On Saturday we had a football match to go to and so went in early to have lunch at our favourite small Italian restaurant Saporita.
We saw that a number of shops have closed down and are now empty. This is particularly the case in the Castle Mall.
This was the first of two malls to be built in Norwich and again I have to use the word shabby to describe it.
Many units are shut and others have become gaming and play areas. I would also use the words dingee to describe it.
Let's roll the clock back many years to before the mall was conceived. I worked in the large building known as Prospect House. It's a concrete monolith and I have never worked out whether I like it or not
Like the University of East Anglia buildings, it would be classed as Brutalist in style. Outside the front is a sculpture of two massive gold balls. Again I have never been sure whether I like them. But for many years this building was my home during the day.
It was owned by Eastern Counties Newspapers. You knew where you were with the name Eastern Counties Newspapers, often referred to by its initials ECN. It did what it said on the tin - publish newspapers for the Eastern Counties. There was another HQ in Ipswich. Then it became Archant and began to lose its identity. Now it's part of Newsquest.
The office where I worked looked out onto a public car park. Every evening I stood on the edge of this car park to be picked up by my mate Ron who worked a short distance away. One day I remember there were horrendous traffic problems with Norwich gridlocked and Ron had been unable to get out of the multi storey car park where he left his car.
It took him over an hour to get to me. His only comment was "I hate bloody Leonard Cohen." Apparently the car in front of him had the windows down and was playing Cohen very loudly. Incidentally I have always liked Leonard Cohen.
As I have said my office looked out on the car park which had previously been a livestock market. Eventually the new Castle Mall was planned and it turned out to be a very clever building. Surprisingly Norwich is quite a hilly city. It's just the rest of Norfolk that is flat, apart from Beeston Bump of course but that's another story.
Castle Mall has three main floors. It has a number of small subsidiary floors but they don't have an entrance or an exit. But the important thing is that whichever floor you are on you can enter and exit at street level. So Castle Mall was something of an innovation.
Then they built a second mall, slap bang in the middle of the city and close to the magnificently modern Forum building which rose like a Phoenix from the ashes when the old lending library burnt down.
Chapel Field Mall became the shopping centre of choice, being very modern. Today it is still bright and breezy. It's named after an area of Norwich and the Chapel Field Park which is close by. The Mall is built on the site of a former chocolate factory and, as I write this, I can vividly remember the wonderful smell of chocolate that came from Caley's, particularly in the summer when windows were open. A lot of my readers will remember that smell and will probably be experiencing it as they read this.
As for Prospect House. It's now owned by a firm of solicitors. Long gone are the printing works and I'm not sure whether the newspaper's still have a presence there.
And yes the building is looking very shabby indeed. I have memories of the days it was a vibrant newspaper hub full of hustle and bustle. I certainly remember working there with great fondness and being part of what might not be classed the golden age of newspaper production but could certainly be viewed as the silver age.
There are other parts of Norwich looking equally shabby. The massive Debenhams store still lies empty and unloved, the former British Home Stores is empty and has been for several years and we noticed that the baby shop with the name I can never remember has shut. Not only that but there was a large pile of rubbish outside.
Inside some shops seem to have taken a nosedive as well. Two people both said that the clothing department at John Lewis is poor compared to what it used to be.
So after all this shabbiness we wandered down to the football ground to see Norwich beat Cardiff 2-0. It wasn't a great game and there was considerably less atmosphere than normal and that had nothing to do with the crowd. The public address system had gone wrong and so there were no announcements and no whipping the crowd into a frenzy. There was no strident music and it did underline how important the pa is to creating an atmosphere.
Of course from a health and safety point of view there could have been problems. Ten minutes before every game we get a message along the lines of "The chimes you have just heard will precede any emergency. If you hear the chimes stay calm and await instructions from the police or club stewards". So there couldn't be any emergency messages on Saturday. Also we couldn't be informed that the legendary Mr Carrow was in one of the stands.
This message always brings hoots of derisory laughter. It's a very very thinly disguised warning that there is a problem in one of the stands e.g "Mr Carrow is in the Barclay Stand." Cue lots of cheering from the fans. The situation is usually resolved with another message " Mr Carrow has left the Barclay" which is met with even louder cheers and laughter.
I remember the days at the ground when the PA was used for much more important messages such as: "Would Mr Brian Smith please return home immediately where he will find his wife and new born son doing well". Then there were the marriage proposals. Those kind of messages lightened up many a winter's day but now you'd only get them read out if you paid heaps of money.
I fear I may have told this story before but years ago we were on a train from Norwich to Nottingham. We were going to see England play cricket at Trent Bridge, my favourite ground.
We got to either Ely or Peterborough I forget which when we were told the train would be going no further as the PA system had failed. It struck me that this was just being used as an excuse to prevent the train from continuing. There were only three carriages and it would have been very easy for a message to be relayed between the carriages if there had been a problem. Interestingly on the train home after the match, which just happened to be the last train of the day, there was also a problem with the PA but no hint of stopping the train from running. I think at times that little story sums up much of what's wrong with our country.
I have enjoyed writing this blog. It seemed to flow nicely. Sometimes I struggle to think of things to say but not today. So I decided to see how many words I had written and it weighs in at a monster 1,300. I hope you enjoy at least a few of them.