the British word ‘bogey’ to mean one stroke more than par.”

Fascinating stuff, and strange too. Given that it took place in Yarmouth, I would have thought the explanation would have been much simpler.

Almost exactly what they meant

Some journalists like to examine everything people say so that they can pounce on inaccuracies or self-revelations and make fun of them.

Naturally, I am not like that, which is why I will hardly mention the item I spotted in a magazine recently: “Everybody is welcome to this private invitation party.”

Exactly how welcome is a little unclear, as is the sign on a bus shelter at Norwich rail station which reveals that the X31 comes every two hours and the X52 “broadly two-hourly”. I am still not sure which one to go for. I may take the narrow view.

But both of these would be passed over by the connoisseur in favour of the reassurance stemming from a Shell UK retail director who responded to criticism of his company inserting mobile phone masts into its forecourt price signs.

He said: “We fully recognise the public’s concerns and we are working proactively with the phone companies to ensure ongoing transparency.”

Normally this sort of rubbish is translated into English for the benefit of the newspaper reader, but occasionally it’s worth hearing the original.

Maybe he’s angling for a job with 24seven. Proactively, of course. In an ongoing sort of way. Transparently speaking.

Pondhenge pilots private targets

Shock news from north Norfolk, where the recently created Pondhenge Parish Council has been selected to pilot some of the more advanced ideas of the Government in its fairly secret campaign to control our lives completely.

Pondhenge residents will in future be required to set targets for getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, as well as drawing up policies for breakfast, shopping, lunch and supper. They will also need to reach certain levels of efficiency in breathing.

A number of legendary Norfolk figures are protesting about this alleged infringement of liberty, including Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, and Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston.

“We don’t hold out much hope,” said the group’s scientific adviser, Professor V A R Scheinlich. “The Government has a record of never listening to common sense. Our only hope is that the Prime Minister will admit he’s failed and resign.”

The Pondhenge goose was unavailable for comment, but several environmental groups said they were in favour, because people should do as they are told.

Is council being wise about its camels?

As part of its extremely pre-Christmas events this year, Norwich City Council has gone to great lengths to excite its citizens by arranging for three camels and three wise men to accompany Father Christmas on his premature arrival this week.

Leaving aside the questionable theology, I was amazed to hear that the council had been able to lay its hands on three wise men.

But the camel question is almost as interesting. Presumably it is something to do with road humps or other traffic calming, but isn’t there a city diktat banning circuses containing animals? In which case, how is the use of camels on Santa duty different from camels in a circus? Both perform unnaturally.

Or maybe these are not real camels, but cardboard cut-outs. I would advise readers to watch closely.

21 October 2002

on 21 October 2002 at 08:00

Teachers on a mission find they're suspended

In a bid to spend some of the huge amount of money that flows into an Education Action Zone, someone hit on the brilliant idea of sending a consignment of Yarmouth head-teachers and teachers to Vancouver for 10 days.

To those unfamiliar with the geography of Canada, this is further away than Kathmandu, Nepal; so it should have been far enough. But the plan failed: they came back.

Sorry – that was totally unfair. The plan was not that they should fall in love with Vancouver (an easy thing to do) and miss the plane back. The plan was to provide plenty of sightseeing as a kind of antidote to working in Yarmouth. I think.

The highlight of this, I understand, was the famous and hairy Capilano suspension bridge, which was intended to reproduce in the teachers the feeling of standing in front of a class of children, but with the added attraction of being able to throw yourself off.

Surprisingly, everyone resisted this temptation.

Happily the teachers were also able to fit in visits to some British Columbian schools, which I believe are far more advanced than ours.

For instance, they do not have Ofsted inspections and are not plagued with the obligation to produce a written policy on everything from literacy to washing up.

There was also the opportunity to observe a revolutionary and highly successful teaching tool that involves developing pupils’ thinking skills.

This has been pioneered in Canada, but is also being used successfully elsewhere.

The group could have gone to Australia, for instance. Perhaps they will.

And there’s another place where it’s already been trialled with outstanding results. Let me see, now.

Where would that be? Oh, yes. It’s Norfolk – just down the road from Yarmouth.

I look forward to seeing the effect of the Canadian experience on Yarmouth schools, but I suspect that a distant look in headteachers’ eyes will be the most easily observable outcome.

So many campaigns . . . so many jobs at stake

Amid all the spin that assails us, we sometimes miss the vested interest that certain groups have in keeping us restricted, frightened and confused.

The Norfolk Casualty Reduction Partnership – fondly known in certain quarters as the Speed Camera Promotion Partnership – likes to remind us that it does not keep the many fines generated from its activities. What it usually forgets to mention is that if it did not convince the Government that speed cameras were necessary, it would simply disappear, along with its rather nice offices in Dencora House, its salaries and its vehicles.

Similarly, the thousands of climatologists funded by governments throughout the world to warn us about global warming would be off looking for new jobs if they were to conclude that the climate is cyclical and mainly influenced by the sun, and that there is practically nothing we can do about it anyway.

The brigades of bureaucrats who infest our government departments and local councils would likewise be dumped if red tape were abolished and paperwork made as simple as it could be.

And the many highly paid PR persons now employed by practically every public utility would be redundant if the people in positions of responsibility would simply answer the phone and tell the truth.

So don’t expect anything to make life easier. No one’s going to make money out of that.

New remembered hills

The hills of Norfolk are clearly striking a chord with readers. One points out that I have neglected to mention Saham Hills, which rise spectacularly north of Watton. These have their own mountain rescue team, advertised on stickers in car windows in the area (or maybe in one car window which moves about a lot).

Another points out that Alburgh, near the Suffolk border, is the highest point in Norfolk, which rather surprised me. No doubt she was referring to Holbrook Hill, the nearby summit, which I intend to climb one day.

Hills expert Richard “Volcano” Meek was unavailable for comment last night.

Sevens 'not natural'

Religious groups have complained about the plan by Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston to produce a wide range of food and drink packaged in sevens, like seven-slice loaves and seven-bottle cases of wine.

His scheme, based on a nationwide plan to produce eggs in boxes of seven to ensure that people eat one a day, has come under attack from an ecumenical cell led by Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, a curate and druid, who described it as “unnatural and newt-like”.

He added: “We should be having a day of rest each week. It’s the natural order of things. It’s bad enough shops opening on Sundays, so that you can’t tell one day from another.

“We can do without things coming at us in sevens. If you work in sevens, you never stop. And you’ve only got to look at people to see the effect it’s having on them.”

Mr Houseago has called for a ban on anything produced by Mr Hardy and a return to normal human behaviour.

Disappearing chickens mystery

I was impressed to read that the Ditchingham roundabout chickens (pronounced chicanes) have been wandering in the road just outside Bungay for about half a century. They are therefore probably the first example in the world of successful traffic calming.

It is not surprising that the local council does not like this, since it is well know that councillors prefer things that do not work, so that they can replace them with other things that do not work, like road humps. And it is certainly suspicious, as a correspondent points out, that the chickens are suddenly disappearing after the council’s legal bid to remove them had failed.

Some blame men in vans looking to make a profit on the birds, but I suspect fowl play by the authorities. Others would go further, suggesting that the Black Dog of Bungay, which was removed for refurbishment not long ago, has been set loose among the chickens as a health and safety measure.

Mr G Went, of Bungay, has called for the dog to be returned to its lamp standard without delay.

7 October 2002

on 7 October 2002 at 08:00

Bus sets new record for UEA crawl

Regular readers will know of my keenness to use public transport whenever possible, even if I am not going anywhere.

So it is a disappointment when it falls short – not just by the merest margin, but by a gulf stretching into oblivion.

A couple of Mondays ago I arrived in good weather at what is now known as Norwich rail station, just before 8.30am, to catch the Number 25 bus to the university. This service runs every 10 minutes.

Twenty minutes later a bus rolled nonchalantly up, and eventually it left with me in it. The traffic was light, and even though the bus dithered on Castle Meadow, it arrived in St Stephen’s just before 9am, at which point the driver turned off the engine and walked away.

We sat for 15 minutes (remember, this is a 10-minute service) before another driver put in an appearance. It took him a further five minutes to load the large queue that had accumulated, and we pulled out of St Stephen’s just after 9.20.

It had taken me 50 minutes to travel about a mile from my house to Chapelfield Road. In a car, in the same conditions, it would have taken about three minutes.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, if that is what you call cramming the bus to the rafters with students and leaving an unhappy residue at the side of the road. We got to the university shortly before 9.40.

This may have been an unusual day, but not if the unconcerned demeanour of the drivers was anything to go by.

In any case, that is not the point. To be a viable alternative to the car, public transport has to be both convenient and reliable. It is no good doing a journey in 20 minutes one day if it is going to take well over an hour the next.

It is very easy to blame congestion, but on this occasion there was none.

Only a couple of days later I was stuck on a chilly platform at Ipswich Station waiting for a train that was three-quarters of an hour late. Most of my train journeys have been unmarred by delays, but just one experience like this is enough to create second thoughts.

Meanwhile the ritual abuse and pointless obstruction of motorists continues. Putting a bit of effort into making public transport a viable alternative might be a more effective method. Unfortunately too many people see being unpleasant to motorists as an end in itself.

Missing hill mystery blamed on East Anglian drift

Another mystery is being examined by noted explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who is building up something of a reputation as an expert on Norfolk hills.

His latest investigations surround Morton on the Hill, a spot on the Norwich-Fakenham road that is notable for being particularly flat.

Mr Meek suspects that this “hill” may have been another victim of the last eruption of Mount Beeston, which he has demonstrated convincingly to be a dormant volcano linked to the death of the Runton elephant.

However, an old map that he has uncovered does throw some doubt on this theory.

Dated 1574, it describes Morton as Su Permont – a clear indication that it was in fairly recent times a hill of significant proportions.

This seems to put paid to two other theories – that the hill was demolished by the same meteorite that put paid to the dinosaurs, the remains of which can be found parking very close by; or that the village was originally on the Rill, namely the River Wensum.

Not entirely happy with any of this, Mr Meek is currently examining the suggestion that East Anglian drift (something like continental drift, only slower) is to blame, and the hill will eventually be found lurking somewhere nearby, like Attlebridge.

Rumours of Hardy affair

Inspired by a nationwide marketing scheme to produce seven-holed egg boxes – so that consumers can eat an egg every day of the week – a wholefood chef from Hindolveston is planning to produce a range of easy-to-use food.

