A short round up of things on my mind. Things I’ve seen, read, heard etc. From my point of view, it will help me keep my eye in with my writing. As the name suggests, it will be semi-regular and published on Thursdays.
A bit of news: That Mary Earps won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award last night and I couldn’t be happier for her. I’m not trying to be right-on or anything like that when I say I love watching the Lionesses. They seem to be more of a team than their male counterparts – and more successful. Earps is a brilliant example of the virtue of never giving up. Four years ago, she felt like her football career was going nowhere and was preparing to try something else. Last night, she received the prestigious SPotY award as a Euros winner, World Cup finalist and comfortably the best goalkeeper in the women’s game. Apparently oxygen thief Piers “Morgan” Moron has been whining (for a change) about it. I find a good rule for life is that whatever he doesn’t like is probably a good thing. Well done Mary.
A song I’ve been listening to:Blossoms will be releasing their fifth album next year and the first single from it, To Do List (After The Breakup) is a banger. It’s a collaboration with fellow Stockport musician Findlay and, in true Ronseal style, tells you what you need to do after a break up. I’m a big fan. Watch the video below.
A podcast I’ve been listening to: one I’ve been really getting into recently is The Rest Is Entertainment. It’s a weekly dissection of all things pop culture hosted by Richard Osman (of Pointless, House of Games and Thursday Murder Club fame) and The Guardian journalist Marina Hyde. A recent highlight has been Osman’s insight into this year’s race for the Christmas number one, in which he dropped the bombshell fact that 2004’s Band Aid 20 remains Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s only UK number one single. It’s interesting, it’s funny, and it’s been making my journeys to and from work fly by.
Something you should watch this Christmas: it’s not exactly a hidden gem, but nothing gets me into the Christmas spirit quite like the 2008 festive special of Gavin and Stacey. It’s brilliantly observed, and truly captures that sense of anticipation that the big day holds. It makes me miss those big family Christmasses I remember as a child. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.
Is that it?
That will do you for this week. Have a very happy Christmas, a great new year and I’ll be back soon.
Just before you go – why are you asking yourself questions?
It’s what literally no one has been waiting for! Part 2 of my write-up of my holiday in Wales. If you haven’t read part 1, click here to get up to speed with Barry Island, Chepstow and Hopwood Park Services.
Day 3 – Wednesday 19th July
Wednesday was mum’s birthday, so the morning involved her opening her cards (I now have a five year streak of producing tears with mine) and presents (the Garmin fitness tracker, a joint gift from me and Dave, was well received). But we didn’t have much time for that, as we had to be on the train fairly early again. We were heading back into England – we were going to Bristol.
The trip to Bristol obviously involves crossing the River Severn again, and on the train it means going underneath it via the Severn Tunnel, not something that mum enjoyed. Anyway, it was quite a short journey and we arrived in one of England’s great cities.
I had never been to Bristol, but read and heard much about it. This was Brunel country, a big city that somehow doesn’t have a top flight football team, and also where a lot of scenes from my favourite sitcom Only Fools and Horses were filmed once it had become too popular to be shot in London. It was exciting to be able to tick off another metropolis.
Unfortunately, we had not planned for our visit to Bristol beyond buying the train tickets, and so on arrival we had no idea where we going or what we were going to do. We walked away from the enormous Temple Meads station and, as it turned out, went the wrong way and ended up in a rough part of town.
Temple Meads station in Bristol
Mum said she wanted a coffee, so I used my phone to find us a place with good reviews not far away. We discovered that this place, Bakehouse, was on an industrial estate. The coffee was ok, the food looked nice but went untried due to how expensive it was, and we found ourselves in the bizarre situation of sitting on a picnic bench amongst industrial units. Only two days before we had been enjoying the spectacular views on Barry Island.
We resolved to find the city centre, and eventually managed it. We went into a few shops and had a nice lunch in a café, but we never saw any of Bristol’s great sights. We didn’t see the SS Great Britain, we didn’t see the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and I didn’t tick off any more sporting venues such as Ashton Gate, the Memorial Stadium or the County Ground. We went to catch the train feeling like we hadn’t really ‘done’ Bristol, and I feel like I need to return at some point.
Day 4 – Thursday 20th July
There was a train strike on Thursday, so we spent the day off the rails, as it were. We walked to Caldicot Castle, not far from our apartment, and were very pleasantly surprised by the experience. It was free to get in, which was unexpected, and there are so many little nooks and crannies of this historic site to explore. A Grade I listed building, most of what we can see today was built somewhere around 1170 and restored in that confident Victorian way by a man called Joseph Richard Cobb, who made it his family home.
What really interested me was the fact that the castle was used to house families who had been bombed out during the Second World War. Down one very narrow corridor was a bath that would have been used by people living there in the 1940s.
Extensive helical staircases would take us down to the basement, where a grate allowed us to peer into the darkness of the dungeons, and up to the top of the tower, where we enjoyed wonderful views over the Severn Estuary – very much a photo opportunity.
The view from the top of Caldicot Castle, with the Severn Bridge in the background
We enjoyed a snack and a drink from the castle’s tea room before we left. A truly wonderful place, a fantastic thing for the locals to have on their doorstep. The field next to the castle is used for concerts – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds are performing there in August.
Day 5 – Friday 21st July
Our last full day in Wales. We had heard about a place called Dewstow Gardens & Grottoes, which was only about ten minutes away from the apartment by car, so we went there to take a look.
Honestly, if you are ever out that way you must go to Dewstow Gardens & Grottoes. The gardens at ground level are beautiful and incredibly well-maintained, with so many trees, plants and ponds to sit by and enjoy some peace and quiet. But it is when you go underground, into the network of tunnels that go through the stone, that your mind is truly blown. These grottoes are amazing spaces – they really are like stepping into another world.
