Flat: Return to Felixstowe

Flat is a series of pieces on some trips I made into the heart of East Anglia with a little bit of music listening thrown in for good measure along the way. This is the fourth part of what will comprise seven posts and it covers the time I spent back in Felixstowe where I paid another visit to Treasure Chest.

You know, all through the weekend I had been kicking myself over the fact I hadn’t bought that copy of The Tantric Tradition by Agehananda Bharati, because I realised pretty much as soon as I was driving back to Woodford, that I definitely wanted it, needed it even. The desire to get my hands on it was no doubt amplified by the fact that when I returned home and checked it out online, I was more than a little staggered to see that copies of the 1992 Rider Books edition were now selling for well over 35 quid. The copy in Treasure Chest was just 3, being a 70’s reprint of the 1965 Rider Books original, and it was in pretty good condition too, so in terms of value, hopefully in terms of content as well, I knew that I just couldn’t go wrong.

There was already the nagging thought in my mind that someone else might have come along and snapped up that copy, bought it in those couple of days the shop would have been open since I had last been in there, although in reality the chances of that happening would have probably been pretty remote. All the same I sincerely hoped that it would not have been the case, but of course there was no way of telling until I got back to Treasure Chest to check if it was still on the shelf. The point was that the sooner I got myself to Felixstowe the better, then I would be able to get my hands on the copy and that would be the end of it. I was pretty damn sure it was going to contain some fascinating information as far as meditations on the subtle body were concerned, along with its composition and manipulation of the energies needed to aid the arousal of the primal power of kundalini. Otherwise it would be doubtful I would get to read it for quite some time, if ever. To fork out nearly 40 quid for it was going to be too high a price to pay, way too high, especially because it would be for something which I didn’t really know the full contents of. It was just a hunch on my part that, as far as The Tantric Tradition was concerned, I was on the right track, just a hunch that it would prove to be most useful, and that for 3 quid and a ride down to Felixstowe from Cromer, it was more than worth investing in both the time and effort.

By the time I got out of Cromer it was 1.30 in the afternoon and I calculated that if the going was good and there were no nasty surprises, it would take me around 2 hours to drive to Felixstowe, which would mean I would roll up on the seafront at around 3.30 in the afternoon. This would give me more than enough time to walk by the sweet North Sea and then take a hike up the hill into the centre of town in order to call back in on Treasure Chest. Yes, to once again walk through those maze-like rooms and corridors of the book stacked shop, and once I got to the end of it, reaching the section on Eastern Religions and Philosophies plus Occult, be able to pick up my precious copy of The Tantric Tradition. So I was happy I had followed the A148 to the end of the line and got to Cromer. Whilst Walsingham, my original place of intended destination, might have been a nice idea, in fact nice enough to get me out of the house and on the road again, I was glad I had not followed through on that part of the deal. In my own peculiar way I’d enjoyed Cromer, enjoyed my stroll around town which I had undertaken after having first parked up in the midday sun. Then I had more than enjoyed the box of fresh fish and chips I had eaten there, sitting under a solitary tree looking over an empty green, with the hot tasty fried stuff whilst swilling it down with an ice cold can of Coke. When the time was right things didn’t really get any better than that, at least not as far as I was concerned, but now that time was gone and I had to move on.

It did not take me long to make my way out of town, and once onto the A140 I was surprised to see signs which indicated the city of Norwich was a lot closer to Cromer than what I thought. This reinforced my conviction that my idea to go back down to Felixstowe was a good one, because the distance simply wasn’t going to be too far at all. After leaving Cromer it was back to giving the rest of Def Leppard by Def Leppard a spin on the car stereo, picking up where I left off after We Belong earlier in the day. Now I wasrocking right on through the rest of it, all the way up to a powerful closing brace of Wings of an Angel and Blind Faith which brought proceedings to an end. It was a very good album in my opinion and which more than restored the band’s credentials after their less than impressive Songs From the Sparkle Lounge from back in 2008, maybe not quite in the same league as the likes of High ‘N’ Dry or Hysteria but most certainly not bad nevertheless.

