29 January 2007

on 29 January 2007 at 05:30

Scheme to close down Suffolk resort is leaked

Secret plans to close down a fairly well known Suffolk seaside resort are revealed in a highly confidential document that has been leaked to this page.

The paper reveals that confusion over the allegiance of Lowestoft – which is often regarded as being in Norfolk although it is in fact well into Suffolk – has led to suspicion and recriminations. After exhaustive research and public consultation, mainly in Yarmouth, it was decided that the best solution would be to close down Lowestoft completely.

The first stages of the plan are already in operation. An initial disorientation programme was highly successful, with residents expecting a new improved road system but getting months of congestion instead.

Now plans to stop anyone entering or leaving the town by road are being put into effect, subtly codenamed “Three Months of Traffic Misery”. They include resurfacing, bridge refurbishment, converting streets from one-way to two-way, lane closures, road closures, diversions and traffic calming measures.

“All this is essential,” said consultant Len “Kissme” Hardy, of Hindolveston. “In fact all roadworks are. You may have noticed.

“Here we are aiming to transform a roads system from something that is merely amusing into one that is totally incomprehensible. And of course drive people mad in the process.

“It’s all going very well.”

According to the leaked document, the ultimate aim is to close down all entry and exit points under the pretext of installing cycle lanes. In order to avoid charges of urbanicide, food parcels will be dropped by helicopter until the media lose interest or the sea level rises. New maps are already being drawn.

Wrong kind of wildlife

My article last time on the obnoxious dune walker of Horsey brought two contrasting responses.

One was from a Sheringham woman who felt that we should give the seals space. This is a view I have no problem with at all. Seals can have as much space as they like, and I am quite happy to keep well away from them, once I know they are there.

My objection was to the unpleasant behaviour of the ODW, which was clearly not a unique incident. Another woman rang to say she had a similar experience.

She said: "We walk along Horsey Beach all year round, but on one occasion recently, our party was confronted by a very rude man – I don't know if he was a warden or a volunteer – shouting at us from the dunes through a megaphone, telling us to get off the beach. It must have been very frightening for the seals.

“We couldn't get off the beach immediately, because there was no gap in the sea wall, but one of our party managed to climb up the sand dune, at which the man was very abusive to him, and threatened to call the police. When my friend offered him his mobile phone to make the call, he decided not to pursue it.”

Clearly one of the distinguishing characteristics of the ODW is the way it enjoys shouting at people and bullying them. This is precisely the kind of wildlife we do not want on our coastline, and I trust someone will find it a different habitat soon. Scroby Sands comes to mind.

If it is necessary to keep people off the beach, there are perfectly civilised ways of doing it, as my second contact points out: “On another occasion, there were two lady wardens there who were politely marshalling people, with no trouble at all."

Ivy peace hopes as league promises to lay down arms

After years of guerrilla fighting amid the glades and coverts of eastern England, the Anti-Ivy League has agreed to lay down its arms and disband.

Scientists have demonstrated that ivy, though it has a bad reputation, does not kill trees. It is not parasitic and does not directly affect the health of the trees it climbs: it simply uses them for support.

The League has accepted this in principle, though it has declined to sign any documents.

Talks with the League have often been called off in the past amid recriminations and counter-accusations. Although it has on occasion agreed to stop its attacks on unsuspecting ivy, it has never given up its caches of saws, knives and cutters.

Isolated attacks have continued, and the innocent have suffered. But now peace hopes are high. All weapons will be handed over, and a local ombudsman, Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, will oversee their destruction.

A spokesman said from Wicklewood last night: “It is time for the Anti-Ivy League to slink off into the mists of history.” But he sounded a warning note: “We must not forget that the Provisional Anti-Ivy League and the Real Anti-Ivy League are still out there. We have to remain alert.”

Outbreak of cooling baffles experts

Meteorologists are baffled by an outbreak of global cooling in south Norfolk.

Alert locals have noticed that a stretch of just over a mile of country road, roughly at the centre of a triangle whose points are in Alburgh, Topcroft Street and Hardwick, is regularly iced over when surrounding roads are clear.

Last Thursday, when most roads in the area had lost any trace of snow by 11am, the freak stretch, which includes two sharp bends, was still covered by packed, icy snow and lethal to the unwary.

The cause of the phenomenon is a mystery, but experts put it down to a current of cold air that “comes out of nowhere” and suggest installing sleeping snowmen to jolt drivers out of their normal inertia. Weather man Ralph (Sonny) Gewitter said a local tributary of the Waveney was to blame. He declined to name it.

Bring on the haggis

I was in something of a dilemma last week, torn as I was between celebrating the feast day of Francis of Sales, the patron saint of journalists and authors, on Wednesday, or Burns Night on Thursday. To do both would clearly be excessive.

