Nothing Beats a Good Story

I don’t get interviewed much these days. Back in my pansies heyday everyone wanted a piece of me; queuing up, they were. But now we’ve settled into county life, I’ve become old dog, old tricks, descending into idyllic rural obscurity. But then up popped a request from Nicola MacCameron, a voiceover artist at Mic And Pen, to drag me barking out of retirement. How could I refuse? This time, though, Liam got in on the act.

Nicola

“What do you enjoy reading?”

Me

“As a child of the media age, I tend to take my fiction visually. Most of the books I read are non-fiction – memoir, history, social commentary or politics – and then usually around a pool. That’s when I have the time. So I asked my husband, Liam, who is much better-read than me.”

Liam

“There are some wonderful books set in a ‘foreign’ setting. Sebastian Faulks’ gripping novel ‘Birdsong’ features an Englishman who moves to France before the outbreak of the First World War. ‘A Woman of Bangkok’ by Jack Reynolds is a thrilling and atmospheric classic set in Thailand. There are so many. What matters most is the story. Sure, the setting can add something – sometimes it becomes a character in its own right…”

Unusually, Liam got the last word.

“…but nothing beats a good story.”

Read the full interview here.

Close Encounters

We were to meet up with the fragrant Roving Jay for one of our regular bloggers’ food-and-drink conventions but our plans were scuppered at the last minute. As we’d already bought the bus ticket, we went into town anyway for a wander around. Tombland, Norwich’s historic heart, is looking splendid after a recent wash and brush up. You might think the name comes from something spooky but it’s actually old English for ‘open ground’ (or such like) and is where the old market was held until those dastardly all-conquering Normans moved it to its present location a little after 1066 and all that.

It was a great day for a stroll so we decided to check out Cathedral Close, the substantial grounds of the grand Norman church. The Close is full of statues – of men mostly, as is the norm. However, one woman, Edith Cavell, has pride of place at the entrance. Ms Cavell was a British nurse in German-occupied Belgium during the Great War. She is remembered for tending to soldiers from both sides of the trenches and for helping about 200 Allied soldiers escape. Arrested by the Germans, she was tried for treason and shot by firing squad. It caused quite an international incident at the time as it wasn’t the done thing to shoot women – only horses. As she was a Norfolk lass, Edith Cavell is buried in the cathedral.

Doubtless, someone will discover something about Ms Cavell’s words, views or deeds that wouldn’t quite be cricket by today’s standards and demand she’s knocked off her plinth. That would be a shame.

Naturally, a chilled bottle was waiting for us at the end of the trail. We settled down at the Red Lion Pub on the river next to the Bishop Bridge, built in 1340 and the city’s oldest, to watch people messing about in canoes. Bottoms up!

The Ship of the Fens

Our next family do since the end of lockdown was to Liam’s lot. A fun family BBQ in rural Hertfordshire, a night or two in Cambridge and a visit to Ely, a teeny-weeny city with a vast cathedral dominating the flatlands. ‘The ship of the Fens’ can be seen for miles around, demonstrating just how important He used to be to the prince, the pauper and everyone in between. There’s been a house of God on this spot since 673.

Ely sits on a small plot of high ground at the heart of the Fens, a once expansive marsh long since tamed by dykes and ditches, and drained for agriculture. The city has a quirky feel to it and, despite being only 14 miles from Cambridge and 80 miles from London, projects an air of splendid isolation and self-sufficiency, perhaps inherited from times past when it was an island, cut off for much of the year.

Obviously, the huge church is the main event. I’m not even remotely religious but its sheer scale forces you to look up to the heavens in utter astonishment.

Scammers, Spammers, Tricksters and Trolls

Hardly a week goes by when we don’t get a call telling us we’re about to get done for tax fraud or threatening to cut off our internet if we don’t pay up. Then there’s the tirade of texts and emails about dodgy activity on accounts we don’t hold or failed transactions on accounts we do – pay here, pay now. If we didn’t know any better, we’d have sleepless nights fretting the bailiffs might come a-knocking.

Then I started receiving abuse from some loony toon in the States about an image I used in a couple of posts here in Pansyland. The woman claimed the picture was of her, posted without her consent. Except, of course, it isn’t of her. It’s a picture of someone I once knew who died in tragic circumstances. My abuser also alleged that posting her picture made me complicit in a campaign of hate and revenge porn by a former squeeze. Except, of course, the image isn’t remotely saucy. It’s just an old picture from happier times.

It’s hard to unpick my very own little troll’s backstory as her written English is so poor. It’s just a rambling, incoherent rant, really. Anyway, apparently she’s reported me to the ‘sheriff’ (what, of Nottingham?) and threatened to have me arrested by the CIA. I’ll do ‘jail time’ as the Americans call it, if I don’t take the image down. She’s used several channels to have a pop – email, here on the blog, Facebook. At first it was quite menacing but after a few days it just became an irritant. She clearly needs help. Listen up Marsha, it ain’t you. Go see a shrink.

Report, block, delete.

A Final Farewell

We can’t complain. Village life is calm and cuddly. But when the easing of lockdown let us travel further afield for the first time in around seven months, we packed our bags and were off like a shot. The bright lights of London beckoned and not even lousy weather could dampen our spirits. Travelling across the city was a slightly unnerving experience. In normal times, whatever the time of day, the Tube is nose to nipple. But we don’t live in normal times. It was like Old London Town was just waking up from a long hibernation – which, in a way, it was. Then we got to eat inside a restaurant so we supped a gin fizz to celebrate. We felt like naughty truants bunking off school.