Yes, Songs From the Sparkle Lounge had been a somewhat under-whelming affair if truth be told, in fact if push came to shove I would rate X their 2002 effort as being above it in terms of quality, something which for a lot of Def Leppard fans would be probably seen as taking the cake. Mainly due to the fact that at the time of its release, X was heavily panned by many for being too soft, too poppy, with not enough punch to it. In many respects that was true, yet some of its songs were really, really good – poppy not rocky for sure – but as far as the raw material was concerned, not bad at all and the album deserved to have fared better than what it did, which was tank. Needless to say the critics stuck the boot in, but then when it comes to Def Leppard they always did, so that was no great surprise. Songs From the Sparkle Lounge however was a case of the boys trying a little too hard, trying regain lost ground and unfortunately not pulling it off, and maybe that was because it didn’t have so many decent songs on it.

The good news was that Def Leppard was a different story and if you don’t believe me check out tracks like Let’s Go, All Time High and Battle Of My Own to get an idea of what I’m going on about. In terms of listening pleasure it had in abundance all those things which Def Leppard are famous for; multi layered harmonics built on beds of crunchily impressive electric guitars underpinned by powerful bass and supersonic drums, before all being mixed and polished to a high quality sheen to give them their trademark sound. So anyway, Def Leppard was back on the Prius sound system and it was on nice and loud since I needed to stay awake, alert and on the button whilst I took on the A140 with a belly full of fish and chips inside me from Cromer. When it came to things such as energy input, Def Leppard more than did the trick. They create what I can only describe as high chakra music, from the throat chakra on upwards to be precise, going straight to the centre of the head. In many ways it is pure vishuddhi, and if you want to know what that means I can only point out the names of some of their albums – Adrenalize, Hysteria, Euphoria – and the names of some of their songs – Energised, Disintegrate, Invincible, Hallucinate – to give you a clue. And get this, no one else but bona fide rock royalty gods would ever come up with lyrics like –

I’m on an all time high
Never giving up, gonna live it up, never gonna die

They were close you see, close to eternity, wilfully blind possibly to the tragedy of their own mortality, but then again, so what?

It didn’t take long for me to get down to Norwich, it would have been even quicker if there hadn’t been a distinct lack of dual carriageway on that stretch of the A140 from Cromer. This meant that on a couple of occasions I got stuck behind some slow moving traffic, but it just went with the territory as far as the roads in that part of the world were concerned, farmers with tractors, dozy locals pottering along in clapped out cars and all the rest of it. If truth be told I didn’t really mind, it was still possible to see the flat countryside, to taste the life of humanity as lived in a way which was far more interesting than what I would have ever got from just driving straight down a motorway. Inhabitation clusters were swung through then left behind, with the green fields and blue skies of East Anglia spun woven into a significant uniformity above and around them. So it was all good, more than enough to make me feel grateful for simply being alive, to be able to drive through it and do it all so easily from the behind the wheel of my Prius.

Nevertheless I have to admit that I did get a little confused when navigating my way around Norwich on a new road system which took me to the east side of the city and past the airport. It was just beyond where the A140 split that the route became decidedly tricky with lots of roundabouts to negotiate and signs to follow, where the chances of taking a wrong turn became more and more of a distinct possibility. In fact at one point that’s what I did and realised too late that I needed to drive down the A147 for a little while longer so as to connect back up again with the A140. Once I was on the A147 after that slight wrong turn, I then took my eye off the ball for just a split second and swung out of the lane I was in only to nearly get clipped by a van which was bombing along right behind me. Yes, nearly got clipped in the fast lane on the A147 just south of Norwich. If that had happened it might have sent me spinning, a high velocity transfer into the lands of who knows where? It would have come along after 4 hours on the road, over an hour since after I’d eaten that box of tasty fish and chips back in Cromer. Energy sag, eye off the ball, one false move, whatever you wanna call it, might so easily have spun me out of control and over the barrier, flying through the air a potential dead man. If that had happened it might well have been curtains. It was a little bit of a wake-up call, a blink of an eye then you’re gone situation, something which on another day might have easily cost me my life.

