For reasons loosely tied up with the binder twine round my trousers or the length of straw permanently jutting out of the corner of my mouth, I am mistaken often for an expert on quaint old Norfolk customs.

I do inform those who ask we still hold the odd Coronation street party, Jubilee tea and Thanksgiving supper to mark end of a war or start of a new blackberry-picking season. We also celebrate openly when a whooping-cough epidemic is wiped out or a nasty pothole is filled properly.

It all stems from an age when we had to make our own amusements to complement the rhythms of a Norfolk largely at ease  with itself.

Rural. communities were small, closely knit, bound to the soil and eternal secrets of overgrown headlands  and bountiful hedgerows.

Ironically, country life has lost much of its spontaneity while demands for it to be revived are on the increase. New villagers, invariably drawn by ancient tales of rustic rituals designed to keep indigenous remnants out of mischief before satellite dishes, mobile phones, real ale, paintball in the forest and growing genetically modified cucumbers, hunger for them old anniversaries and antics.

Happenings that used to occur so easily no-one thought them unusual, or even peculiar to a particular area. 

Now assume a mystique bordering on the supernatural. 

Take the traditional Norfolk routine of dickey dawdling where rival hamlets reflected virtues of a gentler age by pitting their slowest donkeys against each other on the last Saturday in July.

The animal taking longest to complete the two-furlong course on neutral territory, while deemed not to have stopped or taken on board any form of sustenance at any stage of the journey, was crowned King Dickey in the first week of August – if the competition had ended.

There have been calls to revive this rural delight in west of the county but using traffic wardens on old-fashioned bicycles instead of perambulating donkeys. 

Arts Council backing is promised but purists say it simply won’t be the same. They have a point.

We have seen the socially significant and deeply moving Soak the Suffragette manifestation of Edwardian country house gatherings reduced to a garden fete knockabout sideshow called Drench the Wench.

So politically incorrect it mocks all progress made in certain departments since Saturday night television was invented.

We have heard the brave new custodians  of revels, festivals and wakes confusing swan upping at Downham with pint downing at Upton. 

We have winced at the questioning of fertility inducing merits of rolling pork cheeses along disused railway lines.

We know there is reluctance to accept the Dunmow Flitch as a Norfolk custom in origin despite firm evidence it was popular in the 13th century as the Dunhame Itch.

Married couples in either Grete or Little Dunhame who could prove they had not uttered a civil word to each other during a period of at least seven years and a day after the wedding were given leave to separate along with a voucher for a large side of salted beef.

It all adds up to serious doubts about the amount of due care and attention likely to be paid by those claiming to seek country anchors in a fast-changing world.

From well undressing for hardy maidens on January 15 and forelock tugging for those of a subservient disposition on any five dates in October, well-loved local ceremonies and customs must be retained as comforting fixture points on our calendar.

I recall a visit to the county by a sort of modern Clement Scott working for one of the posh Sunday papers determined to send all its readers to the same spot to find rural tranquillity. 

Here’s an example of his poetic offering:

“Hayblown lanes by day and salt-scented  waterways at night help us to reassess our sympathies and antipathies and to relearn the grammar of a mystic communion we are forced to shun in the shouting capital”

Exactly. Nothing we like better than a good old mystic reunion, even if we’re not always prepared for prying eyes, flapping ears and wagging tongues as we commune mystically on our own midden at Cold Comfort Farm. 

Sitting cross-legged on the edge of a harvest field calling upon the rustic god Horry Krishna to protect the crop can do more damage to your loincloth and buskins than to your image if the weather should turn contrary.

Still, there are certain rituals we like to sustain in order to emphasise Norfolk still has no qualms about being slightly behind the times.

A penchant for Junepole dancing fits that bill perfectly while the ancient sport of dwile flonking has to be made for those who love combining ale with action, beer with bonhomie.

Other much-cherished futility rites well worth preserving must include ferret trussing, coypu bothering, bullace chomping, rhubarb crumbling, tourist taunting, bullock whopping, roadsign swapping, sugarbeet piling, haystack tiling, bunion airing, taxbill tearing, smock tactics, ladybird counting, pitchfork parading swivelling signposts, hogweed takeaways, sowthistle soup, tractor trundling, blindfold courting and sponsored sauntering.

Something there, surely, to suit all tastes when it comes to keeping Norfolk different.