As the tourist season has its first premature reawakening, we are making more visits to the Blakeney craft gallery, to check or take stock. Sometimes Hubby and I do these together, travelling the eight miles by car. Otherwise, it entails me carrying a medium sized canvas bag, curtesy of the RNLI, to carry stock there. Travelling there via the Coasthopper on my OAP bus pass. These buses are noticeably becoming fuller, and more frequent, as the weeks progress. The days of the Pandemic when hardly anyone travelled on public transport, if they could help it, are long forgotten. Only a few respiratory challenged individuals still don the ubiquitous mask.
On a recent Blakeney delivery, as I queued to board the bus, ahead of me were a couple in their late thirties, with six or seven pieces of continental style luggage. Struggling to get on the bus, pay their fair and find the best way to organise their luggage in the minimal racks provided. I watched all this rigmarole from the cheap viewing seat two rows behind them. As they talked I gradually realised that they were not talking English at all. It went through my mind what the possible options were. Not being any sort of linguist I settled on Dutch and was happy to leave it there.
I observed the way the couple related, and could not sense much warmth. The dialogue between them felt touchy and quietly fractious. The man seemed to be trying to be attentive, but the woman wasn't having any of that sort of fuss. After a while I just let them be, and my attention drifted to focusing upon where the nearest stop request bell was. Would I lean forward to use the one opposite the seat in front, or turn ninety degrees to use the one behind me. It was a dilemma.
However, a couple sat immediately behind me suddenly piped up talking about the foreign couple. It was the sort of conversation that was a little too loudly vocalised, to be comfortably ignored. The man hardly said a thing, it was the woman whose voice predominated. It was the type of monologue I was more than familiar with. The same sort of unfiltered monologue where the moment ideas came to her mind they came out of her mouth, that bore echoes of my own Mother. An uninterrupted flow of commentary upon the experience of reality. She had also cottoned on to the idea of what the origins of the couple ahead of us might be. So a succession of statements about the possible language they were speaking, struck up.
'No, I don't think it's German at all, do you......
doesn't sound quite right.... Perhaps it is Dutch...... but if not, its certainly Danish, or Latvian, maybe they could be Finnish. Yeah, I bet you they are Finnish. I don't know, who am I to say?'
Indeed. What went through my mind was - does she not realise that couple might be able to hear her talking, and might also understand English. Of how uncomfortable that might be to hear yourself being talked about in this way. Her conjectural associative ramble might have gone on for a bit longer had not a gentleman then got on the bus. He stood at the bus entrance and was scanning the passengers. Finally he declared himself:
"Sorry, I'm looking to see if my wife is on board. I'd agreed to meet her here. But I see she isn't here yet, Thank you'.
And with that got off the bus and stood by the bus stop, evidently awaiting her arrival. That arrival was loudly announced by the lady behind me.
' Oh here she is, here she is. She's not in a hurry at all, is she? She's taking her time, as if we have all the time in the world, look at her, she's not geting a move on is she. She's doing it deliberately.....Oh, she's disabled....( short pause ) Still keeping us waiting though. Goodness me, that took quite a bit of doing.'
And with that air of heavy judgement left hanging , she quietened down. This is not the first time I've heard this type of instant condemnation of an individual they clearly cannot know. It appears to be most prevalent amongst the elderly. I want to say mainly women, because this is who I've mostly heard, but there have been men too. The sort who take one look at a person in a bus queue and instantly think they know what sort of person they are. Someone usually completely deluded in their world view. And so a torrent of unfiltered prejudicial judgements will come forth from their mouths, like an oracle speaking from entirely another realm where an almost scriptural authority resides.
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I was walking down Sheringham's main street the other week. A loose gaggle of a family. Father, Mother, son and girlfriend were ambling along excitedly chatting amongst themselves. They were dressed in the type of stylish casual fashion wear you would only find on an urban city dweller. Not locals then! The Father was notably wearing a kilt with a black V necked jumper. A couple of ladies walking just behind me piped up commenting on them -
' Well that looks absolutely ridiculous on him, that doesn't work at all as a combination. Not at all. Some folk, the way they chose to dress in public. Beggars belief.'
And these types of comment are not unusual in Sheringham. North Norfolk is conservative with a small c, and quite traditional in its viewpoint. A society happily, defiantly, content with being several decades out of date. Many folk come here specifically to escape the modern metropolitan world. And who am I to be critical, as we too came here for a change of location, from university town to seaside resort.
I prefer to think of myself as being a left of centre progressive, decidedly more liberal at heart than a some of my fellow incomers. North Norfolk is the sort if political constituency where Labour always comes third, with barely a few hundred votes. Local MP's and Council, ossilate solely between Tory and Lib Dems. Many incomers leaving London or the Midlands, do so to specifically escape the encroaching of immigrant neighbours. Sometimes you do have to be very cautious when engaging in conversations with some folk. For fear of where they might lead. Forever aware it could take an obliquely racist turn with very little prompting. For anyone can find a way of mounting their favourite hobby horse at the drop of a hat.
'What I always say, is...........'
which translates as
'I'll say this again, because no one has a yet taken heed of my opinion or prognosis, which is, in my view, a real shame.'
And Finally.
On a recent drive through Nottingham I spotted from the car a hairdressers with this fabulous name - HAIRITAGE
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