24 January 2005

on 24 January 2005 at 04:00

Indomitable Sheila fingers owls in post poser

A good friend of this site, Richard “Volcano” Meek, has asked me to throw a light on a peculiar discovery in the Fakenham area, sometimes called the black hole of Norfolk.

He writes: “As an intrepid explorer of the Norfolk Interior, I have naturally built up a network of native scouts who keep me well informed. One such is the indomitable Sheila, a Fakenham frontier saloon keeper. This former coypu trapper and bounty hunter is best known for bringing in Dancing Goat, Crazy Horse's more talented brother. “Sheila informs me that the post box outside the nearby mission building now bears the legend ‘Collection at 5.30pm: additional collections will be made as required’.”

Sheila and Richard both wonder how the Post Office can possibly tell when an additional collection is required. He suspects that very small people are located within the box and remain in constant touch with Postal HQ by short-wave radio. She feels this is implausible and suggests it is all done with owls, or possibly newts.

I find it hard to choose between two such obviously attractive options. If I was going to be boring, I might hazard a guess that “as required” is just one of those phrases, like “essential roadworks” and “closed for safety reasons”, that attempt to persuade us that something is happening for a good reason when is it is purely random and without any regard for convenience, health or coherent planning.

OK - that’s enough boredom.

Keeping an eye on road safety

On a couple of occasions I have pondered the mystical meaning behind the road signs that read “Cats’ eyes removed”. But is there a practical explanation?

Reader Peter Hammond, who as a professional driver is particularly concerned for genuine road safety, has noted that the cats’ eyes that have been removed tend not to come back – and that safety is being jeopardised as a result.

Since a mixture of misplaced dogma, general ineptitude and superficial thinking has resulted in our road system being pathetically inadequate for the 21st century, it is vital that everything possible needs to be done to make what we have as safe as possible.

Mr Hammond writes: “We need urgently to replace the scuffed, broken or non-existent cats’ eyes, repaint the erased, abraded and obliterated white lines and begin a programme to paint kerbside lines on all our roads. I also suggest that we fix an orange reflective band on the central reservation crash barrier so that drivers can gain an extra visual guide to which way the road bends.

“All this is non-polluting and aimed purely at making our roads safer.”

But of course it doesn’t make you drive more slowly or punish the driver in any way. So is it a non-starter? Worse, is the removal of cats’ eyes a deliberate attempt to make driving more difficult and thus force us to slow down?

Crazy, perhaps. But frighteningly possible..

Broadcasters hit pronunciation problems

It may not be practical or even desirable to recruit only local people to exciting high-profile positions like broadcasting on Radio Norfolk or BBC East, but you could hope that the chosen ones might get some sort of crash course on Norfolk geography before telling us about what is happening on those of our local roads that are not yet closed to traffic.

A couple of times recently I’ve switched to Radio Norfolk to find a bizarre road warning – first for some place called Wy-mond-ham and then, a couple of days later, for Newton Floatman – which is presumably on the Broads somewhere.

Stunned, I tried Look East early one morning, to be told that the proposed Norwich northern distributor road was designed to ease congestion on the A47. And the M25, no doubt. Someone should really get out of the office more, or talk to someone born in Norfolk.

Pub reveals location of secret garden

Some time back I suggested that a road sign “Concealed farm entrance” ruined any chance the farm had of remaining concealed. While displaced in Suffolk over the festive period I came across another gaff-blowing exercise outside a pub: “Secret garden through door at back of bar”. What next? “Narnia through wardrobe”? Wonderland down rabbit hole”? Newts in pond? Must be something to do with this new Freedom of Information Act. Bit disappointing, really.

Back on solid Irmingland

Reader Karen Tooley has written to reassure me about Irmingland, which I revealed is worringly located by a local guidebook five miles north-west of Hunstanton. Since she lives at Irmingland she is quite convinced that it is in fact, as I first suspected, well inland near Corpusty. More precisely, it is “on the borders of Corpusty, Saxthorpe and Itteringham, and is in the parish of Oulton”.

Karen, who has lived in Irmingland with her family for the past 27 years, adds that the hamlet “is little known, as there are only six families living here, with one of those living in Irmingland Hall, which dates back to the time of Oliver Cromwell. His daughter once resided there.”

Nice to be back on solid ground. This information has all been confirmed by Mrs Hicks, mayor of nearby Little London, north of Cromer.

Nothing funny in prison yard

I was going to point out that the dangers to pedestrians posed by the council’s brave new dislocation of Norwich city centre (or the prison yard, as I prefer to call it), with privileged vehicles coming at you from unexpected directions. But I was pre-empted by the collision last week of a police car and a bus at the heart of the new “system”, which would have been funny if it were not so serious. It’s only a question of time before a taxi collides with a cyclist. No, I know that’s not funny either. None of it is at all funny.