An esteemed former editor of mine, something of a Scotsman, impressed on me the importance of Burns Night, as well as the correct spelling of St Andrews (no apostrophe) and the fact that there is no such thing as Moderator of the Church of Scotland.

I can think of few facts more essential to civilisation as we know it. There was no contest, really.

15 January 2007

on 15 January 2007 at 09:47

Steer clear of winter visitor to dunes

Ramblers in the Horsey area should be on the lookout for a rare winter visitor to the area – the obnoxious woolly-hatted dune walker.

We came across one just into the new year when we ventured past the Nelson Head public house, across the meadows and out on to the sand.

As we emerged from the cut in the dunes we noticed a lone seal. We thought of having it with chips, but decided to leave it alone.

Turning left towards Horsey Gap, we were met by a couple of walkers of the female persuasion, who warned us that we should avoid disturbing a mother seal and her pup, just ahead. We assured them that we would give them a wide berth.

At this point the obnoxious dune walker appeared, with his distinctive booming cry, “Get off the beach.”

I was reluctant to approach him in case he panicked and ran into the sea, especially as he was accompanied by a rather elderly looking member of the same species, who may have been his mate. Its distinctive though softer cry of “Ridiculous, ridiculous” was, I noticed, slightly less likely to disturb the seals, one or two of which I now saw in the distance.

To try to minimise any disruption, we climbed up the dunes towards the pair. I was accompanied by a sociology professor and felt the experience might come in handy for research purposes.

On my inquiring politely why I should get off the beach, the ODW retorted that he did not have to tell me why, suggesting that he had delusions of owning the beach, which may be a characteristic of this species.

In fact the species may be prone to more widespread delusions, as this particular specimen seemed to think that we should have seen notices not to go on the beach, though there weren’t any; that we should have deduced from the emptiness of the beach that we shouldn’t go on it anyway (the book I was using said the beach was frequently deserted); and that we should have known there were many seals on the beach, though we had only just set foot on it.

Hopefully the ODW and his mate have now moved on to warmer climes, but I suggest that visitors to the Horsey area watch out for them.

When we eventually reached Horsey Gap, expecting to find numerous “Keep off the beach” notices, all we could find was a small one attached to a fence that said: “Do not attempt to return young seals to the sea.”

Personally, I wouldn’t dream of touching a seal of any kind. But I could think of one or two other creatures I would like to propel seaward.

Frightening disappearance of coach and horses

Shock news on the Christmas card front. A contributor who has been religiously documenting the contents of his cards for the last 40 years has come up with a statistic far more frightening than the loss of the word Christmas in favour of Season’s Greetings, Merry Winterval or Have as Good a Time as you Can at Roughly this Time of the Year.

He reports that this Christmas (or the recent December Event, if you prefer) he received only one Christmas card that featured a coach and horses in the snow – “three pairs of horses, driver and three passengers topsides, red livery”.

That represents, he says, a frightening overall card percentage drop in coach and horses from about 85 per cent 40 years ago to under one per cent this year.

“Is this the end of something?” he asks. “Are coaches and horses (and snow) the victims of global warming? I really do think we should be told.”

Nowhere near here

I mentioned last time that an appropriate place for the notorious “Nothing Happened” plaque in Turnstile Lane, Bungay, would have been Nowhere, near Acle.

I now discover that there are at least five other Norfolk villages not a million miles away from Nowhere. They are Repps, West Caister, Great Witchingham, Wiveton and Wereham, and they are listed (together with Wenhaston, in Suffolk) in a fascinating volume called Norfolk Fragments, by former diarist and walker Bruce Robinson, whose research into the sideways history of Norfolk is legendary.

The book is published by Elmstead Publications and concludes of the places called Nowhere: “Some seemed to have been scraps of land at places where parish boundaries met.”

I understand that others were stations on the M&GN line.

Coincidentally a founder member of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team has been kind enough to send me a “Nothing Happened here in 1832” plaque, which is on my desk as I write. I am trying to think of the right spot for it.

Winners are not newts

A couple of readers have responded to my article on the risk of corrupting innocent nightingales by sending them down the road of money-spinning great crested newts.

Newts, it seems, may have been hoist by their own expansionist petard.

Apparently the cost of safeguarding the protected amphibians through obtaining a Defra licence is so expensive that many would feel the only way to make progress was not to notice the newts in the first place. This could easily result in the loss of newt colonies.

“The only winners are those who are getting paid, and it’s not newts,” I’m told.

Temperatures up and down

Forecasters at the Met Office have predicted that this year is likely to be the warmest on record globally. They also point out that last year was the warmest year on record across the UK – though for some reason omitting to mention that globally it was only the fifth warmest in the current century – or to put it another way, the second coolest.

Meanwhile I read that official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show that “the global average temperature did not increase between 1998 and 2005”. Can this be true?