Even better, when I was enjoying a delicious sausage roll and slice of chocolate cake from the café, little birds like to sit on the tables and eat the crumbs that people have left behind. Look at this chap.
We didn’t really have a plan for what to do after we’d left Dewstow, and in an unexpected turn of events we ended up crossing back into England and stopping at Severn View Services. As the name suggests, this is where a short walk will give you the best possible view of the Severn Bridge.
Increasingly weary, next we found ourselves back in Chepstow, but with very little energy left in the tank we didn’t do anything other than visit a Wetherspoons for a meal. I had a pizza (and no, I’m not getting any thinner).
We were knackered, but content. We’d seen so many new places and done so much walking that we knew our holiday in Wales was one we would never forget.
Day 6 – Saturday 22nd July
Time to go home. With the forecast suggesting that a month’s worth of rain in one day would leave Wales looking something like Atlantis before long, we left as early as we could. I put my head down for a nap just after we’d crossed the bridge back into England, and when I woke up we were driving around the suburbs of Reading, which was a surprise as no part of our journey home should have involved the suburbs of Reading.
Apparently, they had said on the radio that there was traffic on the M25 at Slough. This was exactly the part of the M25 we needed to go on, so Dave had made the decision to try to avoid the M25. Well, to say this meant we went home the long way round is an understatement. We must be the only people ever to travel between Wales and Norfolk and stop for a wee at the Tesco in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. After we’d been there I swapped with mum and sat in the front seat to help guide us in the right direction. We took in Chesham, Hemel Hempstead and St Albans but eventually made it to the A14 near Cambridge and back to dear old Dereham.
If you’ve made it down this far, thank you very much for reading. Hopefully I’ve inspired you to go exploring. Whatever you do, make sure you visit Dewstow Gardens & Grottoes!
It was the first time I’d been out that way, and it was a nice change from heading to the Yorkshire/Derbyshire area, which I had been doing most summers since I was a child – including last year.
I kept a diary of the six day trip, so here’s what we (my mum, step-dad and I) got up to:
Day 1 – Sunday 16th July
Departure day. It wasn’t just us going on holiday – our budgie, Messy, was spending the week at Dave’s brother’s house, and he’d been taken there on the Saturday night. We had said we wanted to be on the road by 8am, so of course we left shortly after 9am.
I had taken a travel sickness tablet, and tried to get some sleep on the journey. I put my head down somewhere near Thetford and when I woke up we were just to the south of Birmingham! We stopped for a break at Hopwood Park Services and then completed a pretty smooth journey by crossing the Prince of Wales Bridge into Wales.
Crossing the Prince of Wales Bridge into Wales
We were staying in an Airbnb in Caldicot, a small town near Chepstow. This was the first time we’d used Airbnb and first impressions were good. Our accommodation was a self-contained apartment attached to the owners’ house.
That evening we walked to find the railway station and explore the town.
Day 2 – Monday 17th July
With the weather forecast good for our first full day in Wales, we decided to go to Cardiff on the train. But once we’d arrived at Cardiff Central Station, we decided to carry on to the coast at Barry Island. This was, of course, where a lot of the sitcom Gavin and Stacey was filmed, as well as a few scenes from my favourite film Submarine.
I have to say I wasn’t expecting Barry Island to be quite so beautiful. The beach is huge, and with the sun shining the water sparkled and you could see Weston-Super-Mare on the other side. We stopped at a café on the sea front before walking to the end of Friars Point, where the heavens opened and we got soaked.
Enjoying my summer holiday
Making our way back, we had lunch at a fish and chip shop next door to Marco’s Cafe, the real life place that Stacey works at in Gavin and Stacey. It’s clear that Barry Island is very proud of its association with the hugely successful BBC show – there are murals celebrating the fact all over the place, and the shops are not short of mugs emblazoned with Nessa’s catchphrase ‘oh, what’s occurring?’ or t-shirts with ‘sugar tits’ printed on them, the ‘affectionate’ nickname Dave Coaches used for Nessa.
A game of adventure golf and a drink sitting outside a pub followed before we headed to the station, but the day wasn’t over. I like ticking off any sporting arenas I see on my travels, and Cardiff has several. Not far from Cardiff Central I was able to see the Principality (formerly Millennium) Stadium, the home of the Welsh rugby union team, although we couldn’t get too close to it due to some work being done. I did take this photo though.
The cricket ground, named Sophia Gardens after the park that is close to it, is a bit of a walk from the Principality but we made the effort and were rewarded when we were told by a steward that we were welcome to go in and watch the end of a women’s match that was going on.
I can now add Sophia Gardens to the list of cricket grounds I’ve seen a match at: Lord’s, Trent Bridge, Headingley, Old Trafford and Edgbaston.
When the match was over, we were on our way back to the station when we realised that the next train back to Caldicot wasn’t until 7.50pm! So we had dinner at a Wetherspoons around the corner to kill the time. We were pleased we did, as it was in a fascinating old building – a theatre that was the venue for the first performance of the Welsh National Opera.
Reaching our apartment just before 9pm, we were all shattered. Our first full day would turn out to be our longest!
Day 2 – Tuesday 18th July
After the events of Monday, a quieter day was mooted for Tuesday. We walked into the town to see the market, which turned out to be about four stalls. The most noteworthy event that morning was a man tripping on a raised bit of paving and going down in instalments, hitting the ground chin first. Dave, a trained first aider, rushed to help. The response was actually quite heart warming – a chair was brought over from a nearby restaurant, a first aid kit was procured from a betting shop, and an off-duty nurse took over. As we were leaving, the police (or ‘heddlu’ as they are known in the utterly impenetrable Welsh language) were just arriving to see what was going on.
