The Runton Diaries

All Four Corners Of The World

May 15th, 2017

I discovered the other day that if the Flat Earth Society had an end of year dinner and dance, they wouldn’t be able to play All Around The World by Lisa Stansfield at it – the phrase ‘around the world’ implies that the earth is spherical, you see. To get it past the dj, the lyric regarding Stansfield’s misplaced infant would have to be ‘I’ve been to all four corners of the world/and I can’t find my baby’, or possibly ‘I’ve been to both sides of the world/and I can’t find my baby’. This is the sort of thing we have to know at Runton Hall. It’s a shame, because All Around The World is a classic Great British Summer Event tune, and means that it will be a while before we can raise the profile of Runton with a Great British Summer Event, although for a place that would be literally invisible if it felt it could get away with it, this is not perhaps such a bad thing.

I can truthfully say without fear of contradiction that I hate the outdoors. However, I do love a Great British Summer Event. You can keep your paraolympians and your People’s FA Cup – this is the Brits at their finest, scoffing Mr Whippy ice cream in the drizzle amid exhaust fumes in a field littered with fag ends, with mid-Nineties non-Britpop belting out of a poor quality public address system in the background. Marvellous. Attraction-wise, there’s something for everyone. I always enjoy the obligatory English Civil War tent containing a history teacher struggling with a flintlock pistol, hard enough to fire in the actual English Civil War, where combatants where not constantly interrupted by bored children putting their hands up to ask why they were gay. Burger vans flying the Confederate cross among the flags of the home nations, drunk twelve year olds, fat majorettes, shire horses wearing deeley boppers – it’s tremendous stuff, and the carnivals of East Anglia, long recognised as gathering places of the rich and beautiful, are the epicentre of it all.

The customary carnival procession, always advertised as ‘Second Only To Rio’, is little more than an excuse for everyone to drink themselves blind and hurl improprieties, with which I will not trouble you, at Carnival Queens being driven slowly past on flat bed lorries. Myself, I prefer the Boxing Day hangings favoured by East Anglian coastal resorts. These aren’t, at present, actual hangings, but a custom dating back twelve centuries in which men charge into the freezing North Sea in honour of Ran, a Norse god, watched by large crowds who cheer them on with lusty cries of ‘You’re going to drown you fucking twat’. Bucket-rattlers, moving among the crowds, collect money for fireworks displays, held on New Years Day instead of Guy Fawkes Night in these parts, as Norfolk supported the Gunpowder Plot and saw no cause to celebrate its failure. I like to say that on Boxing Day they execute a young offender on the promenade in front of a jeering crowd, and throw him, still conscious, into the sea where he is torn apart by gleeful townsfolk, hence Boxing Day Hangings. I have no idea why I say this, but it provides an insight into how I might have dealt with Guy Fawkes sympathisers, had I held judicial office amid such treason.

Carnival dog shows are a thing to behold, consisting of family pets with differing levels of willingness and co-operation being lead around a small enclosure, followed by raw meat donated by a local butcher being awarded to whichever owner lives closest. The format is unchanging year after year, and no one minds, even the East Midlanders who invade Norfolk each summer and, on one occasion in Sheringham, Amelia and Jacob from Clapham, representing the Remain vote and thinking they were in Hell. At this event, the announcement of an Ipswich-based Highland Terrier ignited the ancient blood feud between the East Anglian counties, and amid a torrent of initially good natured booing, the MC was heard to say ‘I must say, I don’t fancy your chances’ to the dog’s owner, who was six, amid the kind of uproar more commonly associated with a witch burning. Happily, a Lancaster bomber flew overhead at this point, delighting all and sundry. If you should find yourself marshalling an outdoor event in the English provinces, keep one of these on hand for if things get rowdy. Everyone loves it, and if you can combine it with the Dambusters theme – well, there won’t be a safe German for miles, to say the least of it. With everyone intent on bombing Berlin, the Mundesley Carnival Dog Show was won by Labradoodle (a mix of a Labradog and a Poodle) belonging to Chloe (a mix of a Clare and an oboist), all the way from Eastcliffe Avenue, a small road within sight of the ‘arena’.