Len "Kissme" Hardy has set up a company to take advantage of new research showing that people are incapable of buying more than one box of eggs a week and can’t count anyway.

“We shall be creating loaves with seven slices, bunches of grapes containing seven grapes, cases of wine holding seven bottles and cheese sliced into seven bite-size chunks,” he said. “And that’s just a start. There is obviously a huge gap in the market.

“People want to live their lives in easy stages, and the week is the obvious choice.”

He denied a rumour that soon-to-be-published diaries written by Dorothea Goodchild, 104, would name him as her secret lover. Ms Goodchild vanished two years ago.

Shape-changing hope

Strange behaviour in the Rackheath area, where a correspondent tells me the B1140 has been changing shape.

Apparently workmen (or possibly workpersons) spent several weeks building a mini-roundabout and altering the road to stop vehicles driving in a straight line – a practice known to be dangerous.

Then, out of the blue, the roundabout disappeared overnight, and the road straightened itself.

My correspondent blames unnatural forces, or perhaps a perfectly natural wormhole spilling over from the Autonomous Republic of Hingham and distorting space and time.

Either way, this is a phenomenon that could prove useful. Perhaps it could be adapted to dispose of speed humps – or, as another innovator has suggested, inserting a lot more speed humps until roads become totally flat again, but slightly higher.

This would obviously be good for road safety, because you could see further. New technique will protect householders

Following renewed fears of flooding in Norfolk, contractors Houseago & Hicks of Erpingham, who specialise in building new homes on flood plains, have come up with a revolutionary plan to protect householders.

Spokesman Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, said last night: “We are intending to use sandbags to build our houses in future.

“I’m amazed no one has thought of it before. Everyone uses sandbags to keep out water. Why not get the sandbags in place from the outset?”

Asked whether there would be any further use for bricks, Mr Houseago said these could be stockpiled for use in severe flooding. “People could build walls round their houses for added protection,” he said.

23 September 2002

on 23 September 2002 at 08:00

Fine time for coypu, newts and clowns

The discoveries of Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek are getting more and more bizarre. During his excavations near Mount Beeston in North Norfolk, he has uncovered the remains of a clown, complete with red nose and baggy trousers.

Since this was adjacent to the Runton Elephant, his first thought was that it was part of an early Roman circus, but he revised this opinion after a dating check.

He then wondered whether it had escaped from a nearby local authority, but a quick inquiry revealed that none of theirs were missing.

At this point I was able to help by pointing out that although many people thought local authorities were run by clowns, my own extensive research over several years had found that they were staffed largely by coypu and great crested newts.

Since the Battle of Wymondham in the mid-1990s, the newts have been running an underground campaign designed to eliminate anything recognisably human from our way of life. By infiltrating councils, they have been able to introduce distortion and disruption of normal behaviour, usually by means of huge loads of unnecessary paperwork.

Their allies, the coypu, aid and abet them by creating confusion everywhere. This is not difficult for them, since they are both extinct and not extinct, and it has helped especially in the development of traffic policies, which are inevitably contradictory.

In the Norwich area, for example, you might think they want to discourage cars. If so, obstacles like the projected closure of Tombland and the end of easy on-street parking might make some sort of sense.

But at the same time we have the encouragement of congestion and pollution in the positioning of the Castle Mall car parks and the Big W; the increase last week in park-and-ride fees; the ongoing Grapes Hill roundabout disaster; and the strange case of Silver Road.

Silver Road used to be a fairly quiet road, issuing on to the inner link road at a spot where you could only reasonably turn left. Instead of rationalising this by inserting a no-right-turn sign for the benefit of the occasional idiot, the coypu thought it would be a wonderful idea to introduce what my mother-in-law – a wise woman – calls “one of those silly little roundabouts”.

This encouraged far more drivers to use Silver Road, because they could now turn right and enter the city. Result: extensive hold-ups on the inner link road and complaint after complaint from Silver Road residents about traffic. No doubt this will eventually be solved by introducing speed humps.

So we have expense, irritation, congestion and pollution, when all that was needed was one signpost.

Another triumph for the coypu. Bring back the clowns.

Not another boring piece about climate change

The real danger of global warming is not in its possible effects, but in its power to distract us from what we could be doing to help needy people.

Sceptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg calculates that if the Kyoto Protocol were brought fully into effect, it would delay the effects of warming by only six years over a century.

But for the same amount of money that would be spent in just one year on implementing the Protocol, we could provide the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation – something that would avoid two million deaths and prevent half a billion people becoming seriously ill every year.

But you can judge how interested politicians and many environmental activists are in doing effective good when you realise that the 60,000 delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg enjoyed four- or five-star accommodation, plus tons of lobster, oysters, filet mignon, salmon, caviar, pate de fois gras, champagne, fine wines and mineral water.

And hundreds of trees were cleared out to accommodate delegates’ limousines.

Meanwhile, an estimated 60 African children a day die from contaminated water, and poverty in Africa has increased 35pc since the last such summit, 10 years ago.

As Noam Chomsky so eloquently put it on another occasion, “you need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what’s really happening to them”.

Shock plans to smarten East Anglia revealed

Following suggestions that Cromer’s crab boats are too scruffy for such an up-market resort, it has been revealed that plans are afoot to smarten up other parts of East Anglia for the benefit of discriminating holidaymakers.

Consultants Houseago Inc have been called in to look closely at beaches, broads and peripheral paraphernalia. Preliminary findings are that much of Blakeney is pointless, and Holkham beach is “nothing more than empty space, suitable only as a film set”.

Wroxham, like Cromer, would be better off without boats, says the report, which however praises it for its shopping facilities. Yarmouth is lauded for having “everything you could possibly want”, but Houseago Inc suggests moving the sea out a bit to create more space. Southwold is “beyond hope”.

Meanwhile the Government is intending to set targets for resorts, followed by examinations. A spokesman said: “These will be equivalent to A-levels. At first. Later we expect to downgrade them.”

Do not read wrong way round: start other end

Translating directions is always a problem, but when you’re dealing with a product that combines a compass with improving the smell in a car – as shown me by a friend recently – the difficulties tend to multiply.

Users are told that “the reek in the car can be changed to the natural fresh fragrance”, which is encouraging, and “you can stick it on everywhere you want in the car after sticking on two-faced tape”.

So far, so good, maybe. But there is a word of caution: “Don’t use other way than right uses” and “Keep out from the children”. Presumably just in case you had been intending to insert one wrongly in a child.

But I feel the prize must be awarded to one sentence that is in perfectly good English: “Please assemble product the other way round.”

Probably best not to think about that at all.

Owners follow dogs' lead

Most recreational areas in our fair neck of the woods are sadly soiled to some degree by what dogs leave behind. But Mattishall appears to have an additional problem.

According to the parish council minutes – to which my attention was directed by a correspondent – “queries were raised re the length of footpath adjacent to the infants school, and its being fouled by one or more dog owners”.

I’ve heard of owners growing to look like their pets, but apparently the pooches’ behaviour is catching too.

9 September 2002

on 9 September 2002 at 08:00

Elderly and infirm get poor deal from city

Those of us who switched our votes at the last city council elections were hoping that a change of power at City Hall would make a difference.

But the streets are still full of litter, and the council continues to risk law suits by discriminating against the poor, the elderly and the infirm, and in favour of the young and healthy.

And this discrimination is about to get worse: the council is going to install more speed humps and make life more difficult for anyone who drives a car.

How is this discrimination against the old and sick?

Well, anyone who is young and/or healthy can walk or cycle. Cyclists, although they are fine people, are the most dangerous of road users, but they get specially built tracks, and no one takes any notice when they routinely jump lights and ignore no-entry signs.

The ill or elderly rely on cars: increasingly these cars have to negotiate various obstacles to reach their homes, the worst being humps in the roads that cause considerable pain to drivers or passengers with joint or back problems. (Of course, they can stay at home.)

What about the poor? They are likely to have older cars that will suffer most from being jolted over deliberately engineered suspension-breakers.

But none of this matters if it stops accidents, does it? Well, I could stop all accidents involving cars by shooting their drivers. Perhaps that is what the city council would prefer.

A civilised society should be preserving mobility for its less able citizens. We have that mobility, and if the best way we can think of to stop accidents is to screw up the road, then I suggest we start employing people with more than one brain cell.

Pictured in a secret testing ground in South Norfolk, this prototype vehicle is the most advanced in a series of suggested improvements in car design from the workshops of a well-known anti-car pressure group.

The T2000 includes several features that the pressure group feels will be essential on the roads of the future, including the large tube (top) for processing statistics, and the refined exhaust (left) which cools the atmosphere.

Critics have pointed out the restricted visibility, but this is not felt to be a major factor. Much more important is the absence of wheels, which should cut down on speed slightly, though maybe not enough. On its trial run the driver dozed off, and the T2000 was involved in a collision with a traction engine that attempted to overtake it. This accident was blamed on excessive speed.

Signs of a new approach

Complaints about the upbeat “Norwich: a fine city” signs have led to tests being made on alternative approaches.

This picture from a reader shows one of the possibilities, inspired by the increasing problems within the city, particularly on weekends.

Its inventor, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: “It may be a bit ahead of its time, but I think it will fit the bill eventually.

New village may have emerged from the sea

The recently discovered Norfolk village of Whynge could be the result of longshore drift, coastal experts have suggested.

Earlier theories centred on the possibility that no one had noticed it before because it had been signposted variously Quarry, Landslip and Common. But this is now felt to be unrealistic.

A coastal spokesman said: “We feel by far the most likely explanation is that it emerged from the sea because of sand and shingle building up. We know that the coastline changes over the years, and this is just one manifestation of it.

“The fact that Whynge contains speed cameras, chicanes, phone masts, a composting centre and 15 giant wind turbines is simply a sign of the times.

“That is the way things are going.”

He felt that in the circumstances it would be perfectly all right to let older, less well equipped villages like Happisburgh be swallowed up by the sea.

“It’s the survival of the fittest,” he said. “The unfit go under, and villages that adapt come out of the sea and evolve on dry land. The possibilities are endless. It’s all very, very exciting. Eventually Whynge may develop a bus route.”

Ancient forecasters much more accurate

Although we are told we can predict the climate for the next hundred years or so, we still seem to have trouble forecasting the weather for even a day at a time, especially if that day happens to be a bank holiday.

As to the BBC website’s five-day forecast, I am at a loss to understand why they bother, since it always changes after three. I did mention it to them, but they said they changed it when they had fresh information, which rather missed the point.

