22 December 2003

on 22 December 2003 at 08:00

Opportunity for irony goes begging

The backlash to the Government’s recent revelation that it had pushed too hard on speed cameras was really quite funny.

In fact I can think of only one thing that would have been funnier: a police car colliding harmlessly with a speed camera behind Brake chief executive Mary Williams as she pontificated on breakfast television and attacked organisations that promote road safety. Unfortunately, a perfect opportunity for irony was missed.

Of course Brake itself is funny, in a peculiar sort of way: any so-called safety organisation that names itself after the most risky manoeuvre a driver performs has got to have a sense of humour.

But road accidents are far from funny; so why was Ms Williams attacking road safety organisations? Well, she calls them fringe groups, presumably because they take the Anatole France line on road safety. (M France pointed out astutely that if fifty million said a foolish thing, it was still a foolish thing.)

Ms Williams, like so many others, prefers to trot out statistics that have been proved quite wrong but remain popular with people who don’t have the imagination to tackle road safety properly.

The different road safety organisations are beginning to look a bit like religions, which is bad news, because religions – although normally well motivated – tend not to get together.

At the moment what I would call the suicide bomb approach is in the ascendancy. These are people who misdiagnose the cause of the problem, take a perverse view of the outcome and delight in punishing innocent people.

They advocate looking at the speedometer instead of watching out for hazards; they like to distract drivers; and they believe that it is a good idea to place obstacles in the road.

They also delight in placing corrupt beliefs in the minds of their victims: for instance, the notion that if you dawdle, you are safe; and the idea that it doesn’t matter if you hit people as long as you do it really slowly; and the doctrine that if you travel at 20mph long enough, you will be surrounded by beautiful and compliant road safety equipment for eternity.

Meanwhile any attempt to find the real cause of accidents is sabotaged by a form of holy writ: the police have been told specifically to put down speed as a cause whenever remotely possible. I personally find this shocking, but apparently it is routine. So it is in the end no more surprising that road deaths should continue to rise than it is that they should fall in the areas around speed cameras. Speed cameras tend to be placed where accidents have happened. Since accidents are random events, they are not likely to happen in the same place all the time: a high will be followed by a low.

The true picture is the nationwide one, and it is getting worse since the introduction of speed cameras – and the promotion of the speed scapegoat as our national animal of choice.

Shocking lapse by Pondhenge

Following the disturbing news that the University of East Anglia has fallen short of its target number of students from working class backgrounds comes an even more shocking revelation from North Norfolk.

The New University of Pondhenge (formerly the rather more euphonious Pondhenge Polytechnic) announced last night that it has totally failed to attract as undergraduates any students whose parents are bus drivers.

Professor Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago said yesterday: “It is true. I can hardly express how ashamed we are of this abject failure. How we can survive as a university without the input of bus-driving families is impossible to contemplate.

“It is absolutely vital for the future of Norfolk and this country as a whole that children of bus drivers get into university, and Pondhenge in particular.

“If we cannot do better than this, we shall of course close down.”

A Government spokesman said funding and public transport generally would be withdrawn from Pondhenge if targets were not met. This would mean the end of the ground-breaking MA in creative goose-handling, which is unique in the United Kingdom. Prof Houseago is 104.

Fears that traffic may use new road

Widespread panic that the proposed new distributor road north of Norwich might attract traffic is concerning county planners.

“We never thought of that,” said chief deputy assistant acting road designer Len “Kissme” Hardy, who lives in Hindolveston. “We had been assuming that the road would remain empty, which would of course be ideal.”

Alerted by this road-traffic convergence horror, the county council is looking at some of its other policies, and is now worried that new housing planned for the county may be occupied by people. “It’s a terrifying thought,” said Mr Hardy, “though of course not in my area.”

There are further fears that improved waste collection could lead to people putting out rubbish; sea defences might hold back the sea in some places; and opening shops may lead to people buying things. A think-tank has been created to spot other frightening and unexpected scenarios.

Sandringham landslide worry

My position as president of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team could prove unexpectedly arduous.

A correspondent with inside knowledge warns me to expect “a positive landslide of mountains trying to infiltrate Sandringham on the basis that one of them might receive the Royal Warrant”.

I had of course anticipated having to deal only with mountains wanting to be rescued because they had strayed into West Norfolk by mistake – something that happens quite rarely. The prospect of mountains entering the area deliberately is frightening. I can only warn them of the dangers they might be facing; the agony that would undoubtedly be suffered by their families, especially small hills, if something went wrong; and the huge burden they would be placing on the National Health Service in the event of an accident.

Meanwhile I am on the alert, relatively speaking.

8 December 2003

on 8 December 2003 at 08:00

Speed cameras not widely approved

It was ironic that the first person charged with trying to destroy a speed camera in this country was locked up on the same day that the Government acknowledged that it had gone too far in promoting the so-called road safety device.

As a result the more intelligent police forces have announced that they will be cutting back on cameras, and placing them at black spots only. At the same time a poll was published which showed that 84 per cent of motorists thought they were treated unfairly by the Government: hefty majorities felt that speed cameras did not reduce the number of accidents, that there were too many cameras and (a whopping 71 per cent) that they were there primarily to raise revenue. This did not deter a spokesman from Norfolk’s speed camera promotion partnership, commenting on the trial, from saying he was convinced that a majority of the public were in favour of cameras. He may not have known about the poll, but he certainly knew that 12 out of the 18 permanent roadside cameras in Norfolk had been attacked in the last two years, because he said so. This is hardly evidence of overwhelming approval from the public, given that only a minute percentage of disapproving drivers would go as far as to break the law in that way. More than 700 cameras have been destroyed nationwide.

In fact the emphasis on speed as a big factor in accidents is both mistaken and lazy, as has been shown on this page before – which may be why speed limits are so popular in Suffolk. Excess speed happens, and is dangerous, but the really huge factor behind most accidents, as we all know deep down, is inattention. And that’s why curbing the use of mobile phones by drivers is a great idea. But why stop there? The insides of most cars are full of distraction opportunities. Leaving passengers aside, there are cassette and CD players, radios, air-conditioning controls, cigar-lighters and other assorted peripheral switches.

I am not suggesting that we make them all illegal – except for the passengers, obviously – but drivers need to be aware of the risk they take every time they look away from the road. By lulling them into a false sense of security through suggesting that they can do almost anything as long as they are driving within the speed limit, we are inviting more accidents. And the figures show that’s exactly what has happened.

A reader tells me of a recent incident in which a top-of-the-range BMW filtered into his lane from a slip road “at all of 40mph” – at least 20mph below the prevailing speed of the traffic. He continued: “I had to pull out sharply and overtake – and guess what the driver was doing?”

Not speeding, certainly.

Summit of my career

I was overwhelmed – and, of course, rather humbled – last week to have a signal honour bestowed upon me.

I am now president of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team.

Chairman Mr D Everett, of Snettisham, informed me of the decision shortly after the position was declined by Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham. I did not feel in the least slighted to be second choice to such a distinguished citizen, especially as the job included a free team shirt, which I shall of course wear at every opportunity.

According to Mr Everett, Prof Scheinlich declined the offer of the presidency because he was working on a book on the motorways of Norfolk. Other positions within the WNMRT remain vacant: secretary, treasurer and events organiser, for instance. I am particularly glad to take up this post because – contrary to popular opinion – I do feel that there is a big risk to any mountain that strays into West Norfolk. It might simply sink into the Fens, or lose heart in Brancaster. There is no telling what might happen to it in the Sandringham area.

Our organisation will be vigilant in watching for all such events and will not hesitate to do our utmost to rescue any mountain at risk in the wilds of West Norfolk.

Stagecoach scandal

Following concern expressed on this page about the absence of stagecoaches from Christmas cards this year, I received a letter from a concerned South Norfolk man, who described it as “a scandal, and the result of the Government attempting to move our transport system into a century not yet ready to receive it”.

David Williams of Winfarthing (for it was he) wrote: “With Anglia Railways operating an increasingly restricted service, the revival of the stagecoach service between Norwich and London should be looked at seriously.

“As far as I know, the wrong sort of snow can usually be negotiated by a coach and four, making the whole idea seem an attractive proposition. Leaves on the road are no great problem either.”

He adds: “Fortunately the leading community magazine in South Norfolk, nay the whole of Norfolk, has been persuaded to open its ancient archives to a curious public and reveal that all is not lost and the Christmas coach and four can in fact ride again.”

Mr Williams, who is editor of Cock Crow, was kind enough to send stunning pictures of stagecoaches to us. Unfortunately we have been unable to publish them for technical reasons (wrong kind of ink). Curious readers should contact him.

Helpful measures

Metric tonnes are a bit hard for most of us to envisage; so Norfolk County Council has given us a helpful guide in its helpful magazine for all residents. Instead of 13,000 tonnes of salt being stockpiled for use on the county’s roads this winter, we are invited to see this as 1625 killer whales. In similar vein, each gritter will be sent out carrying 12 polar bears – or to be more precise, their weight in salt (not gold).

These violent metaphors may be designed to keep us alert, but we need to be careful where we are going. A helpful reader suggests that we could end up with our whole weights and measures system being rewritten – a bag of sugar could be a large cat, and a sack of coal could be a coypu. I quite like the idea.

Spanking school

Having been a little concerned for the future of some Norfolk schools, which seem to be running the risk of being derailed through PFI, I was overjoyed to read that a school at which my mother taught back in the 1930s has had its Victorian buildings replaced. Rackheath Primary, near Norwich, is now, in the words of the head teacher reported in the village news organ, “a brand new spanking school”.

I understand that the head back in the 30s was not backward in the use of the cane, but no doubt spanking is more in the spirit of the 21st century. I am sure it will go from success to success.

24 November 2003

on 24 November 2003 at 08:00

Latest council bid to foul up traffic

If you want to know anything about traffic congestion, just ask Norwich City Council. They cause most of it.

Their latest device to foul up traffic in the city was not advertised in advance, and certainly no-one who was going to be affected by it was consulted. But it has a number of negative effects.

What am I talking about? The insane decision to prevent drivers turning right from Thorpe Road into Riverside Road.

This is a problem area in the city – not least because the city council in a previous but equally idiotic incarnation allowed the Big W to erect a massively unsuitable store on the Riverside development, and then installed a job lot of traffic lights that nobody has ever bothered to co-ordinate properly. Particularly striking is the pedestrian phase outside the station entrance, which is so long that it regularly gives priority to thin air for about half a minute at a time. (Not in itself surprising: our local highway authorities would rather give priority to a bucket of leaking toxic waste than a car.) This serves to back up traffic to the Foundry Bridge lights, which means cars coming along Riverside Road cannot get across and are frequently piled up back towards Ketts Hill. Meanwhile, vehicles emerging from the Riverside car parks block the approaches to Foundry Bridge from the other direction. Not a pretty sight. But how does the new no-right-turn make it worse?

For one thing, it makes it well-nigh impossible for people living in Aspland Road – a cul-de-sac off Riverside Road – to reach their homes during busy periods. Whereas before we (for I am one of the lucky ones) could approach down Thorpe Road and turn right quite easily for the short stretch along Riverside Road, now we are forced into one of the two traffic jams already mentioned.

But the really crazy thing about the turn ban is that traffic coming down Thorpe Road and wanting to turn right is now forced into the heart of the city instead, and is soon contributing to the traffic jam approaching Castle Mall.

So why has the city council done it? I honestly don’t know. It was not hurting anyone, and it has not made life easier for anyone else. Pedestrians as well as car drivers will suffer from the resulting increased pollution, and there is a good chance of an accident at the extremely confusing junction.

