Blog Norwich

I actually read some newspapers this weekend, the kind that are printed on paper and you hold in your hands and everything. I was particularly interested in the reporting on those essential games in league one that get all that high-profile coverage. After having leafed through 3 or 4 reams of back pages and supplements, it was clearly not the place to find out about another Norwich win, albeit probably not a very exciting one. But that’s fine. I’d much rather have an entire season being ignored by popular press if it means we can quietly slip up a division while nobody is looking.

What did occur to me, however, as I perused the stats like some anorak, which I am, was that notwithstanding the lack of press coverage, there are still an inordinate number of people who will religiously attend the games at Carrow Road, whatever the prospects for entertainment. I know, because I am one, that Norwich fans generally like their entertainment to be painful, cringe-making and exhausting, which presumably explains the 25,000 attendance to a game against the mighty Swindon. That’s 25,000. That’s not only the highest attendance in league one, its higher than most championship games. In fact, as far as I could make out, its the 10th highest attandance in the entire football league. Even if you throw in Scotland, only Rangers got more, so Norwich had the 11th highest attandance this weekend in all divisions in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and even the Channel Islands.

Norwich City fans are bloody marvellous.

Apparently, lots of people are getting caught doing just that, but, since I drove through that place in a fit of pique yesterday, following an unsuccessful trip to a peripherals warehouse, I don’t understand how. I don’t think I built up a speed approaching anything more than walking pace through that bizarre collection hospitals, golf clubs, bungalows and empty garden centres. I did nearly break 20 mph between a couple of traffic calming abominations, only to be caught short by a mobility scooter racing to the post office, which I expect had probably mysteriously closed overnight. Honestly, if I ever think that living in Hellesdon, Costessey or Drayton is a reasonable idea the closer I get to dribbling into my weetabix, then a short drive through them on a Wednesday afternoon soon sends me cantering back to the city. While I can still walk faster through Hellesdon that I can drive through it, I shall be maintaining a healthy distance.

That’s not to say Hellesdon is the worst place in the world, or even Norwich. Its just that I haven’t taken a drive through Sprowston this week.

I have to drive somewhere on Thursday evenings. It’s not a particularly difficult journey, just up the city. So why, at 5.30, is the entire combined population of Taverham, Sprowston, Costessy and Hellesdon converging up the city centre in their Nissan Bastard trucks, queueing halfway round the ring road, just to get to a shop that might be open late for 1 day a week? Its been like this since August. Is it Christmas or something? Are you people mad? What possible reason could you have for sitting in a traffic queue on Thursday teatime, watching the car park spaces count down on the big boards they have on the arterial roads? Is there a sale at Primark? Is it a 2-for-one deal at Greggs bakers?

All I want to do is take a little trip from A to B and back again, which happens to be across the city centre, and you dullards are clogging up the place with your tongues hanging out like some mad shopping dogs on heat. If this is what being the fifth most popular shopping destination in Britain is about, them I’m moving to Ipswich, for all that culture.

I do understand that we have to go some way to afford a priority for pedestrians when it come to complex road junctions, so it’s entirely appropriate that the council should upgrade the belisha beacons around here so that the flashing orange orbs now sit atop 17 foot poles (painted metal ones, not the one fixing my patio). However, which planning genius was it that determined that 11 o’clock at night would be a grand time to fire up the pneumatic drill and hammer out a pesky 6 inch thick layer of tarmac and concrete so that EDF could stick some kind of live, neutral and earth wire up under a traffic island? 11 o’clock! Not only did it wake up the students, asleep in a pile of their own fresher’s week body fluids, round the back of the garages, but it was so loud that I couldn’t concentrate on the X factor uncut behind the scenes repeat on ITV 7. I had to Sky plus it and I never watch those things. I’m too busy writing letters to the Evening News that they never print.

Next time there’s a trench to be dug outside my house in the middle of the night, could you make sure it is, at the very least, being dug to shelter from the advancing hun, that have begun a 65-year rearguard action and are determined this time to claim the city hall for the führer’s typing pool. Any other reason will provoke a furious outburst from me, durung which I will spill my tea onto my broadband router.

I think I’m missing something there. I had a friend a long time ago who usedto regularly cycle up there from Earlham. He did it willingly. Until recently I just thought Stalham was the gateway to the east, but now I realise that it is actually Tescos. Which can’t be a bad thing. Its a bit further than Harford Bridge, but then, if I take my cool bag and stick the Aunt Bessie’s frozen roast potatoes in there, I’ve got an hour or so to go bowling in that hut at Sea Palling before I head back for Countdown.

So Stalham’s not that bad in the end. It could do with a Kebab/Pizza/unlicensed Vauxhall Nova shop or something, but apart from that, its nearly worth a visit.

Honestly, I no longer have any idea what anybody is talking about when it comes to north Norwich. By 2011 there’ll be a million new homes in Rackheath and the new ring road will let elks pass underneath. As far as I’m concerned, anything north of Sprowston is either an aiport or an industrial unit making ankle bracelets for the stall on the Haymarket, so you might as well just pave it over and stick an incinerator there. I’m not talking about north Norfolk, where the plot of land I bought in 1976 for 200 quid is now worth about 17 Range Rovers, because its actually nice up there. North Norwich is a different place alogether. It’s just the place you have to go through to get to the nice bits.

I’m sure Chloe Smith could set me straight on the virtues of north Norwich when she’s finished looking concerned about things on pavements.