Weather forecasting is just one of the sciences that appears to have deteriorated over time, as ancient-Norfolk expert Richard “Volcano” Meek has demonstrated in his ground-breaking work on the slopes of Mount Beeston, near Sheringham.

He writes: “I came across a stone tablet which carried the earliest known weather forecast: ‘It wille be a bitte parkye’. This was absolutely spot on for about a quarter of a million years – often dismissed by non-meteorologists as The Ice Age.”

Some may dispute Mr Meek’s precise figures, but it is marvellous, as he says, that “these early Pre-Fyshites could provide such an accurate forecast when in this age of genetically modified seaweed we can hardly predict the week ahead”.

Mr Meek is currently investigating the primeval soup, which he suspects is still being served in some Norfolk guesthouses.

Norfolk driving advice is breath of fresh air

One of the nice things about living in Norfolk is the occasional outbreak of intelligent behaviour. A correspondent tells me that on driving into Deopham, near Wymondham, he was greeted by an official speed restriction sign bearing the legend beneath it, in the local language, “Drive you steady”.

Much more effective than a thousand sour-faced humps and hysterical “Speed kills” signs.

26 August 2002

on 26 August 2002 at 08:00

Fatter earth blamed on selfish behaviour

Amid all the alternative excitement, you may have missed the announcement earlier this month that the earth is getting fatter.

Measurements taken during the last four years have show that its “dynamic oblateness” (a phrase I intend to make use of on a personal level) is increasing. Obviously, this is our fault.

Plans are already afoot to arrange a Fat Earth Summit in Reepham, to which all world leaders will be invited.

Pressure groups are already being formed to alert us all to the appalling effect we are having on the fatness of the earth by our thoughtless and selfish behaviour. Governments are promising to tackle the problem by increasing taxes on anything that promotes fatness, particularly in earth-like objects, and to demand as much paperwork as possible. There will probably be a charge for congestion.

The UEA School of Fatness Research has already put together computer models demonstrating that by the end of this century the earth will be so fat that life as we know it will be almost impossible, except for mosquitoes and some owls.

A spokesman, Dr Paul “Black” Grape, said that the recent flooding in Europe, the drought in America and heavy showers over parts of Norfolk were undoubtedly a result of the fatter earth – a far more important phenomenon than the Asian Brown Cloud. He said it was essential that we all stop using cars and jump up and down a lot, thus compacting the surface area of the earth. It would help if we could do this near the equator.

Meanwhile a controversial view was put forward by Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, an expert on distortions of time, space and earth. He said the increase in earth fatness over the last four years correlated surprisingly closely with the huge growth in speed cameras.

Since road deaths had also increased, he urged that they should be abolished. “If not, we will all slide towards the poles, which hardly bears thinking about,” he said. Road humps would also have to go, for obvious reasons.

Missing from museum

The new-look Castle Museum in Norwich is a strange experience – veering wildly between hi-tech and no-tech, with iffy-tech children’s play areas thrown in. All in all, a surreal though occasionally enchanting journey that made me happy to cling on to the reassuring reality of those old pictures and stuffed birds.

Perhaps the most surreal thing about the museum, however, is that it doesn’t have a public phone. Which means that if you need to contact someone during your (minimum) two-hour visit, you have to leave the castle, scour the immediate vicinity for a telephone and then, having found and used it, decide you can’t be bothered to climb the hill back to the museum. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem to me to be brilliant marketing strategy – unless of course they’re going for a rapid turnover.

Clue to location of Atlantis in South Norfolk

Intrepid explorer Richard Meek, fresh from his triumph in exposing the threat to Norfolk from its two dormant volcanoes at Thetford and Sheringham, believes he may have pinpointed another little-known fact about the county.

“I believe that Atlantis is at the bottom of Diss Mere,” he revealed yesterday. “Everywhere else has been checked and, as Sherlock Holmes used to say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.”

Many locals talk about strange goings-on in the Mere in years gone by, but Mr Meek is the first man brave enough to put the jigsaw together and stick his neck out.

He believes the demise of Atlantis may have resulted indirectly from the explosion of Mount Beeston. “Of course, many people believe Atlantis was much bigger,” he said. “But that has not been proved.”

What convinced him finally was the clue that he believes was left by an Atlantis survivor, who named the town Diss.

“It’s obvious when you see it,” he said. “When you get close to the town, Diss appears. See? Disappears. He was obviously trying to tell us something. Atlantis is definitely in there.”

Rumours of dragons nesting under the Green at Hunstanton have still to be investigated by Mr Meek, who expressed himself “sceptical, though it might explain the pier catching fire”. The former Blue Dragon swimming pool in the town could be significant.

Aliens try to merge in, but get details wrong

Aliens are among us. They look like us, speak a bit like us, and some of them work like us: but they haven’t got the behaviour quite right yet. I don’t discard litter in the street, and I bet you don’t either. But they do. I have seen them in action, and they come in many shapes and sizes.

Last week I observed a retired-type alien “surreptitiously” brushing rubbish out of his car and on to a city street before, presumably, returning to his space ship. Younger aliens – and there are thousands of them – routinely discard packaging or anything else they don’t want before beaming up to the planet Me.

One trick these aliens are apparently unable to master is how to use a public convenience. I mean, how difficult is that? But surveys of these amenities routinely reveal the kind of unpleasantness that must presumably be normal in the home lives of aliens.

Attempts are being made to locate their planet and blow it up in an unneighbourly but satisfying way, but so far such attempts have been embarrassingly unsuccessful.

12 August 2002

on 12 August 2002 at 08:00

Putting too much into the countryside

When I was up in the Cairngorms, just north of King’s Lynn, I walked headlong into widespread local worries about proposals to turn the area into a National Park.

Outside interference, jobs for the boys (and girls), meaningless public consultation and intrusive signposting were just some of the horrors envisaged for the wilderness area in the name of the great god Conservation. And for some reason it made me think of the Tas valley, just south of Norwich.

Close to the city’s outskirts, there is a Roman town. It is not easy to spot. To the naked and uninformed eye there is a large piece of grass with raised banks, some of them containing remains of old walls. There is also a church, and a river. It is a delightful area, with a small parking place, a few wooden steps and discreet information posts.

The prospect of this quiet beauty being invaded by people who want to exploit it is one that worries me as much as it does Roy Masters, a blacksmith from North Norfolk who works “very much as the Romans did when they were here – by hand”.

He is “absolutely appalled” to see what the so-called experts came up with. “They intend to spend £3½m on a visitors’ centre plus access," he writes.

"Once you leave the southern bypass “you would be on what could only be described as a single-track roadway. Then there is a narrow railway bridge to negotiate, and after that the plan is to run nearly a quarter of a mile along the top of a hill to an ancient Roman beech-wooded mound, where these experts intend to place a car park and visitors’ centre”.

And that’s not the end of it. From there they “intend to construct a raised walkway and bridge all the way across the valley. When you have finished your quarter-mile walk and, having paid for the privilege, you stand in the centre of our ‘Roman Town’ – a vast, open grass area surrounded by banks”.

Mr Masters suggests that paying visitors may be less than enchanted by the view. And thousands of unhappy paying visitors will have replaced a few happy, non-paying ones.

Not a pleasing prospect. I warm more to the rather cheaper scheme suggested by South Norfolk councillor Roger Smith in 1998. Leaving the site a little overgrown would add to its sense of age and mystery, he suggested.

The leisure services committee at that time agreed a programme of grass cutting and general maintenance of the site – at the modest cost of £3500 a year.

That’s what I call a breath of fresh air.

Expert opinion: how important is that?

With all the major athletics events recently, some people may have missed the Norfolk Games, held at Little London, near Corpusty, and opened by the mayor, Mrs Hicks, with the words: “I declare.”

Unfortunately we don’t have time to bring you any of the events, but we have space for analysis by the experts, led by Norfolk veteran Henry (Fred) ‘Shrimp’ Houseago – a two-furlong specialist in his youth. With him are Prof V A R Scheinlich, who has frequently smashed the record for Hingham to Norwich, and Len ‘Kissme’ Hardy, a chef and high jumper.

Houseago: The crowd were wonderful. They got right behind our athletes.

Scheinlich: Definitely. Our runners really came of age here.

Houseago: How important was it that most of them got out of bed this morning?

Hardy: Definitely. And the crowd were terrific.

Scheinlich: Yes, I think we have to hand it to the crowd. But how important was that gold medal?

Houseago: Definitely. It really came of age. Do you think it can go on from here?

Hardy: Definitely. But the crowd were wonderful.

Houseago: Perhaps we could have a look at that key race. No, sorry. We’re out of time. Pity, really.

Scheinlich: Definitely. How important is that? Great crowd. It came of age. Nice stadium, too.

Bale-rolling set for comeback

I was delighted while rambling near Claxton the other day to see that a couple of fields had been set up for the ancient Norfolk sport of bale-rolling.

Since it was hit by scandal just after the war, bale-rolling has faded into the shadows. Several teams were accused of using illegal dwiles, and there were rumours – possibly ill-founded – of both greasing and stubble-smoothing.

“There was too much money in it,” said Prof Ian ‘Sam’ Aufmerksam of the UEA School of Penguins, Chess and Road-Surfacing, when he researched the subject five years ago. “These old sports could only survive on an amateur basis.

“I’m afraid we’ll never see the like of the old champions such as Andy ‘Push’em’ Higbee. The thrill of bales thundering down the slope and into the grup may never be glimpsed again.”

But recent research has revealed a resurgence of the Claxton Chapter, and the bales have been set up on sloping fields for a championship-level match – the bale equivalent of playing off the back tees in golf.

The time of the event and the names of the participants remain a closely guarded secret.

New volcano located

Lava expert Richard Meek, who warned recently of the imminent eruption of Mount Beeston, near Sheringham, has stumbled across yet another dormant Norfolk volcano.

This one is in Thetford which, as local historians will know, has suffered from more than its fair share of explosions in the past. In the last century, one such catastrophe resulted in a violent increase in population.

The dormant volcano pinpointed by Mr Meek is known locally as The Mound. He points out that this is a synonym for ‘Bump’, the alternative name for Mount Beeston.

He also reveals that “students of ley lines will not be surprised to learn that the two sites can be joined by a straight line on the map” – clear proof that ancient Norfolk people regarded them as having special spiritual power.

As yet, he sees no indication that The Mound is about to erupt, despite the lack of stability in the town centre.