I have always thought it a good policy not to attribute to malice something that can be adequately explained by stupidity, but here the stupidity is of such a high order that I’m really not sure.

High tide event mystery

The most beautiful parts of Norfolk are often hidden. For 12 years I dwelt innocently only a few miles from Hardley Flood – a stunning stretch of water just outside Chedgrave – but didn’t know it was there.

Those who do stumble upon it cannot help but be intrigued by the notice that greets them. Certain parts of the path through Hardley Flood, it reveals, are sometimes “flooded by high tide events”.

What can such an event be? Walking along the path, I looked out for an event horizon, but there was only a normal, stunning horizon, and a normal tide. Clearly I was missing something.

I turned to Prof V A R Scheinlich, the well-known authority on knot theory, which goes almost as far as string theory in accounting for nearly everything. He suggested that the high tide event probably referred to a rip in the space-time continuum caused by the pull of the moon’s gravity at high tide. Chedgrave people are probably familiar with it.

In passing, he said he was developing a faster-than-light string drive which he hoped would enable us to leap into one of the mysterious other dimensions predicted by string theory. In fact, he showed me the string he was working on and said he was a bit tied up.

“Hardley Flood may be the solution,” he said.

Cars caught in roundabout horror

A reader from King’s Lynn has alerted me to an alarming situation there. Apparently the road markings on the born-again Hardwick Roundabout – freed by the new flyover from the assaults of A47 through-traffic – are so confusing that a number of drivers have been seen circling it for some days before being guided off it, exhausted and barely coherent.

The lady who wrote to me found herself in just such a situation when attempting to visit her daughter in West Winch. She described the horror of circling the roundabout several times and “waving gaily to others doing the same thing”.

She advises taking a survival kit if you wish to attempt the navigation of the roundabout – and possibly a compass. She concludes: “I’m not sure, but it seems all roads lead to Hunstanton.”

10 November 2003

on 10 November 2003 at 08:00

Time to be realistic about roads

There is no end to the arguments against building new roads. One of the most popular – and most bizarre – is that new roads attract more traffic.

I don’t know why, but in these congested times I somehow can’t see people dashing out in their cars as soon as they hear a new road has been built, just for the sake of driving along it. Well, maybe once, to see what it’s like. But not on a regular basis.

The idea that we will all abandon public transport and head for the new road like lemmings is truly ludicrous. If public transport is available for the trip we have to take, if it turns up on time often enough and doesn’t cost too much, then we will continue to use it. Why not?

But in reality it is very often not available. And not only is it unavailable, frequently there is no realistic way of making it available, because the journeys that people have to make are so diverse.

I would love to see public transport used more often, but I don’t see it happening, as long as leaves can stop trains and buses fail to turn up for no reason at all.

Once we accept that people will continue to use cars and that they are not the devil’s spawn, we can begin to work out sensibly how to cope with them. That is what most people want.

The ironic thing, of course, is that if people didn’t use a new road, it would all of sudden become a strong argument that we shouldn’t have built it. So if we use it, it’s wrong; and if we don’t, it’s wrong too. Handy, if you’re an anti-car fanatic.

Meanwhile, the powers-that-be continue to plug the railway – and quite right too. But you need to be careful in responding to attempts to lure you on to trains.

On the A11 for instance, not far from Attleborough, is a sign inviting you to travel by rail from Eccles (actually Eccles Road station). And why not?

Say you’re heading for Norwich, and you think it might be nice to leave your car at Eccles. You locate the charming little station, whose car park has room for about five cars and was, on the day I visited it, full.

Say you arrive at 9.30am, lock your car and head for the platform. Just to be sure, you check the timetable. Next train due? No problem. It’s 7.18 – the next morning. So, just under 22 hours to wait, then.

I’m not saying Eccles should have a more frequent service. I’m just wondering if that A11 sign might come under the heading of misdirection.

One country to the right

Judging by the number of television programmes promoting home-buying abroad, this country is full of people who want to be elsewhere.

Even senior staff members of the EDP have succumbed to the lures of sunny climes like France and Catalonia, despite the obvious charms of living in Norfolk and working for a newspaper of this quality.

At the same time, a surprising number of people want to move to this country, often from much more exciting parts of the world. It seems that this dissatisfaction with the country we are living in is an increasing problem, but a Wicklewood man has come up with a solution.

“I suggest that we all stand facing north, then move one country to the right,” he said. (He wishes to remain anonymous.)

This would clearly solve a large number of problems at a stroke. Admittedly, it might be hard to fit everyone from the United States into Ireland, though it worked the other way round. Welsh people would have much more space in England, and Yarmouth people would do well on Scroby Sands.

I am not so sure about other parts of the world, though I have high hopes for the Middle East. All we need now is a television programme to sort it out.

Keep putting the clocks back

My wife has been reluctant to move the clocks back an hour this winter. She maintains that British Summer Time seems “more natural”, and I can see what she means. I am more natural in summer.

On the other hand (that would be the minute hand), since moving the clocks back an hour gives us an extra hour’s sleep, I would be reluctant to pass it up. A colleague believes we should go further and move the clocks back an hour every Saturday night. He writes recklessly: “I have no notion what effect it would have. Perhaps it should be optional.”

According to Professor V A R Scheinlich, an expert on time distortion, such an experiment was launched at Hingham just after the last war, and was “quite successful for a time”. But it was not long before things got out of hand, and it is widely thought that the bizarre temporal anomalies that now afflict the Autonomous Republic of Hingham are a direct result of it.

Undercover here (or not)

Warning signs are a dime a dozen nowadays, but I was intrigued to stumble on a new one as I walked innocently down Rouen Road in Norwich recently.

Plain clothes police, I was informed, were operating in this area.

Now I may be wrong about this, but I thought the whole point of plain clothes police was that you didn’t know they were there. The only reason I can think of for the Rouen Road notices is that there really aren’t any plain clothes officers there (possibly for financial reasons), but they would like you to think there are. You may find this reassuring.

Cards not travelling well

I have received a letter from a respected and long-term Norfolk resident that I feel I should pass on.

It reads: “Sir. I wish to protest. When I were a lad most Christmas card illustrations depicted horse-drawn coaches and gentlefolk passengers struggling through the snow, which I thought very tasteful indeed. “Reminded one of tradition, open fires, gentlefolk, holly, lanterns, mufflers. That sort of thing. In recent decades, however, I have noticed that cards showing coaches in snow are becoming very, very rare indeed.

“Last year I did not receive a single one! And in a shop I went in today, amid the many dozens of available Christmas cards, there was but a single sad example of the aforementioned meteorology and traditional mode of transport.

“Is this blatant discrimination against stagecoaches and snow? The public needs to be told. And if so, something must be done, otherwise we shall all end up with pictures of mobile phones and speed humps on our lounge walls.”

27 October 2003

on 27 October 2003 at 08:00

Search for symbol of the east

The challenge to create something “really special” to inspire a sense of pride and unity in the East of England will be exercising some of the world’s most creative minds over the coming months.

They are hoping to come up with something as striking as the Angel of the North or the London Eye, but which will be immediately identified with this part of the country.

I understand that a giant Speed Camera Promotion vehicle has already been ruled out, and a scheme to dig a series of enormous holes filled with water and linked into the river system has been described as vandalism of the environment and so is clearly a non-starter.

A piece of installation art depicting coastline crumbling into the sea is in the running, but the clear favourite is inspired by a discovery made outside the region – at Whitley Bay. This is the remains of a six-foot-long carnivorous amphibian with a wide row of teeth and a walking style “like a giant newt”.

Artist Annette Karenina, of Gorleston, said yesterday: “A sculpture of this massive newt in a prominent position would symbolise East Anglia’s fight against the expansionist ambitions of great crested newts. A good spot for it would be off the A11 at Wymondham – the site originally suggested for the discarded speed camera vehicle.”

Other suggested sites include County Hall or City Hall in Norwich, in both of which the newt culture has made impressive inroads; the promenade at Great Yarmouth, where the giant sculpture would be quickly destroyed in a meaningful event filmed for posterity; and Pondhenge in North Norfolk, where it would dwarf the famous Pondhenge goose. Local residents and bird power activists are already up in arms there about what they call artistic bullying.

A site in the centre of Knapton, where villagers have been complaining about sewage leaking on to the street, has been rejected on the grounds that North Norfolk District Council would simply deny it was there. This could hit tourism.

New theory on South Norfolk villages

While staying with a cousin in Burston, near Diss, Prof V A R Scheinlich has been momentarily distracted from the time distortion anomalies that have made the Autonomous Republic of Hingham famous.

But he has been seduced by another unusual phenomenon – the strange cluster of present participles masquerading as villages in the Burston area.

“I was intrigued by Shimpling, Gissing and Winfarthing,” he said. “They seemed a bit too good to be true.”

Following lengthy investigations, he has established almost beyond doubt that they are not place names at all, but descriptions of local activities. “As those activities were never entirely clear, historians were confused, and the name for the activities became attached to collections of houses,” he said. “Some people think that people built houses in the neighbourhood to try to find out what was going on. Most of them never did so – a common problem in Norfolk. But I believe I have worked this one out.”

The professor, who is also famous for his only slightly successful knot theory – the theory of almost everything – said he was now certain that to shimple meant to behave in a coy way; to giss originally meant to be extremely demanding of passers by; and to winfarthe was to give way to someone whose proper place was before you. This idea has been since taken over by Formula 1, where it is known as “team orders”.

He believed that in view of its history, Gissing would be an ideal place to trial congestion charging, but Norfolk County Council has so far resisted the idea, in a shimpling kind of way. Prof Scheinlich will return to Hingham soon.

Telephone book cash-in plan

Following the incredible success of BT’s new Norfolk phone book distribution plan, where people just outside Norwich are deprived of all the Norwich numbers, another top local company is planning to cash in on the idea.

Houseago Inc of Erpingham will publish a series of carefully targeted local directories. Sales manager Len “Kissme” Hardy said yesterday: “We were really impressed by BT’s idea of non-duplication. I mean it’s so obviously in the customer’s interest that you don’t print a telephone number more than once. People might find it all over the place.

“What we are going to do is issue the people of Trowse with directories to Trowse and parts of Dereham only. If that goes well, we will press on with directories for Spixworth and Fakenham; South Lopham and King’s Lynn; and Hemsby and Thetford.”

Mr Hardy, who comes from Hindolveston but is living in South London for the winter, is optimistic. Market research shows we are on to a winner,” he said. “And if people do complain, we’ll give them another directory free as a goodwill gesture. “Just for this year, though. It’s a long-term money-spinner. Don’t print that. I didn’t say that.”

Mr Hardy is ex-directory.

Happy solution at Whynge

After complaints from house-buyers that they do not want to live in areas infested by road humps and 20mph limits, the recently discovered Norfolk village of Whynge has come up with a solution.

Whynge emerged from the sea during a temporary drop in sea levels and is now often on the coast. Parish council spokesman A D “Happy” Manhire said the village was intending to demolish all road humps and remove speed limits, since they were clearly anti-social.

He added: “We are now twinned with Barnet in North London, which is getting rid of all of its humps in order to save lives. Research carried out by the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing has also found that speed limits are fixed by people with no expertise whatsoever.

“We want people to be relaxed and happy. Please come and live here.”

He admitted there was a slight risk of the village disappearing into the sea again, but said he planned to install cameras to prevent it.

Little otter

I am told that the wild otter recently referred to here has given birth to a little otter. This is believed by many to be an irrefutable indication that global warming is getting a grip.

13 October 2003

on 13 October 2003 at 08:00

East-west physics challenge to new road

Travelling from east to west, as we all know, is not natural. The laws of physics prevent us building a decent road or railway track across the country.