We got in the car and went to Chepstow, which is only 5 miles or so away. The only thing I really knew about Chepstow before arriving was that they did horse racing there, but it’s actually a really interesting town with plenty of history. Here’s a photo of Chepstow Bridge, where you can actually walk between Wales and England.
Chepstow Bridge from the Welsh side
I’ll be writing about the rest of my trip to Wales in the next few days – I hope you’ll come back for part 2!
Most of us have had a camera phone for quite a while now, with hundreds if not thousands of photos taken over the years. I’ve scrolled through mine and picked out ten that have a story behind them.
1st November 2010 – Dad
I have told the story about my dad more than once, but in short, he died in 2014 at the age of 69 having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years previously. It’s nice to have this photo on my phone. Dad is in his sheltered housing flat here, on the sofa where we drank bucketloads of tea and watched countless football matches. His cheeky grin is showing off the false tooth he wore. The story goes that it was knocked out by a cricket ball during a match on the playing fields of what is now the Hewett School when he was a young lad.
1st June 2020 – seeing family for the first time since lockdown
I think for many of us it was a bit of a shock to go into total lockdown in March 2020. Never before had we faced so many restrictions on our lives, but then it had been a hundred years since the last pandemic of Covid’s scale. It wasn’t until June that the restrictions had been eased enough for me to go and see my mum and her other half Dave (aka Stephen to me). It was strictly outdoors only though – thankfully the weather was lovely. This was also Dave’s birthday and the day my mum presented him with the papers showing that she’d legally changed her surname to his.
20th July 2021 – sunset at Old Trafford, Manchester
This was taken at Old Trafford cricket ground as the sun set on a red hot July day in Manchester. The match between England and Pakistan turned out to be the first sporting event to be played in front of a capacity crowd since the pandemic began. England won.
28th November 2021 – my last day at Sainsbury’s Queens Road
My first, and so far only, job was at Sainsbury’s and for eleven years Queens Road was all I knew. Then an opportunity came up to move to the Pound Lane store and, despite the terrifying prospect of having to meet a load of new people, I took it. I was blown away by the send-off my friends and colleagues gave me. This was taken on the Sunday, my last day at Queens, before I started at Pound Lane two days later.
21st January 2022 – Oscar
My friend Katie’s dog and without a doubt the best boy in the world. On this particular walk on the old railway line near Aylsham I managed to capture the moment he looked at the camera and I’m rather fond of it.
28th February 2022 – the end of self-isolating with Covid
Having avoided Covid throughout the lockdowns it finally caught up with me early last year. At the time I was living in a house where my bedroom had an en suite bathroom so I remained in that room for the entirity of my self-isolation, with food being left outside the door. Being stuck within those four walls for over a week was really tough. I took this photo just as I was about to leave the room for the first time. I can remember the feeling of excitement and relief.
23rd April 2022 – before a Norwich match at Carrow Road
With mum and Dave before Norwich’s match against Newcastle last year. Our pre-match ritual tends to involve buying pasties from Morrisons and sitting on that wall before going into the ground. Norwich were thrashed 3-0.
9th June 2022 – The Killers gig at Carrow Road
The tickets to see The Killers at Carrow Road were actually given to me as a Christmas present in 2019, with the gig due to take place in June 2020. For obvious reasons it was postponed twice before we finally got to see them in June last year. It is rare to have a band as big as The Killers performing in Norwich and they put on a fantastic show, with one of my favourite bands Blossoms as the support act. In June this year a dream will come true when my all time heroes Arctic Monkeys will play at Carrow Road. I can’t wait!
25th August 2022 – my 30th birthday
There was something about turning 30 that freaked me out. On the day, plans to go on the heritage railway between Dereham and Wymondham were scuppered by thunderstorms. Then all my friends turned up on the doorstep and we had a barbecue. I didn’t think people cared about me enough to do such a thing! It was a lovely evening and, as it turns out, being 30 is a lot like being 29.
15th March 2023 – sunrise from my hotel room window in Cromer
A recent one, but I must have enjoyed my one night stay in Cromer because I’m feeling nostalgic about something that happened only two weeks ago. I had long wanted to stay at the Cliftonville Hotel, as I thought the building was interesting and I was keen to see what the promise of sea views from every room looked like. I scratched that itch during a week’s holiday from work and had a great time relaxing and getting my head together. This was taken from my hotel room window quite early in the morning, with a stunning sunrise over the town and its famous pier.
There we have it then, a small selection of photos on my phone that bring a smile to my face. Thanks for reading!
My chest feels tight. As if someone has wrapped a belt around it. I am short of breath. I need to focus on taking deep breaths. It feels easier to do that hunched over. My heart is racing. I can feel it beating. I have the constant urge to look over my shoulder. As if whatever it is I am running from will be there next time. Caught up with me. Taking me down. I want to run away. I don’t want to be near people. But I can’t. Not here. It’s not an option. Not in this uniform. Not in this place.
It passes. It always does. The pressure on my chest has eased, I can breathe normally without thinking about it, my pursuer has stopped chasing. For now.
The word “anxiety” did not cross my mind when these episodes began happening to me. When I finally told someone about them, it was the first thing they said. Was it a relief to hear that? I mean, at least there was a plausible explanation. Anxiety is medically recognised. There’s an NHS page about it. I could get help for it. People have time off work because of it.
But why am I suffering from anxiety? Why now? It comes on suddenly and goes away just as quickly. But I never know when it will strike next. It is always on my mind.
I’ve not had it before. I’ve certainly been anxious. God, you can’t be as socially awkward as me without getting anxious at some point. But the debilitating, seemingly random attacks on the normal functions of my body are new.