Too many slow ponies

When I was on holiday in Aberdeenshire, which is an extraordinarily civilised part of the world, I came unexpectedly upon a sign in the grounds of a castle. It read: ‘Slow Pony Driving’.

I was a little taken aback, but was quickly able to adjust when I realised that people on Royal Deeside are known for their colourful and inventive use of language. Clearly, people who drive too slowly there are known as ‘ponies’ (presumably by analogy with shanks’s pony). I soon came across one. He was driving at 35mph on an A road – and slowing down for the corners.

Perhaps the sign could be adapted for use in the rear screens of cars. There would be a huge market in Norfolk, especially on the North Walsham road, and I am sure it would contribute to road safety.

29 July 2002

on 29 July 2002 at 08:00

Author takes steps to follow road back

Roads have been wallowing for quite a while now in the slough of negative publicity, orchestrated by strange beings who feel we would be much better without them.

But the romance of the road has a long history. While a road under construction is an eyesore, a completed road quickly becomes a pleasing part of the landscape.

Only if there are too many of them in too small a place is the picture different – and the same is true of people, but sooner.

Bruce Robinson, an author who used to work on the EDP, is a bit of an expert on roads. Among many other books, he has written The Nowhere Road, which surprisingly is not the A47 but Peddars Way.

Norfolk County Council was so taken by this title that it has decided – by judicious use of signposting – to create many more nowhere roads in the county.

Unfazed by this brush with fame, Mr Robinson has spent some time recently following The Norwich Road, which is not a road at all, but a book he unearthed in a second-hand bookshop.

Written by Charles G Harper a century ago as one of a series, it tells stories of the 112-mile coaching route from Whitechapel and Stratford in east London through Ingatestone, Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich, Scole and Long Stratton to Norwich.

Inside the book he found the original sales invoice and receipt. The volume had been purchased by a Mr G E Cower of Gower Street in London, in June 1902.

How can you follow a book? Mr Robinson, something of a romantic, chose to return to the bookshop that sold it exactly 100 years to the day after it was sold.

“Astonishingly,” he says, “the bookshop is still there. At least, a bookshop now occupies the same site in Marylebone, though it is no longer Francis Edwards but Daunt Books, which specialises in publications for travellers.”

In an area of London that has changed little, he then decided to go to the heart of the matter, and knocked on the door of the house once occupied by Mr Cower, the purchaser of the book. Sadly, it was empty, though a nameplate described it as the Bloomsbury Centre.

It was clearly a step too far. He had run out of clues. Or had he? Just down the road from his home in Wicklewood was a milestone bearing the inscription “London 100 miles”. The plot thickened. He reached for his walking boots.

Glimpse of the future through blurred glasses

Obviously I was as reassured as everyone else to read that BT was removing only “surplus” phone boxes from our countryside – in much the same way, presumably, that Dr Beeching removed surplus railway lines back in the 60s because they would never, ever be needed again.

That was one of the more spectacular examples of getting the future wrong in recent history. No doubt many others are in the pipeline, disguised as white papers, visionary targets and economy measures.

Reducing everything to the bare essentials is never the right policy. If the world had been created with the bare essentials for survival, we would certainly not be here now. Nor would the world.

I do hope that in 10 years’ time someone doesn’t discover that mobile phones really are killing us and are bad for the environment too. In that case the search would be on for the phone box graveyard to which the 174 uprooted Norfolk boxes will presumably be consigned, in an environmentally friendly sort of way.

Or will they be used to hold the tonnes of mail that it will soon become too expensive to deliver?

Short-sightedness is the curse of the age. When it is linked with the plague of measuring everything with money, disaster is the only possible outcome.

Road number? Hang on, let's see if I'm really here

It was revealed in the EDP recently that the police find it hard to cope with 999 calls outside urban areas unless you can tell them the number of the road you are on.

Not only that, they are apparently under the impression that “most members of the public know road numbers”. This is in fact only true if they are following a map, and then only sometimes.

A correspondent observed that “it is my experience, culled from 45 years working with the public, that a large percentage of the population cannot even give you their own address adequately, never mind name roads they rarely, if ever, travel on”.

Surprisingly, things are even worse than that. I can reveal that in a gathering of 14-year-olds, many of them do not even know if they are there or not.

This became clear when teachers in a school I know attempted to allocate Year 9 children to groups, for reasons that need not detain us.

Many were creatively absent, and so it was necessary to call a register. The inability of most to call out “Yes” in a way that made it distinct from “No, she’s absent” was wonderful to behold. And of course it wasn’t their fault.

I do hope they have no cause to make a 999 call. The police would have a real problem on their hands.

Fast food for woodpeckers

An alarming trend has been spotted by woodpecker-watcher Richard “Volcano” Meek.

Apparently woodpeckers have turned their backs on their traditional summer food of insects – notably ants and beetle larvae – and are flocking to bird tables in search of fast food items like peanuts. Ornithologists, I undertand, are worried on two main counts:

Will we be plagued by reprieved ants and beetles? Will the woodpeckers become hyperactive through excessive use of junk food and turn into juvenile delinquents – boring holes in doors, instead of just knocking and flying away?

I myself will not be losing any sleep over it. Before we know where we are the bird tables will be taken over by a chain, and the peanuts will reach the table so slowly that it will be quicker to go to a pub.

Or back to the trees, of course.

15 July 2002

on 15 July 2002 at 08:00

Knot theory problem for string scientists

Today sees the start of a major conference at Cambridge University on string theory, which many scientists believe could lead to a unified theory of everything.

But one key man has not been invited to Strings 2002: Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, whose pioneering work in the same area has shocked many of his contemporaries.

Prof Scheinlich claims to have already discovered a fairly unified theory of almost everything. Fellow physicists, however, have refused to accept his unorthodox methods and have tried to prevent him from publicising his ideas.

He claims that this is because his own version of string theory – knot theory – uses the concept of multi-dimensional universes to explain a variety of phenomena, including the Hingham wormholes, the Pondhenge goose, the Ditchingham chickens and Schroedinger’s cat.

Asked why his theory was only fairly unified, he said that he had just about got it together, though it tended to unravel at times, rather like string. “In time it will be unified,” he said. “Time being a relative term in knot theory, and especially in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham.”

While scientists have searched for a theory to explain everything, even road humps, Prof Scheinlich has been content to go for almost everything.

“There is no way we can explain everything,” he said. “If we said we had explained everything, we would then have to explain how we could explain everything, given that the explanation would be outside everything else and, according to knot theory, inexplicably extra-dimensional. Like the cat.”

While Cambridge scientists work on oblivious to the ground-breaking theories of Prof Scheinlich, support for knot theory has come from an unexpected quarter – the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing.

Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam said last night: “I have the greatest respect for the work of Prof Scheinlich. He is undoubtedly the greatest living expert on Hingham, and if you can understand that, you can understand anything.”

Mrs Hicks was unavailable for comment.

Resurgence of newt power on horizon

A battalion of great crested newts is said to be blocking the line of the proposed Long Stratton bypass – thus preventing relief reaching the beleaguered town.

This resurgence of newt power comes as a shock after the apparent success of the campaign led by Norfolk veteran and druid Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, to oust the amphibians from positions of power in the county following the legendary Wymondham war.

Veterans of that encounter still speak in hushed tones of the newts’ expansionist ambitions. But their subsequent alliance with Austrian cave salamanders failed to break new ground, and Mr Houseago has been enjoying a fairly quiet retirement.

He is now expected to campaign on the Long Stratton issue and has already called for the UN peace-keeping force that was recently deployed at North Walsham to be moved south.

Meanwhile, great crested newts inconvenienced by the current dualling of new stretches of the A11 are receiving £250,000 compensation in the shape of special land guarantees.

“The battle is not over,” said Mr Houseago. “Newts never let up. We will continue to fight for our rights as true Norfolk people. We shall never surrender.”

Leap of imagination

The most dangerous road in Norwich – Prince of Wales Road – had 62 accidents in three years, most of them caused by pedestrians who had drunk too much.

The solution is obvious, when you think about it: the city council is planning improved pedestrian crossing facilities.

It takes only a small leap of the imagination to see drunken persons diligently searching out the crossings in a subdued way instead of hurling themselves loudly and aimlessly into the road.

Lynn a fine town - expert

Richard Meek, the expert responsible for alerting Norfolk to the possibility of a volcanic eruption near Sheringham, is concerned at my passing reference last time to the state of King’s Lynn.

I would like to assure readers that Mr Meek has the highest regard for Lynn. He does not feel its present state is the result of a prehistoric volcanic eruption. It is, he says, a fine town.

Personally I tend to see it as a curate’s egg of a town. Parts of it are very tasty, and would probably not be improved at all by a layer of ash.

1 July 2002

on 1 July 2002 at 08:00

Elephant big clue to Norfolk volcano

Norfolk is at risk of an imminent volcanic eruption, according to an investigator who has been carrying out excavations on the slopes of Mount Beeston in North Norfolk.

Complex calculations have revealed that Sheringham and Cromer could be completely obliterated under 12 metres of volcanic ash, says expert Richard Meek. He points out that this could badly disrupt the tourist season.

According to a revolutionary new theory from Mr Meek, the Runton elephant may not be a fossil at all, but the remains of a beast caught out by the last major eruption, which also marked the end of a frequent bus service to the area.

If this is so, plans to turn the massive elephant into the star of a new multi-million-pound visitor attraction may have to be put on hold while Mount Beeston is ‘plugged’.

Estimates of the age of the animal may also have to be revised, but residents have been advised not to panic.

Mr Meek’s theories also cast new light on the ‘startling and unique’ discovery announced last week of the remains of mammoths dating back to the Ice Age at a quarry site in South Norfolk.

Prof V A R Scheinlich, of Hingham, has already proposed that the mammoths are victims of an earlier eruption, which resulted in a shrinking of the original Mount Beeston between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, when it was an amazing 20,000 feet high and erupted most Thursdays.

The effects on the Hingham area are still being felt, says Prof Scheinlich.

Meanwhile, archaeologists excavating the medieval Red Mount Chapel at The Walks in King’s Lynn have found a multi-dimensional 18-sided wall but no mammoths or elephants at all.

This indicates that the eruptions did not affect the Lynn area; so some other explanation must be found for the state the town is in.

Is mystery officer behind nanny craze?

Conker trees, window boxes and bouncy castles may be just a fading memory, but at least we have advertising boards.

The Labour administration at City Hall, Norwich, became so notorious for its overprotective approach to citizens who might be in ‘danger’ that some have blamed the nanny approach for its failure at the polls.