Anyway, I assume that is the reason. It may have something to do with ley lines, wormholes or magnetism. Or perhaps the Government simply “does not do” lateral thinking: the evidence is there in the illogical refusal to dual the A47, which is about as east-west as you can get.

It is therefore amazing that the county council is even considering a northern distributor road for Norwich which, despite its name, would run east-west.

The successful southern bypass has elements of east-west about it, but it really goes south and then north, which is why it got built so quickly. The northern routes on offer are much more obviously east-west – or, in certain lights, west-east, which is not much better.

The suggestion that any road at all should be built is quite unexpected from the county council, which plonks cars firmly at the bottom of its list of transport priorities. No doubt if we had gangs of terrorists, poisonous snakes and grizzly bears roaming Costessey, they would get priority over evil things like automobiles. Never mind that for many elderly and ill people, cars are the only possible method of transport.

And it still gets blamed by the usual suspects for favouring cars, despite all the evidence to the contrary. For instance, it has already been accused of ignoring or playing down ecological and environmental costs of a northern road, although its list of the seven possible routes (or part-routes) includes 25 possible effects,18 of which are environmentally negative.

And it is still dithering about whether any such road should be dual carriageway, when it is blindingly obvious that it should, for a hundred different reasons. Anyone considering building a single-carriageway major road anywhere should be taken out and shot. Slowly.

The environmental benefits of a road taking traffic out of residential areas to the north of the city are huge. The odd beetle may get affected by a compulsory purchase order, but for human beings it will be a massive relief.

Of course, there is little relief from the deviousness of statistic-compilers. Number two on the council’s list of questions asks: Do you support education, encouragement and enforcement measures? Only one answer is possible; so if you are all in favour of education and encouragement, you have to vote for “greater enforcement of speeding laws” as well. I always wondered where they found all those motorists who were supposed to be in favour of speed cameras. Suddenly the whole cunning plot becomes transparent.

Fisher girl clue to land shifts

Concern rages almost unabated about the possible transfer of land out of Norfolk, following my rather radical suggestion that some of it had been used to form the Scottish Highlands.

A new back-up theory centres on the Scottish fisher girls who used to come down to Yarmouth to smoke herring, which in those days was a Class A drug. It has since been decriminalised, and the practice faded out, but not before the girls – possibly suffering from hallucinations, and desperate to escape – smuggled home large quantities of Norfolk earth in their pockets.

This subtle theft baffled Norfolk police, who did not get much further than suspecting that the thieves had gone to ground. An appeal for them to give themselves up was unsuccessful.

Despite the obvious attraction of this theory, which has already received funding from the Government, there are other ideas. Reader Howard Jones, for example, believes that it is the Dutch who are sneaking bits of our fair county away. Their motive? They need to raise their land mass by a good few metres to avert the possibility of flooding through rising sea levels.

He writes: “The recent grounding by the Trinity House ship Patricia is proof enough. The crew of this trusty vessel, while surveying our coast to ensure that all was in its rightful place, were put in perilous danger because the sandbank they were looking for had shifted further than they expected – or perhaps had been moved.”

This is clearly worrying, and may be a sign that various other countries have identified Norfolk as an easy touch for land-grabbing. I would urge readers to be alert to any dents or holes, however slight, opening up in their vicinity.

I would further urge the European Union to set up an Equal Land Commission to ensure that no unfair expansion of territory is going on under cover of darkness.

Wild otters don't like pepper

It would be easy to take too lightly the wild otter at Earsham referred to on this page recently. A friend tells me that otters can be quite savage. On a recent excursion into the wilds of Canada to see grizzly bears in their native habitat, she asked the guide if it had ever been necessary to pepper-spray a grizzly in self-defence. She was told: “Never, but it was once necessary to subdue an otter in that way.”

Walkers in the border area near Bungay will not sleep easy in their tents.

Newt on heels of librarian

As I have always had a soft spot for libraries, I am delighted to hear that the latest action hero figure to be released in America is a librarian. She is modelled on an actual Seattle librarian, is made of hard plastic and moves her finger to her lips in what is described as a “shushing” action, which should see off most evil villains without any trouble.

Norfolk’s answer to this is to be revealed later this month by Houseago Inc, of Erpingham: it is a great crested newt made of extremely fragile plastic and easily destroyed.

“We feel it should appeal to most children,” said managing director Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104. “And of course it will boost our campaign to exterminate newts, who are gradually taking over government in this country.”

29 September 2003

on 29 September 2003 at 08:00

Real cause of road accidents

It is impossible not to sympathise with the aims of RoadPeace – a charity that helps the victims of road accidents. Few could argue with its belief that “road danger can only be dealt with by tackling its root causes: condemning irresponsible driving and educating road users about their responsibilities, and promoting a transport policy that gives equal consideration to all road users”.

The campaign by RoadPeace to put up signs in memory of crash victims seems unobjectionable – even praiseworthy. And Norfolk County Council’s disquiet at the possibility that the signs might distract drivers is hard to swallow, given the thousands of other distractions on our roads created by themselves and other organisations.

But distraction, leading to inattention by drivers, is a major problem. It is a much worse problem than speed, for instance. It is a root cause of accidents that is wrongly ignored, because it’s hard to film.

Most drivers will be disturbed that, despite the balanced quotation from the RoadPeace website quoted above, both the RoadPeace members quoted in the EDP about the campaign mentioned only speed as a problem – “speeding over the flyover” and “toe off the accelerator” being the key quotes.

It is also worrying that at least one of them can’t drive and so presumably doesn’t know that under normal circumstances a vehicle under acceleration is much more controlled than one braking or freewheeling.

The causes of road accidents are rarely simple. Those who focus entirely or even primarily on speed are doing road safety a disservice, mainly by convincing bad drivers that anyone driving slowly is driving well. If all that dawdling drivers are doing wrong is provoking rash drivers to overtake them unsafely, they are still contributing to death on our roads – in my view contributing quite significantly.

Still we find non-angels and parish councillors rushing in as soon as a tragedy happens to demand speed reduction measures. Perhaps speed cameras would be better employed to measure the haste of such people’s rhetoric and slapping a swift fine on all those who hurtle in without thinking.

One hundred years ago an Act introduced to regulate speed on the highway stated sensibly that “if any person drives recklessly, or at a speed which is dangerous to the public, having regard to all the circumstances, including the nature, condition and use of the highway and to the amount of traffic which actually is at the time or which might be expected to be on the highway, this person shall be guilty of an offence under this Act”.

Bring back the justice of this basic principle, and we could forget the red herrings and concentrate on the real causes of crashes.

Otter side of the story

The case of the wild otter and the walking boot, recounted on this page last time, has provoked a response from the animal in question, known to its friends as A N Otter.

Apparently the story started when the mammal made the mistake of washing its fur in shampoo, which of course removed all its natural oils. It was therefore in sudden need of a boot to make its way down the stream. He continued: “As you so rightly mention, there are walkers. Lots of them. And they never leave me any crisps. That makes me wild.

“Anyway, I seized one of these walkers with no crisps and took tribute in the form of the boot.”

As some might have predicted, the boot was useless, because it didn’t float – just another of the disappointments caused by poor use of English. The boot ended up tied to a post by the road, which is not surprising in the circumstances.

Book plannned by 'Volcano'

Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek has promised me that he is writing a book for Christmas. In this case, it happens to be Christmas 2008, but I am sure it will be worth the wait.

The preliminary title is Walking over Bishy Barnabees, and stems from a yomping tour of Norfolk undertaken by Mr Meek while waiting for a bus. It followed shortly after his invention of inflatable water skis received a bad press. He explained: “The speed limit on the Broads is now 5mph, which made me think that all those water skiers would sink. So I came up with my patented inflatable water skis, enabling the skier to jog along behind the boat – a bit like snow shoes.”

For some reason this brilliant idea did not receive the recognition it deserved. Undeterred, the intrepid explorer is planning an expedition to search for the source of the Wensum. Preliminary research suggests that it may be a dripping tap in Colkirk.

Hanging wheelchairs threat to walkers

I have been hearing exciting reports about the new walkway at Barton Broad. But I am a little concerned about hazards that may be lying in wait. According to a report in another organ – supplied to me by a North Walsham reader – the walkway is not only wooden but “suspended wheelchair-friendly”. This sounds dangerous to me. However enthralling the walk, and however thrilling the view at the end, the risk of developing unconsciousness through an encounter with a suspended wheelchair may be too great. Ordinary wheelchairs are tricky enough. I hope humps have been installed to slow them down.

Safer, no doubt, to have a quiet meal at a nearby Neatishead public house. But this too is fraught with difficulties. A notice outside reads: “Only park here when you are in the pub.” I don’t think I’m even going to try that.

On the tilt

Rumours published here recently that much of the Scottish Highlands is made up of land removed surreptitiously from Norfolk have been given added impetus by an alert Fakenham resident, who has been examining pictures taken by EDP photographers.

He writes: “Have you noticed that some parts of Norfolk have a definite tilt, and this is often shown by various photographs showing quite distinct ground slopes?”

He calls these phenomena “earth leanings”. He concludes: “Whether this is due to earth movements from Norfolk to Scotland or whether Hingham is involved again, I don't know. Could you please investigate?”

The only expert who would speak to me about this kind of thing, Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, was sceptical, because there did not seem to be much Government funding involved. Readers may have other views.

15 September 2003

on 15 September 2003 at 08:00

Evidence for Norfolk land grab

Last time I started to tell you about my visit to the Highlands of Scotland to research the theory that they used to be part of Norfolk. Unfortunately I got a mite distracted by the traffic on the way back and lost the thread. This almost never happens.

I can reveal, however, that there is prima facie evidence to back up the theory, which stemmed originally from work done by local scientists such as Prof V A R Scheinlich of Hingham and Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing. Most people accept that there are bits missing from Norfolk, especially in the Reepham and Halvergate areas, and many readers will have experienced the eerie sensation of going back to find somewhere that is not there any more.

This may be partly due to the deliberately misleading signposts erected by the county council as part of the war effort, but I believe there is a deeper significance to it.

Anyone who has taken even a brief look round the Highlands will tell you that there is a great deal more of them than there needs to be. Often it is obvious that whole chunks of earth have simply been dumped in unlikely places. While the overall effect is admittedly stunning, experienced lawyers feel that Norfolk has a case for retrieving some of the material.

The case has been strengthened by reader Ray Fenn of Shotesham, who tells me that while on holiday in the rural North West of Scotland some years ago, he fell into conversation with an elderly local “who told me that for several years he was employed on coastal steamers carrying coal to the power station at Norwich. “Returning downriver, they stopped at Cantley sugar beet factory and loaded topsoil which had been washed from the beet before processing. He did not say (and neither do I) that this was done with either the intention to create, or had the effect of creating, his native scenery.”

Mr Fenn is almost sure that this is what he was told, and I have to say that it rings extraordinarily true. I do feel it unlikely, however, that Lord Lucan was involved in any way, or that nudity was strictly necessary to obtain the desired artistic effect. Unfortunately my campaign to “Bring back the Hills” to Norfolk has so far received little support.

Were roadworks really necessary?

I am sure that all citizens of Norwich have been hugely entertained by the amusing roadworks around Agricultural Hall Plain. No doubt they, like me, are lost in admiration for the ingenious method selected to get the sacred cow buses directly from Upper King Street into Castle Meadow; and have enjoyed, as pedestrians, the challenge of crossing the temporary chaos without benefit of lights. But I do wonder if the whole thing might have been avoided in a much more boring way, and at great saving to the communal purse. Since the constant hold-ups in Rose Lane are caused almost entirely by cars queuing to get into the Castle Mall car park, wouldn’t it have been simpler to station a couple of traffic wardens permanently in a strategic position to move the lemming drivers on? I admit it doesn’t allow the transport people to have so much fun with their Lego, but sometimes the taxpayer should come first.

