Now slow yew down ma ole booty

A warning sign on the Loke near the Long Pond. Someone taking the initiative, good to see.

Photos by  Margot K Juby

Feeding the ducks

I'm a hairin’ scarin’ fisherman...

‘I’m a hairin’ scarin’ fisherman and I hail from Kings Lynn town,
And in this old life I’ve seen many an up and down.
And when we’ve spent our stocker bait and had a jolly spree
Away we’ll crack, on board the smack, and plough the angry sea.’

To watch her and trigger and pipe her as she goes,
Give her the sea and let her rip we're the boys to pull her through
You want to see our Ally when the wind is blowin' through
Sailing from the Dogger bank to Great Grimsby.

I find that is a variation of an old song "Dogger Bank" ( which is in turn probably from another Music Hall song ) given to us by the grandly nicknamed Trunky Bunn of King's Lynn. Quite how it ended up engraved on a granite boulder in a playground on Loke Road I really don't know but there it lies, a gift to future generations, what they'll make of it I can't imagine.

On a similar theme I can include this little plaque on a former pub down the road and around the corner mentioning Ralph Vaughan Williams' dalliances with the natives of North End. If you listen to old RVW long enough you find yourself thinking I know that tune it's such and such ... well he's only gone and nicked it hasn't he ... plagiarism, as somebody once said, is basic to all culture.

Pylons, The Loke and The Long Pond

As the sun set softly over Loke Road (or simply 'the Loke'; as the natives term it) so Margot indulged her passion for pylons.

St Nicholas' spire in the background

I admit it's the same pylon from a different view.

The short part of the Long Pond

The Loke crosses the Long Pond cutting this ancient water course in two. I'm guessing it's a monastic structure to do with drainage, monks were real clever at drainage... Old maps (1887) show a Short Pond close by and I'm guessing now filled in as no-body mentioned it when I was there. There was also another large pond named the Loke (sic) filled in and covered over and now a playground close by yesterday's picture.

If I'm right then this is the very pylon Margot used to dawdle under on her way home from school despite her mother telling her not to.

A drowning shopping trolley, when will they ever learn that they can't swim?

Some local wild life.

And with this post we've come to the end of our little day trip to King's Lynn and must make our way back to Hull. I enjoyed meeting Margot's old friends (who I'd only known from Facebook) and  even the hanging around for a locksmith in the cold of the evening seems like a dream now (OK a nightmare) ... Hoping to be back soon ...

None of this would have been possible without the kind assistance of Dave Hunter and Betsy Smith, friends also met on Facebook, who offered us a lift both ways, seems they like driving a lot. Once again many thanks ...

Ne dumpez pas ici!

In Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portugese and Ukrainian and in English (in any fool's language you like) it is forbidden to dump your rubbish down this alley at any time. Much good that sign has done.

Seems the fly-tipping curse is pretty universal in this country. Now someone on TV just the other day had the idea, that, maybe, just maybe, charging folk about £30 to take away their old sofas and chairs could, just could, mark you, be leading to this epidemic. And that it costs the Councils more to clean up this mess than they make in charges ... and, you know, like maybe a conclusion could be drawn from this ... (I don't know how to indicate that irritating rise in intonation at the end of every statement that has become fashionable these days; a fashion that folk seem to have picked up from our colonial cousins...) 

Regarding this particular criminal installation I gather the local council think it is the responsibility of the property owners to clear this mess while the owners have a very different view possibly expressed fluently in Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portugese and Ukrainian with the Norfolk folk all nodding in agreement. What we've got here is failure to communicate...