10 January 2005

on 10 January 2005 at 04:00

Jolly jangle of guards locking up the city

In one of his songs, Bob Dylan wrote that sometimes it seemed the whole world was one big prison yard – “some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards”.

You can tell the guards by the way they love their keys – and the way they always know best. Many of them are Liberal Democrats. Norwich city councillor Judith Lubbock, for instance, who was quoted recently as saying rather revealingly: “You can’t drive your car through the city when you want to.”

She is not alone. As well as her colleagues in City Hall, most of the money-hungry big shops are on her side: John Lewis, for instance, who have recently started opening on Sunday to snatch even more of your money and now don’t want you to be able to drive past any day without spending.

I like John Lewis as a shop, but clearly someone is getting much too greedy, and it is not the car-drivers. What is at issue here is the pedestrianisation of Westlegate, a key city centre street. The move has been blocked for a while by Tory county councillors, but it will keep coming back, especially in view of the highly dubious “facts” that are being trotted out. Sixty per cent of people in favour? Must be a very carefully selected bunch of addicted shoppers.

Five per cent or less effect on traffic elsewhere? Who are they kidding? To paraphrase another Dylan song, it’s not that they’re pulling the wool over our eyes that’s so insulting: it’s that they’re doing it so obviously.

And don’t for one moment think that this would be “an experimental closure to see what effects it would have on traffic levels”. Remember the “experimental” closure of Castle Meadow to cars.

Meanwhile, chaos starts today in the city, with more ill-thought-out street closures and banned turns. I’m sure the pedestrianisation will be very pretty, but do we want a pretty prison yard while the elderly and infirm are kept inside their cells? Or do we want to be able to get from one place to another? I hear the jolly jangle of keys.

Whale of a time in the road

Whales are being used to slow traffic down in New Zealand. You might think this would be a real problem for the environmental mafia. It must certainly reduce speed, which obviously would keep the world comfortably cool for another million years, but on the other hand, doesn’t it damage those cuddly marine mammals that we all love? They must be like fish out of water.

Happily the real prospect is brighter on almost every count. The speed humps tend not to be alive: they are just in the shape of sperm whales – though they are understandably known in this form as humpbacks. And they are much more user-friendly than the ugly monstrosities that get plonked aimlessly around Norwich and its unsuspecting villages.

The reader who spotted these whales suggests that we use a bit more imagination in our road hump designs – and while I would rather see them all dug up and taken to New Zealand, I suppose a second-best option would be to create a bevy of coypu, great crested newts and bitterns to grace residential roads, as long as they don’t get above themselves. My correspondent even goes so far as to propose customising the humps: swans in Swannington, apples at Appleton and crows at Cromer.

Another New Zealand innovation that could be adopted here: a large sign reading “The Coroner thanks you for being a careful driver”. It would never happen, of course: it doesn’t take pictures, doesn’t fine you and doesn’t mention speed.

Newts moving in to net compensation cash

The latest consultation on the Norwich northern distributor road has now ended – and thousands, maybe even hundreds, of us will have selected our favourite and least favourite route options. These now go forward to the next delaying mechanism until someone, somewhere is forced into making up his or her mind. I can’t help noticing that all the western routes bar one go very close to colonies of great crested newts, which can only mean two things: first, they have moved in deliberately; and second, we are spoilt for choice. Seasoned road watchers have noted that great crested newts promptly appear near every proposed road improvement in the county and cause massive expense since, despite this ubiquity, they also claim, bizarrely, to be endangered. This is a great chance to get rid of loads of them at once.

Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 105, a world renowned expert on newts, commented last night: “This is a great chance to get rid of loads of them at once.”

Meanwhile Dr Rupert Read, who lectures in philosophy at the UEA when he is not writing letters to the editor – and is a vigorous campaigner against the road – gave a public lecture recently entitled “How to change your life while leaving everything as it is”. Sadly I was unable to attend, so I am not sure how much of it was devoted to roads in Norfolk, but I understand it did mention Wittgenstein and Zen, both of whom are known to be newts.

Space-time distortion in Irmingland area

Apologies to the inhabitants of Irmingland, which I said last time was near Corpusty. According to a handy reference work entitled “How to find over 700 Norfolk villages”, I see it is in fact five miles north-west of Hunstanton, which is a neat trick.

A new DVD, Irmingland: the Venice of East Anglia, is being produced by Prof V A R Scheinlich of Hingham in his Space-Time Distortion series. It is believed to be ground-breaking.

Doors of perception

Some time back I suggested that a road sign “Concealed farm entrance” ruined any chance the farm had of remaining concealed. While displaced in Suffolk over the festive period, I came across another gaff-blowing exercise outside a pub: “Secret garden through door at back of bar”. What next? “Narnia through wardrobe”? Wonderland down rabbit hole”? Must be something to do with this new Freedom of Information Act. I knew it would all come to no good.