But now we have the new Lib Dem supremos getting all het up about advertising boards tripping people up in the streets – and the Labour has-beens getting all superior about it, presumably because they didn’t think of it first.

Odd, or what? Maybe the councillors are not to blame after all. We know they are easily led by devious officers. Obviously someone in there is determined to carry on his or her bizarre campaign of over-protection, whoever is in charge and ostensibly making the decisions.

I am tempted to carry out an investigation, but instead I will follow Norfolk police strategy in cases of serious crime, and invite the guilty party to confess.

Schroedinger fears in hunt for missing black dog

The story of Bungay’s mysterious black dog was back on television yesterday, and this has alarmed one citizen, who is concerned at a possible influx of enthusiasts into the town.

Anyone searching for the curious canine is likely to be disappointed because, as Geoff Went points out, “we have no black dog.

“He was last seen disappearing down Trinity Street on the back of a Suffolk Council lorry almost two years ago.

“Nobody seems to know where he is. I’ve asked the Town Reeve and the Town Mayor, but they don’t know, although the rumour is that a refurbished one is available.

“In other words, the original is lost, and they are offering us a pup.”

Mr Went would like readers to help find the dog, which is known as Shuck and is quite attached to lamp standards.

I am a little concerned that this could turn out to be a similar case to that of the elusive Norfolk big cat, which I suggested recently could be Schroedinger’s cat – a feline that all physicists know is both dead and alive, unless you look at it. Dogs like to know where they are, and would react badly to that sort of thing.

Adrift in the wild

Here we are on Blakeney Point to observe the habits of holidaymakus sealboatus, many of whom congregate here at this time of year, possibly on the way to warmer climes.

Months of painstaking research has established that while on the mainland this species wanders around, apparently aimlessly, but is attracted to boats. These invariably take them out close to the seal beaches and often land them on the point, where they are presented with nature in a wild, uncluttered state.

They have only an hour to enjoy the dunes and beaches before the tide forces them back. But here is the mystery. With a golden opportunity to explore a beautiful peninsula that is usually inaccessible, what do they do? They go and buy a cup of tea at the tea shop.

We can only wonder at the lack of curiosity and assume that some very basic urge is involved here. Has tea addiction become a reality? Further research will clearly be necessary . . .

17 June 2002

on 17 June 2002 at 08:00

Steps into a spinning, unreal world

Some readers wonder why I bang on about speeding and global warming. I would like to reassure them that I do have another life, in which slow, cool things such as my wife and son, chess, redcurrants and long walks are far more important.

The reason I return here to the vexed area of movement on our roads, and to climate change, is to combat the continual propaganda that assails us, day in and day out. Not to replace one piece of propaganda with another, but to point out that it is possible to discuss these matters.

Every time we stop thinking and simply accept what governments or pressure groups tell us, it is another step away from freedom and into a spinning, 1984-style world where things are said in order to produce a specific result, and not because they are true.

Climate change has become a knee-jerk reaction to practically every problem known to man. It has become a dogma of funding-hungry environmentalists, an easy article for every journalist who hasn’t time or inclination to research it and a repository of all our fears.

But it is all immensely complicated. There is conflicting data, and there are very shaky computer models. You may think you know all about it, but you certainly don’t. No-one does. It’s also worth remembering that you can know a great deal about something but still make a wrong judgement. Specialists are not automatically right.

The reason I write about speeding is not because I want to drive fast. It is because, like climate change, speeding is a scapegoat. It is not true that speeding causes most accidents, half of accidents or even a third of accidents.

Transport Research Laboratory figures show that 7.3pc of accidents are caused by excessive speed. So where does the “one third or higher” lie come from? Very simple. It is done by adding in failure to judge the other person’s path or speed, following too close, slippery road, being in a hurry, driving aggressively, bad weather and “other”.

Even adding all these totally different causes together comes to well under 31pc. This is conveniently rounded up to a third. And hey presto! It can become a half with only a flick of the wrist.

Anti-car opportunists are not concerned about the real causes of accidents – things like fatigue, inattention, distraction and incompetence. They are not worried about the real problem with “speeding” – which is that many speed limits are set too low, and so drivers do not trust them.

If a driver sees mile after mile of 40mph signs on the A11 when the workers have all gone home and there are no hazards, he is likely to view any 40mph limit suspiciously.

Last week a cyclist wrote to the editor complaining about the “80pc” of motorists who “speed” and adding: “The UK has the highest child deaths in road incidents in Europe.”

This is a typical example of random statistics (and bad grammar, but we’ll leave that aside). A 1998 DETR report reveals: “Britain’s overall road safety record is good; the 1998 fatality rate for children was 1.76 per 100,000 children, well below the EU average of 3.39.”

Only two EU countries have a better record: Sweden and those notoriously slow drivers, the Italians.

Football takes over at top of worship ratings

The switch from God to football is almost complete. With many churches cancelling or moving worship services on the first Sunday of the World Cup to allow their congregations to watch England play Sweden, it is crystal clear where people’s priorities lie, and why not? After all, football is already worshipped with much greater fervour than God. We might as well admit it.

God, being such a nice guy, will obviously not mind being shifted aside for an hour or two. It’s not as if it’s a special hour, or anything. He’s there all the time, isn’t he? And you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. We know he’s happy to be a kind of backstop for when things go wrong, like England losing.

A quick perusal of the Bible shows that God is always willing to take a back seat. Take the first commandment, for example. Well, an obvious mistranslation there. And of course, God is a football fan. He probably worships the game.

I mean, football is so much easier to understand. You can’t expect us to think about things like eternity, creation and resurrection. We can only cope with small miracles, like players coming back from injury, correct offside decisions, or England winning on penalties.

And it’s so much easier if we can push aside those uneasy feelings that there may be more to life than the perfect goal, getting 10pc off at B & Q or coveting the neighbour’s lifestyle.

Life after death? Well, there’s always the European Championship. Spirituality? Don’t know, mate. We do the Mexican wave. Awe? Well, that Beckham is something else.

Is it possible that God might not be simply a nice guy, and there might have to be something a little bit different about a God who holds a universe together? A little bit bigger, for instance? A little bit worth giving priority?

Don’t know, mate. Wait till the World Cup is over, and I might give it a thought. If I don’t fall apart first.

Shocks in line for power users

Pedestrians are extremely bad at estimating the speed of passing cars, which is why we have so many ridiculous speed limits.

This was demonstrated vividly in Hethersett, where villagers complained that drivers had been hurtling down Churchfields at 70mph. The county council did a survey and found that speeds along the road were in fact well under 30mph.

Never mind. The surveyors discovered that there was a problem in another road; so they will be able to get those humps out after all.

Meanwhile the Government is working on plans for people to be given periodic shocks if they use too much electricity. Apparently we indulge in it far too much, and it can kill people. A gas leak strategy is in the pipeline.

20 May 2002

on 20 May 2002 at 08:00

New threat to scientific orthodoxy

Right, settle down. Today’s lesson is taken from the Kyoto Protocol, Unrevised Standard Version, verses 1997 to 1999: “Thou shalt not question any statement made by your governments, or by scientists funded by them.

“Thou shalt not presume to doubt the motives of those who carve the party line in tablets of stone. Thou wouldst do better not to think at all. “These are the words, and the words are in the beginning, and the middle and the end.

“Thou shalt not anger those who know much better than thou, nor question any statistic published by them. Thou shalt bow down to computer models, however vague, and cast out data that do not fit. Thou shalt allow only the holy words to be printed, or thou shalt be taken to the Press Complaints Commission, trodden underfoot and mocked and despised. Amen.”

That is the word of the Odd. Let’s now move on to sing joyfully Hymn 2000: Transports of Delight. Please stand at the bus stop and turn down the heating.

“Praise to the diesel buses who fume along our way; we’ll always stand and praise them, come what may. E’en though we die of freezing, or cancer from their smoke, we’ll back them to the hilt because a car is just a joke.

“We’ll cast aside car drivers and hurl them in the mire; we’ll cover them with calming humps and push the tarmac higher. Pedestrian and cyclist are better than the rest; discussion is forbidden, for we know best.”

Please sit down, or kneel if you prefer.

Dearly beloved, we are faced with yet another challenge to orthodoxy. All around us, people are thinking for themselves and challenging scientific belief.

Some have even gone so far as to claim that there may be a God, or even worse, that evolution cannot be proved. This must not be allowed, any more than we can allow suggestions that speed is any way not fatal. Speed cameras and other sacred objects must be honoured and protected at all costs. I need hardly say that it is quite permissible to use any tactics to protect them and to bring down fire and brimstone on the motorist’s head.

Brethren, I am sad to say that some even doubt the second warming. We know that warming will come again, globally, and that it is the motorist’s fault. We will excommunicate all who stand by their cars, or who fail to condemn the use of fossil fuels. Their love of idling is appalling. They will not be allowed to enter the holy place.

And now, as friends of this earth, let us offer each other a sign of greenish peace. But first a brief prayer. Hands together, eyes tight shut.

Society on the verge of disintegration

Amid all the angst last week about a mother being jailed for failing to ensure that her children attended a school, a couple of connections seemed to go unmade.

The most obvious one was contained in these two reported statements: teachers were banned from smacking children in the 1980s; and classroom discipline has collapsed over the last 20 years.

Now muddle-headed groups like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – and many others – want to stop parents smacking. Presumably the aim this time is a total breakdown of society as we know it.

And just to save some of you the trouble of writing, no – I am not in favour of beating, caning, whipping, stabbing, garrotting, actual bodily harm or tactical nuclear devices in the home. Apologies if you can’t tell the difference.

Fears as peace-keepers leave

Alarming reports from North Norfolk indicate that the United Nations has withdrawn its peace-keeping force from North Walsham. The clearly marked UN vehicle standing at the south entrance to the town – so long a symbol of an uneasy truce – has been removed, and commentators are concerned that fighting may soon break out again.

Local militia groups bent on autonomy have been quiet recently, but rumours suggest that there could soon be an influx of angry young men from surrounding villages such as Meeting Hill, Swafield, Westwick and Spa Common.

Little London militants have been contacting other Little Londons across the county, and the mayor of one of them, Mrs Hicks, has been seen yet again fomenting discontent in North Walsham, well known as a trouble spot in the inhospitable terrain that contains so many hiding places, like Bacton.

Len “Kissme” Hardy, an expert on wilderness areas, comets and some pies, has told reporters that the UN must return immediately if disaster is to be averted.

