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. Following on from Ridin’ Out To Yarmouth this is the seventh part of seven posts and it covers my trip up into Norfolk to visit the quite rightly famous seaside town of Great Yarmouth and then back again through the badlands of Suffolk.
As I continued on my walk in towards the middle of town it soon became clear to me that as an old fishing port Great Yarmouth had certain exotic features to it which you might not find in your average holiday seaside resort, or maybe you would, but not quite in a way so close to the surface. Soon I was in an area which was possibly busier at night than what it was in the middle of the day, although even then, at around 1.30 on a Friday afternoon, it was still nicely ticking over. Top Gem Chinese takeaway decked out in red and gold was not yet open for business, but next door a Turkish barbers called Top Fade most certainly was. And it got me thinking which Top came first or was it just the case I was in the Top part of town? Both looked pretty distinct, not in the hands of the same owner that was for sure, so what was it about Top to have a Gem and a Fade right next to each other? Who knows? All the same it was nice to stand there and ponder this Yar Yar potential mystery whilst I tapped a few lines into my Samsung Notes outside a Premier Store Local. It seemed to be doing good business, a constant stream of punters popping in and out, possibly most of them to buy tickets for the Euromillions draw that night, a Rollover which was going to be a big one, where visions of Majestic, Merlin, Showboat and Ceasar’s Palace from the seafront suddenly came flooding back to me.
Further along from Top Gem and Top Fade was a place by the name of The Halal Meat Shop where a bunch of Muslim guys were standing around both inside and out, all in high spirits, talking in a language I didn’t understand, and with no women in sight. In Liberty’s bar however there were plenty of women, all of them white and many of them sitting outside smoking cigarettes, with chilled drinks in long tall glasses on the tables in front of them, women with tattoos chatting to men who also had tattoos, men who might have been a throwback to the old days, when tattoos were only on people you ought to be scared of. Liberty’s bar was opposite Wing Le, a Chinese restaurant apparently serving up high class cuisine, at least according to the banner hanging across its front window, and maybe it did when you were six pints into a night on the town knocking back those jar jars. Not far along from Wing Le and on the same side of the road was Peggotty’s, a bar which offered up pretty much the same scene as Liberty’s, and where again plenty of white boys and girls were smoking and drinking outside it. Guess it was just a case of Friday afternoon rest and relaxation Great Yarmouth style, a chance to kick off the traces, start the weekend early, although it looked like some of the punters outside Peggotty’s might have been on a permanent weekend, not that I knew for sure of course, but they were certainly well settled in, no doubt about that, not going anywhere except back inside for another cold one.
The number of white people hanging around the alcohol scene in Great Yarmouth was really quite striking, noticeable to the point of possibly being a little bit disconcerting, so many men and women just hanging around drinking, smoking and chatting. But hey, it ain’t me who runs the show on Judgement Day, if that is, there even happens to be one! Further along from Peggotty’s was Jasiek, a Polish supermarket very well stocked and which clearly catered to a substantial local customer base who probably played a significant part in keeping the local economy going. Directly opposite Jasiek was a shop called Grasshoppers which had a display of pipes, bongs and a whole load of other paraphernalia in the window which, as far as I could work out, could only ever be used for smoking dope, skunk, or whatever it is you wanna call it. Must have been a healthy local scene goin’ on I guess, and what better place to get stoned out of your mind than in a faded seaside town on the edge of the Norfolk Broads? Next to Grasshoppers was Pandos, another Chinese restaurant hoping to entice the punters with numerous specials being the order of the day. Across the road from Pandos was a house boarded up and completely painted black which had a dozen or so letter boxes on the outside of it with bells next to them. From the door of this strange looking building a group of loud talking women in heavy make-up suddenly appeared from out of a cloud of vape smoke. Not much imagination needed to guess what kind of place it might possibly be. Not that is, if you had an imagination like mine. Yes, it really was a bit of a saucy scene in Great Yarmouth and one which was obviously popular and pretty well established.