I thought it had gone away. A while ago, those feelings were suddenly absent. My days were clear of them. I didn’t feel like I could call myself an anxiety sufferer. I didn’t feel like I suffered enough. To put myself in the same category as those who need medication, sick notes, would be fraudulent.
But then they came back.
I’ve been drinking chamomile tea, with its supposed calming qualities. But other than that, I don’t really know what to do. I can’t get over the feeling that I’d be wasting a doctor’s time. I’m just waiting for it to pass.
By writing this, I am hoping getting it out of my head will be beneficial. By publishing it, I don’t know. Maybe someone will read it who can identify with it. Maybe they will be able to tell me that yes, I am right, that’s definitely anxiety, because I had it and here’s how I cope with it. Maybe they will see a bit of themselves in my descriptions and feel comforted that it’s not just them.
Maybe there’s no point at all. But I wish it would stop.
Those were the words of a 13-year-old Winston Churchill on a visit to Cromer back in 1888. Well, I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed my overnight stay in North Norfolk earlier this week a lot more than arguably the country’s most famous Prime Minister did.
Cromer is less than an hour from home but that was fine by me. I had decided to book a hotel there because, during my holiday from work, I was keen to make the most of it. To get away, to have a change of scenery and get my head together. Sea air has long been recommended as beneficial to the mind and the body.
I had long been intrigued by the Cliftonville Hotel in the town, too. It stands rather imposingly, just up the road from the centre, overlooking the sea. I’m fascinated by old buildings and the Edwardian hotel looked impressive from the outside. So I booked a night at the Cliftonville. Like I said, I enjoyed myself. It had the desired effect. And I learned.
To be fair to the young Winston Churchill, the Cromer he visited in 1888 would have looked very different to the one I was in this week. He wouldn’t even have had the pier to marvel at – Cromer Pier as we know it today wasn’t built for another 12 years. But it says a lot about the sense of humour we have in dear old Norfolk that his less than glowing opinion of the town is set into the promonade, right in front of the pier.
If you’ve not looked into the history of Cromer before, it’s a fascinating story. The name does not appear until 1262, which given how old a lot of places in Norfolk are is basically last week. There was a village called Shipden near here, about a quarter of a mile from where the end of Cromer Pier is now, that was claimed by the sea hundreds of years ago. With the recent goings on in Hemsby, it just goes to show that some things never change. In 1888, coincidentally the same year as Churchill’s visit, a pleasure steamer crashed into the Shipden church tower which by then was just about reaching sea level. The passengers on the steamer were all rescued and no lives were lost, but when attempts to move the ship failed the decision was taken simply to blow it up, along with the church tower to ensure an incident like this wouldn’t happen again. About a hundred years later, a team of divers were able to find the wreck of the pleasure steamer as well as follow the streets of the old village along the seabed.
What we now call Cromer would once have been known as Shipden-juxta-Felbrigg, with the name Cromer in use by 1400. Right in the middle of the town is the substantial church of Saints Peter and Paul. There is evidence that at one point Cromer was a small place with a large but run-down church in the middle. Just as had happened in Mundesley – which I wrote about last week – the arrival of the railway to Cromer in the Victorian age helped it become a seaside resort. On my walks around the town while I was there, Cromer has a huge number of buildings that would have been built around this time. Take a look at this page from the Town Council for more on Cromer’s history.
As for my own trip, I arrived at the Cliftonville on Tuesday afternoon and was impressed from the moment I walked through the doors. It looked smart, it felt classy, and any fears I had that I was in for another London experience began to ease.
I was in room 42, on the third floor. There is a lift, but I loved the grand staircase so much that I never used it. The second floor is being refurbished – there were tiles leaning against walls in the corridor and the chatter of workers as you passed on the stairs – but you couldn’t hear any noise from my room. Room 42 was small, granted, but it didn’t feel claustrophobic. I had booked a single room, travelling alone as I was, and that meant a small room with a single bed. It’s a while since I’ve slept in a single bed. It was clear that this room, too, had been recently refurbished. Possibly within weeks. The room had a fairly strong smell of paint, probably from the work being done on the floor below. The room had been finished to a very high standard and was sympathetic to the architecture of the building. Thumbs up from me.
The hotel claims to have sea views from every room, and while mine was on the side rather than the front of the building, I got a stunning view of the pier and the town centre.
The morning view from my hotel room window
I headed out for a walk, to explore, and was on the pier when I saw the weather closing in. Soon, a mixture of rain and hail was coming down, as well as the odd rumble of thunder. I went back to the hotel to wait for it to pass. When it did, I went to the famous Mary Janes Fish & Chip Shop, but ended up eating my sausage and chips sitting in my car in the hotel car park as I didn’t want the room to stink of them and all the seats I could find outside were soaking wet.
I decided to have a bath, since the facilities seemed so inviting, and went to bed reading Felix White’s book It’s Always Summer Somewherefeeling restful and content, apart from the brief moment I forgot I wasn’t in a double bed and promptly fell off the side.
I woke up somewhere between 5am and 6am. Mum had told me to look out for the sunrise if it happened to be awake, so I looked out of the window and was greeted with this stunning sight.
The single glazed window had inevitably lost its battle with condensation, but a quick dry with a towel exposed that glorious view in all its glory.
Breakfast was included in the £69 I paid for the hotel and I went down just after 8am. I found I was the only one in the restaurant, at least until an older couple came in when I was nearly finished. I was asked if I wanted tea or coffee (coffee please) and had a selection of cereals and juices to help myself to, as well as a menu of hot food to select from. In the end I just had a bacon bap, which was let down only by the fact the bun was a brioche one. Even my table in the restaurant had a view of the sea.