Runton Hall’s donkey fleet will be at Scarborough this season and therefore not available to carry children along sundry Norfolk beaches at low tide. This will rob me of my annual opportunity to warn parents that a startled donkey can run at seventy miles an hour and other lies, none of which are ever questioned. I told someone once that if a donkey sees a bus queue, it will automatically join it. Not so much as a raised eyebrow. I also tell their delighted offspring to look out for sharks, submarines and pirates, often washed ashore at this time of year. One of these summers we’ll have to get Joe to dress up as Blackbeard and jump out from behind the pier supports for a larf, making demands for dubloons or pieces of eight, or parrot food or wooden leg varnish or eye patch darkener. Or in a shark costume, so that midway through his spiel the theme from Jaws could sound as his ringtone, and he could say ‘Better get this, it’s the missus’, then have a conversation whereby he could inform his imaginary shark wife that ‘They’re out of surfers, love’ but that ‘they’ve got children from…’ [Addressing children] ‘Where are you from? Grimsby?’ ‘…Grimsby. Could put them in a casserole I suppose’ and all that which, if accompanied by enough pissing about, will be a larf, especially if we say it’s for Help for Heroes.

With no donkey stewarding in the offing, Joe and I will also be denied something called the Tattoo Game. Originally, I wanted this to be a henna tattoo stall at Camden that patrons could unexpectedly discover did real tattoos several weeks after visiting it, but the current incarnation involves pointing out a tattoo on every parent and saying ‘Oh, I do like that, yeah, no, that’s lovely’, no matter how awful it is or fat they are. We’ve had some belters, and not just butterflies, dolphins, tribal bands and exhortations to ‘Follow your heart’, written across people more likely to follow a chip van, either. Highlights include dual Paul Wellers, contrasting Jam-era Weller with Style Council Weller, one on each calf of a savagely sunburned man from Coltishall, and a back-wide depiction of British soldiers going ashore at D Day on a bloke from Overstrand, which Joe claimed was similar to something his mum was thinking of getting.

Despite such jollity, I must reluctantly conclude that although an event like this would be remarkable indeed were it to take place at Runton Hall, it would at best ruin glamping revenue, and at worst see the glampers open a Mr Whippy restaurant in Shoreditch when they got home. Then again, if they wanted to enhance the authenticity by having exhaust fumes piped in shortly after having all the windows and doors nailed shut, I’m sure I could dig up a Bitty McLean cassingle to complete the ambience. Also, imagine the effect of a Red Arrows flypast on the Runton doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists, jumpy about military hardware at the best of times. It would be like putting Mentos in a bottle of coke.
Doomsday Glampers

May 14th, 2017

In which we consider glampers, food intolerance, doomsday preppers, the beastly Hun, and places to go for a good scream in the afternoon.

The Runton guests referred to by Joe as ‘glamping wankers’ are middle class parents with children they fancifully suppose are gifted, instead of what they actually are, which is loud. These children are typically weak and allergic to everything, and dragging them to deepest East Anglia and subjecting them to Afro Celtic Sound System playlists in a field full of rapeseed pollen doesn’t seem entirely fair – but on they come regardless, parking their Audis on a patch of rough ground behind a former stable that by a terrible oversight has not first been liberally strewn with landmines. Incidentally, parked out of sight in the stable itself is an elderly VW Golf, where Becca goes to scream when her own numerous children become unbearable. She more or less covers her screaming with the CD soundtrack of Phantom Of The Opera, which the Golf’s previous owner managed to permanently jam in the player. I suspect there might be potential in hiring out the Screaming Car, and shall mention this to the board of trustees when next I see them.

Such catering as Runton Hall offers is carried out by a presumably qualified part time chef called Steve, and mainly consists of packed lunches. If you want to see a forensic team in action without watching CSI Miami, give a middle class parent a packed lunch for their child. There’s nothing the Joshes and Jacobs and such can eat. You expect a bit of veganism, because veganism is God’s way of apologising for middle class people and ensuring that they are too unappealing to breed, and I have not eaten meat for many years, although I eat fish because they’re weird and I don’t want them to evolve any further. In 2006, the middle class decided that it could no longer eat gluten in an attempt to keep unbranded breakfast cereals out of Waitrose, and it makes them almost impossible to feed. Be all that as it may, the Runton Hall trustees are fond of them because they are a relatively easy source of income; once they’ve stopped whining, you only have to provide wifi, a bongo workshop, and access to German Field*, and they look after themselves. Well, more or less. As Joe points out, if they can’t deal with gluten they probably aren’t going to deal with a solid kicking too well either, which is a pity because it would make having to put out their raging campfires at three in the morning when they’ve retired to their tents and fallen asleep far more enjoyable.

