TIGTBALO
I needed to get some miles under my belt for my marathon walk. August has been a poor one for walking, due mainly to the heat and so I have completed under 100 miles and now need to step this up if I'm going to reach my 1,500 target by the end of the year.
So I decided to take the bus into Norwich, have a general look round and then visit a few of my old haunts and then walk home. It turned out to be a distance of just under 10 miles. I was as stiff as a board when I got home but it was a walk that gave me plenty of food for thought or should that be thought for a blog?
After having a look around Waterstones, doing some shopping and visiting Norwich Library, I set off. In Norwich Library I found a book entitled "The Women of Rothschild - The Untold Story of the World's Most Famous Dynasty". Now what interest do you have in this book I hear you ask (or probably not).
Well in my family I have an intriguing ancestor. Admittedly he's only a first cousin three times removed but he is a fascinating figure. His name was Frederick Duncan Dew and I have mentioned him in my blogs before. But a little bit of re-iteration is never a bad thing.
Frederick Duncan Dew was one of the sons of Britiffe Dew (a very strange name) who was the first superintendent of the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich. The Rosary was the first non denominational cemetery in the country. Frederick was born in the Lodge house at the gates of the cemetery.
After leaving school, Frederick became a servant at a large house in Norfolk before moving to London where he became servant and butler to the Rothschilds at one of their houses in Piccadilly. These houses are featured in the book I mentioned and regularly hosted some of the top people in the land including Royalty and Prime Ministers. So I will be interested to see if I can establish what it was like when Frederick worked there and the people he is likely to have met and served.
Frederick became a licensee in London, owning a number of pubs. He also became a benefactor of schools and died a rich man. He was honoured by being made a Freeman of London. How he came to own pubs and amass money is still something of a mystery but it could well have had something to do with the Rothschilds. I will let you know if I find out anything else about this interesting man but I'm just wondering whether they set him up in business as a loved and valued servant.
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I always find it strange that it takes world events to prompt an interest in a particular subject. Waterstones was awash with history books on Russia and Putin. It takes interest in a murderer to stimulate an interest in his country.
It was rather poignant as we heard of the death of Mikhail Gorbachev. I wonder what he thought of Putin and the current situation in Russia. We will probably never know.
Gorbachev was heralded as "the man who changed the world." Putin will probably be known as "the man who changed it back again." It's no good in having a democratic reformer if he/she is followed by a despotic tyrant whose only aim is to instil fear and take his country backwards.
Which takes me to the point of giving a mention to my good friend Phil Hardy. Phil is one of our district councillors for the village but he is also an authority on the assassination of John F Kennedy and the Cold War. I have just published four of his articles on those subjects in my Hethersett Herald E Magazine. The fifth and final part which covers the Putin era and is quite chilling in its content will be published today in the September Herald.
You don't have to live in Hethersett to read the Herald, just go to www.hethersettherald.weebly.com where you can find all 84 editions.
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So after a hot dog on Norwich Market, which I ate in the Remembrance Garden, I set off on the walk. Many of the pictures today are from that walk.
I went across Chapel Field Gardens, taking a photo of the bandstand and wondering what it was like when a Chinese Pagoda was there. Went under the underpass and through Globe Place (quite a rundown area) and along Somerleyton Gardens and past the place where Dodgers bike shop was in the 1950s and 1960s. Local people may remember Dodger. Certainly everyone in the area knew him, although I'm sure none knew his real name which incidentally was Kerrison and his shop was in Cambridge Street.
I walked down Rupert Street and took a picture of number 97 where my grandmother lived and where I spent many happy hours as a boy. It's been modernised from those days in the late 1950s and 1960s and I expect it now has a bathroom and indoor toilet. But here's the spooky bit (cue that music from The Twilight Zone), that photo just wasn't there. And I'm certain I took it.
I walked to the bottom of Rupert Street trying to imagine what it had been like when it suffered extensive bomb damage in the war. I believe my grandmother's house escaped damage. Continued to the bottom of Rupert Street and then onto Unthank Road. Doubled back towards the city and into Park Lane and into Portersfield Road in the area of Norwich known as The Avenues.
Portersfield Road had my favourite fish and chip shop in Norwich. It's now a kebab shop. Not a lot has changed over the decades in the Avenues. I worked my way to the inner ring road at Colman Road and then down Unthank Road and onto Newmarket Road.
Now in a car this takes just a few minutes. On foot, Unthank Road is very long. One part of it is in what's known as the Golden Triangle with lots of student accommodation and bed sits and also lots of interesting pubs and coffee shops. Further away from the city, it's a wide and leafy thoroughfare with, as they would say on Eastenders, some big gaffs.
I then worked my way down into Eaton and Cringleford and then along the B1172 and back to Hethersett.
Part of the walk took in a quiet lane of about half a mile alongside but cut away from the main road. This was strewn with litter as is shown in one of my photos. I passed paper cups, cigarette packets, plastic bottles, food containers and much more. Most of the rubbish was from eating establishments. This road is off the beaten track and so vehicles must have deliberately taken their refreshments there to consume.
So here's where my confusion comes in. How difficult is it when you've finished your McDonalds or Burger King to just leave the packaging in the car until you get home and then transfer it to the household bin. It actually doesn't take much more effort than winding down a window and tossing it onto a verge.
Sadly litter has been a problem forever and will continue to be so unless perpetrators are fined or something positive is done to stop it and I've no idea what that might be. Appealing to people's better nature just doesn't work as sadly some people don't have a better nature.
On the way I came across a trio of interesting signs which are reproduced. One is pretty straightforward as it was at a church and just said: "Joy, Peace, Love and Hope." Something it would be great to think was happening!
The second was another pretty obvious statement: "Think Before You Park. Our children's safety comes first." Not surprisingly it was outside a school.
It was the third sign that was a touch contentious. It was in the garden of a private bungalow. Actually it was so big that it practically took up the whole of the front garden. It said:
"Shame on Norwich City Council spending £400,000 on new tennis courts while Norwich citizens go jobless and hungry."
I have mixed thoughts about this. The council has money to spend in many different areas and leisure is an important one of them (reminds me that my own village is providing a new community pavilion on the Memorial Playing Field - would this be construed to be wrong as well)?
To think that no tennis courts would mean additional money to support the jobless and provide food is naive. It just wouldn't happen. Money has to be provided for all aspects of life. Mind you I have a different thought about this when I see the time and money wasted on re-surfacing our main shopping street St Stephens. This is a decided waste of money which could have been spent on other things of much more importance. I did want to knock on the door of the bungalow and ask the owners how much the banner had cost and wouldn't they have been better giving that money to a charity for the homeless. I can think of tow or three who would gratefully have accepted it.
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Finally today a big hello to Jim Lane from Tasmania whom I met at the Norfolk Family History Headquarters in Norwich on Tuesday. Jim was researching his Norfolk Ancestors and had a fascinating story.
His great great grandfather lived in the Rows in Great Yarmouth, as did many of my ancestors. Jim's ancestor moved to New Zealand in search of gold. He didn't find any but did start a coach manufacturing business. The family made its way to Australia and Jim lived on the mainland until his retirement when he moved to Tasmania.
This has been TIGHTBALO.