It was a whirlwind four-day tour seeing my mother in the flesh for the first time since December 2019. These days she’s as deaf as a post but otherwise in fine fettle. She refuses to get her hearing tested which makes phone calls a bit of a challenge but it’s the kind of contrariness that has got her to 92 – that and the tea and the fags.

We caught up with other family too for a bite and a long natter, and with a gaggle of vintage pals to bid our final farewells to one of our own who died suddenly just before the pandemic placed us all under house arrest. His is a nice spot in Highgate Cemetery, made famous as the last resting place of Karl Marx and a host of other worthies, so he’s in illustrious company. It was a sweet and simple ceremony. We laughed, we cried. Then we got drunk.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

We had the partridge. Now all we needed was the pear tree. At least that’s what I thought until Liam pointed out that the big fat bird wandering around our small garden to feed with the bully-boy crows was, in fact, a pheasant. Not as colourful as our usual pleasant pheasant with its red, gold and blue livery, but a pheasant all the same.

I’m told that pheasants aren’t the sharpest beaks in the aviary. I had this one practically eating out of my hand. A very friendly pheasant it was. Friendly enough to hop straight into the pot if I’d asked nicely. Friendly but dumb.

I’ve Got It Covered

I ’ve had my second jab – Yay! It was a wet, wild and face-slapping day so I was grateful for the kindness of one of our new village friends who taxied me to and from vax central in a neighbouring hamlet. You know who you are – thank you.

I was in and out in a jiffy. After my first jab I experienced a slightly sore and swollen arm for a few days. This time, nothing, nought, zilch, zip. I didn’t feel it going in and haven’t felt anything since. Now I’ve got it covered, can we get back to normal now? Pretty please.

Twelve Camels For Your Wife

I often get asked to review books. I usually politely decline. But sometimes something grabs my attention and this is one such time. A great title helps and this is a great title – Twelve Camels For Your Wife: An Englishman’s Lifelong Love Affair With Turkey. This is what I thought.

Author George Dearsley isn’t the first Brit to fall for Turkey and he certainly won’t be the last. But his account of a longstanding love affair with the country is a real delight – an astute, beautifully-penned story of an Englishman abroad. What starts as a madcap road trip to Japan in a royal blue Bedford van, twists and turns, anecdote by anecdote, into an entertaining and touching tale of a courtship with the land he now calls home. It made me feel so nostalgic for my own times past. There are some very funny and well-observed scenes about things that many expats will instantly relate to: the unfathomable bureaucracy, the language mishaps, the surprising customs. And there are some wonderful turns of phrases (‘We came, we saw, we conkered. The area was awash with chestnut trees.’). But it’s his depiction of the Turkish people, the friendships he makes along the way and ultimately his affection for a small village 40km northeast of Selçuk (‘There were many more horses and donkeys than cars’) that tugs at the heartstrings. Funny, insightful and poignant.

Check out on Amazon

Bring Out Your Dead

Before the miracle of modern medicine and universal healthcare, life for most was plagued by illness or the fear of it. People croaked in their beds from mundane diseases that today we pop a pill for. Many a cottage stairwell was too narrow for a coffin so some featured a trap door between floors called a ‘coffin hatch’ (or sometimes a ‘coffin drop’, for obvious reasons). This allowed the dearly departed to be laid out at the end of a bed in their Sunday best for the procession of mourners who came round for tea and sympathy. And it provided a more dignified exit to the graveyard. Much better than bouncing a stiff down the stairs.

Our cottage may no longer be an unsanitary hovel with cholera in every cup, but we’ve still got a coffin hatch, though not an original. It was constructed by the previous owner when he moved the staircase to a different part of the house. This modern hatch is just the thing for hauling up and down the big and the bulky. We’ve even hit on the idea of using the hole for a lift, as and when the stairs get too much. We’re rather taken with the thought of dying in our sleep – from old age we hope.

  • Not for the faint of heart
  • The coffin hatch
  • Stairs to stay sober for
  • Perfect for a lift!

Shop ’til You Drop

To misquote Mark Twain, ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ And I hope that’s also true of the long-anticipated demise of the high street. The great shift to online shopping may have been accelerated by the pandemic but I, for one, relish the experience of grazing and browsing in the real world. And so do many others judging by the queues of masked punters we saw shuffling towards the entrances of various Norwich stores when we ventured into town. Sure, some retailers have gone to the wall while others limp on but a little imagination and a lot of fairy dust might be all it takes to stop the rot and save our city centres from becoming ghost towns. People are nothing if not inventive and fairy dust is plentiful in the retail trade.

One thing an online shop can’t provide is the conviviality of a post-shop bottle and bite. This we sought in the Lamb Inn, our favourite city centre watering hole. The delightful lady at the gate recognised us. ‘One white, one red,’ she said. She’s Spanish and I was delighted that Brexit hadn’t put her off from sticking around. What she didn’t know is I had a brand-new axe in my man bag. I’ve never gone tooled up before. I felt like a criminal. And that’s another thing you can’t get online – an offensive weapon. Well, not legally anyway. Rest assured I bought the axe to chop up firewood, not run amok. Norfolk isn’t Midsomer.

As we took our seats for the bus home, I looked through the window at the YMCA opposite. I began to wonder if ‘it’s fun to stay at the YMCA’, as suggestively sung by the Village People. I doubt it. This is Norwich not New York and these village people have long since hung up their leathers and feathers.