Got the impression that since it was stuck out on the east coast of Norfolk and miles from anywhere, this was most definitely how it was and it showed no signs of changing anytime soon, and anyway, why the hell should it? Clearly it was not something which had suddenly appeared overnight, but rather built up gradually over the course of time in order to get to where it was now; a fruity barrel of a boozy fish place with more than a hint of an exotic tickle about it. Probably was the case that many times in the past Yarmouth would have been choc-full of sailors hitting their spots before heading out upon the great wide ocean and possibly it still will be that way for many years to come. Walking through this part of town, which probably got even spicier once the sun went down, I next came across a series of lanes and narrow alleys tightly packed with small shops on either side of them. Junk shops, antique shops, spiritual healing zones by way of Wicca and candles, Zen and Tao, along with a couple of cafes in which you could sit and eat. They all served to conjure up an atmosphere thick and rich, all of which led down to the old South Quay, where to top it off, stood a large sex shop. When I reached this point, standing outside the premises in front of a winking Pirate, I decided to turn around and check out the rest of the town centre before pushing on back towards the seafront.
It really was quite noticeable, whilst I was wandering around, just how many people looked kind of wrecked, smashed, pretty much out of it, a fair number of them in wheelchairs or on mobility scooters, some who looked to be the same age as me or not much older, but more than a little bit fucked up. A couple of months previously I had ended up in Cromer on the North Norfolk coast and in many respects it had been a similar scene, but Great Yarmouth was on a different scale, like an epicentre of a lifestyle which had led to people ending up like this. Then again, they did not look particularly unhappy because of it, so who the hell was I to cast any kind of aspersions? Maybe it was the early October sun shining high which was making things appear not quite as bad as they might have been, or maybe it was just me seeing things through the wrong kind of lens. All the same I wondered how it might have been there on a cold grey day in the middle of November, standing beneath under an overcast sky with only a few pennies in your pocket.
The main square had a small market in the middle of it, along with a number of food stalls serving up fare such as burgers, hot dogs, and chips with an impressive choice of curry sauces, along with large Styrofoam cups of tea and coffee. All of them seemed to be doing pretty good business, all the seats outside were taken, on which the majority of people either eating, drinking hot drinks or smoking cigarettes whilst leisurely chatting to each other. Walking past one of the market meat stalls I overheard an old woman questioning the red faced butcher as to whether or not he had put two chops in her bag. She sounded suspicious, like she thought she might have been getting ripped off, which was something he was not best pleased about; all in all a bit of a strange one. There was on old department store called Palmers overlooking the market square and it might have been there when Great Yarmouth had seen better days, but now it looked like it was just about hanging on. Further along from Palmers was Normans, a large furniture store full of bumper size sofas at knock down prices, and for some strange reason I thought it might have been better if had been called Saxons. Dunno why.
Got to admit I had kind of been hoping to have come across a HMV Store on my walk through town, and this was because the new Echo and the Bunnymen album had just been released – The Stars, The Ocean and The Moon – a work on which classic Bunnymen songs from the early 80’s had been transformed and re-imagined in the form of new arrangements. In other words the Bunnymen were going down what was now the well trodden path of re-hashing old material recorded when they had been much more popular than what they were now. Being a bit of a sad old case, I quite naturally wanted to pick up a copy as soon as I could, in fact I had been very much looking forward to it coming out. Looking forward to picking up a copy on CD – not vinyl, not download, not Spotify – just an out of fashion, little loved CD. Guess it was the case that not so long ago a place like Great Yarmouth would have probably had at least a couple of record shops, but now it seemed they were fast becoming a thing of the past. As I continued my wandering around the town centre I realised there was nothing looking remotely hopeful as far as it having a HMV Store was concerned, nowhere even coming close. If there ever had been one it had clearly bitten the dust a long time ago.
