The Last Rolo

Fellow author, David Gee, recently uncovered a dusty old silver screen classic while rummaging around the video vault at the University of East Anglia. ‘Come With Me to Norwich‘ is a 1952 documentary presented by Richard Dimbleby, BBC patrician and father to David and Jonathan. It’s a ghostly narrative of a bygone era full of bulldog optimism set against the rising tide of a new world order. Fast-forwarding to 2014, it’s fascinating to see what’s gone the way of the dodo and what’s survived against the odds. Mid-Twentieth Century Norwich once traded in mustard, money, shoes and chocolate. But where are they now?

Colman’s of Norwich

In 1814, mustard maker, Jeremiah Colman, founded Colman’s of Norwich, four miles south of the city. By 1865 production had transferred to a large factory near the city centre where the firm still produces mustard and mustard-derived products as an operational division of that enormous global conglomerate, Unilever.

Norwich Union

In 1797, merchant and banker, Thomas Bignold, founded the Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire. The less than catchy name soon became known simply as Norwich Union. Today, the Footsie 100 company is branded as Aviva and is the sixth largest insurer in the world.

Startrite

It was in 1792 that a cordwainer called James Smith made the first off the peg shoes, shoes that ordinary folk could afford. Unsurprisingly, Jimmy’s big idea caught on. The business evolved into the Startrite brand, manufacturing footwear for rug rats. Startrite is still headquartered in Norwich but manufacturing has been outsourced to India. Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of cordwaining in the city. Van Dal still make half a million pairs of gorgeous heels every year for Norfolk broads, drag queens and cross-dressers everywhere. The times they are still a-changing: Startrite is looking for a deep-pocketed investor and Van Dal is being sold to its employees.

Rowntree-Mackintosh

In 1857, AJ Caley established a chemists business in London Street which evolved into a distiller of mineral water and a chocolatier. As the company grew, it moved to new premises in Chapelfield. The firm was sold off by the Caley family in 1918 and sold on to confectioners, Mackintosh, in 1932. In 1937, the first rolo rolled off the production line. This was soon followed by Munchies and Caramac, brands I have devoured with tooth-rotting regularity ever since being knee-high to a grasshopper. By 1969, Mackintosh had merged with Rowntree to make one of the world’s premier confectioners, but it wasn’t to last. In 1988, Rowntree-Mackintosh was controversially set upon by the Swiss food giant, Nestlé. The hostile takeover resulted in a period of savage cost-cutting. The Chapelfield factory was closed with a loss of over 900 jobs and all production was moved to York. The last rolo rolled off the Chapelfield production line in 1994.

There’s still a Caley’s of Norwich, manufacturer of fairtrade chocolate with an online business based in Hampshire and Caley’s Cocoa Cafe in Norwich’s Guildhall. What connection these businesses have to each other and to the old Caley family is anyone’s guess. Still, the name lives on.

Chapelfield Shopping Centre

The old Rowntree-Mackintosh chocolate factory has given way to the posh Chapelfield Shopping Centre. All that remains of the old industrial buildings are the granite millstones that used to grind the cocoa beans, now re-used as seating for the huddled gangs of smoking pariahs outside the rear entrance to the mall. Rolos have given way to Apple, Munchies to Mango. And so our post-industrial world is kept turning by rampant consumerism, conspicuous spending only interrupted by the occasional Costa coffee. Make mine a cappuccino. With a generous sprinkle of Cadbury’s on top.

A Healthy Intermission

Normal broadcasts will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, here are a few random shots of the micro-loft.

Goat Herder Required, Apply Within

House-sitting and house-swapping are fantastic low cost ways of getting to stay in some amazing places. We have old friends in Turkey who live in…

…Gökcebel, a sprawling village in the foothills above Yalıkavak. Their impressive detached pile is surrounded on all sides by a well-manicured walled garden and patrolled by a trio of cats brought in from the bins. Just like its owners, the house is elegant, unpretentious and homely.*

They often exchange their village homestead for ruritanian French gites and posh Californian condos. All they ask (along with the place not being trashed, obviously) is that their soporific cats are fed and watered. Easy.

Now we’re in our new gaff, we might get in on the act. There must be people out there who wouldn’t mind laying their hat in a well-appointed micro-garret with all mod-cons minutes away from the delights of Norwich and her embarrassment of riches. Ours is a lock-up-and-leave loft, small but beautifully formed (like me). All we’d ask is that guests turn the lights out as they leave. I guess we’d have to hide the dressing-up box and battery-operated play things. Or maybe not.

Sometimes, this care-taking lark can be a tad more challenging. Take, for example, the menagerie owners in Hockwold cum Wilton (yes, that is a genuine place) who pretty much need a qualified zoo keeper to look after their duo of dairy goats (Simone and Ashia), a pack of terriers (Monty, Blossom, Scarlett and Sanya), a clutter of cats (Jarvis and KC), a brace of drakes (Flappy and Ballerina), a nest of guinea pigs (Hearty and Chubby), a clutch of chickens (including randy roosters) and a small shoal of goldfish. Sounds a bit too much like work experience at Whipsnade for my liking and besides, I’d be terrified of killing something. Still, there are no shortage of goat-herders applying for the busman’s holiday. They’re fully booked.