Encounter of the otter kind

Walkers in the wilds of Norfolk are prepared for strange encounters of the first, second or third kinds – and more besides. A regular yomper tells me of two baffling, possibly connected items that he stumbled across close to the Suffolk border.

The first, near Earsham, was the sign “Slow! Wild Otter” on a bridge. While most of us are aware that Earsham and otters are virtually synonymous, this is still mysterious. Why was the otter so wild? Was he a member of Transport 2000? It was apparently a bit unnerving. You get used to trolls trying to stop you crossing bridges, but otters tend not to go in for this sort of thing, deeming it uncivilised.

Happily, the renegade otter in question must have been asleep, and the yomp continued safely. But not far away was something that gave the walkers more pause for thought: a single walking boot tied by its laces to the bottom of a signpost. In case you doubt this, I can reveal that I have a picture of it – too graphic, unfortunately, to be published in a family newspaper.

What could it mean? Had a walker been dragged to his death by the wild otter, managing to tie his boot to the post in a last, desperate bid to warn others (there was a plastic spoon nearby)? Or is there somewhere in Norfolk a walker who has not noticed that he has shed one of his boots? The truth is out there.

'Hingham' democracy gets new boost

The cutting edge style of democracy pioneered by the Autonomous Republic of Hingham has been taken a step further by a town in central Norfolk.

The original breakthrough at Hingham, an area well known for its ability to bend time and space, consisted in asking local people what they thought of key issues – particularly the sale of a controversial Scout Hut – and then ignoring them on a technicality. Now Swaffham has leapt vigorously on to the bandwagon. A poll on a plan to extend the town hall at a cost of £300,000 was put to the people, who responded in what might be described as a clear-cut fashion. The actual score was 486 people voting against and only 103 in favour – or not far off 5-1, the sort of result we could only dream of against the footballers of Liechtenstein.

This did not sway the stolid councillors of the parish, who had already decided in favour of the status-enhancing scheme. A bigger house always impresses the neighbours, though I’m sure that was not the motivation for the extension. I have no doubt that the extra space is urgently needed to deal with council business like – well, like counting the results of parish polls, for instance. Anyway, we all know from industry that everything has to grow, don’t we?

Of course, as Mayor Ian Sherwood pointed out, the town council was not legally bound to take any action over the referendum result: it was merely a source of information. So that’s all right. The council is not doing anything wrong at all and is perfectly entitled to its extra rooms.

A group romantically named Stag (less romantically, the Swaffham Taxpayers’ Action Group) has said it will continue to contest the plans, but I am a little worried. Stags are notoriously vulnerable to stalking and often come to a sticky end. Antlers would look good over the new door, don’t you think?

1 September 2003

on 1 September 2003 at 08:00

Retaliation and how not to get away with it

In the 1960s, when referees started sending off footballers who retaliated instead of those who committed the initial foul, they could have had no idea that it would lead to the Clean Environment Act of 2005.

But it was all part of the emerging culture of placing the blame on the victim, instead of the offender.

Footballers can still plunge in with bruising borderline challenges, knowing that any instinctive response by the victim is more likely to get him sent off than them. At the same time burglars have been encouraged to sue householders, and car drivers may have to pay for damage caused by cyclists.

And now, if the Government gets its way, landowners will have to pay to get rid of rubbish dumped on their land by people they dont know and have never seen.

This is outrageous by itself, but it is made even more memorably outrageous by the fact that it is the Government that is to blame for the increased amount of dumping. Could ministers really not have worked out that a massive increase in landfill tax would lead to illegal dumping? Are they stupid, or simply cynical?

During a walk through Ringland Hills, just outside Norwich, a few days ago, I came upon a selection of household appliances, rubble and other assorted litter. This is bound to get worse if or should I say when the Government increases landfill tax still further.

There is no way landowners can stop people dumping without fencing their property, which is just another kind of pollution. Barbed wire is even more unsightly than electricity pylons.

Of course no-one should dump rubbish, but of course people will, just as they continue to drop litter. How about a massive increase in the punishment for that?

Anyone who cares about our environment will want rubbish and litter to disappear. We have to be prepared to pay for that as a community, and it should be a priority.

If only the Government would copy Breckland Council, which has decided to remove and crush cars abandoned in its area. Maybe the main objective is untaxed vehicles, and maybe it will play into the hands of people who want to avoid paying to have their cars scrapped, but at least the rubbish will disappear.

Taking the high ground

Investigating a claim by experts that the Scottish Highlands used to be part of Norfolk, I spent a fortnight in the Highlands looking for links.

It is quite obvious that Norfolk is unnaturally flat, I was told. Equally, the Highlands are unnaturally hilly.

It seems fairly obvious that in the remote past, a great deal of Norfolk land was transported to the Highlands.

It was an extremely relaxing two weeks, marred only by the journey home. Travelling from Aberdeenshire down to Carlisle was quite pleasant, but then we hit the border. Immediately the road deteriorated and within a mile or two we were in 40mph road works restrictions. It was almost like entering another country. Oh yes, it was another country. It was our country.

The M6 in the Manchester area is always a nightmare. This year some genius in the Highways Agency thought it was a good idea to follow up long bridge-strengthening delays almost immediately with long resurfacing delays. This is the Highways Agencys version of the Chinese water torture, and by the time we reached Stoke it became clear that it was having a similar effect.

The biggest danger on long-distance roads is not speed but frustration. As an experienced driver well aware of the dangers, I was still twitchy in a dignified sort of way.

So I am tempted again to ask why we are obsessed by the dangers of speed and why the reaction of a councillor in Suffolk to two crashes which are not speed-related is to demand a reduced speed limit. But of course I am obsessed by the subject; so I will not do that.

However I would like to congratulate Norfolk police in carrying out an investigation into the real reason for accidents at dangerous junctions instead of just slapping up speed cameras.

And I would like to ask why, if speed is a primary cause of accidents, deaths on British roads were 7343 in 1934, when only 2.4 vehicles were registered, and 3423 in 1999 well under half, with over ten times as many much speedier vehicles on the road.

And further, why this excellent and continuous decline suddenly ended in 2001, at the point when speed became the national obsession and the speed camera companies starting making lots of money. Some mistake, surely?

Just tick here

I was disturbed to read of an increase in the number of ticks about, especially in the Thetford area. I have noticed that this corresponds with a massive increase in the number of documents that include tick boxes. These vary from educational assessments to amazingly pointless surveys and funding initiatives.

Clearly tick boxes must contain ticks, and as most of these can be dangerous to health, irrelevant, wrong or misleading, I suggest that we abolish all these documents immediately. There is no time to lose.

Newt expansion goes underground

Happily a large number of schools have taken the first step in this direction by refusing to have anything to do with PFI funding. Some have attributed the rejection to politics or doubts about the companies involved, but my information is that the documents involved are so complicated that a head teacher would require roughly 36 hours a day to cope with them. This is only possible in the Hingham area during time distortion events.

Norfolk veteran Henry (Fred) Shrimp Houseago has come out of hiding to warn East Anglians about a new coup by great crested newts, whose expansionist plans he exposed some years ago.

The newts, who already enjoy greater freedom to cross the A11 than people thanks to specially constructed tunnels have now persuaded English Heritage, a particularly gullible organisation, to publish a leaflet calling on locals to safeguard them.

The aggressive amphibians, which have infiltrated various levels of local government in the region, have been condemned by Mr Houseago. They will stop at nothing, he warned. The only consolation for Norfolk people is that they are particularly suited to Suffolk.

Let's be moving on

Interesting comment from Norwich police on the huge two-hour snarl-up at the exit from the Castle Mall car park in the city one day last week

Apparently they did not notice anything was wrong. They had spotted a traffic jam in the Rose Lane area, but that was not unusual; so they didnt have to do anything about it.

Presumably they apply the same principle to burglaries.

18 August 2003

on 18 August 2003 at 08:00

Crop circle shock

Shock pictures have reached this page of a totally new variation on crop circles discovered in South Norfolk.

Experts agree that two features set this particular example apart from the usual run of crop circles. One is that it is not a circle, and the second is that there does not appear to be a crop. In all other respects it is identical.

There is, as always, dispute as to what the figure represents. Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia suggests that is clear than an alien intelligence is trying to reach us.

“It is fairly obvious that the letters T and O are represented,” he told our reporter. “This means that the aliens want us to go somewhere. I believe the long straight line means that we have to be prepared to undertake a long journey. As the whole thing is a light colour, this may mean that it involves light speed.”

Prof V A R Scheinlich, whose pioneering work on knot theory revolutionised the theory of everything, was more sceptical. “This could be a natural phenomenon,” he said. “In certain climatic conditions a whirlpool effect can distort soil patterns so that they appear to be a message from aliens, especially in summer. A lot of respectable scientists have been fooled.”

He pointed out that this crop circle had appeared not too far from the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, which was well known for wormholes, time distortion and unusual versions of democracy. I have been sworn to secrecy concerning the exact location of this crop circle, but it is in fact at Tibenham, coincidentally the home of Norfolk Gliding Club. Locals suggest that the circle is in fact in the shape of a glider, and the right wingtip actually touches an access path, indicating that it may be man-made. But this is clearly too bizarre a theory to take seriously.

Motorway maintenance

A regular reader tells me that he was clergy-spotting in the Cathedral Close, Norwich, where many bishops, deans and lesser-beaked canons pause to feed on their summer flight south, when he caught sight of something even more bizarre: a large contractors' lorry bearing the legend Motorway Maintenance. There is clearly no need for Motorway Maintenance lorries to be in Norfolk at all, and some say they should be barred at the border. What was going on?

According to my informant, there is a Roman road in the vicinity of The Close, under or near the cathedral. Could it be that a section of it is being secretly upgraded to six lanes to compensate for the closure of Queen Street to cars? And is there any connection between this and the maze in the Cloisters?

The public should be told.

Wrong kind of tunnels

I was intrigued to read recently that the tunnel just outside Ipswich railway station, not far from Norfolk, will have to be closed so that it can be made bigger – apparently to accommodate taller container trucks.

This may be part of a perfectly reasonable European campaign to make life as difficult as possible for England, like the obligation to strengthen half our road bridges to take their heavier lorries. Well, it beats declaring war on us, I suppose. But if not, we must be insane. Making a tunnel bigger to fit bigger trucks is like increasing the size of a house to accommodate a mammoth sofa.

Surely the sensible course is to construct trucks to fit the tunnels we have? And while we’re at it, why don’t we build buses and lorries to fit our roads?

Half the congestion in Norwich (and most of the pollution) is caused by heavy vehicles blocking two lanes and taking an age to manoeuvre round tight corners. Buses and lorries are totally unsuitable for many of the country roads they travel on. Yet we continue to be mesmerised into building wider and longer vehicles.

Fenced off by sandcastle shortage

The latest frightener dredged up by climate change scientists is likely to have the biggest impact of the lot. According to reports, if climate change is unchecked, we may not be able to build sandcastles in future.

Obviously this is worrying. I don’t know how I will manage, personally. But I am also a little curious. Even if the sea level does rise, there will surely still have to be a coast somewhere. Unless of course the whole island disappears, in which case sandcastle loss may not be our top priority.