“This is a fragile peace at best,” he said. “Don’t blame me if things go pear-shaped.”

Quantum leap in mystery of intermittent cat

An explanation for the mysterious appearances of a big cat in remote spots throughout Norfolk has been offered by a Hingham expert.

Professor V A R Scheinlich said that he had examined various theories, including the possibility of temporal displacement, but had been driven to the conclusion that the cat concerned was in fact Schrödinger’s cat.

The most recent sighting of the cat was at Mileham in the mysterious central Norfolk triangle formed by Dereham, Swaffham and Fakenham, where many travellers have simply vanished. But Prof Scheinlich, who is renowned for his diagnosis of the Hingham wormhole effect, feels this is a red herring.

He says it is almost certain that the famous quantum mechanical cat created by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in the 1920s has escaped from its box and is out of control, flitting in and out of existence without warning.

“This is not like that incident in Cheshire, where a cat disappeared and left a smile behind,” he said. “This is the real thing. Or the unreal thing, depending on which way you look at it.”

He warned people not to approach the cat, which could easily collapse, jump or move into a parallel universe, which would not be helpful.

Asked whether the cat was alive or dead, he replied: “Yes, probably.”

6 May 2002

on 6 May 2002 at 08:00

Big game is interrupted by tragedy

Here we are at a delightful spot just off the A140 to watch another exciting game of Road Crash Poker. The two teams are at the table and – hang on a minute, I think that’s another accident outside: car 0, heavy goods vehicle 3. A nasty home loss, there.

Back to the poker. This could be a very close match, because both teams have a similar amount of ammunition, and it’s all live.

They’ve started! The Dogmatists have been dealt some very powerful cards. They have several newspaper headlines, all with the word speed in them, and an impressive selection of statistics, one or two of them genuine.

The team captain has opened the betting with a couple of statements from the Transport Research Laboratory. Out of context, but that doesn’t matter: no one has seen the originals, and it’s looking very good – hang on again, another crash three miles up the road involving a bus, a tractor and a small owl.

No news yet of that score; extra time in progress. Now the Challengers have seen those statements from the Transport Research Laboratory and have raised a different one. Well, we’ve seen that one before, but somehow it always comes as a surprise. Courageous betting there. This could go either way.

Aha! The Dogmatists have gone for a big raise: backing from three environmental groups, 743 parish councillors, 98 cyclists, 29 tame journalists and a dog. That could clinch it. Wait! Yes, that’s another fatality, two cars colliding at a junction. That’s 2-2, and it’s gone to penalties.

The Challengers have thrown in support from the Association of British Drivers, and a whole barrel full of common sense, which should be worth something. They’ve called. Apparently someone is holding a dead man’s hand. Well, that means a showdown. All cards on the table. And we’ll see the result after this news of another disaster: a shunt involving seven vehicles and a sheep. No score yet.

Yes, the Dogmatists have won easily. It is indeed a full car – I mean house: aces and eights.

They win the mammoth prize of 17 speed cameras, as many road humps as they can carry and all the money that would otherwise have been spent on road improvements: that’s about £15.

If you survive, join us again for another thrilling game of Road Crash Poker. Goodnight. We have you on film.

Mass trespass by ducks

Worrying times in South Norfolk, where a mass trespass by ducks has been taking place, presumably to commemorate the mass trespass by ramblers on Kinder Scout almost exactly 70 years ago.

The ducks, claiming a right to roam, invaded a first school near Harleston, defying attempts by teachers to protect the children and workmen who are on site constructing a new classroom – or nest, as the ducks prefer to call it.

The head teacher at Alburgh, who prefers to remain anonymous, said the ducks were on neither the National Curriculum nor the menu and therefore had no place in a school. As a temporary measure, they were allowing the birds to take part in lessons but a watch had been placed outside in case Ofsted inspectors got wind of it.

Teachers were expecting the ducks to do well in upcoming SATs tests, although some wondered if they might quack.

Fears were expressed last night by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) ‘Shrimp’ Houseago, 103, that this was “just the tip of the iceberg”. Following the ducks’ breakthrough, he fully expected great crested newts to follow, possibly disguised as Norfolk Property Services.

Slack lines no problem for cut-off communities

One day, not long ago, a man in darkest Mid-Norfolk looked out of his window and saw an engineer looking at the telephone lines near his house. When asked, the engineer said he was “making sure the lines aren’t slack”.

Later that day, the man’s phone went dead, and he found the telephone line lying across the corner of a field. It was not slack. It was broken. He reported the fault, and two days later someone wrapped the broken line round a pole, which was obviously reassuring.

Five days after that, he rang the complaints department of the company, who said the pole would have to be replaced, and traffic lights were necessary to do it. They did not say why, but they did say that for traffic lights they would need planning permission.

Next day the man was told the fault would be rectified that afternoon.

Three uneventful days later the complaints department, when consulted, said that an engineer would visit the site to see what had to be done.

When I last heard, the man had been without a phone for 11 days, losing a great deal of trade, many private calls and his grip on reality. At one point during the 11 days, his calls were transferred to his mobile phone.

This lasted for a day until callers got a message saying the number was “not registered for this service”. The man says this message was delivered in a “snooty” voice, and I have no reason to disbelieve him.

For myself, I am quite happy for any phone lines near me to remain slack. Thank you for asking.

Cheaper Fakenham move

Following the hugely successful closure of the ancient court at Fakenham to save money and inconvenience as many people as possible, it has been decided to make further economy measures.

Norwich Diocese has decided to close all churches in mid-Norfolk and require churchgoers to attend a cathedral in Norwich, Ely or Peterborough. All village halls will also be shut down, with meetings, dances and bingo being transferred to buildings in Norwich or Lynn. Shops, described as an antiquated system, will also be closed, with potential shoppers transferred to strategically placed supermarkets.

“It really is terribly irritating, having people in the Fakenham area,” said a spokesman. “We’re doing our best to sort it out.”

The bus will continue to run.

Potholes: the answer

Widespread concern was expressed last week about the huge number of potholes in our roads, with a backlog that it will cost billions of pounds to tackle. Such potholes are, of course, extremely dangerous. Happily, I think I can offer a solution.

Many of our roads are covered with humps, which highway authorities have somehow found the time and money to install despite being unable to keep up with road repairs.

Such humps are also extremely dangerous, particularly to motor cyclists and cyclists, but also to car drivers and pedestrians. The answer is obvious: dismantle the humps and fill in the potholes with them.

Two dangers eliminated at a stroke. I am sure the resulting reduction in casualty rates – and personal injury claims – would be very satisfying for councillors, and indeed for all of us.

22 April 2002

on 22 April 2002 at 08:00

Gullibility test better than code

Parish councillors are understandably upset that the Government wants to foist more paperwork on them in the form of a code of conduct.

This of course simply brings them into line, because the Government, being of a dictatorial persuasion, would like anyone and everything to be transparent – open and empty, without content and without intelligence, but with plenty of targets and preferably on a bus.

Parish councils are not yet like that, and councillors even less so, give or take the odd newt. Their powers are very limited, and it is hard to believe that a code of conduct would make much real difference – especially as most parishes have a very detailed knowledge of their councillors’ interests. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing.

However, given certain parish councillors’ compulsion to push for unrealistic speed limits and bizarre traffic mismanagement, it would be interesting to see how many of them are closet members of anti-car groups like Transport 2000. So a more limited code of conduct would be useful, possibly involving a gullibility test.

One of the more recent statements from Transport 2000 made it clear that the group is against bypasses and the widening of trunk roads.

This means, presumably, that it is in favour of residents in unbypassed towns and villages suffering from heavy goods vehicles rattling past their houses (perhaps with the additional thump and pollution of scattered road humps), and in favour of the increased danger to pedestrians inevitable in such a scenario.

Presumably it is also in favour of keeping up the road casualty rates, since wider roads and dual carriageways are intrinsically safer.

Despite emotional media coverage of anti-bypass campaigns involving hole-digging, tree-climbing and beetle-saving, bypasses are desirable in almost every respect.

Recent research on the effect of the Newbury bypass – so vigorously opposed by “environmental” groups – shows that it has been widely beneficial. Journey times, and therefore congestion, have been reduced; there is much less traffic in the town; and even wildlife is prospering.

Good roads are no threat to the environment: the sprawl of housing estates into green fields is a much bigger worry.

Go west if you must, but north is easier

Complaints about the lack of east-west internal flights from Norwich International airport are only the tip of the travel iceberg.

The truth is much more sinister: there is a conspiracy to prevent people travelling east-west at all.

Even in Norfolk this can be clearly seen. Any number of roads go south-north, but how many go east-west? The north Norfolk coast road, which is a joke, and the A47, where obvious needs for dualling have been consistently rebuffed.

You can get to north Norfolk easily enough by train, but try getting to Dereham, Swaffham or King’s Lynn. All right, you can get to Yarmouth, but where do you go from there?

This is not simply an East Anglian phenomenon: nationwide, all the best roads go north, and so do most rail lines. It is easy enough to get to Liverpool from Norwich, but Coventry is a real problem.

Further north, there is unreasoned opposition to making the A66 a viable, safe route.

Why should this be so? New research reveals that travel east-west is much harder because it is going “against the grain” and can result in headaches. East-west roads and rail tracks cost more to build because of the increased sickness among constructors, and the fact that the land “lies” north-south.

In Norfolk, anchor – the stabilising mineral that keeps towns and villages in place – is always found in a north-south configuration, and something similar may be true elsewhere.

Further research was needed, said researchers, enclosing an invoice.

Norfolk takes a shot at the impossible

Apparently Norfolk is going to be in the forefront of a project to halt global warming. While we’re at it, we might as well have a go at reconfiguring the solar system, cooling down the sun, raising the dead and walking on water.

The earth’s climate has warmed and cooled throughout history, and no amount of compliance with any protocol is going to make a difference. Even admirers of Kyoto will admit that any effect would be minimal, and that’s probably a wild exaggeration.

While residents of Cutting Edge, Norfolk, should be happy to care for the environment in reasonable ways, such as recycling and avoidance of waste, they should beware of people trying to place restrictions on their freedom for no sound reason.

Governments love global warming because it enables them to make money and to place petty restrictions on their citizens. When a company is required to rebuild a window to comply with a prediction that will probably never be fulfilled, it is vital that someone sees through it.

This road is dangerous, so let’s talk

The A140 between Norwich and Ipswich is one of the county’s most dangerous roads, but it will be all right soon, because Suffolk County Council has launched a consultation exercise.