1 January 2007

on 1 January 2007 at 05:00

Wandering among the griffins

I understand that the next time I take a trip on the Bittern Line, I could end up in what is due to be called Griffin Country.

This is extremely worrying. I am already on a hit list drawn up by great crested newts and by coypu, which I revealed on this page are nowhere near as extinct as they pretend to be. I can’t prove that the e-mail I received from ycoup@hingham.com, suggesting that I might become extinct myself, was in fact from a rodent of any kind, but I have my suspicions.

Now, it seems, I have to contend with griffins whenever I venture into the villages north of North Walsham.

It could be worse, and nearly was. I understand the original idea was to call it Griffon Country, but it was pointed out that griffons are a type of vulture almost never seen in north Norfolk. The idea was abandoned, but not before several twitchers arrived at Bacton.

Griffins themselves are not so common now in the north-east coastal strip. Some say they have been eroded and have fallen into the sea. I doubt this would happen to a beast that is a cross between an eagle and a lion, though I can see how it might be confused enough to lose its footing.

It is some years now since I have actually seen one of these wonderful animals running free around the Great Barn at Paston. One of them was believed to have gone to school at North Walsham, where it was good at contact sports, but in recent times they have all but disappeared, perhaps because of global warming and a lack of glaciers.

I thought I saw one last week when I stood in Hog’s Loke, near Spa Common, and gazed over the North Walsham and Dilham Canal towards the sea as the sun set over Meeting Hill, but I could have been mistaken.

I shall certainly be watching my step as I stroll through Knapton, Trunch and Edingthorpe in future. Once griffon, twice shy, as they say.

Nothing plaque pinned down in Bungay alley

My thanks to the readers who wrote in to tell me where the mysterious borderline “Nothing happened” plaque was pinned to a wall.

It turns out to be Turnstile Lane, in Bungay - an alleyway running between Upper Olland Street and Lower Olland Street. Geoff Went tells me he walks through there quite often and is sure that one day something will happen, which is commendable optimism.

The precise location, I am told by David Wolfenden, is the wall of a house at Number 8; so I suppose the plaque could refer to nothing happening inside the house, but only in 1832. The wording specifies “on this spot”, which begs several questions. Meanwhile my original informant suggests that a more appropriate location for the plaque would be Nowhere, near Acle. I happen to be nowhere near Acle as I write, and could not agree more.

He also suggests that there may be several even more obscure places in Norfolk called Nowhere. If any reader is in the middle of one of them, perhaps he or she could let me know, in case plaques are necessary.

Save nightingales from filthy lucre

Disturbingly, Norfolk Wildlife Trust has launched a Christmas appeal for £25,000 to bring nightingales to Foxley Wood.

I like a nightingale as much as the next man – in fact I am fond of birds of all kinds – but I have strong reservations about this.

Everyone knows how much great crested newts charge nowadays to allow any kind of construction to happen, whether it is roads or houses. Indeed it seems that the possibility of disturbing great crested newts has to be factored into any major project, such is their expertise in extorting cash.

Few people would trust a newt further than they could throw it, which is illegal, by the way.

I would not like to see nightingales, at present innocent birds, go the same way. Once you give a group of nightingales £25,000 to live in one place, you will find nightingale consortia all over the county, demanding nesting fees. Desirable areas, like Berkeley Square, could see astronomical amounts paid.

From there it would be only a short step to their charging extra for singing unsocial hours, especially if the singing was enchanting.

Save our nightingales. Don’t give them anything.

Disappearing hospitals the game of 2007

Watching hospitals disappear is the new, exciting game for 2007.

Apparently what you do is set up cottage hospitals to look after the needs of small communities in Norfolk. You encourage local people to work in them, with a resulting high level of care and community. You develop local pride in their performance, and a great deal of local money is raised to improve them.

Then you put them at the mercy of a huge and constantly changing top-heavy health service that leaks money like a burst water main, but in much less interesting ways.

Then you get someone from a long way away to come and listen to overwhelming reasons that the hospitals should stay open.

You turn round, feel good, shut your eyes for a few seconds, and when you open them again, the hospital has disappeared.

Hours of fun for all the family. A No-one is to Blame Production. On sale now.

Horror as time distortion pops up in Norwich

The influence of the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, with its radical form of democracy and time-space distortion, has reached out to the very heart of Norwich.

I don’t mean its Georgian architecture, its annual fairs or its candlemaking. I mean the clock on St Augustine’s Church, near Anglia Square.

For years this had been stuck at 7.10. Recently, for no apparent reason, it moved forward to 7.40. When the phenomenon was investigated, it was found that the clock had no workings inside at all.

Recently a Developing Consciousness course has been running at the nearby church hall, and some members of the congregation feel that the clock may have been affected.

Prof V A R Scheinlich, the Hingham distortion expert, said: “We thought this kind of thing was restricted to the Hingham area. The vicar should be very worried.”