It always amuses me how Norfolk and Norfolk people are portrayed on television. It's probably best to be amused otherwise it would make you angry. Actors trying to re-create a Norfolk accent usually end up speaking with a west country sound. In Norfolk we do not roll our rs.
So last night I watched a programme I had recorded before Christmas. Ade Edmondson was travelling the country and pitched up in Norfolk - or more to the point pitched up in Cromer (pronounced Cromaaah) with a smattering of Downham Market, Denver and Cley (pronounced either Clay or Cly depending on whether you are posh). So the programme was scarcely representative of Norfolk as a whole and most of it surrounded the fishing industry and crabs, kippers, bloaters and other assorted fish.
Ade tried to be funny in a peculiarly Ade kind of way and really it didn't work as he tried to speak the Norfolk dialect and ended up falling just short of making us look like a bunch of yokels as he tried to have some fun. It really didn't work. Not everyone in Norfolk speaks with a broad Norfolk accent. I don't for one (although I can when I want to) and neither does Steven Fry and hundreds of thousands of other people. What we do do is treasure our heritage and history. Norfolk is a beautiful county even if (as Ade was quick to point out) it's very flat. Outsiders can't seem to understand that we like it that way. We know there are no mountains and very few hills (although anyone who has tried to cycle round Norwich will disagree with that) and the highest point in the county is known as Beeston Bump, but we love the open spaces, the broad brushed skylines. It's an artist and photographer's dream and I for one will be out with my camera as soon as the weather is warm enough.
One of my favourite Norfolk scenes is looking across Halvergate Marshes between Acle and Great Yarmouth. You can see for miles with just an occasional windmill dotted about. It is open and expansive with none of the claustrophobic feel you get with mountains. It gives a feel of freedom and space something that Ade Edmondson failed to bring out in his quest to be funny at our expense. It certainly inspired some of the most memorable prose written by Charles Dickens who set part of David Copperfield in Great Yarmouth.
There is more to Norfolk than fishing and the sea, although it was sad to see film of Cromer Lifeboat Coxswain and fisherman Richard Davies who sadly died after the programme was made. I lived next door to Richard when I was a journalist working in Cromer in the early 1970s. He was a great character. Would always ring my bell and bang on the door as he want out on a lifeboat call, whatever time of day or night it was. He would also regularly leave crabs on our doorstep. Sadly I was allergic to them and so couldn't enjoy them!!! My time spent at Cromer as a young reporter was some of the happiest of my working life.
Last night we celebrated our eldest son's 30th birthday and our youngest son's pregnancy!!!!! by going for a meal at the Relish restaurant/bar in Newton Flotman just outside Norwich. I would rate the food somewhere between average and good.
Today it's off to a lunch at the Methodist Church for my wife's Latvian group. They went to the Baltic country a couple of years ago to help renovate a home for young mothers and their children. Then tonight it's the Hethersett and District Churches Together barn dance in Little Melton Village Hall --- yeehah.
Finally today I'm not sure whether I touched on a new web site yesterday entitled Ladybird Letters. I only heard about this through a Facebook message from our future daughter in law. It is an excellent idea and I was very touched to find out that the business has been set-up in memory of our stillborn grandson Oliver and through our love of ladybirds who seemed to appear everywhere after his birth and gave us comfort in a strange sort of way.
Have a look at http://www.ladybirdletters.co.uk
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