Living on the edge has largely been my lot since dabbling grass-stained toes in a nearby gravel pit and tempting post-war pollution into the open.
A village upbringing at the heart pf agricultural Norfolk found me loitering with no intent on hazy headlands rather than digging in enthusiastically to impress the farmyard selectors. It looked too much like hard work out there among cattle, crops and weather-beaten critics of dilatory lads.
A seven-year grammar school detention in Swaffham fashioned mutual acceptance of a “dew diffrunt” mantra in the classroom. I decided to specialise from the age of 12 in the only two subjects for which I showed any appetite or aptitude, English and history. Mentors in other fields seemed happy enough to let me graze on the outskirts of mainstream education.
Over three decades of full-time endeavour with local newspapers and radio left me tantalisingly short of that enclosure reserved for the media’s top movers and shakers. Failure to grasp the basics of shorthand plus a lifetime fear of anything with knobs, switches and wires may have counted against me, along with lack of a driving licence nd occasional lapses in deferential behaviour.
As a soccer scribe joyously elevated to covering Norwich City’s varied fortunes under contrasting characters, hard man Ron Saunders and flamboyant John Bond, I came to prefer a touchline of lonely independence to the dug-out of cosy subservience. Growing suspicions about how the professional game would fall foul of ludicrous transfer fees and wages along with cheap celebrity standards proved only too well founded.
As a weekday wireless operator, always reminding those listening in stereo I was the one “torkin proper” in the middle, I gloried in the early freshness and freedom of a local BBC station allowed to use words like “Indigenous,” “parochial” and “squit.”
For me, the “Made in Norfolk” accumulator ran dry in 1995. Current cuts looming over Radio Norfolk output make a mockery of so much initial freshness and homespun delivery.
I’ve been ploughing freelance furrows since as writer, broadcaster and entertainer Of course, “freelance” can mean existing on the periphery of just about everything, although it is a couple of steps up from “just resting” for actors and “contemplating my future” for redundant hunnycart drivers,
I have camped on the fringes of showbusiness, not least as soulful lead vocalist with Captain Boyton’s Benefit Band in the mid 1960s. The Norfolk Sound (often known as Sugar Beat) created by local press characters is reputed to have reminded The Rolling Stones and Beatles not to take success for granted. Reckon that worked okay.
My role as leader of the travelling Press Gang entertainers for 25 years around village halls and other community meeting places underlined a need to stay true to local culture at a time when it could so easily be smothered in bland uniformity.
A mightily modest career as player with Caister Cricket Club saw me living meagrely on edges from an anxious crease, laughing at any batsman naive enough to miss one of my straight spinners and lingering in the outfield listening to the silence and dreading a steepler coming my way.
So where has all this flirting with the real things of life led me? Still living on the edge at Cromer next door to the Old German Ocean. That’s what I call the North Sea in order to attract an air of venerability in these image-conscious days. We moved the Skipper family seat here nearly 35 years ago.
Perhaps it’s perfect location for someone not quite sure of the best way to counter fears of Norfolk turning into everywhere else. Cromer may be a microcosm of a county trying to marry best of the old with least worrying of the new. Despite being a resident of Henry Bloggs’s domain for so long I am none the wiser which shore we are pulling for.
That deep unease occasionally spiced with bursts of anger has characterised much of my writing and public speaking in recent years, although a precious Norfolk sense of humour continues to pull me back from the precipice of utter despair.
I fully admit to betraying a fair amount of evidence to reinforce a reputation as someone who welcomes progress as long as it doesn’t change anything. However, I constantly celebrate some of Norfolk’s gloriously durable qualities, especially those displayed by colourful and life-enhancing characters still encountered along the way , mostly in trend-resistant corners of an old empire where they tend to flourish.
Even the most ardent prophets of boom must recognise and respect these traditional virtues for what they are – true embodiments of that “dew diffrunt” mantra so many applaud even while too few keep the faith.
Living on the edge brings coastal hazards like flooding, erosion plus lazy ole winds that go straight through you, along with man-made pressures based on booming tourism, rising numbers of second homes and loss of local community character and cohesion.
For all that, there’s little to match talking to yourself at the end of Cromer Pier on a frisky January day, blaming Sheringham for sending choppy waters and rest of Norfolk for taking up too much space during rest of the year.
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