After the Def Leppard came to an end on my Prius hard drive it was straight into Hysteria, Def Leppard’s classic 1987 blockbuster album which had taken them four years to make and seen their drummer lose his arm in the process by way of a nasty car accident. It is the work which has forever sealed their place in rock history. Building on the success of Pyromania from 1983, it isan album which has now sold over 25 million copies since it was first released, containing a collection of songs in which not a single note is out of place and which after countless listens still yields new discoveries. So I had no choice but to keep Hysteria on the Prius system, to keep it loud because it sounded amazing, and now with an extra little bit of punch to it due to the fact I was listening to a 2017 re-master which I had recently purchased from my local HMV Store down in Westfield, Stratford. The monster riff of Women kicked things off followed by a hypersonic Rocket before smashing straight into Animal, an amazing opening triple in anyone’s book, then followed by the equally incredible Love Bites, Pour Some Sugar on Me and Armageddon It. Six of the best and it is no exaggeration to say that Def Leppard have probably never played a show in the last 30 years without featuring at least three or four of those opening half dozen songs from Hysteria in it. In the case of Pour Some Sugar on Me, the number of shows which they haven’t played it can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, make that the same for Animal too. When I got to Don’t Shoot Shotgun, eighth song in, it was time for a little break because my ears were bouncing round the walls of the cab of my Prius and I needed to concentrate on my driving. By now I was also over halfway down the A140, well past Norwich and within shotgun shootin’ distance of the A14 which would then take me all the way to the east coast of Suffolk. And who would have thought it? It had only seemed like ten minutes ago since I had left Cromer back up on the north coast of Norfolk!

It was with some degree of satisfaction that I hit Felixstowe just after 3.30 in the afternoon, pretty much bang on time as far as my estimation for the journey was concerned. Coming back so soon just seemed to reinforce my feeling that I really liked the place, it being an end of the line road to nowhere kinda town, something which suited my disposition just fine in a washed up kind of way. Yet at the same time there could be no way of hiding the fact that it was home to the largest container port in the country with all the heavy duty stuff which went with it. A dual carriageway which pretty much ran all the way to the edge of the town added to my ease of entry, something no doubt intended to facilitate maximum efficiency for all things to do with the port, for those countless containers all stacked up and ready for action. I was able to bomb along, down to the final roundabout and straight across it, then be within close range of the seafront with just one set of lights across the rail tracks to go through before I was there.

those container stacks
jacked high on the horizon
in the light of a setting sun
bid me to frame them
with halo rings and Vikings
sprung from a song once sung

That was all that was needed to reach the sea, where once again there was room to breathe, with the east coast air soon filling my lungs, urging me to make the most of it. Just like a few days ago when walking on the seafront, there was a sense of movement out on the waters of the North Sea, something dynamic going on, massive container ships on the horizon, either making their way into port or coming out of it past Landguard Point lying at the mouth of the River Orwell.

Felixstowe had three bookshops which for a place its size seemed quite exceptional, where these days many similar towns have none. The overall feel of the place made me think it had escaped the attentions of those who come along and ruin things in about five seconds flat. Guess they just hadn’t reached there yet! No doubt it was in their sights and at some point the day would come. It benefited from being stuck out on the coast, the fact that from there you had no place else left to go. To travel further up you had to go back towards Ipswich and join the A12, and it was pretty much the same deal if you also wanted to go down as well, heading back along the A14 and then over the Orwell into Essex. There was no doubt some parts of Felixstowe were a little bit on the rough and ready side, but the fact that a huge container port was located there meant it was far from being a seaside dump. Things were in motion in some kind of way, never static, always busy and on the go. Trucks, lorries, pick-ups, all of them parked by the side of the road or in container parks, waiting to load up or drop off their cargo boxes before setting out to practically anywhere in the country. That was the deal, that was the story.

