We are in the middle of mid September wind and rain. Sheringham has exited its high summer season, and entered the time warped silliness that is the 1940's Weekend. Its a regular event here not previously experienced by us, as we've studiously avoided it. The whole concept of everyone dressing themselves, the shops and streets as if it were still wartime, seems weird, as though the whole place has become infected by a rather virulent disease involving camouflage netting. A disease that's spread to other close towns in North Norfolk. Hubby says its like entering the world of Stepford Wives, where you're left wondering what is going on here and where the real people went?
You can, however, understand the financial rationale, because its very lucrative to have upwards of 20,000 people bumbling around your town for two days. All the pubs and B & B's being fully booked. The weekend was started by the North Norfolk Railway over twenty years ago, and every year it gets ever larger numbers attending. Its now one of the most successful such weekends in the country, marking the last hurrah before places lay off their summer staff, and shorten their opening hours.
Why the 1940's? Well, I guess its a symptom of our nation's narcissistic nostalgia, looking into the mirror of a long passed era for a sense of identity. A time when Britain had the appearance of a more cohesive society, and was defending democracy. This yearning to matter, to have an Empire, to be a great economic powerhouse, still affects the way we see ourselves in the world today. In our unrealistic expectations that others will do our bidding, simply because we say so, or throw our supposed weight around, because we are British, after all. A delusive arrogance now presenting itself in all its vainglorious swagger in the Brexit negotiations.
Why Sheringham? Well, the first bombs that ever fell on English soil, fell during World War 1, and fell upon Sheringham. No one died, but the spot now marked with a blue plaque, proudly declares this footnote in history and the sizable dent made to someone's backyard. There is no other discernible reason, historical or otherwise, for this event. Apart from the fact it goes with the North Norfolk Railway's old fashioned steam trains, and is evocative of the wartime stoical romanticism of Brief Encounter. The huge numbers of people who died as a consequence of the war, is turned away from. The focus is on the period style, the way we survived at home, rather than the substance of the conflict. Because it has been so successful other seaside towns along the coast have decided to compete by manufacturing their own themed dressing up weekend, Cromer has its 1960's weekend, Wells next the Sea has its Pirate Festival, each bearing their own rather tenuous commercial logic.
The build up to 1940's weekend starts weeks before, as window displays are adjusted, charity shops start touting their period vintage gear, and someone in town does a roaring trade in masking tape, as every bit of window glazing gets crossed with the stuff. There are homemade fins of German planes sticking out of walls, unexploded bombs on roofs, and a small tank made out of painted hardboard. Plus the sand bags, the digging for victory posters, the period cars, the American jeeps. The dress code is simple, the women are either land girls in dungarees with bright headscarves tied in a knot above the forehead or wear flower print dresses with furs and a fascinator. The men are mostly dressed in military uniforms, tweedie civvies or dapper spivs in double breasted suits. The detail that its gone into is quite impressive.
Like most things in Sheringham its done with a certain amateurish and enthusiastic gusto, that is endearing. It has to be said, that it brings people together in a shared experience, those who turn up, obviously love it, so this provides its own justification, I suppose. No one bothers to question why a 1940's weekend anymore, if they ever did. Its something the town just does, because ,bizarrely, it does work. Though we can't be the only ones who've avoided town for those two days. However, if we do end up opening a cafe here, I guess we'll just have to create our own way to join in with this.
By Monday morning the forties paraphernalia will start being packed up and consigned to someone's loft or garden shed again, Then Sheringham will return to normal, and move rapidly forward in time to somewhere after the oil crisis of 1973.
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