In any case, I have the solution. We must simply put fences along the beach, as we do along rivers where people tend to fall in. The fences would not only hold back the rising water levels but prevent reckless holidaymakers from swimming or paddling. There is too much of that going on.

I have a dream: a fence all the way round the British Isles, so that we will all be totally secure. Health and safety, eat your heart out.

Parking saints encourage walkers

A recent survey revealed that more people walk to work in Norwich than in any other big town or city in the region. As a regular city walker, I would like to think this is because of residents’ health-consciousness, but I suspect it is more to do with the lack of parking spaces.

One refreshing thing about parking in Norwich, however, is the permit areas, which are named after saints like Clement, Peter, Julian and Giles – a group which will I suspect be known in future as the patron saints of permit parking.

A surprise omission (unless I have overlooked him) is St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Residents attempting to find a slot among the white vans that infest our street would certainly see him as an appropriate replacement for our sadly anonymous and unholy Zone B.

4 August 2003

on 4 August 2003 at 08:00

It is understandable that Norfolk people should find driving on dual carriageways difficult, since we have so few of them.

But this does not apply to the rest of the country. So why is dual carriageway driving generally so bad? As a public service I have put together a supplement to the Highway Code that should help to make dual carriageways both safe and uncongested. Some of these points are merely clarifications of current safe driving practice; others are helpful suggestions.

* On dual carriageways HGVs should be confined to the inside lane. * When overtaking on a dual carriageway it is not sufficient simply to switch on your indicator and pull out. * You should never pull out in front of another vehicle if by doing so you cause it to brake. * Slow-moving vehicles should not pull into the outside lane of a dual carriageway automatically whenever they approach an entry slip road. Vehicles joining the faster road should normally filter into the nearside lane between vehicles. * No vehicle should overtake on a dual carriageway unless it can complete the passing manoeuvre in 20 seconds or less. * When passing slow-moving vehicles in heavy traffic, do not pull out in front of faster vehicles, thus forming a long, slow-moving stream in the outside lane. Wait until the faster vehicles go through. * It is permissible to change lanes more than once on dual carriageways. Do not feel that because you are in the outside lane you have to stay there until you overtake the lorry half a mile ahead. * When pulling on to a dual carriageway road from a junction, match the speed of the traffic as soon as possible. It is permissible to press the accelerator. * When turning off the dual carriageway, do not slow more than is necessary before doing so. Slow driving on fast roads is dangerous. * Do not assume that anyone driving faster than you is a mad fool. He/she may be a better driver than you. He/she may not, but you can’t tell that from the fact that you have been overtaken. * Do not assume that anyone who overtakes you is in a desperate hurry. He/she may simply prefer not to sit behind a lorry/van/caravan or any other vehicle that blocks the view of the road ahead. Or you may be driving too slowly for the conditions. * Do not hit the brake whenever you see a speed camera, especially when you are already travelling well under the speed limit. * Pay attention. * Have consideration for other road users. * If you think that everyone exceeding a speed limit is a criminal, stop driving immediately. You do not have the minimum brain power necessary to drive well. * If you do not enjoy driving, stop driving immediately. If you don’t enjoy it, you will almost certainly be doing it badly. (Obviously this does not apply in temporary situations like traffic jams or other highway-authority-induced congestion.) * If you are pulling a caravan, take it to the nearest scrapyard.

Council advice

Councils have a hard time, don’t they? They try to do the right thing, but it keeps going wrong.

Norfolk County Council workers, for instance, suddenly got all concerned about unauthorised signs giving directions to Gunthorpe grand fete; so of course they took them down.

“We’re not spoilsports,” they said. Which doesn’t really explain all those signs that remain beside the road long after the event has passed. I have never yet seen a Flood sign where there was still water on the road, and the sign warning of road closures in the city for the Lord Mayor’s Procession was there for weeks afterwards.

Norwich City Council got all excited about environmental issues. So it issued free compost bins and caused a massive traffic jam on one of the city’s most sensitive routes. It had already delivered recycling boxes to our street (and many others), which is fine – except that the gentlemen who empty them fling them down all over the pavement, upside down and with the lids off. Not exactly wheelchair-friendly.

Then North Norfolk District Council thought it would be a good thing to install security doors on a number of blocks of flats in North Walsham to prevent vandalism and robbery. It worked, too. Unfortunately it also meant that several elderly residents couldn’t get out because they were too frail to open the doors. Let’s hope there’s not a fire.

Getting the hump

I would not want to criticise the BBC, which is in enough trouble as it is, but I was rather disturbed by its web page on speed humps, to which I was directed by a concerned citizen following my piece on introducing humps at Mundesley, through which it is already impossible to drive quickly.

The page, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3084331.stm, includes a vote on whether or not you want to sweep away speed humps, as they have done in the enlightened London Borough of Barnet. Naturally I attempted to vote in favour, but my vote was not accepted. I received a message saying “Page not found”– on several occasions.

I hope this is not an attempt to distort the vote, or to pretend that no-one is interested. Perhaps by the time you read this, normal service will have been resumed.

Newt expansion

A reader tells me that the expansionist plans of great crested newts, long discounted by experts such as Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, may not have been entirely abandoned. One of their pet projects – the genetic modification of cats – appears to have been revived, if we are to believe a notice in a Norwich newsagent’s.

"Free to good home,” it reads. “Two newted male cats. One grey, the other black. Must be kept together.”

23 July 2003

on 23 July 2003 at 08:00

Appalling catalogue of broken loves

Norfolk County Council is planning emergency measures to combat the dangerous proliferation of speed dating in this hitherto quiet and sedate part of the country.

Members and officers are convinced that speed dating, which originated in >America, is the cause of at least a third and probably half of a long list of broken hearts in Norfolk, which are on the increase and costing the National Health Service millions.

Bypasses are not available because of financial difficulties, according to the regional planning team.

Studies by the Dating Research Laboratory have shown that while inattention, carelessness and stupidity are to blame for most accidents of this nature, speed dating is a big factor, especially if you assume that nearly all dating is speed dating. The pressure group Delight 2003 is also urging the Government to clamp down and introduce draconian measures to stop what it calls “this horrific catalogue of wasted loves”.

Speed dating in its pure form involves groups of females armed with “date cards” sitting round a table. The men then prowl around the perimeter of the table, also armed with date cards. Individuals tick against the name of any person they would like to get to know better, and at the end of the evening, which is very short due to the level of embarrassment involved, persons are fixed up with one another.

“This is clearly appallingly dangerous,” said council spokesman G C Newt. “We intend to introduce two main measures. First, we will install speed cameras in the halls where this practice takes place and where statistics show there have been a number of broken hearts.

“These cameras will be painted bright black so that they are easily visible.

“We also plan to put in speed humps, to slow down the progress made by young men round the table.

“This will enable them to get a good look at the young women and avoid making a costly mistake by jamming on the brakes too soon. And vice, of course, versa.”

Mr Newt said there were also plans to protect the young women by introducing parking fines for young men who were shopping in too restricted an area. He added that the use of mobile phones would be strictly forbidden.

Asked whether those determined to speed date would simply move into smaller and more congested halls, which might be even more dangerous, Mr Newt said he thought the council would quickly adapt. It was determined to make money out of the situation. Distinguishing between documents

More clues have emerged to the exact nature of the job done by the director of organisational development at Norwich City Council. Apparently one of the things she has to do is work out which documents have to be typed properly.

This has of course necessitated a certain amount of reorganisation, developmentwise, and all the good display screen operators have been rounded up and named.

We will not name them here, because they are innocent, but we know who they are.

You might think that all documents emanating from the council should be typed properly, but this is not so.

If you want to produce a document that is fewer than 10 pages long and includes no complex graphics, you must do it yourself, even if your keyboard skills hover around the absolute minimum.

Unless, of course, accuracy is important, and in my experience this is rarely the case.

Oh, and unless the image of the council could be affected. I don't think we need worry about that.

I don't know about you, but if I worked in City Hall (as I once did, surprisingly), I would be trying hard to produce documents that were at least 10 pages long, with graphics, where accuracy was vital and the image of the council was affected.

It's known as hedging your bets. And it could explain a great deal about council documents.

Ground-breaking vegetables

A Norfolk man is pioneering a totally new kind of genetically modified crop that he claims will pose no threat to human, animal or plant life – but “could make things difficult for politicians”.

Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, has planted three fields of his ground-breaking protest peas near Erpingham. He said last night: “These are much better than those garden peas that just roll around in a seasick sort of way.

“These have got a bit of oomph. They have something to say.”

Asked what it was they had to say, he replied: “They are in the Norfolk mould. They do different. They are against all kinds of things.”

He added: “I call them Tolstoy. They are warring peas.”

Mr Houseago added that he was negotiating with a wind farm to grow his peas on a commercial basis.

“Wind farms are the coming thing,” he pointed out. “They have already been linked with baked beans, but I plan to get in quickly. I have the stomach for it.”

Look – no hands

A friend of this page who is involved in traffic surveys in Norwich city centre reports a fascinating and frightening fact: women using mobiles while “in control” of a car were observed to outnumber males almost four to one.

Most of these females are, judging by appearance, under 30. I suppose I would have been more surprised if I had not seen just such an individual the other day merrily passing a traffic light on Riverside while doing her safety belt up with one hand and holding a mobile phone to her ear with the other. Don't ask me what she was doing with her knees.

7 July 2003

on 1 July 2003 at 08:00

Behind the times on speed humps

One does not, perhaps, expect Mundesley to be in the forefront of traffic management.

But it is particularly unfortunate that, at a time when one London borough is getting rid of all 1000 of its speed humps because they are ineffectual, damage vehicles and cause pain and deaths through their effect on emergency vehicles, Mundesley is about to instal them.

There is, of course, the usual consultation going on, but because the humps come as part of a bigger package containing one or two sensible suggestions to improve safety, no-one will be surprised if they get the nod.

And this will be rather sad because, although it is Norfolk County Council's fault, it is Mundesley that will be seen as out-of-touch and unimaginative. And it is Mundesley people who will suffer.

I am quite fond of Mundesley: it is where my baby grandson caught his first glimpse of the sea, among other things. I go there quite often, but this will not continue if the council instals speed humps and a 20mph limit – the other reactionary suggestion. I hope local traders are aware that many others will feel the same.

I wonder if the people at County Hall who seem so keen on 20mph limits are aware how slow 20mph is. There are undoubtedly parts of Mundesley where 20mph, or even less, would be a sensible speed, mainly because it is well nigh impossible to go faster at those points without hitting a wall. But this most certainly does not include the vast majority of the town, which the council wants to include.

Most Norfolk drivers do not need encouraging to go slowly. They already do, partly because they feel the main function of a car is to allow you to conduct conversations with your passenger, complete with hand gestures and eye-to-eye contact. They also do not seem to want to go anywhere very much. It is as if someone has placed them in the driver's seat and they have not yet discovered what is going on.

Other suggestions for Mundesley include improving the footway – much more of this would be a better plan – and narrowing the road so that it is easier to cross. Next step is presumably to get rid of the road so that you don't have to cross it at all.

The council calls its new version of humps “less noisy”, which is hardly reassuring. All the problems found in the borough of Barnet still apply. Only one question remains. Who is making money out of installing these monstrosities?

Weaving a tangled safety web

It is time the health-and-safety people, so active for so long in areas where they serve no useful purpose, looked into greenhouses.

A correspondent informs me that she carelessly entered her greenhouse without filling in the correct forms last week. As a result she walked into a cobweb and got bitten on the scalp by a small, angry-looking spider.

I thought at first that this might have been a health-and-safety official working under cover. But there is a good chance that it was in fact a genuine spider, especially as my correspondent's husband then performed a similar foolhardy greenhouse-entry mission and got bitten on the arm, “which swelled up like a balloon for several days”.

