SHERINGHAM DIARY No 132 - The Early Morning Scroll

We headed out to Hunstanton for our usual twice yearly visit. This year, in March before the season really kicked off, and late October when it's in the last half hearted pangs before closing up. A lovely vegan lunch in The Old Town Beach Cafe, Old Hunstanton, was an excellent preparation for the mile or so walk along the front into the main 'newish' Hunstanton. 

Hunstanton is your classic working class seaside town. Beautifully kept formal gardens, with fun fairs, amusement arcades galore, numerous chippies, fast food outlets, scuzzy pubs and cafes. Off season, its quieter and you get the sense of a place more than two thirds dead to the world. Each time we visit, another cluster of shops have closed. Gradually Hunstanton's High Street offering, outside of the tourist orientated area, is in rapid decline. Locals with real money live in the villages outside it, further inland. Most likely frequenting the posh shops and restaurants of Thornham and only, if really needs be, a venture into the urban scuzziness that is Kings Lynn. 

The further west you travel in North Norfolk, the flatter the landscape becomes and the more sparsely populated. As you drive through them you can tell these are not thriving communities. Beautifully kept and regularly valeted perhaps, but essentially the majority of houses, nay, entire villages, have become picture book holiday lets or second homes. This means these surrounding coastal villages, though preserved to an enviable level of perfection. are sterile, idealised versions of a North Norfolk village. Basically uninhabited deserted places outside of weekends and holiday periods. The local economy is virtual, and thus in practice non existent. The sort of place that has no independent shops, no village store, but does have a Bespoke Kitchen Design outlet. The whole idea of their being local people inhabiting here, has completely vanished. Swallowed up by a glossy holiday brochure.

On the way back, we travelled, not along the coast road but further inland. This cuts about half an hour off the return journey. And here you pass through villages that do seem to have a bit more going for them. They have their focal point in the village hall, either an old converted nissen hut from the war, or a larger knapped flint shed big enough to house a hundred villagers, at a push. As we passed through one village, my eye was caught by a poster advertising a Race Evening. And the perverse quality of my mind given the present zeitgeist, briefly imagined and outrageously flirted, with the idea that this was where all the local white folk gathered together to share their collective solidarity, receive some vital white culture nourishment and support each other in the fight against multi-cultural wokism, plus to co-ordinate a plan action against a chinese takeaway opening by the village pump. But, no, its actually an evening of betting on the races, still probably entirely populated by local white folk, but come together to have a bit of a flutter, a natter, get pissed, then drag themselves home via the pristine sanctum of their pure white Audi S7.

'Talking of Thornham, only bloody well in the news again. Local Thornham Deli, not as small as you might think, by the way. Has absolutely pan loads of customers flying in on their ruddy helicopters to buy their favourite tipples and nosh, from the savoury meat counter. There bye circumventing the convention of a long and arduous journey via the unpredictable agency of a road. Local gammons hence, in vertiginous uproar at the sheer efrontary and tech millionaire gall of the blighters. Its a bit like queue jumping, don't you know, never liked that sort of inherent lack of decency. The sense for one's true place in the hierarchy of things. Arrive in a car, and go to the back of the queue, you self entitled nouveau riche twats.'

I'm making a conscious effort to read a compendium of poetry by the US poet W.S.Merwin. It is a gargantuan volume. I've had it for a number of years, and my progress through it, despite a lot of the poetry being extraordinarily good, has been slow. But now I'm dedicating a moment everyday to reading a poem or two. I've tried reading poetry in bed before sleeping, but the imminence of slumber tends to detract one's attention far too much. In the mornings, before or after meditation and Tai Chi, I appear to have my poetry head on, have opened up my receptive heart, and hence they tend to speak much more directly and meaningfully to me. They become these tiny reflective gems, short multifaceted journey's into another way of seeing and being. And the more I read the better attuned to that I become.

This is unlike today's ragamuffin collection of controversy and stories of imminent catastrophe that You Tube offers me most mornings. Is there really ever a time for such things? My off then on experience of an internal state of alarm, that can seep into my life and slumber record. That existential panic, is the result of one too many morning scrolls through the doom laden streets of this sort of fucked up media. Not engaging with any of that early in the morning, at the very point where I've just awakened and got up, sometimes the very worst for not sleeping well, is proving healthier for my mental well being, to cut out completely the early morning scroll. That's my new campaign slogan - Abandon the Early Morning Scroll!

My woolovers photo shoot

I'm not the fast or dextrous knitter that I used to be. My hands, its my hands darlings, there's a limit how much faffy knitting they can handle these days. So its little and often.. But I have recently finished my first completed garment in many a decade. Its a men's sleeveless waistcoat, which has come out the right size, fits me well, and has blocked nicely. Just in time, as we are on the early storm slopes of winter, so its already getting a lot of wear. 

The new sleeveless I've started

I've had another waistcoat project hanging in abeyance. It was a gansey style knitted sleeveless waistcoat. It was really intricate stitching wise, and had three pattern elements too it, that did not run in parallel. Now in the 1980's this would not have phased me at all, the more intricate the pattern the better. Nowadays, creative hurdles need to be more carefully moderated, to be achievable. Whenever I took a break from this project, if that were to turn out to be months long, returning to it became a tricky learning curve to reestablish quite where I'd left off. Well, I decided to abandon that and frogg what I'd knit so far. My interest in it as a project, was not there anymore. Hubby has found me a simpler, but still interesting, cable waistcoat pattern that I'll be starting soon. 

Cower at my cowl

Meanwhile I have a cowl to knit in a thick grey aran, that is, unsurprisingly progressing rapidly towards being wearable.  

Smile for Barbara

Have you ever thought whether your car appears friendly or not? I hadn't until the other day we were in Fakenham walking back to the car, and I looked at the front of our car and had a revelation. I remarked to Hubby how our car 'Barbara' had a Welcoming Disposition. Because some cars do not, their front grills, frown and gnarl at you, with their hooded angular lights and pronounced black network of slit vents. Some high performance cars have this sinister aggressive scowl, like they were made to reflect the character of an evil Marvel comic book villain. Others simper or look like someone's punched them in the face. Take a look, I guarantee you'll be intrigued...or unnerved.