From the market square I took a side street heading back in the direction of the seafront. I had been walking for around 2 hours but I was not that hungry, my tasty cheese and tomato toastie from the Anchor Gardens Cafe having kept any further hunger pangs at bay. I could have done with another cup of tea however, my mouth was as dry as a chip, all in a town where there were a lot of chips. It had been hot work walking around in the October sun, wearing just my Rolling Stones XL t-shirt on top of a pair of Next jeans which I’d bought a couple of months ago from an outlet branch in Braintree, and now I was very thirsty. After a while I ended up on Nelson Road which had a couple of pubs on it, The Prince Consort and The Prince Regent, names harking back to glory days gone by, days long gone, of that there was no doubt. Outside a pub on the corner called The Clock, there was a guy on a mobility scooter sitting with his back to the street and staring at the wall, face up close to it, whilst a pint of lager stood on the wooden table beside him. Not quite sure what was going on there, but it did look kind of odd, another person washed up possibly, left to hang out to dry in the wilds of Great Yarmouth, or maybe it was where he had been born. Opposite The Prince Regent was an East European supermarket in front of which a couple of women were crouched down smoking cigarettes, talking loudly in a language which might have been Lithuanian, although I didn’t have any real certainty about that, could have easily been Bulgarian. One of them had bright blonde hair, and with her blue eyes she was really quite pretty, beautiful even, as she pulled the smoke of her cigarette deep down into her lungs and stared straight through me.
Nelson Road took me back onto the main drag leading down to the seafront from the town centre. It was pedestrianised and quite busy with people, but with a nice relaxed feel to it. There was a busking trumpet player with a Slavic face who was giving a shaky rendition of Send in the Clowns whilst standing outside a Turkish restaurant where juicy slabs of meat were fizzing on the grill in the open window, a scene which somehow seemed quite poignant. Further on down I walked past Pownalls Field and Gun Shop, which was founded back in 1900 and still going strong, guess Norfolk was shooting country after all, so it had a readymade market. Further along from Pownalls was a clothes shop called Azam’s of Great Yarmouth, which probably hadn’t been there quite so long, but nevertheless looked in pretty good shape and was packed full of stock. Opposite Azam’s was a restaurant by the name of Gilfred’s which had a sign in its window advertising Sunday roasts at £5.95. All the fun of the fair then, and before I knew it I was back on the seafront, standing opposite the Britannia Pier where a huge board advertised summer shows featuring Jimmy Carr, Sarah Millican, Peter Andre, Jim Davison and – Hey rock ‘n’ roll, Bring it to town let’s go – Showaddywaddy! It was October now of course and although the weather was fantastic, as far as the dates on the board were concerned, summer for the Britannia Pier was most definitely over.
Walking along the seafront and back in the direction of the Anchor Gardens Cafe, I took in some of the names of the hotels, guest houses and restaurants lined up on the other side of the road – New Beach Hotel, La Cucina, Chico’s – before soon being back on Amusement Strip where the likes of Gold Rush, Magic City, The Mint and Silver Slipper were still blazing away in the light and noise of infinite promise. Whilst I was standing opposite them, tapping a few more memos into my Samsung Notes, a guy came up to beg some money from me. He was very polite, and while clearly homeless, he seemed quite together, probably knew what was what and wasn’t just a space case. It suddenly dawned on me that if I offered him more than just pennies, say five or ten quid, and asked him to take me somewhere under the radar, he most definitely would have done so. Interesting to think what it would have been like if I had followed through on such a notion. I might well have found myself within a short space of time in a room with someone on a double bed filling up a pipe of crack cocaine. Great Yarmouth was the kind of place where the lines were drawn thin, could be blurred so as to make it easy to step over the other side without wasting too much time, spending too much money, or having to make too much of an effort to think about what you were doing. Standing there I let those strange thoughts run through my mind before sending the young man on his way with a quid in his hand, something which he seemed very pleased about.
