Norfolk

Guess that I don't need that though,

Now you're just somebody that I used to know ..

This week just gone I went to Norfolk, as part of my world comeback tour. This actually turned out to be a really long entry as I did more storytelling than I set out to. Kellie should be chuffed.

I want to get the sad bit first to begin to get it behind us - halfway through our trip, our great dane, Della suddenly began having difficulty walking, followed by barely being able to stand. We'd initially thought she had a condition which affects Danes called Wobblers (the symptoms of which are far too sad to have such a funny name. Say it out loud. Wobblers. Really, what the hell) but after some scans, she was found to have tumours in her back legs which were causing her a lot of discomfort. After a bit of debate and the prospect of very expensive, non-success-guaranteed treatment, we made the sad choice her put to sleep.

I'm gonna miss you, you awesome pooch.

This is our sentimental tribute to her in the sand on Holkham beach. Accidentally slicing your fingers and palms on hidden pebbles and razor shells comes second to immortalising your dog.

I don't know if any of you have been to the Norfolk coastline, but there isn't a lot to do. Catching crabs at the quayside (no pun intended) is a fairly staple part of holidaying round here, but can wear thin quickly, and outside of little art galleries, deli's and shops that sell souvenirs and the odd bucket and spade, there isn't a great deal of 'awesome' factor going on. We did spend a decent amount of time on the beach, where I passed the time by trying to bury the other dog. Pebble beaches aren't as good as sand.

I do however have a couple of anecdotes for you. The first one is related to catching crabs, a pastime which I've long since realised is impossible to say to people without some form of short explanation. 

"Get up to much on your holiday?"

"Yeah, had a good relax, went to the beach, read a new book, caught crabs down on the waterfront"

"You what?"

Not even calling it 'crabbing' is a viable alternative, because then it sounds like some kind of voluntary STD bender you went on, as in "I need to go to the clinic, I was crabbing the other night". But, 'crabbing' is less of an effort both to say and to type than 'catching crabs', so we'll go with that one.

It's worth pointing out here actually that crabbing has lost a hell of a lot of it's novelty now I'm all grown up. Having been to this little coastal village many times over the years, I'm well versed in the catching of the crab. When you're younger, it's really awesome seeing how many crabs you can get, and then after a couple of hours letting them all go back into the water. There was the excitement of pulling up your line and seeing if anything's eating the bait and the thrill of transferring the poor crab from your net to your water bucket.

But going back there now, I'd been sat there for about 15 minutes surrounded by 5, 6 year old kids and their grandparents and I realised all of a sudden that I am probably far too old for this. Regardless of that 'never grow up' mindset, it was difficult to ignore the fact that I am unemployed, moneyless and was sitting on a quayside next to a bucket full of crabs. 

This was only reinforced when a family with young children walked past and had a gander at what I'd caught. Now this is a very normal part of crabbing in Norfolk and passers-by will ALWAYS take an interest in people's catches when crabbing at the waterfront. But as opposed to bygone years, the mum said "ooh kids, look at this crab that this man has caught!"

Pause.

This man.

This man?

This is much too frequent an occurrence. It happens in shops, restaurants, in the street. Anywhere I could come into contact with parents and their children. 

This man. 

Careful, you're in the way of this man! Look what this man's buying, do you want one?

It's unnerving. I sure do miss being 'that boy'.

So having established that a.) I'm a man and b.) I'm too old to go crabbing, I'll get back to the original story. When we go crabbing we use bacon as bait, simply because it attracts more crabs than the shitty bags of whelks and cockles that the shops sell. On a crab-catching line there's a little net drawstring bag that your bait goes into, so you don't lose anything.

We crabbed on the first night then left all our things outside the house for the next time. Due to various outings and simply not being arsed to go crabbing, it was 3 or 4 days until we went again. The first thing that greeted us was the smell. Retrospectively, this was such an obvious oversight but it never occurred to us at the time: the bacon we'd been using had been left in it's bag, on the crab-line, in about an inch of seawater in the baking sun. For 4 days.

Now, this smell was something else. This was possibly one of the worst smells I've ever encountered. The previous day the dog had shat in the car next to my feet mid-journey and we'd had to keep a second poo in a plastic bag in the boot until we found somewhere to get rid of it. So I am no stranger to diabolical smells. But this bacon was in a different league. The only thought in my mind was get rid of the fucker.

Shit this is a long story.

So we made our way down to the waterfront, my dad changing which side he stood on to avoid being downwind of the horrific bacon bucket, and I started to change the bait. Swapping my sisters bait went off without any hitch other than the aforementioned appalling smell, which had made my eyes start to water at this point. The real problems arose when I got to my crab-line, and realised that the draw-string bag would only open about a centimetre or so, which was simply not wide enough to remove the huge black-grey mushy blob that had once been a rasher of bacon.

Again, hindsight allows better reflection; the obvious solution to the problem was, simply, do anything except what I did, which was to jam my fingers into the net to try and remove the bacon-y gunge manually. At this point I did that thing where you're sick into you're mouth, and the smell becomes so over-powering you pull a face like a frog with your eyes closed and very dramatically turn away from what you're holding. But whatever, I managed to fish out all the crap and dump it in the water, where it probably destroyed ecosystems and killed at least one seagull.

I went back to our car to get the new bait, and regaled my parents with how minging the task at hand had been. Not only weren't they interested, but I quickly realised that the smell had now integrated itself into the fibre of my being and I'd become a walking pile of putrid. They sent me home to wash. There was no sympathy for the grossness of the achievement.

That's how bad I smelt. I was sent home to wash.

 And we didn't even go catching crabs in the end, so it was all for nought.

The other story has far less 'you had to be there' factor. Me and my sister were walking down to the quay one night when we passed the couple who were renting the cottage opposite ours. We'd never spoken to these people apart from maybe a 'hello' when we passed each other outside our houses when we moved in. Anyway, we walked past them, not a word from either party. And about three seconds later, one of them lets rip and cuts the air with an enormous fart.

This wasn't your standard trying-to-be-subtle-but-went-wrong flatulence. Effort had gone into this fart. And it lasted just over two seconds, while me and my sister exchanged a look and knew we'd found a joke for the rest of the holiday. I'm certainly prone to the odd fart, but not in public on a summers evening. 

I'll leave you with two things. One is a cute picture of our other dane with the sand memorial. The other thing is the funniest thing I've seen in weeks, but can't work out why.