Runton Hall claims many things about itself. For example, it claims to be ‘fostering the playful nature of children and planet earth’, and I am therefore always struck by how many doomsday preppers are wandering around it. In case you are unfamiliar, doomsday preppers are happy in the knowledge that society is going to collapse at any minute, and that an opportunity to look pleased with themselves among the ruins is fast approaching. Runton Hall is popular with preppers because it is remote and offers wooded areas where food, medical supplies and all that can be hidden in the event of, for example, a Russian EMP strike, currently considered the most likely doomsday scenario. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to be prepping for the wrong disaster. Anyway, my favourite prepper is an enormous science fiction obsessive dubbed Beggar’s Canyon by ‘Anton’ after a geographical feature on the fictional Star Wars planet of Tattooine, which is also two metres wide. Beggar’s Canyon is troubled by her weight, as indeed we should all be. Then again, she is perfectly entitled to heft herself around the grounds asking where the buffet is in Klingon if she so desires, even if you can tell she’s looking at you for your potential nutritional value as she does so.

As for the rest of Runton Hall’s population – well, we have Buddhists in the gamekeeper’s cottage, and the Flat Earth people are still in the old servants’ quarters. It is not for me to comment upon the legitimacy of Flat Earth theory (or Buddhism, for that matter), but Flat Earthers are a serious bunch. I had to go through their accommodation checking for atlases, globes and so forth (visiting school parties sometimes stay in the old servants’ quarters) because they are pretty touchy about stuff like that. Runton needs the Flat Earth Pound, and I am happy to assist, although this does not alter the fact that removing educational equipment so as not to offend people who think that the Earth is flat is what my life has come to. On the bright side, if society does collapse soon, those of us in the Runton Hall site management staff will be one step ahead of the preppers, because we will get to their stuff before they do, leaving them to eat the glampers. Result.

(*The English Channel is a perfectly reasonable barrier between England and the continentals. What does the Hun do? Unable, as ever, to stomach a fair fight, he flies over it. That’s the mentality of these people, I’m afraid. His beastly little aeroplanes managed to grunt and clatter across the clean English sky as far as deepest East Anglia where they bombed Mundesley, if you please. You may rest assured that Runton Hall gave Jerry a proper British-style slap in the chops by housing captured Wehrmacht officers and giving them little plots of land where they could learn about being kind to things, a course of action the Hun would never otherwise consider. Seventy years later, the result is a vast and varied organic vegetable garden, which the glampers can dig up their own dinner in. Marvellous. I mainly eat Kit Kats, so it’s of little interest to me, but still.)
Farewell, Piccadilly

May 12th, 2017

The countryside is fucking barbaric. I don’t know if you’ve been there at all but, if you haven’t, it’s a bloodbath from end to end. One enormous slaughterhouse, all of it.

Everything in the countryside can be shot, hunted and generally preyed upon, and is too busy shooting, hunting and generally preying upon everything else to notice. Furthermore, whereas a Londoner such as myself will consider knowing what time the Bakerloo Line shuts down, or where to get a late drink in Southwark* as evidence of participation in an advanced society, someone in the countryside will consider knowing the best way to dispatch a rabbit in much the same light. The method, incidentally, is as follows: place the fore and index fingers of your right hand in a ‘v’ shape around the rear of the neck, then put the palm of your left under the luckless bunny’s chin and push firmly up and back. The lumbar vertebrae snap, the spinal cord is severed, and death is instantaneous. It is, as they say in the countryside, ‘the kindest thing to do’, although I imagine it would be even kinder not to kill it in the first place, or maybe treat it to a slice of carrot cake in the V and A tearooms instead. This information was imparted to me by Joe, a fellow urchin from the hairiest days of capering amid the shanty town of Camden Market, while executing hamsters with a claw hammer on a recent Tuesday afternoon. Joe hails from White City, but has been living in a wigwam in the grounds of Runton Hall for eight years, and has gone entirely native. The lesson is this: if you’re going to go to the countryside, get in, do what you need to do, and get out. Don’t start mucking about having pub lunches and all that. That’s how they rope you in – Joe only intended to stop for scampi and chips in Southwold, and now he lives like an Iron Age person. The danger, my friends, is real.

Mercifully, some similarities remain between us. For a start, we are both unemployable in any meaningful sense. Joe’s career highlight involved checking telecoms companies for Millennium Bug Compliance in 1999. This wa not difficult, and merely entailed walking around, nodding thoughtfully, and placing a sticker featuring a microchip fashioned into the shape of a smiling insect with ‘Bring On Y2K!’ written underneath it on equipment deemed able to withstand the coming apocalypse. It was a scam, obviously, but then so was the Millennium Bug itself. Joe understood that no one wanted to be the person who in January 2000 would have to explain why they hadn’t thought it worthwhile having their business Millennium-proofed, with computers running wild in the streets, and therein lay the genius at the heart of the whole caper: more companies than you might think adopted a ‘Well, we’d better let him get on with it’ approach, and quietly paid his invoices when presented with them some weeks later. Incidentally, the way to get past the poor quality security guards at telecoms companies is to be extremely aggressive when demanding access, and entirely charming once it has been granted – essentially a one man ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. Sadly, both good and bad cops alike agreed that he had committed fraudulent embezzlement following his arrest in a BT building in Reading, and he was sent to HMP Oxford for fourteen months, but although he missed the Millennium celebrations, enough invoices remained unclaimed-back out of sheer corporate embarrassment to make his incarceration worthwhile.