Once back in the vicinity of the Anchor Gardens Cafe I went to another place close by which was right on the seafront, where once again I sat in the sun whilst staring out over the water and drinking a decent mug of tea. Just sat there staring out upon the empty sands with the North Sea beyond, still a bit lost in thoughts of that recently imagined shadow world, more than a bit if truth be told. Behind me a couple filled a page from a crossword puzzle book, reading out the clues to each other: Des Moines is the capital of which state in America? Good question! After my refreshing mug of tea I walked back to where I’d parked the Prius, on the way dropping in for another piss in the same public toilets I’d used before. I was back in the car at just gone three, which meant I had been in Great Yarmouth for exactly two and a half hours, more than enough for me to have had a good look around, to have seen what the place was like on a sunny Friday afternoon in early October. Now it was time to hit the road, to get out of town and it felt good to know that at least I had that option.
It would have been possible for me to drive back to Woodford going a different route to the one I came up on. I could have gone on the A147 past Norwich, before joining up with the A11 to take me all the way down to the M11 and close to home. Instead I opted to go straight back down the way I came, all sixty miles of the A143 from Great Yarmouth to Bury St Edmunds. When I was ten or so miles along, I suddenly decided I would drop in on the town of Beccles because I had lived there for a couple of years in the mid 70’s when my dad was manager of the port of Lowestoft. Got to say that I did not have particularly happy memories of Beccles because I had been bullied at school there, a new kid in town who was more or less run out of town. I have written about all that in something called Badlands of Beccles which lies within Golden Telescope, a work thatcovers the first 26 years of my life, and for which I still need to give one final edit. In amongst all the fear, misery and downright nastiness of that time, I do remember that there had been a great little record shop in the town centre and I thought there might just be the tiniest chance it was still there. If so, it might also have in stock the new Echo and the Bunnymen CD so I would be able to buy a copy, which in some kind of inexplicable way I thought would be rather appropriate.
Driving into Beccles again, I saw that the town centre, with all its buildings closely huddled together, had not really changed that much. As with so many other places these days however, it was obviously getting run ragged by all the traffic passing through it, traffic relentlessly piling down its narrow streets in a never ending filth belching stream. Guess it is now over 40 years ago since my own brief stay there, although because of the bullying it didn’t seem so brief at the time, in fact it had felt like an age, and a pretty dark one. After I had parked up my Prius and paid a couple of quid on the pay and display, I was able to walk into the centre of town. The record shop was long gone, not a sign of it, although I think I remembered the building, which now stood empty. It had been worth a try I guess, just on the off chance. My diversion off the A143 had not been a long one, but even so there was nothing doing, that great little record shop, one of my few good memories of Beccles from a long time ago, was now no more.
By way of consolation I popped into a Greggs close to where the record shop had been and bought a slice of ciabatta margherita pizza for £1.50. Considering it was a Friday afternoon and coming up to 4 pm, I have to say the pizza slice served to me was remarkably fresh and tasty. I wolfed it down when I got back to the Prius, sat there behind the wheel in the car park thinking that Greggs were most definitely going up in the world if they were selling stuff as good as that. So that was it, once I’d finished my tasty little snack I was done with Beccles, walking around had indeed brought back a few memories for me, but not many of them were good ones. Probably just as well I hadn’t been able to pick up a copy of the Bunnymen album from there, it might have been tainted in some way each time I played it, knowing that it came from Beccles, a place in which I had gone through hell after ending up in its badlands for a couple of years back in the mid 70’s.
When I rejoined the A143 it was late afternoon and it was a great time to be driving, like being in a tunnel of traffic bombing along, racing through the Suffolk countryside where the swish of field grasses, farms and habitations came spinning into view before quickly disappearing behind me in the distance. The windows of my Prius were open, despite the sun getting lower in the sky and the temperatures dropping. Who Built the Moon? by Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds was back on the sound system, and it sounded better than ever, of that there was no question. I was really getting into it, some of its songs were the best that I’d heard in quite a long time and when cast upon those forever expanding horizons of the Suffolk border lands whilst heading south, they led me into a series of internal ruminations.