Not to be put off, she herself re-entered the greenhouse, walked into a cobweb again and was bitten on the eyelid by a spider. Was it the same spider? Pictures are circulating, I believe. Sadly the eyelid swelled up “like a red golf ball, very itchy and unpleasant-looking”.

I am not sure which is worse – a red golf ball or a balloon – but clearly these spiders have to be stopped.

I had been planning to campaign against health-and-safety mania, since I felt it posed a health-and-safety threat in the form of people dying of boredom when the phrase was mentioned. But now I see there is a valid role for these officious officials. I urge them to tackle the nearest greenhouse immediately.

Sense at last on speed limits

I am delighted to see that at least one political party sees sense on speed limits. The Tories have promised to increase the limit on motorways to 80mph when elected – a sensible and long overdue move, as any motorway driver will know.

They have also said they will get rid of the many misnamed “safety” cameras, retaining only those at obvious black spots. One hopes that, unlike certain speed camera promoters, they will not be afraid to say what the criteria for such black spots are. One hopes also that when elected – and realistic policies towards drivers will not do them any harm – the Tories will tackle extremely silly limits on other roads, like the 50mph recently installed on the Norwich-Wroxham road. I suspect that this was done purely to stop people using it as an alternative to the Norwich-North Walsham road, where the limits are almost legendary in their stupidity.

Such unrealistic limits simply convince poor drivers that they are good and turn good drivers into poor ones. If road safety were really the priority that highways authorities claim, they might spend some money teaching people how to use junctions instead.

Lost in space: where's the point?

Possibly as a result of my piece protesting about intrusive apostrophes in road signs on the Riverside development in Norwich, someone has taken the trouble to remove them. The apostrophes, not the signs.

This is gratifying, I suppose, but it would have been nice if they could have afforded new signs, since the adjusted versions contain an odd-looking space in the middle of a word as a result. Clearly this is felt to be good enough for the locals, who presumably don't have punctuation as a top priority. Perhaps they can't see the point.

Feud for thought

Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who has been dormant recently, has been pondering the implications of a possible price-cutting war between Kentucky Fried Chicken, Macdonalds, Little Chef and Burger King. Would this, he wonders, be a fast feud?

23 June 2003

on 23 June 2003 at 08:00

Norfolk is government guinea pig

Secret documents leaked to this page reveal that Norfolk has been chosen to pioneer a new form of government.

Hints were dropped last week when deputy prime minister John Prescott announced that there would be no referendum on elected regional government in East Anglia because “public interest is so low”.

In fact the papers reveal that Norfolk will shortly be selected to pioneer the new “direct decision” government which New Labour hopes will catch on in the country as a whole. It cuts out the entirely the time-consuming and embarrassing need for local elections, as well as other irrelevancies like planning inquiries, public consultation and various kinds of appeals.

In the first instance this will be achieved by the expansion of quangos, on which people who already earn lots of money will be able to earn much more, simply by making occasional decisions about areas they have no affinity with.

This is described as “obvious modernisation” by the government, which will introduce targets and invent statistics.

It is believed that the golden opportunity for Norfolk – in which everyone can play a vital part without doing anything at all – stemmed from the ground-breaking form of democracy achieved in the nearby Autonomous Republic of Hingham.

This demonstrated that public consultation need not affect anything, and was therefore pointless.

Because Hingham has since won the Le Mans 24-hour race with its home-grown Bentley cars, this is regarded by New Labour as vindication for the cutting-edge system of government.

Eventually it is hoped that Norfolk will be governed by one person selected by Whitehall, and opinions will be distributed among the population to avoid any necessity for the development of home-grown ones that might not fit in with the overall plan.

Asked whether such a system might not be in the spirit of democracy, a government spokesman said: “There is very little interest in this, which is the way we feel democracy is going. It's all so much simpler. This way, we feel sure that the trains will run on time.”

Humps in flying objects?

A regular reader reports a mysterious encounter with flying objects at Long Sutton, just outside the Norfolk border.

The peace of the charming market town (he writes) was shattered by four enormous and ponderous aircraft flying in stately procession one behind the other. One was clearly an AWACS radar plane, as the mushroom on top was plainly visible. All four were flying relatively low, as if they had recently taken off, and were heading roughly west. All were under heavy fighter escort.

Who would need such high security on leaving Norfolk? George Bush was back in Washington (unless he has a double, of course). So was it Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice?

Perhaps it was Norwich City's manager on a signing mission. Or more likely a cache of Norfolk speed humps being moved in secret to the States as suspect weapons of mass vehicle destruction.

Perhaps it was Charles Clarke's wallet, or the money missing from the education budget. Or David Beckham, wanting a close look at the Fens. The nation, I think, should be told.

Tea ban to save planet

The revolutionary discovery that we are drinking less tea because of global warming has inspired Norfolk veteran Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, to launch a “no tea” campaign.

He has already ordered a carton of No-T shirts from entrepreneur Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston and has commissioned the School of Chess, Penguins and Road Surfacing at the UEA to design a logo.

“I am really excited about this,” he told our reporter yesterday. “If we could get people to stop drinking tea altogether, we could save the planet. Especially if they put lids on saucepans as well.

“I have a dream,” he added. “Everybody drinking good old Norfolk water, and the planet getting colder and colder, particularly near Brancaster.”

Blown up out of all proportion

Inspired by the news not long ago that a large inflatable church was available for purchase or rent in areas where the church was no longer the centre of the community, a reader has come up with a brilliant idea to solve KLM's overbooking problems.

She suggests that the airline, beset by complaints and criticisms from customers, “should issue every potential passenger with an emergency inflatable seat that could be erected in the gangways of their planes if necessary”.

Clever. But I do have a slight worry about what might happen to inflatable seats in a pressurised cabin. And if the stewards could not reach the passengers with their in-flight meals… no, on second thoughts, that wouldn't be a problem.

However, I suspect that a blow-up church in the airport boarding area might serve a more useful function.

Gnomes bid to cut road deaths

Concern that the widespread introduction of speed cameras has coincided with an increase in road deaths throughout the country has led Mrs Hicks, Mayor of Little London, near Corpusty, to introduce what she calls a control scheme.

She said yesterday: “We are planning to put garden gnomes by the side of the road – only at accident black spots, of course. We shall then measure the effect on the number of accidents over twelve months.

“Our experts expect that it will roughly match the effect of speed cameras. Personally I believe the gnomes will do much better and bring road deaths down again.”

Asked whether the gnomes would be carrying fishing rods or nets, she said she was unavailable for comment. But they would definitely not be flashing.

9 June 2003

on 9 June 2003 at 18:17

Absurdity police would be welcome

Insiders at Norwich City Hall report deep concern there at news from Latvia that an anti-absurdity bureau has been formed to deal with its government's excessive "foolishness" and bizarre behaviour.

Apparently the bureau receives about 10 complaints a day, and there is a risk that it could catch on in other countries. This would clearly be worrying for the consortium of great crested newts and coypu that now form a majority in the running of the city council in our own fair county, following a general haemorrhaging of edgy and confused staff.

Conflict is looming at present over the mind-bogglingly complex Green Travel plan – already mentioned here – which intends radical change to the arrangements for employees who need to be mobile to do their jobs.

Their trade union, Unison, has rejected the dogma-haunted plan, raising the spectre of industrial action and disruption to Norwich services.

The reaction has been swift and draconian. The director of organisational development – apparently an actual job – has offered some "Advice to Employees" which includes the odd demand that employees notify the "Staff Christmas Parking Mailbox" if they intend to take industrial action.

Presumably in the spirit of Christmas, the advice continues with notification of possible pay deductions, suspensions, disciplinary action and – even worse – car parking fines.

Employees will clearly be encouraged by this turn of events.

It seems that the worsening atmosphere at City Hall over the last two or three years, reported by a mole to stem from an emphasis on cash-saving instead of service delivery, is not due for improvement any time soon.

I suspect that an anti-absurdity initiative could change all that.

We uncover people saved by cameras

Following meticulous research conducted by this page, we can reveal that we are now in possession of a list of the 46 people described by Norfolk speed camera supremo Bryan Edwards as "still walking around Norfolk, going about their lives that could have been killed in accidents" in the absence of cameras.

Naturally we would not want to embarrass these people by naming them here, but we can reveal that 17 of them, astonishingly, live in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, and the rest of them within 70 miles of it. Some of them are so grateful to the speed cameras that saved their lives that they are having private ones erected in their gardens.

We hope this research will reassure those people who feel that the cameras are used purely to raise money and snare vandals. At the same time we feel that Mr Edwards' warning that such vandals "could end up with a life sentence" is unduly lenient: castration is surely the more civilised option.

With any luck our findings will also pre-empt recent evidence from a Government-sponsored study that much cheaper electronic warning signs are more effective at speed reduction than cameras. This is clearly irrelevant, since they do not raise money.

We can also reveal more ground-breaking discoveries concerning accidents on the Broads. Apparently speed is a factor in more than 90 per cent of these, and plans are afoot to erect cameras at black spots. Scientists are also investigating how to install humps, or "waves" (Water Arcs Versus Excess Speed), in the major rivers.

Whales: the folk memory

Explorer Richard "Volcano" Meek, whose revolutionary theories concerning Norfolk's dead whales were published here first, tells me that he has had some further ideas about the phenomenon.

He now believes that the whales dropping from the sky in times past may have caused the pingos that are so prevalent in the Watton area. There may also be a remote chance that falling whales wiped out the dinosaurs, thought this will not be certain until the BBC broadcasts a series on it called Walking under Whales.

Astutely, Mr Meek points out that our phrase "raining cats and dogs" is clearly a folk memory of these events.

Unaware of anger?

My comments a month ago on the abandon with which KLM overbooks seats in its planes brought numerous replies from people similarly affected – one from as far afield as Nairobi.

It would be strange if the airline was unaware of the anger it causes, and of how long that anger lingers in people's minds. Its attempts to justify the practice are the opposite of reassuring.

One of its staff told me in Amsterdam: "We can never guarantee that you'll get a seat." Clearly it's unreasonable to assume that they could. After all, we've only paid for it. In full. In advance.

Yes, it is available

Apologies to those one or two people who attempted to purchase my poetry book, Mist and Fire, from Prospect House in Norwich. It is not available there, but can be purchased direct from me.

Write c/o the EDP, and your letter will be passed on – or simply e-mail me. The price of the book is £4.50, but since readers of this page are totally trustworthy, I am happy to supply a copy on approval.

Don’t look now

Thousands of people were shocked beyond measure by news from the British Medical Association last week that most hospital accident and emergency departments met a Government target while they were being monitored, but not before or after.

Astonishingly, special arrangements had been made to meet the targets during monitoring – including cancelling routine operations, bringing in temporary staff or enforcing double shifts for doctors and nurses.

I am sorry to say that I was not at all surprised. It is, after all, simply an extension of the general principle – true down to the behaviour of the tiniest particles – that observing something makes it behave differently.

The Government, sadly, does not know this. We should probably tell it.

26 May 2003

on 26 May 2003 at 08:00

Statistics – how you can help

Statistics show that readers of this page are in the top one to six per cent of the country.

Unfortunately I cannot reveal where these statistics come from or what exactly was measured, but I think you will agree that it must show we are all pretty intelligent.

It may also show that we will believe anything that has figures in it. You probably already think that the lower figure is more accurate. If it were climate change, of course, it would still be the lower figure, but everyone would pretend it was the higher figure –that just shows how flexible we are.