Alone for breakfast
Then I decided to get my things together and check out of the hotel, heading back into Cromer, taking in the morning sea air. I went into a couple of shops, leaving one of them with a new hoodie, and then I bought a small pot of pineapple, a bottle of orange juice and a paper and sat near the sea wall. My time in Cromer had been so short, but like I said, I learned.
Here are a few things I learned:
I am alone, but that’s ok.
I am used to spending plenty of time alone. I do a lot of things with my mum, and that’s wonderful, but before I moved back in with her and her other half last year I lived as a lodger for eight years and spent lots of time by myself. I’ve never had a girlfriend, but that’s because I’m awkward and unappealing. I can probably count just the two friends that I would trust with my deepest secrets. It has to be partly my fault, I guess I can be overly intense and people tend to get bored of me after a while. But I often think I would love to be one of those people who has a phone that is constantly going off with messages. I’d love to be one of those people that wakes up to a good morning text. In Cromer, though, I absolutely felt the strength in being alone. I am often shy, hiding away even from buying things in a shop, but I overcame those fears on this trip and this has given me confidence that I can push on when I’m back in the real world.
You don’t have to go far from home to have a holiday
Cromer was my holiday, my trip away during my week off work. It might not have been the Caribbean or the Canary Islands, but it was far enough away for me to feel like I was somewhere different. And for £69 it didn’t break the bank either.
The smallest things can put a spring in your step
On my evening in Cromer, walking back to the hotel in the rain, I was waiting for a van to pass before I crossed the road. The window in the van was open, and loudly broadcasting from within was The View From The Afternoon by Arctic Monkeys. ‘Superb taste in music’ I thought to myself, and the rest of my journey was completed with a spring in my step.
And that was my trip to Cromer. All that remains is for me to urge you to go and stay at the excellent Cliftonville Hotel and to provide you with a photo dump. Thanks for reading.
Gary Lineker being taken off the air from his position as the host of the BBC’s Match of the Day is the story that’s dominating the headlines at the moment. The former England striker, who has been the host of the Premier League highlights programme since 1999, is being punished because he won’t apologise for a tweet in which he likened the language used by ministers of the Tory government in relation to its new policy on asylum seekers to “that used by Germany in the 30s”.
Since then, pretty much every presenter, pundit and commentator has said they won’t work for the BBC this weekend in a display of solidarity with Lineker. This includes his most likely replacement as host Mark Chapman, as well as Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Alex Scott. This Saturday’s edition of Match of the Day will be broadcast with no presenter or pundits at all, without any of its usual commentators and with no interviews with players or managers. Other BBC shows, such as Football Focus and Final Score, have been pulled from the schedules because they can’t find anyone willing to work on them.
I will be completely honest with you. I would describe myself very much as left leaning, politically, and I despise the Tory government. I don’t feel that it represents me and I find myself not only unable to support them but frequently disgusted by its actions. I wish for a more compassionate government, one that cares more about its ordinary citizens than the rich and privileged and one that doesn’t actively stir hatred. My wish is that it gets removed from power at the next election.
I agree with Gary Lineker’s tweet. When you start using terms like “illegal immigrant” you stop using terms like “human being”. You start to think of asylum seekers like farmyard animals, or worse, vermin that need to be exterminated. These are living, breathing human beings with thoughts, feelings and families. They are not making extremely dangerous crossings of the English Channel in small and inadequate boats to get a free house and benefits over here. Most of them are fleeing a war or horrific regime the like of which that we can’t really comprehend in this country. I find it astounding that the government is looking to simply move the problem elsewhere rather than attempt to find out why these people are risking their lives to get here and making an effort to address those problems. This doesn’t mean put them up in luxury homes.
The uninitiated might be forgiven for thinking that this story is all about a mere football highlights programme on TV and that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it does matter. In removing Lineker from his position, the BBC are effectively saying that you can’t broadcast on their platform if you say something the government doesn’t agree with. And that’s worrying – you might expect this of Russia or China, but not in Britain.
Remember, Lineker has never used his position as the host of Match of the Day to express his political opinions on the programme itself. Such opinions have always been confined to Twitter. The same Twitter that Alan Sugar has used to share several of his political opinions, a lot of them against the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, plenty of them against the rail strikes and the relevant union leaders involved with them, and the not exactly impartial “DONT (sic) VOTE LABOUR”. Yet, the old boy is still allowed to wave his finger around as the face of The Apprentice on primetime BBC One. Could it be that he gets a free ride because his opinions are in support of the Tory government? I wonder.
I don’t know where this story will end up, but I do know the BBC have created an entirely avoidable situation. The furore over Lineker’s tweet was just about quietening down when they announced on Friday night that he’d been taken off the air. In doing so, they’ve made quite the rod for their own back. If it makes some people stop and think about what a sorry state this government has brought to country down to, then it might not have been a waste of time.
I’ve got some much needed time off work this week and, not wanting to waste it sitting around at home (though the snow has rather forced my hand on that one for the last couple of days), on Wednesday mum and I decided to go and see the sea.
We ended up in Mundesley, a village I hadn’t been to that often and didn’t know that much about. I knew that a teacher I didn’t like at primary school lived in Mudesley, and I knew that Mundesley was the first place mum and dad took me for an outing after I was born. I don’t remember that, obviously, but I’ve been told about it. I’ve also been to Mundesley with my friend and her dog for a walk.
When we arrived, the village was very quiet indeed, as you might expect in winter with the wind blowing and the temperature hovering just above freezing. Mum and I went to the cafe nearest the car park, where we sat in the window watching a procession of dog walkers heading down and then re-emerging from the ramp that leads to the beach. I had a coffee and a bacon and sausage roll. I’ve become something of a connoiseur of various pig products presented between two slices of bread, as my expanding waistline will attest to – Mundesley’s, for the record, was acceptable. Not the best I’ve ever had, but not too bad.
