Fish and Chips

Fridays are usually the busiest days for chippies, some say it's a throwback to Christian dietary interference on eating meat on that day or maybe Friday was payday and money was available or, and I think is more likely, good fish and chips are simply delicious and irresistible!  This Good Friday, however, many chip shops are closed and I suspect they will stay that way forever due to Government interference on civil liberty. Life after this phoney plague and unnecessary mass house arrest will be dull and impoverished; you might almost wish you had died.

This jolly sign was on Greevegate, Hunstanton. No trip to the seaside is complete without some fish and chips so we dutifully consumed some in a restaurant just down the road from here. Well I have to fully research my posts don't I?

St George's Guildhall, King's Lynn

As if the guildhall I posted yesterday wasn't enough there's another one just along the road, St George's Guildhall on King Street. This too is early 15^th century and claims to be "the oldest and largest complete medieval Guildhall in England with an unrivalled history as a venue for theatrical production." A local story has it that during a plague in London Shakespeare came to King's Lynn to stay at a mate's house along with his merry band of cut throats, imps, pimps and banjo players and performed one of his plays (what he wrote) here. It's a good story and King's Lynn has been dining out on it for centuries. Now academics seem to support it and academics have a direct line to God's own truth as we all know.
The place as you might imagine has history, a history which is too long for me to even attempt to condense and you can read all about it here.
It's now a gallery, theatre, arty smarty place with a cafe in the cellar (or undercroft as the locals like to call it) where subversives meet to plot the downfall of western civilisation, smokers can stand outside...

The Guildhall, King's Lynn

I posted the Guildhall on the Saturday Market before, here, but I don't think I came close to showing its full splendour. This stitch-up is, I think, a bit better. It's a little gem, no strike that, it's a big gem, a Koh-i-Noor of building. It dates from the 1420s with later bits and bobs. There's a dry as dust architectural description here but you can skip that and just stand back, let your eyes feast on its beauty.

A Little Light Larkin

Coming back in the gloaming from a clandestine shopping trip for strictly non-essential things (so arrest me!) I came upon a fat hedgehog crossing in front of me; first one  I'd seen in a couple of years. It can rest assured I will never be mowing the lawn, I killed the lawn instead. Anyhow here's a happy fillip for all you quarantined gardeners today ...

The Mower
    

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.
                          
                           Philip Larkin

Sod this for a game of soldiers

Phone for the fish knives, Norman 

As cook is a little unnerved

Way back in the dim mists of time when I was but eleven years old a visitation of the influence, as the medievals called it, bestrode the world taking with it several millions, including some 30,000 in the UK. The so-called Hong Kong flu came, it saw, it conquered and then it disappeared. Did the world grind to a halt? Did they cancel everything? Did they lock up everyone? Did they threaten you with criminal sanctions if you sat in the park for a few minutes? No, of course not, life and death and Wimbledon and yes, even the Olympics went on as normal and hardly anybody mentioned it at all. I bet hardly anyone even remembers it. I only vaguely recall folk saying the usual "There's a lot of it about" but then they say that every year. Certainly there was no panic, no stupidity, no collapse of the NHS.
Today however a madness has spread quicker than the damn virus; thanks to the malevolent internet, stupid press campaigns, weak and vain politicians, corrupt governments (in particular China, a murderous gangster state on the brink of economic collapse), a bizarre credibility given to the Oracle of Imperial College London ("Half a million dead if no action taken, a quarter million if some action taken, maybe twenty thousand if you lockdown and crash the economy" , then after a week it became "maybe 5,000 or so and many would have died anyway" ... the moral as I constantly say is never mistake a model for anything other than an expensive guess).
Symptoms of the madness are a lack of clarity, of perspective, a complete loss of sang froid, panic driven self-incarceration, a withdrawal, nay a collapse, of normal social intercourse and civic life. The damage to the world economy is possibly greater than that of the depression of the 1930s and we all now how that turned out. All those silly things that you have done, social distancing, meticulous hand washing, hoarding of toilet rolls (what was that all about?), hiding in the bathroom for ten days ... all utterly pointless. The virus will get you whatever you do indeed it's quite possible you've already had it weeks ago and not even noticed.
So how do we get ourselves out of this tangled web? What's the end game? Do we sit here and watching repeats of football matches until July or whenever the Fat Controller is fit enough and back from paternity leave and suffer businesses large and small going to the wall just to "Save our NHS"? ... or do we grow a pair (such a fine expression!) and say enough of this stinking crap, we're out of here. Sod the lock down! Stuff your faulty repressive laws! Let's get back to living a life worth living and back to work and save our economy what's left of it.

Did I mention?

I mentioned Amy Johnson before, you remember the Hull woman from such humble origins who flew round the world (or was it half way round I forget, no, no it was to Australia, never did know why she wanted to go to such a god forsaken place after living in Hull) on a bicycle and rubber-band powered flying machine, a Gypsy Moth. When I say humble did I mention daddy was a local millionaire? Must have slipped my mind, somehow. I mentioned how there was a replica in the station (of the plane  not Amy, wonderful Amy nobody can seem to capture her radiant beauty) ... did I mention how it was going to be removed somewhere silly (an air museum near York if I remember rightly) until the local shopping place said they would find a space for it. If I didn't mention this then I'm doing so now. Did I mention it was built by prisoners in Hull Prison?  I think I did. Ah but did I mention the plane was called Jason possibly after he of the Golden Fleece and deserting of Medea and the marrying of a king's daughter and all that or maybe it was some other Jason. Did I mention I was bored?

Did I mention the weekend in black and white is here?

Streets filled with cars, please advise ...

Cars are odd things when you think about them. They're not cheap to buy at least new ones aren't, they're not cheap to run (petrol and tax and insurance and maintenance and so on). They represent locked up capital of several hundreds if not thousands of pounds per unit. And yet and yet for 95% of their useful lifetime they are just left on the side of the road; little heaps of private savings slowly rusting in the Norfolk rain. Odd but then there's nowt so queer as folk as they never say in these parts.

This is George Street, King's Lynn where it's infinitely easier to walk down the road than on the pavement. These houses are 2 up 2 down terrace dwellings from the end of the 19^th century, workers cottages they might be called by those who never work. Go through the front door and you're into the front room; they have no gardens, just tiny brick walled backyards leading onto a back alley. It is a popular street for young families of mainly immigrant (Eastern European) workers. It's not bad housing by any means, with central heating, double glazing and fitted carpets they can be cosy little kennels, trouble is people aren't dogs (for the most part).

I'm trying not to think what a deep circle of hell it must be being "locked down" on this street (for no good reason) and tomorrow the first really warm day of the year is forecast and with the temptation of the Loke Road playground and the Long Pond so close by.