By the time I was walking along the seafront the cloud cover which had been there on my ride down through the heart of Suffolk and Norfolk had melted away. It was now brilliant blue sky above me with a high sun shining, illuminating everything in crystal clarity. After hiking up into town to hit the high street, I pretty much made straight for Treasure Chest, where after walking in through the door and going to the back of it, the book I wanted, the book which had been preying on my mind the whole damn weekend, was exactly where I had left it. In no time at all I picked it up out of the box and felt glad, relieved I hadn’t blown it after the opportunity had first presented itself to me on the Friday. Once the copy of The Tantric Tradition was in my hands I was able to relax, to linger for a little while longer and have another browse where as it happened I picked up another couple of books in the process.

Five Wisdom Energies was a Buddhist work from about 20 years ago, based on what are known as the Five Dhyani Buddhas and their psychological component parts, and for just a couple of quid it looked interesting enough for me to want to buy it. I also found a Mandala Books edition of H Saddhatissa’s biography of the Buddha, simply called The Life of The Buddha and which dated back to the late 1960’s. Although a slim volume of barely a hundred pages it had useful information on this great sage who down the centuries has been such an awe inspiring influence and inspiration for so many seekers on the path. The copy looked like it had been left out in the sun for at least 10 years because its pages were yellowed and somewhat brittle, but they had aged in a good way, there was something about that copy of The Life of the Buddha which made it look a rugged work of art and I was glad to have it. The main text kept things simple whilst still going over the pivotal events of the Buddha’s life, which of course revolved around his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree over 2500 years ago in what is now the state of Bihar in north India.

Once I was out of Treasure Chest I was feeling pretty pleased with myself since I had successfully accomplished what I had come to do, this time without any black magicians in sight, imagined or otherwise. On my way back down to the seafront I dropped into a Cafe Nero to have a cup of tea and a toasted panna cotta because it had been a few hours since I had eaten those Cromer fish and chips. The Cafe Nero was not that busy, in fact it was pretty empty, and it was good to sit there in its shadows towards the back, looking out upon a sunny Felixstowe high street which was relatively free of people. It was an opportunity for me to do an inevitable check through of all the stuff on my mobile phone, most of it junk, naturally. Of course it was also a chance for me to have a little browse through those books I had just bought from Treasure Chest, focusing most of my attention on that precious copy of Bharati’s The Tantric Tradition. Although an academic work, it seemed to contain lots of useful information on the world of tantra, useful to the kind of layman who fancied himself to be a little bit more than that, which of course was someone like me.

After my tea and tasty panna cotta snack I continued down the high street in the direction of the sea front, enjoying the late afternoon fresh sea air, congratulating myself for having had that flash of inspiration back in Cromer to head on down to Felixstowe in order to wrap up my little piece of unfinished business from the other day. The music was back on again in the Prius after my return was done and dusted, with those cranes and containers stacks of the port soon fast receding into the distance behind me. It was back to Def Leppard’s Hysteria, picking up pretty much where I’d left off, songs like Excitable taking me through to Love and Affection which in all its deep and meaningless glory was the perfect album closer. Bye bye Hysteria, see you again sometime. After that I had to go for some more High ‘N’ Dry, the album which had started the whole damn thing off for me a few days ago, this highly enjoyable mini Def Leppard related odyssey of mine, driving deep within the flatlands of incredible East Anglia.

Finally, after High ‘N’ Dry, just to top and tail things, there came another blast of Florence + The Machine, another five or six tracks from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. What began with Florence + The Machine on the Friday when heading up to Braintree and ultimately Felixstowe, ended with her on Monday as I bombed back down the M11 to Woodford, early evening shadows drawing in and a deep orange setting sun low on the horizon over to the West.

And meanwhile a man was falling from space
And every day I wore your face
Like an atmosphere around me
The satellite beside me
And meanwhile a man was falling from space
As he hit the earth I left this place
Let the atmosphere surround me
The satellite beside me