I’m not sure exactly who will be consulted, but I am sure of one thing: it won’t be me. And I’m pretty sure it won’t be you either.

Regular users of the road will have their own views of what causes so many accidents. One factor is undoubtedly the number of difficult junctions; another is the fact that the road is not suited to the amount of traffic using it.

The council, after consulting, will decide that the problem is speed. I agree. Because of the inappropriate speed limits and the lack of overtaking opportunities, what happens is a string of vehicles travelling too slowly, their drivers gradually losing the ability to concentrate. The result: too-slow reactions to someone braking for a junction, or frustration resulting in a risky overtaking manoeuvre.

So of course Suffolk County Council will slow everyone down even more, just as they have already done when you approach the A14 and emerge from a particularly slow stretch on to a dual carriageway. This, amazingly, has a new speed limit of 50mph – and, of course, a camera. Because it is just the spot where you will catch someone.

Pointless, irritating, but worst of all dangerous. The county’s obsession with reduced speed limits has already resulted in an appalling statistic: in 2000 there were 58 deaths on Suffolk’s roads; by the end of September 2001 there were 102.

I suggested last time that Norfolk Wildlife Trust might have closed a short-cut alleyway next to its Norwich headquarters to protect something nesting there.

A photograph just received by this page more or less proves this to be the case. It shows Trust staff with the bird in question, which I am told is cygnus cartheftus, a type of swan I had not previously encountered. It may be related to the Pondhenge goose or the Wymondham duck.

I would certainly not want to meet it in a dark alley. The Trust is to be congratulated on protecting the public.

8 April 2002

on 8 April 2002 at 08:00

Quick, quick, slow, and even slower

I was a bit nervous about driving in Italy, but the main problem turned out to be getting in the car.

Our travel agent assured us that Hertz would only need to see our invoice in order to spring into action and supply us with a pristine, all-singing, all-dancing little vehicle.

This was not quite accurate. At Pisa airport Hertz gazed blankly at the invoice in the nothing-to-do-with-us way that Italians have turned into an art-form and then passed us on to Avis – which, being number two, tries harder.

But they too gave us the blank routine, then suggested we ring our travel agent in Norwich and ask them to fax over confirmation.

This is not the sort of thing you want to get involved with on arriving in Italy for the first time, but needs must... A mere two hours and fewer than six calls later, we had our car and were trundling hopefully along the red road to Firenze.

Italians have only two speeds – very fast and very slow. Of these “very fast” was by far the easier to cope with, because it implied a degree of alertness that most Norfolk drivers have declined to even contemplate. It may be nerve-tingling, but at least you feel you are in the presence of people who have some idea what they are doing.

Not many drivers in Italy take the “very slow” option, but those that do are merely reflecting general pedestrian behaviour. You will never see a pedestrian hurrying to cross the road in Italy, or indeed hurrying anywhere, because it might crease their clothes.

This spreads into a general timelessness – or is it self-absorption? Queuing for tickets to the stunning cathedral in Pisa, we reached the very front of a long and rambling line when the one cashier decided it was time for a changeover. She counted all her money, filled in a form, and not long afterwards, really, another cashier took her place. She counted the money in turn and filled in a form, and only then, about 10 minutes later, could the queue get going again.

Oddly, I had been contemplating this kind of behaviour before leaving our shores, because I had noticed a lack of urgency making disturbing inroads into our own normally brisk and efficient country.

Two weeks before Christmas some men appeared at the top of our road and started building some steps. This was excellent, I thought: by Christmas we would surely have steps and a new pathway.

Then the men disappeared. By Christmas, little had been accomplished. Other men put in fleeting appearances, building bits of paths, then melted into the background. The embryonic steps and pathway had barriers erected, presumably in case we completed them in a fit of desperation.

Not long before Easter they were finished. Just in time, too, because Norfolk Wildlife Trust, presumably in a spirit of open access to the countryside, had acquired a nearby building in Thorpe Road and closed an alleyway next to it that had been used by local residents for decades as a short cut. I expect there was something nesting in it.

Scheme to give Norfolk what it's missing

Except for the weather, there is no real need for anyone to go abroad for a holiday. Norfolk has everything. Well, almost everything – except possibly a mountain range.

And reader Richard Meek has a plan to put that right.

His idea, which I have to agree is “stunning in its elegant simplicity”, is to organise a job creation scheme based in Diss that would use unemployed labour to dig a cave system on the county border – and use the earth removed to throw up a mountain range between Norfolk and Suffolk.

The advantages of this are obvious. Among the less obvious ones, Mr Meek suggests, are skiing in winter at Val Diss’ere, Hoxne on the Piste and a pot-holing centre at South Lopham. The latter, he suggests shrewdly, could be linked to the Hingham wormhole, but I feel this may be a trifle optimistic. Hingham is unpredictable enough on the surface, without digging bits out of it.

Mr Meek suggests that a lottery bid could be put together, but I notice that most successful lottery bids have something outlandish about them. Perhaps Counties of Culture would be more appropriate.

Truth comes a bad second

Frightening old world, isn’t it? You finally get someone to admit that using a mobile phone is one of the most dangerous things you can do in a car – or lorry. In fact, a survey shows it’s even more dangerous than being slightly over the drink-drive limit.

And what happens? A campaign to stop people using mobile phones? No, a complaint that people will now think being slightly over the drink-drive limit isn’t so bad.

Never mind the truth: the message is everything. A motto, sadly, for 21st century Britain.

Campaign to save gardeners

The Keep Gardening Special Campaign is hopeful that its campaign to keep garden centres open for 24 hours – or longer – every Easter Sunday will succeed.

“No one has anything else to do that day,” said spokesman Adam (Digger) Pitt.

“It is the biggest festival of the gardening year, and devotees must be free to worship as and when they will.

“This year some people could not get served when they wanted, and this was soul-destroying, not to say sacrilegious.

“Also we could have made lots of money.”

Garden Gnomes Anonymous is setting up a centre to counsel the thousands cold-heartedly prevented from buying plants, rocks and garden furniture.

Turbulence keeps penguins on the ground

As we were flying over the Alps, my wife – who is braver than me in just about every other respect – was alarmed by some prolonged turbulence.

Turbulence, in case you have not experienced it, has roughly the same effect as humps in the road, and is just about as useful. Because of it, my wife does not like flying at all, except in Cessnas.

But it does make me wonder about penguins.

If huge flying machines are rocked about by turbulence, birds must suffer similarly. This surely explains why some birds that would obviously be badly affected by turbulence are in fact flightless. The ostrich, for instance, or the emu.

These birds have tried it, and they don’t like it. They prefer to keep their feet on the ground. And the simple reason that penguins don’t fly is the huge amount of turbulence over the Antarctic – an area similar to the Alps in many respects.

I have since noticed that several other birds that can fly are in fact reluctant to do so. London pigeons, Ditchingham chickens and the Wymondham duck spring to mind. Norfolk expert Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, claims that the Pondhenge goose is a further example. He may well be right.

25 March 2002

on 25 March 2002 at 08:00

Desperate bid to keep us out of driving seat

I see that Norfolk County Council’s exciting Local Transport Plan aims to give public transport advantages over the car in terms of journey time, quality and convenience. If it wants something easier to go for first, it might try draining the North Sea.

I use public transport frequently, although not for commuting. A few days ago I travelled by train to Thetford and back (well, someone has to do it).

It was a cold morning, but the train was at the platform when I arrived 15 minutes early; so I anticipated warming up inside. Unfortunately the train was locked. About 50 passengers had to shiver on the platform until the crew arrived with about four minutes to spare – and even then took their time getting settled before opening the doors. I am sure there is some health and safety regulation that demands this.

On my return journey from Thetford I was seven minutes early for the 11.52. An electronic monitor, however, informed me that the train was delayed – sorry – and would not arrive until 12.06; so to avoid shivering on another platform, I went for a fairly brisk walk. Hard to believe, but there it is. Returning about 10 minutes later, I saw my train pulling out – at 11.55 – leaving me an hour to kill in Thetford.

The only way to make a car less attractive than this would be to put obstacles in the road and introduce limits well below optimum speed, resulting in congestion and pollution. This would make life worse for everyone and so would have to be rejected unless – hang on, that’s exactly what’s happening. And of course it’s still not working.

This leaves us with the last, ludicrous option of disrupting road traffic arbitrarily on some idiotic pretext that doesn’t fool anyone. Amazingly, this too is happening.

Last week, massive disruption was caused to rush-hour traffic on the A47 for the sole purpose of asking drivers where they were going. Why anyone should think that a driver held up pointlessly for the previous half-hour will give an honest answer to such a question is beyond me. But apparently it is a government requirement for councils to do this if they want money – which for some reason doesn’t surprise me at all. So the bizarre activity will continue, presumably until a driver hits someone, or maybe beyond.

But never mind, the council is apologising in advance, and it’s only going to cost you and me over £200,000.

What’s really frightening is that this is not even a sinister plot. It’s just the usual bungling.

New planning twist

Many readers of this page, I know, like to stand around in the city – waiting, perhaps, for someone to build another bridge across the Wensum, or a bus station of some kind. In such a state, a person might easily find himself reading a planning application.

Since time immemorial – even before Richard Dawkins was created – these have been fixed to Norwich lamp-posts for the delectation of passers-by. Unhappily, things are changing.

Instead of being mounted on a board for easy reading, they are now wrapped round the nearest pole. Obviously this makes them much harder to read, and I suspect the influence of the great crested newts that infest all corridors of power. Such amphibians are used to twisting themselves – and everyone else – into ever-tightening contortions, particularly over planning matters.

Are they trying to keep something from people with normal necks? We should be told.

Contamination risk unforeseen as bug strikes

The hindsight bug has struck again.

Widespread criticism of the ill-judged parking meter scheme in Norwich has meant that changes costing £16,500 are called for, and Norwich Highways Agency committee chairman Leslie Mogford has been tragically struck down.

“In hindsight we could have made it work better,” he said. “But hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

In what way is hindsight a wonderful thing? Well, for one thing it is a wonderful device for deflecting legitimate criticism. But it’s wearing a bit thin.

Meanwhile parking meter experts RTA Associates must be a trifle red-faced. In 2000 they estimated the monthly income would be £76,000. It turned out to be £38,000, which is not particularly adjacent. Could this be another case of a council getting expensive experts to make a prediction that its own staff could have done for comparatively nothing – and scarcely less accurately? Hindsight again, no doubt.