Thanks to Roving Jay for the heads up on this one.

*From Turkey Street, Jack and Liam’s Bodrum Tales out soon.

Wild Things

The old Co-operative Society depository that now ware-houses our micro-loft sits along one side of St Stephen’s Square, just outside the old city walls. Sadly, a modern road layout has rather robbed the square of its former character. Aside from the old warehouse, all that remains is a local pub for local people on the corner (those who are familiar with the BBC2 series ‘The League of Gentlemen’ will know exactly what I mean). Still, all is not lost. Some bright spark had the brilliant idea to plant the scrub and verges with wild flowers and long grasses. It makes my heart sing even on the dullest of days.

The Lofty Visitors

English weather at its worst is a depressing and insipid affair – no drama or performance, just days of persistent damp greyness. A few weeks of low-lying gloom were brightened by a warm front of visitors to the Norwich micro-loft. The high pressure pushed the clouds aside, to leave the flatlands basking in sunshine. First up were vintage friend, Clive and his partner, Angus. The generous day trippers brought booty : a ‘corkcicle,’ a nifty little ice fairy’s wand that magically chills wine in an instant, and a fabulous hand-thrown bowl that Clive lifted from the souks of Marrakesh. From the practical to the decorative; they know us so well. We lunched in Wild Thyme, a vegetarian restaurant with a Dickensian address you couldn’t make up if your tried – The Old Fire Station Stables, Labour in Vain Yard – and bread and butter pudding to die for.

A few days later came Karen, our very own Mrs Madrigal, who, during our Turkey years, stored us in her en-suite loft on our trips back to the motherland. It was a significant birthday for her (discretion prevents me from revealing which) so we dined at the opulent Assembly House, one of the most gorgeous examples of Georgian architecture anywhere.

Spending a penny found us accidentally caught up on a film set with the cast and crew milling around waiting for the cameras to roll. As I emerged from the gents, a familiar face flashed past wrapped in a white towelling robe. A little digging later revealed that we’d stumbled upon the making of ’45 Years,’ a film starring Tom Courtney and Charlotte Rampling. It was the ravishing Miss Rampling, the classy lead of many a Seventies’ film noir who I’d seen rushing to her close up. Men over fifty will remember that, unlike page three stunnas, Charlotte got her baps out for her art and not for their titillation (or so it was claimed).

After dinner, it was back to the loft for a little more fizz and a lot more gossip. At the end of the evening, we poured Karen into a cab which conveyed her to the Maid’s Head Hotel, reputedly the oldest in England. Next day, Karen’s verdict was that, unlike the well preserved Miss Rampling, the depressing old pile is in dire need of a facelift. Time to call in the Hotel Inspector?

Bath Time Blues

One thing I won’t miss about the Weaver’s Cottage is the bath. It’s enormous. I’m not the mightiest of men (at 5’ 5.5” and shrinking in my socked feet) so it’s like lying in a flotation tank. I have to grip the tap with my toes to stop myself from going under. At 6′, Liam fares a little better, but not much. Thankfully, our new gaff has a bath of standard dimensions. I’m looking forward to giving the shower a miss messing about in the bubbly hot tub, glass of chilled white in one hand and a copy of ‘The Week’ in the other. Fabulous.

Mind you, I didn’t always covet bath time with such decadent relish. As a child of the Sixties and the youngest of four (until my sister accidentally came along and usurped my position as baby of the family), I was last in line for the soak and sponge. Back in the day, we lived in the married quarters of the former Royal Army Medical College along Millbank next to Tate Britain in central London. Accommodation was strictly army-issue utilitarian, no central heating and only rudimentary hot water. Like families up and down the realm, Sunday night was bath night in the Scott household and we all took turns for a scrub. It was done in chronological order so by the time I climbed into the bath, the water was tepid and covered in an oil slick. Disgusting really. These days it would be considered child abuse. But then we’re talking about the era before deodorant, when men were men and pits were ripe. The Sixties stank as well as swung.

The Medical College closed in the Seventies and the buildings now form part of the London University of the Arts. It’s a sign of the times and one I rather approve of. This was our billet:

The parade ground once had a small children’s playground on the right of the image and that’s where I did my swinging while my father counted beans in the offices on the far side. I’ve passed the building many times in recent years. In fact, Liam and I got hitched just round the corner in the Sky Lounge in what was the City Inn Hotel. It’s the Hilton now. You see, nothing stands still and in my book that’s a good thing.

Itchy Feet

In the summer of 2012, we parachuted into Norwich on a wing and a prayer. We hadn’t the slightest inkling whether this golden-oldie city of medieval steeples would suit us or not. It was a difficult ask: somewhere we could replant our off-peak life but avoid the workhouse and somewhere within a bearable commute of London so we could keep tabs on our folks.