After the cafe we went for a walk, taking in the Norfolk coast path and the various sights along the way. Mundesley is actually a very interesting village in an architechtual sense – there are a number of old buildings, quite grand in appearance, that I wish I could find out more about.
Look at this building, for instance. I’ve had to get this image from Google Maps as I didn’t take many when I was there (my hands were too cold to hold my phone) but I can tell you that it looks exactly like this now. Empty.
The architecture looks kind of art deco, I would say. It’s attractive, with its curves and big window. Yet it is underused, not being utilised to the extent that I’m sure the people who put it there invisaged.
The research I’ve done suggests that this building, somewhat surprisingly, isn’t listed and that it was once called Bar Victoriana. Judging by its Instagram account, Bar Victoriana marketed itself as a trendy cocktail bar and occasionally had live music. The bar’s website is now dead, but on Facebook it appears to have closed in July 2019, with the promise of a ‘new seafood & grill restauarant’ on the way, which would explain the signs still on the outside. I can’t find anything about what happened afterwards, but I would suspect that the business may have been a victim of the pandemic.
The building as it was in September 2008
Mundesley has plenty of Victorian buildings, probably due to the arrival of the railway (long gone) in that period that turned the village into a holiday resort. Some of them are made out of local stone, given them an unusual appearance, while others are built from the red bricks you would expect of the Victorians.
There are two imposing former hotels in Mundesley that demonstrate its past glory as a Victorian seaside resort. The photo below shows The Grand Hotel, as it was originally known, in around 1960:
From what I’ve been able to find out, the hotel was renamed the Hotel Continental at some point after the Second World War. G. Laird, who took the more recent photo below, remembers three summer holidays in Norfolk during the 1960s and said the Hotel Continental ‘was then a very elegant building and was clearly a popular hotel’.
It would seem the hotel later became apartments.
Old hotels fascinate me – especially abandoned ones. You see, history isn’t about being nerdy and reeling off dates all the time. My interest in history comes from mentally taking a trip into the past and thinking about what the buildings and the places I can see used to do, and of the scores of people that would have used them in a former life. Think about all of the Victorians who would have come to that hotel for their bucket-and-spade holiday. How excited they must have been to be out of the city for a few days. Imagine them, dining in the hotel with a view over the sea. What would they think of it now? A bit run down, a shadow of its former self. That’s what intrigues me about this kind of thing.
The other old hotel in Mundesley is the Manor Hotel. It was built in 1900, so slightly newer than the Hotel Continental, and was – as the name suggests – originally a manor house, converted into a hotel as the tourism industry took off. According to this newspaper article, the hotel ceased trading in December 2019 and a month later was up for sale (for what seemed like quite a reasonable £450,000). Of course, the pandemic was on its way shortly after, bringing with it a complete halt to tourism and leisure activities, so I don’t know what happened after that. The building stands empty, still showing evidence of the business that continued there until 3 years or so ago. Below is a photo I found online of the hotel in the month it closed:
Our walk also took in the impressive All Saints church, which stands alone and imposing on the cliff top. The church has Norman origins, but I learned that it stood virtually in ruins for about a hundred years until being sensitively restored (unusual for the time, I think) between 1899 and 1914 – this coincides with the railway and subsequent tourist trade coming to Mundesley, so they probably felt like they wanted to smarten the place up for all of its new visitors. The church is described in much finer detail than I can manage here.
The church of All Saints, Mundesley
On the wall of the church, we noticed a plaque dedicated to the residents of the London borough of Haringey who had died at Clarence House in Mundesley. We found The Clarence House later on in our walk, and it is a care home in what looks like it might have been another former hotel, but even looking online I can’t find anything about this perculiar dedication to people who came there from the capital. My theory is that some elderly residents of Haringey may have been moved out of bombed-out London to calmer, safer surroundings on the Norfolk coast, but I have no idea if I’m thinking along the right lines. If anyone reading this happens to know more, please do let me know.
Speaking of the war, there is a large amount of evidence of Second World War defences in Mundesley. As well as a few pillboxes, there is a gun emplacement, built in 1940 or 1941. There is a newspaper article here about the community’s efforts to have the gun emplacement protected by Historic England. The gun emplacements are a stark reminder of how worried Britain was during the war about the enemy invading by sea and its extensive efforts to protect the coastline. The guns themselves were removed by 1946, but under the structure remains what would have been an accomodation area complete with bed frames. The future of the gun emplacement is a concern, with the underground section apparently now full of water and coastal erosion bringing the whole thing ever close to the edge of the cliff. I’m not that into war history, but I’d recommend visiting the gun emplacement at Mundesley while you can.
The gun emplacement at Mundesley, pictured in 2016
Part of our walk also took in Sea View Road, an untarmacked street separate from the main road. We found the number of seemingly empty but reasonably well-kept properties along this road odd, eventually concluding that this is probably an area of second homes – rich people, coming from outside Norfolk, who own properties on the coast that they only live in for some parts of the year. It’s a growing point of contention around here, and is already a massive problem in places like Cornwall.
Our walk also took in this old brick kiln, right in the middle of what is now a caravan park and one of Mundesley’s listed buildings, and some evidence of coastal erosion:
With a little help from a bus, we were back where we started and some (very good) chips for lunch brought a lovely little trip to the seaside to an end. I left knowing more about this small village of the North Norfolk coast, and reminded that everywhere has a story to tell if you look hard enough. I urge you to go out there and explore!