All Joe’s numerous children are a larf. This is especially true of one of the oldest ones, whose enthusiastic conception I overheard while trying to sleep on a sofa in Joe’s comically disintegrating mouse-infested ruin of a squat on Girdlestone Walk N6, over the 2008 Easter weekend. There were walls, of course, but they were thin and served only to amplify the horror. Even when there was an opportunity to escape the noise of the miracle of life being created, it was a difficult place to sleep in because what we suspected was a money laundering operation was in constant full swing next door. Counterfeiters always seem to have an inherent sense of theatricality, and those behind whatever was going next door were no exception, with drop offs and pick-ups in the dead of night, lots of full beam headlights, wheel spinning and people in suits wearing sunglasses at three in the morning. It was harmless compared to the neighbour on the other side, who claimed to have changed his DNA via meditation. He was nuts. Really, really, nuts, following us to Archway tube if we weren’t careful, jabbering in a crazed but earnest fashion and then into Camden, where we were trading, and where he admittedly blended in quite nicely. Remarkably, he ended up dj-ing at Gilgamesh, and I believe still does so.

Joe provides for his wife Becca and their numerous children by slaughtering his way through the local East Anglian wildlife as part of a site management position at Runton, a role which also involves maintaining fences, growing stuff, and making sure that all gates are left open to let the air circulate. Claw-hammering hamsters also comes under the highly interpretive list of ‘kindest things to do’, because it provides an instant, if undignified, death, as does beheading chickens in preference to the accepted strangulation method. If I was a chicken about to be strangled, I would want it done by someone skilled at the task, rather than have Joe – in his own words – ‘wringing random bits of neck like a face flannel’, and would also choose decapitation, given the choice. The whole carnival of death is at odds with Runton Hall, which these days is a low-key retreat for Buddhists, hippies, Reiki healers, obscure religious sects, hermits, conspiracy theorists, yoga junkies, idiots, flower children and drop outs of every heft and hue. Remarkably, Joe has been voted onto the Hall’s board of trustees, and has managed to have me appointed, too. It remains to be seen how we’ll make a grab for absolute power, but doing so is an interesting idea, because a) Runton Hall is a lovely place in need of expensive restoration, and b) there is no such thing as a poor hippy, so you’d like to think there’s some potential for connecting the two things rather pleasingly, after which a third could be added whereby the hippies are subsequently done away with, either by beheading or claw hammer, depending upon the vibe at the time.

These, then, are our days. In case you remember us from bygone times, there is no more market trading. The tiny empires that sprang from the East Yard, Camden Lock Market, vaulting the Grand Union Canal and spreading east and south along the Northern and Central lines in the early years of the twenty first century have all but disappeared, their race among the socioeconomic fabric of London finally run, and like Joe and I, many former traders have scattered deep into the geographical accident known as the Rest of the World. Unlike Joe, I do at least live in a permanent structure in the form of an actual house near-ish Runton Hall, although it is factually correct to state that more people live on Girdlestone Way than in my minuscule village. We are often joined by ‘Anton’, an old Deptford cohort now living in a part of Leeds he describes as ‘well Basra’, having given up selling awful jewellery to, and then shagging, poorly tattooed forty year old Lewisham grandmothers at Greenwich Market in favour of an even more precarious living as an ‘amateur electrician’. Thanks to his trademarked fingers-crossed-and-hope-for-the-best work on the elderly wiring of the Runton outbuildings, the old servants’ quarters can now house the many groups of people who like to use the place to escape from, or into, reality, depending upon your point of view. It currently has some Flat Earthers in it, and I have learned that if you introduce their dormitory with a cheery ‘Flat earth – bumpy mattress!’, you get some very stony stares indeed.

*the White Hart at Great Suffolk Street if you’re in before 9ish, but it’s popular with old bill so mind yourself.

Postscript

No, I don’t know why Joe keeps the hamsters in the first place, either. There are loads of them, though.

All Four Corners Of The World

Doomsday Glampers

Farewell, Piccadilly