It will come as no surprise to us, therefore, to find that we are in a perfect position to help the Government, lottery organisers and scientists – and that we are able to do this at a stroke.

Why should we bother with these fringe groups?

I am surprised you should ask that, since it is clearly our duty in Norfolk to help people who cannot make their minds up, or who have already made it up wrongly, or who have very little mind at all.

Some of you may have noticed that lottery games are proliferating at an alarming rate and getting less and less comprehensible. This is clearly pointless, confusing, and a waste of everyone's time.

At the same time, significantly, the Government cannot decide whether it can get away with plunging straight into >Europe without asking anyone if they want to come too.

And it can be no coincidence that simultaneously Norfolk has been selected to take all sorts of exciting measures to reduce carbon emissions, which as everyone knows, are dragging the sun towards us. We can put lids on our saucepans, for instance, or turn off the lights.

What we, as readers of this page, can do to help, is simple. I am going to introduce a new lottery game that will replace all the old lottery games. We will replace all those boring numbered balls with a completely new set of balls.

Each ball will contain a statement about Europe or the environment that is either silly or highly contentious. Happily there are thousands of these to be found in the newspapers daily. Many of them are passed off as facts and taught in schools.

Everyone who takes part in the new lottery will simply have to choose six balls that contain correct statements.

Unfortunately, the odds against winning this new lottery are still spectacularly high. But all money raised is going towards a new charity dedicated to maintaining the critical faculty of the population as a whole. I am sure you'll agree that this is a more than worthwhile project, and a desperate need.

Bizarre letters

I see that Steve Hounsham of Transport 2000 is pursuing his fantasy campaign against me in a stream of bizarre letters to the editor. Just in case readers of this page are in any doubt, I have no connection with the Association of British Drivers, and readers may make of its website (at www.abd.org.uk) what they will.

Mr Hounsham may like to dwell on Socrates' remark that “when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser”. No, I am not a member of the extremist Socrates Club either.

Gulls at home in new mews

Reader Mik Hancock of Swaffham is concerned about the number of mews springing up in various places across Norfolk. He writes: “I was led to believe that mews developments by definition were yards or streets originally used as stables but latterly converted to dwellings.

“From where I write, two come to mind that cannot fit into this category – Church Mews and Barlow Mews, brand new houses that have nothing in common with stables. Admittedly the access to Church Mews is through Pit Lane, a row of terraced cottages that are converted stable dwellings, but Barlow Mews is on the site of a former factory.”

This is clearly a matter of some depth and complexity, but Mr Hancock is equal to it. He reminds us shrewdly that “mew” is also another word for a seagull. Perhaps, he suggests, Swaffham was sea-girthed in the past – possibly during a time of climate change – and many seagulls congregated there.

“Or maybe colonies of wild cats roamed the area, and the sites are named after their cries? Or perhaps the sites were covered in the feathers of moulting hawks?”

Readers who admire Mr Hancock's thoroughness, etymologically speaking, may feel compelled to agree that one of these ideas is bound to be correct. The only other explanation is that “mews” sounds expensive, and that's clearly ridiculous.

Poetry offer: must end eventually

Thousands upon thousands of readers have asked me when this column will appear in book form. Apparently they would like to throw it into the sea, but newspaper does not sink well.

I am sad to say that this is unlikely to happen in the near future because of global warming, but eager readers now have an alternative: they can buy my book of poems, Mist and Fire, which is published this month. My poetry has been described as “lousy as your lousy column” by one alert visitor to my website at www.back2sq1.co.uk, which gives you a fair idea of the quality. It is also almost entirely not funny.

If, despite this, you would like a copy, the book is available from me at the modest cost of £4.50, post free. Cheques should be payable to Tim Lenton, and definitely not to anyone else. The cover pictures, by Norfolk artist Annette Rolston, are worth the price on their own, which would probably have been a better idea.

12 May 2003

on 12 May 2003 at 08:00

Sorry, overbooking just isn’t acceptable

If you want a relaxing, restful holiday, don’t fly anywhere. You are quite likely to have a problem – and that problem will not be terrorists, it will be the airlines.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I flew from Norwich International to Amsterdam with KLM. As air journeys go, this is as straightforward as it gets – but it proved totally beyond the wit of the airline to organise it properly.

When we checked in 90 minutes early at Schiphol for our return flight, we were told it was overbooked, and our seat “could not be guaranteed”.

This was related as if overbooking were some kind of cosmic phenomenon beyond the control of human beings. In fact, of course, it is just the airline being greedy. Someone – possibly elves or fairies – had booked 61 people on to a 50-seater plane.

The airline does not think this matters. After all, the unlucky ones could be put on a flight to London the following morning and be driven back to Norwich – all at KLM’s expense, including cash compensation and a night in a not uncomfortable hotel.

We refused the flight to London. When I travel from Norwich to Amsterdam and back, I do not intend to go anywhere near London. Eventually we were put on a flight the following afternoon, 20 hours later, to Norwich.

As far as KLM was concerned, it was all over. Problem solved. As far as we were concerned, it meant we had to find KLM Arrivals at Schiphol, which meant we had to get on the end of a long queue at passport control (and that, believe me, is extremely annoying when you haven’t been anywhere).

They fixed us up with a hotel shuttle bus, which we also had to find and which was crammed full and got stuck in traffic.

How can KLM justify overbooking a Friday night flight by more than 20pc? If I paid for a new sofa to arrive next Friday, and next Friday the company rang up and said they had taken cash for 50 sofas when they knew they only had 40, I would be extremely upset. Why should KLM think I will not be upset with them?

And I was not alone in my anger. There was the Norwich family who had left Houston 30 hours before and had been split in two, the man from Siberia, the woman from Johannesburg, the woman who had missed three meetings and the man who needed to be in Bucharest. Among others.

It did not help that our luggage was missing when we reached Norwich, and that the taxi rank was empty.

Bad luck, you say. Indeed. But the result is that I am put off flying, and I am put off Amsterdam. KLM calls itself smugly “the reliable airline”. Presumably an unreliable one would drop you by parachute somewhere at random.

Could someone out there be firing whales at us?

Fresh from his investigation into close encounters with aliens, noted Norfolk explorer Richard ‘Volcano’ Meek has been developing theories concerning two whales being found dead recently – one in Stiffkey and another in Terrington.

His first hypothesis was that these could be aliens who had miscalculated the size of parachute required in the earth’s atmosphere.

The absence of parachute shreds put a rather large hole in this idea, however, and he now feels that a more likely explanation is that scientists have been working on a massive new 200-megablubber bomb. If so, there would obviously be a sinister porpoise – and we all know that the United States is using dolphins in warfare.

Mr Meek reminds us of the well-known artillery technique of bracketing: one shot above, one shot below and then one on target. Since we have had whales in Stiffkey and Terrington, he estimates that the actual target is Bircham Newton. Suddenly, it all makes sense.

You never know when you’ll need Latvian

Fruit-farming is getting much more specialised than it used to be. I see from an advert in the EDP’s JobSearch that a Norfolk company looking for two supervisors and a manager requires not only managerial skills and experience, but that the applicants “must be fluent in Russian, Latvian, Polish and English”.

I am intrigued to know how many people possess this particular combination of abilities. Perhaps it will precipitate a rush by fruit-lovers for joint honours degrees in Russian, Latvian and Polish at the UEA: I understand that there has not been much call for such a degree up to now.

Mind you, I can understand the need for fluent foreign language speakers: there is so much room for misunderstanding. While in Amsterdam, for instance, I noted that the hotel lift was made by a company called Schindler, which made me reluctant to use it, since it would clearly be Schindler’s lift.

I was also a bit taken aback to hear the intrepid Henry the Navigator translated into Henry the Sailor during a canal trip (our canal trip, not his).

Visitors to our own country could easily be confused by a document entitled ‘Daft Lowestoft Cycling Strategy’. Even more so if they travelled by train and heard over the loudspeaker that “very slight refreshments” were available. This did turn out to be “various light refreshments”, but that could be hard to detect if you were Russian, Latvian or Polish. Or even English.

Some good news, though. I am informed by a correspondent that the ‘Waitree’ mentioned last time is in fact Hingham’s answer to rural signposting. Which I suppose explains why it was spotted in Yarmouth.

This unspoilt site is the last place for caravans

Local democracy continues to gasp for breath in North Norfolk, where district councillors still find it necessary to overrule the advice of their officers and the wishes of local people.

As a result, land at Hanworth, a secluded, delightfully quiet and so far unspoilt part of the county, is likely to be infested with 100 caravans on a site created by a farmer.

As I have already mentioned on this page, this is just about the last place you would want to place large numbers of caravans: it would create a hazard on nearby roads and intrude into the peace of the countryside.

No amount of repositioning of the buildings will compensate for that, and questions of drainage and environmental impact still go unanswered.

I hope the change in the make-up of the council following the elections will bring members to their senses at last.

28 April 2003

on 28 April 2003 at 08:00

Digging for the fantasy figures

There is a disappointing lack of fantasy in most parts of the current Norwich Area Transportation Strategy review document.

One would normally look to this kind of thing for all sorts of bizarre pronouncements, but sadly it seems to be quite sensible in the main, though a bit short on urgency and solid solutions.

But the fantasy is there if you know where to look for it.

It is not in the statistics for vehicle use in Norwich which, despite talk of expanding car journeys, reveal that the number of vehicles crossing the inner ring road during the day have fallen quite substantially since 1989 – down from 105,264 to 89,225. For the outer ring road the figures are slightly up on 1995, but slightly down on 1998 and 2001.

But this doesn’t quite tie in with the Future Travel Patterns section, which states that “businesses and individuals are travelling more often”. No doubt they are travelling somewhere else.

And right here is where we find the fantasy, subtly contained in the forecast figures for the projected growth in the number of trips in Norwich.

Compared to the figures for 1996, there will apparently be a 98pc increase in walking by 2006. This hops to an amazing 99pc by 2011, which presumably means that while there was a huge step forward for mankind in the first 10 years, there will for some reason be only a one per cent increase in the following five years.

Strange, Holmes. But what about cyclists? Even stranger. The figure in each case here is 99pc, which presumably means that cycling will have almost doubled in 10 years, but won’t increase at all in the next five years.

Something odd going on here. What are they keeping from us?

Perhaps it’s not so much what they’re keeping from us as what they’re trying to sell us. Interesting that the figure for cycling is 99pc and not 100pc or 101pc. That’s what I call precision forecasting. Can it be coincidence that the figure for cars (despite the fall noticed earlier) is predicted highest at 113pc and 120pc?

I don’t know who produced these figures, but it is disappointing in the arena of fantasy to see such a sad lack of imagination. They are all far too close together. Let me see now, I predict that in the next 10 years there will be 58pc more walking, 33pc more cycling and 25pc more motoring.

There will also be a 150pc increase in the number of percentages plucked out of the air by planners and a two per cent likelihood of any of them being anywhere near the truth.

I think you’ll find that’s pretty much spot on.

So that’s where they went . . .

Regular readers of this page are both observant and concerned citizens. One anonymous gentleman from Lowestoft , for instance, is worried about the small number of sensible cyclists on the road.

He writes: “True, there are youngsters on mountain bikes using pedestrianised areas as slalom practice grounds – which is highly entertaining to people laden with shopping or endeavouring to control a buggy and two other children simultaneously – but where are those we could call, for lack of a better term, normal cyclists who tend, among other things, to be law-abiding?”

The answer is a little surprising, he suggests. It is to be found in “those little rectangular blue Cyclists Dismount signs that you find in the most unlikely places”.

These are purely advisory signs, but many cyclists follow their advice. Unfortunately, my correspondent points out that there is no such thing as a Cyclists Remount sign.

