So woke up yesterday to find a strange yellow orb in the sky. Apparently wise men have been dispatched to find out what this phenomena is.
Now I love having a bus pass. Apart from the fact that it gives your age away which isn't good, it gives you a lovely freedom of travel without the pain of 1/having to drive and 2/ having to find somewhere to park.
I am one of those people that drive out of necessity and not out of enjoyment. My grandson wants me to buy a flashy car (he usually names them and they usually cost upwards of £100,000). He cannot understand how I can possibly be happy with my Ford Fiesta. I have pointed out to him that when he wants to come to the seaside with us or get a lift to cricket or football he's quite happy to climb aboard my "pathetic little car."
So whenever possible we take the bus. It saves us money, makes us more eco friendly and there are usually plenty of them. When we have a full return to normal I have a hankering to just get on a series of buses and see where I end up. We did this in Switzerland many years ago with a railway pass. Just got on trains with no idea where they were going and when we saw an attractive village we got off, had a look round and then just got on another train without worrying about where it came from or where it was going to. Towards the end of the day we checked our map and worked our way back. It was a day with no stress, no pressure and lots of coffee in idyllic villages.
Today we caught the number 15 bus from a stop which is just a 100 yard walk from where we live and got off at what I believe is officially known as Thorpe Green. I say officially because I grew up calling this place Whitlingham. Many is the time we went to Whitlingham and sat on the green, enjoying the view of the boats of the Norfolk Broads and watching the trains trundle across the wooden bridge over the River Wensum.
Were they going to Great Yarmouth or London I always wondered which was a stupid thing to wonder because London was in the opposite direction?
I loved Whitlingham so much that I wrote a poem about it. I may have touched on my poetry before. It is universally junk and pretty awful. I used to write poetry because I thought it was the thing to do. I would sit down in the evening and think "well it's time to write a poem." I had no idea about what to write and sometimes would sit there for ages gazing into space without any subject or inspiration. In the end I just put down a jumble of words which I thought was incredibly clever but which I now find embarrassing on the odd occasion that I re-read them (and believe me that is an odd occasion).
I guess that's why my early poems were a mixture of George Herbert, John Donne and William Butler (W.B Yeats).
Yeats wrote a poem entitled "Wild Swans at Coole." It is one of my favourites and for some reason reminds me of Thorpe Green (I have no idea why. Perhaps I was reading it there as part of my A level studies). I believe it is no longer in copyright so here it is in full.
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
So I wrote a poem catchingly entitled: "A poem influenced by the poem Wild Swans at Coole by W. B. Yeats, Singing the praises of one to be admired. Here it is. No copyright problems here as absolutely nobody would want to nick this.
She called me her Lord, but I a mere servant am
A wandering mass of insoluble humanity
Unfair to be pressed into submission like this.
But the unfairness was all mine
An intolerable unfairness, selfishness
A craving to better myself.
We came to that place where swans drink
Their thirst an unquestable feeling of desire.
The water lapping quietly refreshing in its dignity
Scenes f childhood in those swans
Solitude, love and emotions
A craving to better myself.
Scenes of childhood when as a boy I watched
Silently gazing at the thrill of things unmeaningful
The trains with steam hissing smoothly
The quietly blue engulfing skyline
Encompassed by our complete world
A world within a world.
Childhood has passed and with it the feeling
Of ease, contentment and security.
These things were precious to a child
But now I need something more
Something to cherish and keep near
Someone to love.
Now coming back after years to that place
Of overflowing peace and beauty
With a sensation of that self-same security
That I enjoyed as a boy
Security of not being alone
Knowing that she was there.
The trains still pass, whistling at the bridge
But they are diesel powered now and the bridge has eroded.
The sign of cruisers for hire, unlike me, is worn and decayed with age
But my heart is young, my feelings gay*
Beset in the eyes of the one I love
Reflecting on the cool clear water.
Perhaps the grass is longer now
Perhaps the seat is tarnished and worn
But once again that place holds the very same beauty
That overcame me as a child.
But she is thee.
There is more beauty here than I ever dreamed of.
I told you it was tosh - * gay as in its original meaning of the word - colourful.
We got off the bus a little way short of Thorpe Green in order to have a walk. The wise men sent out to search for the strange yellow orb had phoned in to say it was magical because as soon as they searched for it, it disappeared.
In fact it started raining and so we found a table inside The Rushcutters Pub/Restaurant to have lunch on some very high stools which left our legs and feet dangling.
One of the more pleasant things to come from lockdown has been not having to queue up at the bar to order drinks and food. I say Queue but at times it is just a rugby scrum with little or no order. If you are a relatively small and insignificant person such as myself, you can often be overlooked when somebody who is 6ft 4in and built like a brick (well you know the phrase) stands at the other end of the bar. And who really says "I think that small chap at the other end was before me?"
I'm sure this pub has changed names numerous times in my lifetime. It's on the banks of the river so would have been very pleasant had we have been able to sit outside. I would have been able to watch the trains trundle over that bridge as well.
I remember the Rushcutters being called The Boat and Bottle. So I took to the internet and a very good site about Thorpe St Andrew that gave the other names for the Rushcutters:
It was originally knows as the Three Tuns and then the Thorpe Gardens and then the Boat and Bottle. It has been the Rushcutters since 1985 (much longer than I thought). The main building dates from about 1600. It may originally have been a merchant's house and warehouse but this isn't certain. What we do know is that today it is a riverside pub.
I do believe that's almost enough waffle for today. Hope you like some of the photographs. They had to be taken very quickly as the rain continued to increase. We walked back through Pilling Park (where in the past I played football, tennis and cricket), Lion Wood and the former Norwich Union sports and social club ground that once was Pinebanks and which now is horrible overgrown land. This is another place I played cricket, tennis and football. I may even have been a member there for a time and I certainly remember spending one Christmas night drinking there with a friend. We caught a couple of buses to get us back home out of the cold and wet and glad to be in the dry. Apparently last year there were 23 days in May when the temperature went over 20 degrees. This May there has been one!
As a final footnote I came across this history of Pinebanks on the website I have already mentioned:
"Although currently a burnt out shell Pine Banks, adorned by the tower, was once the grand home of Norwich solicitor John Oddin Howard Taylor with extensive grounds containing conifers and shrubbery. Taylor was also a campaigned on a number of social issues that attracted his attention, an accomplished chess player and a writer of poetry. With the entrance on School Lane Pine Banks was built by Taylor about 1880 on what was described as an exquisitely romantic site on the crest of the Thorpe escarpment. The tower, faced with knapped flints and with red brick and limestone dressings was five stories tall. There were windows at several stages and a roof which provided views of the Norfolk coast and the major rivers in clear weather. Some years after Taylor's death in 1890 it passed into the hands of Thomas Jarrold. In 1953 the Norwich Union bought it for use as a staff social and sporting club - one still remembered fondly by many ex-employees. It continued until 2008 when under its new guise as Aviva Norwich Union sold the site for development. It stood empty until a major fire in July 2014 reduced the house to a shell but spared the tower. A large housing development is planned for the Pine Banks site and that of the adjoining property to the south but appears to have been held up by difficulties resolving suitable access."