When we first paddled up the Wensum, we somehow ended up living in a Grade II listed Seventeenth Century brick and flint weaver’s cottage. The place had been through the wars and oozed history. By the Nineteenth Century, weaving had gone the way of the dodo and the cottage was reincarnated as a public house. In the Thirties, the Great Depression depressed ale sales along with everything else and time was called on the Devil’s brew. After that, the building gradually fell into miserable dereliction, boarded up and unloved. The final insult came when the building was gutted by fire; demolition seemed likely. Cue the city elders who stepped in with their compulsory purchase powers, repaired the structure, modernised the fabric and flogged it off. In 1986 the Weaver’s Cottage was reborn as two comfortable maisonettes with all mod-cons. The partially charred beams above our marital bed are the one remaining sign of that near-death experience.

A year and a bit on, those itchy feet are back but this time we’re moving across town, not continents. We’re rather taken with Norwich and have decided to put down roots by buying a small piece of it (while we can still afford to). So it’s goodbye to our pretty weaver’s cottage with its olde worlde beams, toffee-coloured fireplace and drafty halls and hello to our handsome warehouse conversion just beyond the old city walls with big picture windows, views across the burbs and proper insulation. We’re expecting our bills to plummet. Otherwise, that workhouse beckons.

Only in Norwich

Image courtesy of Daniel Tink at Scenicnorfolk

Liam answered the door of our old weaver’s cottage to a little middle-aged man wearing a bucket hat, wax jacket and supermarket denim. “Sorry to disturb ya, mate,” he said, “Been visitin’ me old girl (at the adjacent granny flats) and I’m goin’ fishin’ later but I forgot me worms. Can I dig some outta ya flower bed? Won’t make a mess, promise.” At the time I was enjoying a cuppa and thumbing through a copy of our local rag, the Eastern Daily Press (the most popular morning regional newspaper in the country, apparently). The front page headline was:

“Farmer Killed by Bull”

Only in Norwich.

Beamed Back to Bodrum

The beauty of renting is that we’re not responsible for all those annoying little things that inevitably go wrong around the home. We had a dodgy boiler that refused to heat water (though it was more than happy to heat the radiators, even when not asked). Our friendly landlady despatched a boiler-suited chatty man with cute dimples. He installed a brand new heat exchanger (No idea? Me neither). I provided tea for his labours and listened intently to my boiler man recall his boiler tales. A dull date on a Saturday night, I thought. Despite the cute dimples.

Then we became undone by a temperamental washing machine that only spun when it could be arsed. The reluctant spin went on for weeks. We were seriously in danger of being buried under sopping piles of dripping undies. Our landlady dispatched a smiley man in baggy bottoms and a corporate polo top. I provided tea for his labours as he tried to wring a final spin out of the moody machine. “It’s knackered,” he concluded. His home-spun words were music to my ears. I almost invited him out for dinner.

A week later, our landlady despatched a replacement appliance escorted by a thick-set older man with an even thicker-set accent. He was accompanied by a spotty young apprentice. “Where’s it plugged in?” asked the old man. “Absolutely no idea,” I replied. After a lot of huffing and puffing, hauling and heaving, he found the socket behind the fridge. Then I watched him slice the live wire with a Stanley knife. The loud bang almost gave me a seizure. Unlike me, he wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the black flume and strong whiff of electrical burn or the fact that he’d blown all the sockets in the kitchen. The young spotty thing was shocked into silence. For one brief moment, I thought I’d been beamed back to Bodrum where all workers are fully qualified electricians/plumbers/carpenters/roofers/rocket scientists (delete as appropriate).

Laurel and Hardy didn’t get tea for their trouble, I can tell you. Well, the kettle wasn’t working.

Erection Day

As far as British summers go, 2013 wasn’t that bad – a nice opening, a moist middle and a glorious finish (sounds like someone I know). A few rainy days but little to write home about, apart from one late evening a few weeks ago. Mother Nature threw a hissy fit and chucked a squally storm across the flatlands – snap, crackle and pop, with water coming at us from all angles like an out of control car wash. I was busy tippy-tapping when I noticed a small dribble of water gently trickle down the wall from the corner of the ceiling, rolling behind my laptop screen. Liam and I ascended to our boudoir tucked into the eaves to investigate and, yes, you guessed it, the roof had sprung a leak. An urgent call to our landlady led to a quick inspection by a middle-aged builder sporting a beer-belly and fetching multi-coloured socks, chosen by his daughter, he told me.

Erection day came. I was minding my own business when my attention was drawn to a fella in the semi-buff with more muscles than Brussels playing with his poles right within my line of sight. Yes, him and his tools were only feet away. It was all a bit like a car crash – you know you shouldn’t look but you just can’t help it. Not a lot got done that afternoon, I can tell you, not with the steamed-up spectacles and dripping windows. It all brought back cheerful memories of my x-rated peak-time thirties and that Diet Coke Ad (the original, not the recent sequel). Who said life in Norwich was boring?

Perking the Pansies

Jack Scott's random ramblings

Category: Property