This inevitably means that most law-abiding cyclists get off their bikes and never get on again. Another mystery solved.

Shutting the barn door after the house is gone

I have lost count of the number of readers who have been concerned about the frequent absence of Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, from this page. I think it was one, or maybe two.

But there are good reasons.

One is Mr Houseago’s concern that a new, younger leader is needed to counter the insidious campaign of great crested newts to distort and degrade civilisation as we know it.

He feels that the newts have become so adept at disguising themselves that he can no longer cope.

This decision followed a distressing incident when he attacked a small owl near Wimbotsham.

But the main reason is his fear that the newts will somehow expose another embarrassing mistake, which occurred when he attempted a barn conversion, which he had been told was a fashionable thing to do.

The work took some months, and visiting friends became more and more mystified as it progressed.

No one said anything, however, until Len ‘Kissme’ Hardy dropped by. In his usual forthright style, he broached what he saw as a major flaw in the project.

“I think what you have here is a major misunderstanding of a rather basic detail,” he said.

“And what would that be?” inquired Mr Houseago.

“The idea is that you convert a barn into a house. You appear to have converted your house into a barn.”

Mr Houseago is not available for comment.

Waitrees mystery

My occasional comments on the misuse of English never fail to provoke a response from readers.

Shop notices are a frequent ground of complaint: one chip shop in Yarmouth , for instance, worried one reader with its “Wanted Waitrees” in the window.

What exactly this means is open to debate. Does it mean customers, or is it a type of potato? We may never know.

What we do know, however, is that in the language of shopkeepers there is no such thing as a potato.

There are usually lots of them, in which case they are potato’s, or in the rare case when there is just one, it is a potatoe.

Another reader argues that this is perfectly permissible, because it is in a different language: greengrocer’s English. I rather like this idea. If there were an A-level in it, results could improve dramatically.

Fun? Try reading the story

The campaign to convert the Easter period from a Christian festival into another boring shopping opportunity continued apace this year.

But used as we all are to this kind of thing, I must admit I was taken aback by the invitation from a local shop to partake in “all the fun of Good Friday” at their emporium.

I wonder what fun they could have been referring to: would it be the betrayal, the angry mob, the torture or the agonising death?

All four, perhaps.

14 April 2003

on 14 April 2003 at 08:00

Alien entities turn up everywhere

Intrepid Norfolk explorer Richard ‘Volcano’ Meek has been out and about, investigating reported sightings of aliens by Americans. Apparently an amazing percentage of our transatlantic cousins have had this experience.

I’m not quite sure precisely how amazing this percentage is, because it is currently being recalculated by the Transport Research Laboratory, but I suspect it will turn out to be at least a third, or in some areas nearly 100pc.

It is a pity there is so little evidence of these sightings on camera, but unfortunately as soon as cameras are installed, the aliens set fire to them or take pot shots at them, because they think their speed is being monitored.

However, I digress. Mr Meek’s attention was understandably drawn to the implications for Norfolk, which has its own share of bizarre sightings, especially in Norwich city centre in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday.

Many of the slightly less outlandish encounters have been around the recently discovered deserted village of Whynge, which is often on the coast. In addition, some people think that coypu, great crested newts, the Wymondham duck and the Pondhenge goose may be alien entities, not to mention the Tuddenham toad, the Ditchingham chickens and many HGV drivers.

Mr Meek suspects that Beeston Bump may have been constructed as a mooring point for alien spacecraft, though it has to be admitted that this does conflict with other theories that he holds. I was more attracted to his suggestion that the Acle Straight, when seen from above, is clearly a runway or Nazca guidance line for interstellar vehicles. This would explain some of the phenomena associated with the area, though the fact that Yarmouth is nearby is probably explanation enough.

It is no coincidence, I feel, that one third of Britain’s rabbits have been described by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals recently as obese. Clearly these are not native rabbits, because I am told they can easily outrun a cat. I suspect that they may come from Beccles, where we were informed not long ago that rabbits were exploding. It would be just like aliens to introduce exploding rabbits into Norfolk.

After a while, it could get quite depressing. Mr Meek feels that aliens have been part of the Norfolk landscape for a long time. They include Harvey of Yarmouth, who researched the circulation of sherry in the human bloodstream; Julian of Norwich, who starred in the original Carry On series; and Vancouver, who founded the first sports centre in King’s Lynn. Doing nothing is sometimes best

Doing nothing is an option

That old favourite “Doing nothing is not an option” has raised its head again. It is generally pronounced by people whose job depends on our doing something, and so we can hardly blame them.

This time it is Mike Hulme, executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is concerned, of course, about global warming. He has to be.

If it would help, I will gladly give him a hand to nudge the sun slightly further away, but really I suspect that doing nothing actually is an option. After all, the climate has see-sawed back and forward over the centuries, and we’ve never done anything about it yet. It seems a little arrogant to think we can.

Somewhat surprisingly, Mr Hulme adds that we will see unprecedented changes in the earth’s climate over the coming years and decades.

Unprecedented? Has he forgotten the Ice Ages, or is he expecting something more radical?

Who's at the door?

An eagle-eyed friend has been rather disturbed by certain buses, which carry warning signs from Norfolk Constabulary. The signs are directed against opportunist thieves, who knock at elderly people’s doors. One says “Who is Mum letting in today?” and another “Who is Dad letting in today?”

The problem is that it’s the same picture each time – of an elderly woman.

As my friend observes, “I would be less worried who Dad was letting in today than about what he was wearing today. But then, perhaps there would be fewer of these distraction crimes if the conmen were suitably distracted by the person opening the door. Instead of the slogan ‘If in doubt, keep them out’, Norfolk Constabulary might like to try ‘Give them a shock – wear a frock’.

“But that would only work for men, of course. Elderly women might experiment with donning a trilby and answering the door smoking a pipe.”

See for yourself

Some of you may have read the letter from Steve Hounsham, the communications officer of anti-car pressure group Transport 2000, not long ago and noted his claim that I believe the faster you drive, the safer you are. This is so patently absurd that I suspect few readers took any notice of anything else he said.

However, if you are still confused about speed and the causes of accidents, by all means look at the “findings” he mentions. And then visit an intriguing site that reveals how those findings are routinely distorted. It is at: http://safespeed.org.uk/onethirdemail.html

No doubt Mr Hounsham will accuse the presenters of this site of being fanatics, which in his language means he doesn’t agree with them. I make no comment at all: I am happy for readers to make their own minds up.

No prize's for grammar

I’m delighted to discover there’s still a strong resistance movement out there determined to fight for the basics of English. After my piece about superfluous apostrophes on signs in Riverside, Norwich, a correspondent bemoaned the similar excess in a city DIY store, where he encountered Toilet’s and Door’s.

And there were many similar complaints. A teacher I know has a theory. She suspects some people never grow out of the excitement of being introduced to apostrophes at an early age and feel they have to use them at every opportunity – in the way that if you give a linesman a flag, he feels obliged to wave it often.

It’s an interesting theory, but it doesn’t explain why another reader discovered a “to-peace” item in a local furniture store. This was an attempt to get across the fact that the item was in between one and three sections.

Clearly we are in dire need of a signwriting qualification that includes spelling and punctuation. Any offer’s?

6 January 2003

on 6 January 2003 at 08:00

Roadworks odd enough to be art

Plans were announced just before Christmas to erect a giant stainless-steel latticed tunnel on a major trunk route in the East Midlands.

The tunnel – called Sky Vault – was the winning idea in a competition to create a landmark. It can now be revealed that Norfolk almost took the honours.

Close second, I understand, came the ‘roadworks’ sculpture on the Magdalen Street flyover in Norwich, which judges praised as an innovative piece of work designed to withstand years of attack from the elements.

The “inspiring” post-modern barriers were described by one judge as parodying an overgrown country lane, with an added feature: they give the exciting impression that something is about to happen.

The fact that nothing does happen was described by a second judge as brilliantly symbolic, and by a third, dissenting judge as “a blasted nuisance, not in the least original”.

However, the judges’ report praised the “almost surreal” way in which the barriers were placed.

A spokesman said it looked almost deliberate, and this is what swayed the judges.

But the sculpture, though it combined the almost essential qualities of intricacy and incoherence, lost out to the Sky Vault “because you couldn’t see through it”.

Other runners-up – also, strangely, from Norwich – were the Grapes Hill roundabout, with its “ingenious disruption facility and baroque ornamentation”, and the Riverside Retail Park.

Riverside apparently impressed the judges through one highly innovative element: an invisible footbridge. “The judges liked the way attention was distracted from this by placing another almost totally pointless but quite visible footbridge about a couple of hundred yards away,” said the spokesman.

The judges felt Riverside “stunningly creates chaos out of order, like an infectious organism – blocked arteries, a touch of cancer, frequent fever and a general feeling of despair that mirrors post-Christmas sales, Sunday shopping in general and the war against terrorism in particular”.

It also received a special disintegrated transport prize.

Just stop before you get angry

Winterton, on the east coast of Norfolk, is a strange magnet in the depth of winter. Maybe it’s the name, but more likely it’s the lovely dune and valley walks which draw crowds of Boxing Day and New Year’s Day post-revellers.

I managed it on both days this year, strolling down during a gap in the downpours towards Hemsby, where the beauty and relative cleanliness of a small wilderness gradually become more and more polluted by litter and abandoned metal.

The trick is to turn round before you get too angry.

Not that Winterton is perfect: the car park warns that it will lock you in if you are not back by 4pm – which means you more or less have to park untidily on the verge of the narrow road; and of course the toilets are shut. Well, no-one said it would be easy.

Just when Hingham thought it was safe

Complaints have been flooding in following my retirement last week, which the EDP had tried unsuccessfully to keep quiet.

Anger has centred on the shocking news that – despite all hopes to the contrary – this page will continue to be published, at least for a while.

Local expert Professor V A R Scheinlich wrote: “We had hoped that all this nonsense about Hingham would end.

“It is not true about the Scout Hut, and we are trying to hush up the space-time distortions.” Len ‘Kissme’ Hardy said: “Everything he wrote about me was a lie. I am actually an estate agent.”

A consortium of great crested newts has issued a press release denying any attempt to take over the county and demanding that the editor bans any reference to them, or to coypu.

He has agreed to this.

Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) ‘Shrimp’ Houseago, 103, was unavailable for comment.

He said: “It’s a bit of a disappointment.” In their own words

I could hardly venture into a new year without marking it in some way. This year no predictions, except that the fanatical will be regarded as moderate, and the moderate as fanatical. But here are a few quotes to mull over as you inch into the future:

To decide to view yourself as a complete stranger, someone who has just stepped ashore in your life, is a liberating experience. John O’Donohue

The source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear. Milan Kundera

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. W B Yeats

My priority is to get people out of cars and on to public transport. LibDem leader Charles Kennedy

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Mark Twain

Driving at high speeds results in better concentration and awareness . . . Many accidents in Britain, unmentioned in the statistics, are from drivers falling asleep, bored at the wheel. John Watson

Speed cameras have their limitations . . . but when these matters can be overcome they will be a sure winner for raising revenue. Metropolitan Police magazine

Measure what is important; don’t make important what you can measure. Robert McNamara

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King

Every cloud has...

Fears of accelerated global soaking were voiced last night by Professor Ian ‘Sam’ Aufmerksam, of the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia.

“We have done huge amounts of research into this,” he said, “and our climate models tell us that by the year 2100 the entire world will be six feet under water. This is good for us, because it means we can get more grants and employ extra people.”

Prof Aufmerksam is helping police with their inquiries.