In the game of cricket, a century is a significant milestone. Compiling one hundred runs with the bat is very difficult to do and the greats of the game are measured against each other by how many centuries they made. Sadly, despite it being my favourite sport, I have never been good enough at it to get anywhere near 50, let alone 100.
I have made a century of a different kind, though. This post, the one you’re currently reading, is the 100th I’ve made on my blog! When I started it I was 17 and coming towards the end of sixth form, which feels a very long time ago now. Often several months have passed between entries, but it has always been there as a place to write when I’ve wanted to get something out there. The vast majority of them have been almost entirely ignored, which is par for the course, but a few have unexpectedly gained traction.
To mark the occasion, I thought it would be interesting to look back over the previous 99 posts and pick out a few that mean a lot to me. Yes, I know it is self-indulgent, but my name is literally at the top. I’m not forcing you to be here!
The post that started this blog off was a piece of football writing. This was five years before I began writing a regular column for the Eastern Daily Press but it has always been sports journalism that has interested me. Published on 15th March 2010, it strikes me that the style of my writing has not actually changed that much. I think it has just developed to be a bit looser – that first post comes across as a tad uptight (not unlike me really!) and while I appear to be quite happy to express my opinion on the injury David Beckham had suffered playing for AC Milan, putting not only his participation in the 2010 World Cup but also his entire England career at risk, I get the feeling I’m trying too hard to sound like I write for The Guardian. I’ve definitely developed my writing so I can adapt to whatever publication I’m writing for.
A couple of things about this piece: Beckham never played for England again. My choice to replace him, James Milner, did indeed go to the World Cup that year but (spoiler alert) it did not go well for England and they were knocked out by Germany in the Last 16 – that match that contained Frank Lampard’s ghost goal, hastening the introduction of goalline technology. I also note that my radio station of choice back in 2010 was BBC Radio Norfolk. Not long after this I discovered Chris Moyles on Radio 1 and my life changed. Why, oh why, did I not get into that sort of thing sooner!?
I have written about it in various places before, but my dad died in 2014. Six years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 69. On 22nd May 2015, I wrote this piece about wearing my dad’s old Norwich City shirt to the Championship play-off final at Wembley Stadium. Dad was a lifelong Norwich fan and when my mum and dad split up the main thing we did together was go to Carrow Road with our season tickets. To this day I sit in the same seat, but I sit alone, with my dad’s to my left now taken by somebody else. In May 2015, Norwich had made it to the play-off final, having beaten arch rivals I***ich Town in the semi-finals, and were one game away from promotion to the Premier League. 40,000 Norwich fans made to the trip to London for the occasion, me included. I thought it would be fitting to wear dad’s shirt in his honour on the day.
My dad in his room in his care home, a Canary from beginning to end.
Having shared the story on social media, it proved popular and gained the attention of a journalist from the EDP, who contacted me to write up the story for the paper. I can’t seem to find the article on their website, but I promise you it happened. Norwich beat Middlesbrough 2-0 and made it to the top flight.
I picked this one because I like the way the writing flows and because I’ve plenty of use of this piece over the seven years since I wrote it. Wes Hoolahan, a diminutive Irishman, was my favourite Norwich City player for most of the decade he spent at the club. Full of skill, he could always make something happen and was there at some really good moments for Norwich. I was inspired to write this after he was the star in a 3-1 win over Bournemouth in the Premier League. He was 33 at the time and I felt I wanted to write about him while he was still around.
Wes Hoolahan
I was able to bring this back out again when Hoolahan announced he was leaving Norwich in 2018. It got a fair number of readers and is a piece I’m pretty pleased with.
Looking back, I was churning out writing pretty well in 2015. I’d had the successes of the dad’s shirt at Wembley story, Hoolahan and I’d also been chosen to write for the EDP’s new Fan Zone page. In October of that year, I went up to Durham to visit my former landlady, who was working there at the time. She set me a photo treasure hunt challenge – she gave me a list of things that I had to find and take photographs of. This was a great way to explore a city I didn’t know very well. As you can see from the post, I completed the task. This was my first real foray into personal blogging, something that I’ve done more of since and it has always proved reasonably popular – much to my surprise, as I’ve always felt I’m incredibly boring!
2015 again and another attempt at personal blogging. The dinosar sculptures in Crystal Palace Park in South London had always fascinated me and I had read loads about them but I had not visited them until December 2015. I spent one of the days I’d got off work to visit them and I blogged about my trip. I have been to see the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs several times since.
A two-parter. In October 2017, I made a solo (’twas ever thus) trip to London to watch Norwich City play Arsenal in a League Cup match at the Emirates Stadium. I blogged about the trip, with the first part being all about the football match and the second part being about my walk along a disused railway line the following day. Reading it you can tell I enjoyed myself and it makes me want to do something like this again.
When I’m on social media, I’ve never been able to resist arguing with people when I see them posting overtly racist, sexist or homophobic material. Basically, I will call out the arseholes. People tell me the solution is to ignore it, but I haven’t managed it yet. I just continue calling them out until I need to take a break from social media completely to get my head together.
Bored with seeing women-fearing blokey blokes taking every opportunity to be disparaging about women’s sport, I wrote this piece in 2019. I don’t claim to fight the feminist fight on behalf of women, I’m just a guy that likes sport and I don’t care whether those participating have willies or not. I wrote this so I could link to it when I was arguing with one of these blokey blokes, rather than having to write the same arguments out every time. It feels more relevant than ever now, with the England women’s football team becoming European champions last year.
This was the first time I had written about music and my love for Arctic Monkeys. The band changed my life when I discovered them, far later than everyone else had. They changed my hair style, they changed the clothes I wore, the way I saw music as an art form. I wrote this piece about the album they had released in 2018, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, and according to my stats it still gets occasional views from the many Monkeys fans around the world. I enjoyed writing it so much that I have since written about their other six albums: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006), Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007), Humbug (2009), Suck It And See (2011), AM (2013) and The Car (2022).