I spy it. I hope they’re camped there to catch the bloody pavement cyclists that run down here, although it’s probably more likely that they’re tracking the OAPs on the way to Castle Mall post office, to make sure they’re really 65. Some of them don’t even stoop these days so you can’t be too sure. Maybe they’re even on the lookout for the Costessey chariots parked up on the path on the double yellow lines, dropping Fashanu off to the catholic school, as I try and squeeze past with my shopping trolley full of yesterday’s bread.

I expect they’re just parked there because they’ve gone to the corner shop for a sausage roll. They probably know I’m typing this.

Apparently my Somerfield is turning into Co-op. I was annoyed when my Fine Fare turned into Somerfield. Or was it Gateway or something? To be honest, if they’re going to muck about with my supermarket, I’d rather they turned it into Tescos, because my nearest Tescos at the moment is more than 5 minutes away and since those dolts on Unthank Road who must never actually go shopping are still persisting with preserving their patch of soiled waste ground, this is the only way I’ll get a Tescos within 2 minutes. I want my clubcard points. I don’t want to be asked every time I buy the Daily Express whether I’m a share club member or whatever it is they ask you in the Co-op. And I wanted Nestle chocolate. So there.

Are white lines expensive? If I want to get to Chapelfield from Unthank Road there’s lots of newly painted directions on the roundabout, but why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why don’t the council paint those white line on the road so that idiot drivers don’t veer all over the lanes? if I want to go straight down to Bethel Street using the middle lane I will, thank you very much. Its a completely legal and appropriate move. Don’t try and cut me up with your Costessey chariot when you’re on the way to House of Fraser.

Please put the white lines back on the roundabout. People are stupid.

Bins, bins, bins. Bins. BINS.

You people. All I want to do it take my wife to the train station, that shouldn’t be so hard. I think its about a 10 minute drive through the city and down Prince of Wales Road. But no. For some inexplicable reason, Saturday has become the day when normally sane people decide its a perfect day to sit in their cars on an arterial route into the city, or, in fact, anywhere on the ring road.

It took 35 minutes at lunchtime just to get from one side of the city to the other. Every B road into the city was backed up at least half a mile with carfulls of people apparently going into the city to do something really they can’t do any other time. Never seen traffic like it. Mental.

Did you go? I didn’t. Well, I did, but only by accident. I was crossing the Cathedral Close when some Italian dancers swung into my path on a large elastic rope, only to swing away again. There seemed to be a lot of people with small children enjoying this spectacle, but I was only there to get a cake from the refectory, and I was hot, so I didn’t stop.

I understand that there was lots of things happening the last 2 weeks which proved very entertaining, but I had some trouble with my knee and didn’t get out much.

I don’t really like green fields and pastures and all that kind of thing. I’ve always lived in the city so if you want to pave over Cringleford, that’s really fine with me. It’ll probably make it quicker to get to the A11 that way anyway.

And as for Sprowston, well, there’s not really anything worth keeping there anyway so about 10,000 homes is about right. You might want to build a school or something to go with it. Maybe a hospital or at least another garden centre. Don’t worry about a post office though, it only takes about 2 hours to get to castle mall on a motability scooter, so that’ll be fine.

Not quite like it used to be when you could happily fall back onto the Norwich Union worksheet and do a few years of mundane nothingness just to get enough money to be boring. Norwich without Norwich Union is like Ipswich without tractors. I expect Mr Bignold is weeping a silent 200-year-old tear over the inevitable departure of Vauxhall Aviva to Milton Keynes where at least they’ll be able to watch a half-decent football team from Wimbledon.

At least we’ll still be famous for shopping.

I can usually walk around the city quite easily. I do like it when its nice and full of easter holidaymakers and youths with large hair sloping around the forum. There’s so much to moan about on a leisurely stroll along Gentleman’s Walk.

So I’m greatly miffed that I’ll have to keep stepping out of the way for a stupid noddy bus as it rattles around the pedestrianised streets, carrying goons from Essex and Suffolk around the cultural hotspots. I bet it’ll have some really annoying bell that it dings it some really annoying way as well. Bloody tourists. They’ll be wanting anther festival next.

Want to get all continental on us? Ho, you must be joking! We didn’t move up to Norwich and get a house in the city centre to have you locals getting all your tables and chairs out and enjoying yourselves around us. We’ve got our friends coming up from Fulham this weekend and if Jemima doesn’t get proper sleep she’ll have anxiety attacks.

Really there’s no place in Norwich, especially within 1 mile of our fabulously overpriced London-weighted abode, for so-called enjoyment. It was bad enough with that awful racket coming from the concert hall, but people on the streets? Having a drink? On a summer evening? Goodness me.

Get back to Sprowston and have your fights there, or whatever it is you local people do.

I didn’t know the lanes went all the way up St Giles. I saw a map once, but now I know they do, because there’s all those green paving slabs and red posts all over the place. Good luck. I used to work in the lanes when they were just lanes. They were rubbish then, but you could get a newspaper and some cigarettes etc. If I want clothes I go to Burtons.

They start the demolition of the old brewery on King Street next week. That’ll be nice. Its not really the most attractive building in the area. What say we clear that old rubbish out and stick, say, 500 houses and flats there instead. That’ll be nice. You can share the view of Carrow Road and Morrisons with all those other people who paid 250 thousand pounds for a flat now worth 150 thousand pounds and who don’t even live in it. Should be a lively community feel to the place.

Perhaps you could all meet up and go bowling. Oh, wait, you can’t do that.

Bwwuuhahaha. You have to laugh at that. Even the moaners. Just when you think things might be going wrong, they go disasterously wrong. What price the drop? You’re safe, apparently, according to someone on Future FM.

That’s alright then.