swish of a wish
back in the car fade,
so good to feel
all things will come to me
drenched with destiny
of the formless dust
By the time I had got back down to the town of Diss I’d remembered there was a HMV Store in Bury St Edmunds and that I could drop in to see if it was still in business, because then I would be able to buy the new Echo and the Bunnymen album. A couple of years ago I’d seen the Andy Sheppard Quartet play The Apex in Bury St Edmunds, all in support of their really rather excellent Surrounded By Sea. Before the show I had gone into the HMV which was just around the corner and picked up a couple of re-mastered Grateful Dead albums which were on special offer, namely Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Not only had they been re-mastered, but each came with extra tracks, something which had made the whole deal feel like it was more than a bit of a bargain, and to top it all off the Andy Sheppard Quartet at The Apex that night weren’t bad either.
Once I got to the end of the A143 after having thoroughly enjoyed my late afternoon funnel burn through the Suffolk countryside, I wasn’t too surprised to find that Bury St Edmunds was busy by way of Friday rush hour traffic leaving town. It did not affect me too much because I was going in the opposite direction, heading into the centre and to the car park outside The Apex, which when I rolled up in was relatively empty. At the end of the day it was third time lucky for me as far as the Bunnymen were concerned. Not only was the branch of HMV still going strong, it also had copies of The Stars, The Ocean and the Moon, all stacked up in their rack of new releases and on sale for a pretty reasonable £9.99. Needless to say I grabbed a copy without hesitation, then walked through the rest of the store to see if I might be able to pick up any special offers. It did not take me long to hone in on Chasin’ Yesterday, the second release from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds which, as it so happened, I needed to buy in order to complete my Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds collection; namely the eponymous debut, this one, and of course their latest in the form of Who Built The Moon? Since Chasin’ Yesterday was on a 2 CDs for 10 quid HMV special offer deal, I also picked up a copy of Definitely Maybe, the first Oasis album and which of course was what had set the ball rolling for them back in the early 1990’s. It was now available in a re-mastered edition with one extra track tagged onto the end of it just for good measure, so it seemed like an opportunity too good to miss.
When I paid for what turned out to be three new CDs, the young man on the sales counter, who had an impressive bushy beard and arms covered with tattoos, told me that although he didn’t know much about Echo and the Bunnymen he’d heard their new album earlier in the day because it had been on the store playlist. He thought it was pretty good, at which point I gave him some information on the band, told him they came from Liverpool and had been going for the best part of 40 years. I nearly told him I was going over to Berlin at the end of the month and that I would be seeing them there, playing a show at a venue called the Admiralpalast. Nearly told him about all that but I held back, thinking it might be a bit too much, maybe even a bit pathetic. Instead I just left him with a tip that as far as Echo and the Bunnymen were concerned, he should check out any one of their first four albums – Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine, Ocean Rain. This was because they were all classics and that as far as his musical education was concerned he would be doing himself a big favour if he made the effort to give them a listen.
Getting back to my car and readying myself for the last leg of driving, I was pleased as punch that I had managed to get a copy of the new Bunnymen album on its day of release. I was very much looking forward to listening it on the headphones later on with the lights out, or maybe with just a single candle burning. It wasn’t long before I was on the road again, the A14 westbound once I was out of Bury St Edmunds, then back on the A11 as the sun went down, before finally hitting the M11 to Woodford. So yes, the trip out to Yar Yar had been a bit of a slow burner, but it had gathered pace quite nicely during the course of the day, and by the end of it I felt that pretty much all bases had been covered by way of my latest foray into the flatlands of East Anglia. There was only thing to do when I got back to Woodford and that was to walk up the hill to Churchill’s Fish Bar on the High Road in order to buy my evening meal, a large cod and chips for £8.50, to bring it all back home and eat it before settling down for a late night listen to the The Stars, The Ocean and the Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen.
star trailer
took the road forever
walked a straight line,
you can call it pleasure
or taking the measure
of the interstellar
TracelessTrails 