On the face of it, this is just another piece of personal blogging about walking 14 miles – Aylsham to North Walsham and back again – with my friend Katie. But when I read it back, I realised that it was actually about as gushing as I’ve ever been with the written word. It is really about friendship, and how the little gang that had taken me in when I’d been so alone (Katie, Megan and Sarah) had made such a difference to my life. Little did we know that the pandemic was just around the corner and our lives would change so much.
The pandemic was a strange time, wasn’t it? It all happened so quickly, and while it felt like it dragged on, it feels like a lifetime ago now. As supermarket staff, we were actually given letters to show to the police should we be pulled over and asked why we were out and about. Extraordinary stuff. And can anyone remember when Sainsbury’s was only open to NHS staff for an hour every morning, and they would play Captain Tom Moore’s charity version of You’ll Never Walk Alone over the PA system!? Strange times. Anyway, in April 2020 I decided to write about the things I was doing, watching and playing to get myself through lockdown. I think in years to come I’ll be glad I did this – it’ll be a sort of record of that (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime event.
A piece I wrote about an afternoon spent sifting through some of the many comics I keep in a box under my bed. Not much to say about it, but it got a decent number of readers and people seemed to like it.
I don’t think I would have written this piece if I hadn’t done the comics one first. Last March, I went to a shop on the Dereham to Fakenham road called Corners (now defunct) and found this football magazine from 1964. I picked out some interesting things from it, most of which were along the lines of ‘weren’t things different back then?’.
I was full of angst about turning 30. I find it easier to write than I do to speak, so I blogged about it. Basically, I was about to hit that milestone and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I am glad I wrote this. Turns out, being 30 feels very much like being 29, but this did me good. I later chose 30 songs that had been the soundtrack to my 30 years and blogged about that too.
If I was a musician, this one would be described as my biggest hit to date. Last September, I went to London for a couple of days with my mum, her other half and their two friends. The hotel we stayed in was so awful it was actually funny. I have just checked the stats and 213 people have read this so far – that’s a lot, considering I usually get 10 pairs of eyes on something I’ve written if I’m lucky. This encouraged me to document my own life instead of writing about sport the whole time. A rule I stick to is never to construct situations purely for the benefit of the blog – like the way people on TikTok (bah) who go to places only to show off to their followers. I simply go somewhere, enjoy myself, take a few photos and spend a while writing about it when I get home. It seems to work.
Finally, my attempt to get into the festive spirit. This piece about my memories of Christmas as a child seemed to strike a chord with people, who were reminded of cherished moments from the past themselves by reading it. I loved that I was able to do that for them. Some I hadn’t heard from in years got in touch to say they enjoyed it, which was a really lovely way to round off the year.
There we have it then, my picks of the 99 posts I have written for this blog to date. I have pretty much decided that making a living out of writing isn’t going to happen, but I still get enough enjoyment out of it that I will carry it on as a hobby regardless. So, here’s to many more posts on this blog. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
If you have any thoughts about the posts I’ve shown you here, do feel free to leave a comment under this post or contact me. I’d love to hear from you!
All the signs point to these being bleak times: a lot of us can’t afford to put the heating on, Covid is still refusing to go away – like a double glazing salesman who won’t take no for an answer – and Sky News has a permanent graphic in the top corner of the screen telling us which set of workers is on strike today. At the time of writing, it’s the postal workers.
Yet, despite all of that, I was cheerful and optimistic when I drove home from work for the last time before Christmas last night. I’d even made a playlist of my favourite Christmas songs to soundtrack my 30 mile journey. I’ve written about this banger by The Darkness before but I also highly recommend White Wine In The Sun by Tim Minchin.
For those of us in retail, the busiest period of the year is almost over. We won’t struggle to find a space in the car park, have five trolleys full of left behinds or have to put up with god awful Mariah Carey covers any longer once the doors are closed on Christmas Eve.
Ignoring the utter misery that is January, we also have the new year on the horizon – a chance to reflect on what’s gone before and what we want to happen in the year ahead.
Thinking about it, my 2022 has been about establishing a base, mentally, from which I can build on. Due to factors, I had to move back in with my mum in the spring. Having just turned 30, this is hardly something to be proud of but my mental health has improved dramatically by having a warm, loving and stable home life. I now feel that I can make decisions about the future direction of my life with confidence.
I would like a new job. I think I’ve said ‘this Christmas will be my last in retail’ every year since about 2012 but maybe this really will be it. That’s very much a work in progress though. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ll end this piece with a few photos from my year. Thanks for reading, and however you’re spending Christmas, I hope it’s a happy one.
With mum on a chilly January walk on the beachMy positive Covid tests when it laid me low in FebruaryMy first day out of isolation, MarchA car catches fire in the car park at work, MarchBreakfast outside at the now-defunct Corners near Dereham, AprilDay out in Cromer, MayWith mum in Cromer, MayAt The Killers gig at Carrow Road in JuneFriday night drink in Wells-next-the-sea, JuneWatching Norwich at Dereham Town, JulyPet-sitting Oscar, JulyWatching England women in the Euros at the fan park in Manchester, JulyMum with England batter Jonny Bairstow at Old Trafford, JulyWatching England v South Africa at Old Trafford, JulyWith my friend Gavin at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach in August With my friends and family on my 30th birthday in AugustOn top of Norfolk’s highest point, Beeston Bump, September My night wandering around London in September Happy bunny… receiving the new Arctic Monkeys album in OctoberAt the Blossoms gig at the UEA in NovemberLovely winter walk at Castle Acre, December
LEE PAYNE 