Health officials are already closing East Anglian borders to prevent the plague spreading. Helicopters are even now spraying council offices and other areas of risk. No one is safe.

Wrong blame for bedlessness

In writing last time about the reluctance of managements generally to provide plenty, going for a bare minimum instead, I wrongly blamed the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust for the shortage of beds at its brave new building.

In fact the trust has always wanted more beds, but the Norfolk Health Authority, which is responsible for allocating cash from a single government pot to hospitals and primary care trusts, consistently went for a minimum figure. The difference is quite substantial – 701 instead of 910 – and it was inevitable that the hospital would have far fewer beds than it wanted.

The National Beds Inquiry, which is a countrywide NHS review, regards 83 per cent occupancy of beds as the ideal – giving sufficient leeway to deal with emergencies. The percentage at the new hospital is a less than reassuring 97 per cent.

As it happens, the Norfolk Health Authority is about to disappear off the face off the earth, to be replaced by a Strategic Health Authority covering a much wider area. Will this cash-wielding body take a more enlightened view, or is it simply old men with new hats? I shall not be holding my breath.

11 March 2002

on 11 March 2002 at 08:00

On the trail of a dead man's friend

A letter posted in Norwich in 1847 came into my hands not long ago. Surprisingly, this was not another case of the Royal Mail dragging its heels, but the start of a fascinating detective story.

The epistle was found in a collection of stamps and letters left after the death of a collector. Addressed to “My Dear Son” and signed, I thought, “Thy true affectionate mother, H Buckhouse”, it is about the funeral of an obviously prominent man. Someone called “dear Eliza” seemed to be the widow.

How could I pin the dead man down? The first step was to search the internet for someone called Buckhouse. Here I drew a blank. I was also unable to find a record of the funeral deep down in the newspaper vaults here at Prospect House.

Then it occurred to me that Buckhouse might be Backhouse, and here I struck lucky: the trusty Google search engine turned up a web page about papers left by the Backhouses of Darlington, a prominent banking and Quaker family. In my letter was the phrase “our Darlington friends”, and the address was Polam Hall – now an independent school for girls, but at the time the home of the Backhouses.

Looking more closely, I found that Hannah Chapman Backhouse (1787-1850), was the daughter of Joseph Gurney (1757-1830), Quaker banker of Lakenham Grove, Norwich. I was clearly getting somewhere.

It was not long before I was able to discover that it was Joseph John Gurney who died in January 1847.

Any remaining doubt vanished with the information that his third wife was named Eliza – in fact an American, Eliza Paul Kirkbride, born in Philadelphia.

In this world of evangelical Quakerism, almost all the names were Quaker ministers, including Joseph, Eliza and Hannah. All were related to arguably the most famous Quaker of all, prison reformer and mother-of-11 Elizabeth Fry, who died two years earlier. She was Joseph’s sister. Hannah was their cousin.

Other names in the letter fell into place. “Samuel, Eliza and myself were put into the first carriage,” wrote Hannah, who also mentions an address at the funeral by Bevan Braithwaite. Samuel was undoubtedly Joseph and Elizabeth’s brother, while Bevan Braithwaite was another prominent Quaker minister.

How did Joseph John Gurney come to marry an American? As well as organising relief for the poor during the depressions of the 1820s and 1830s, and a service for jobless fishermen at Cromer in 1842, he had close links with Quakers in America.

After his death Eliza moved back to New Jersey and was active in social reform, meeting and corresponding with Abraham Lincoln.

I feel some affinity for JJ, because he and I were born in the same place – Earlham Hall, Norwich. Admittedly it was a nursing home by the time I made my late appearance, but I feel sure that something must have rubbed off.

Why the police are confused

Hard to argue with the Mayor of Cromer, who feels that the police should be cracking down on vandalism and loutishness in towns instead of devoting three officers to stopping him for what may or may not have been speeding.

The police said they were following “publicly agreed priorities”. Exactly who agreed is open to conjecture, but I suspect the usual craftily worded questions to a carefully selected group of people.

I don’t blame the police, really. They are bigger than me; so I find not blaming them is a sound policy.

If I was a policeman, I would certainly rather tackle a harmless citizen in the company of two colleagues than try to control drunken yobs fouling up town centres. Especially when magistrates seem to regard beating someone up to within an inch of death as an amusing aberration meriting the lightest sentence possible.

The previous paragraph was written before Sir John Stevens’ broadside at the pathetic performance of the criminal justice system, and I have the utmost sympathy with him and the police in general on that issue.

However, I can’t help a little twinge of irritation when I see a sparkling new Speed Camera Promotion Partnership van ready to pounce. I mean, when was the last time you read about a fatal or serious accident caused purely by driving fast?

No doubt we will continue to suffer from unthinking TV journalists who can find no other sensible question to ask than “Was speed the problem?”, even when a policeman has just told her that the accident was caused by something quite different. But perusal of newspaper reports will reveal that accidents are caused by poor judgment – errors in overtaking, for instance.

Paradoxically, one of the reasons such an accident may happen is that a driver is not overtaking fast enough, a mistake which the current climate of speed cameras encourages.

Another huge cause of accidents is error at junctions, and it is good to see Norfolk police using their valuable time not only to name the county’s nine most dangerous, but to park police cars there as a warning. I wonder how many police cars they have.

Shrimp's epic film plan

To mark his 103rd birthday this month, Norfolk legend and curate Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago will be releasing an epic Norfolk motion picture which he has been working on in secret. Called Crouching Coypu, Hidden Rabbit, the film will attempt to portray the very essence of Norfolk.

The central theme will be the martial arts of the typical ancient Norfolk “bors”, who spent days in meditation on the traditional “gate” before venturing out to do battle in almost supernatural fashion against great crested newts and other foreigners.

Purists have complained that the newts are a late invention and were never part of real Norfolk, but Mr Houseago has insisted on their inclusion, together with a selection of attractive “mawthers”. The climax takes place on the vast and mysterious Beeston Bump.

Other scenes have been shot in secret at Pondhenge, Kelling Heath and Pingoland.

Mr Houseago refuses to release details of the plot, but says: “It will be even bigger than Harry of the Rings.”

25 February 2002

on 25 February 2002 at 08:00

Not such a great journey

I had never really thought of the Bittern Line as one of the Great Railway Journeys of the World. To my mind it lacks something of the grandeur of the Canadian Rockies, as well as the wide open spaces of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the unpredictability of the Indian sub-continent.

The wide open spaces of Gunton and the grandeur of North Walsham do not quite fit the bill. But it does have an element of unpredictability, and surprisingly, it does have Michael Palin.

I remember Mr Palin most fondly as Cardinal Ximinez (or was it Cardinal Error?) in the Pythons’ Spanish Inquisition, but he has gone much further than that. Southwold, to start with, and then to even more obscure and expensive places, travelling the world on our behalf.

And now the Bittern Line? Well, not quite. The Michael Palin that lurks on those tracks is a single-carriage dirty diesel train that all commuters dread. Some say it is the train of last resort, turning up at the end of the day to transport three carriage-loads of passengers within its squat confines, engendering a degree of togetherness altogether foreign to retiring Norfolk people.

It has an interesting engine noise set permanently at loud, strange suspension and only two doors – one at each end. Not, one suspects, what the original Mr Palin might have hoped for, especially as he now lends his name to the equally ageing and ill-equipped Transport 2000 pressure group, which tries to persuade people to use public transport instead of cars.

Its chief weapon is surprise, and a fanatical devotion to misleading statistics. Two weapons. It has two weapons: surprise, a fanatical devotion to misleading statistics and a hatred of motorists. Three weapons. Amongst its weaponry are such diverse elements as . . .

He’ll come in again.

Mr H has a close encounter

A colleague of mine who shall remain nameless but is Neil Haverson, master of Fortress H, is concerned about an unusual phenomenon that he has observed while travelling to work along Newmarket Road, Norwich.

Here there is a helpful bus lane, installed to assist motorists in getting out into the middle of the road nearer to oncoming traffic and, well, generally making life easier for everyone.

Mr H takes up the story: “A tad late one morning, I was bowling along Newmarket Road at precisely 38mph. If only, I thought to myself, I could go a shade faster, I could catch up the time I had wasted before I left home indulging in an early-morning argument with Mrs H.

“Then I became aware of a feeling not unlike claustrophobia. Glancing to my left I noticed I was travelling beside what looked like a moving wall. The wall was not there for long; it accelerated past and revealed itself to be – yes, a bus. It must have been travelling at something over 50 mph.”

Shortly afterwards, the fast phenomenon stopped to pick up some cold and stationary people.

“By the time I arrived at the ring road roundabout, where the bus lane finishes, I thought I was well ahead of him and glanced in my mirror with a view to moving into the left-hand lane. Bearing down on me was the bus. He must have taken off at such a speed that he is probably the only bus to achieve a wheelie.”

The explanation is relatively simple, of course. Clearly the bus lane is subject to quite a different speed limit.

Since this experience Mr H has begun to research the speed of taxis, but this has proved difficult. “By the time I have identified the ghost-like blur that whistles past they are out of sight,” he says.

Strange.

Flaming difficult, really

Following warnings from senior fire officers that retained firefighters were not being released by their companies to attend fires during working hours, a Flaming Commission has been formed.

“Our aim is to ensure that fires take place at convenient times,” said smouldering chairman Len “Kissme” Hardy, a wholefood chef from Hindolveston.

“We have already secured a guarantee from the United Arsonists Friendly Society that they will comply with our new guidelines.”

He added that other representatives had broadly agreed to try to reach the targets set by the end of the year. The Dropped Matches Encounter Group and the Electrical Fault Connection Committee were both in agreement, as was the Spontaneous Combustion and Other Smoking Commune.

The only doubt concerned the Totally Accidental and Unpredictable Burning Association, which was complaining that the aims of the Commission were unrealistic, but Mr Hardy was hopeful that everyone would come into line.

“If we don’t sort this out by the next election, we will have failed,” he said. “I’ve told them they’re either reformers or wreckers, and they have to make their minds up.”

Elf problem

Last time I reported on the activities of the Environmental Elf, whose mission it is ruthlessly to sort out flooding in South Norfolk.

A parish councillor complained at my observation that an earlier bid to solve the problem of filled-up ditches through parish councils had failed “because parish councillors know nothing about land-owning”.

He has asked me to put the record straight on this, and I am happy to do so. Parish councillors, of course, do know a great deal about land-owning, and about ditches. Indeed, most of them are land-owners.

I apologise for any misunderstanding this may have caused.