The Runton Diaries

Among The Obscure

Jan 21st, 2020

In private sector management, the way to deal with a useless workforce is by force of personality or, if you don’t have a personality, force. Not so in it’s simpleton cousin, the public sector, where staff, such as the ones I was managing in my previous job up the council, are unsackable. Upon reflection this is harsh, because uselessness only accounted for three, or one and a half metric tonnes, of them. The others were perfectly amenable and made my job just about doable, to the extent that, had it been the footie, I would’ve scraped out a narrow 4:3 victory after extra time. Had it been a figurative riot in a cake shop or some kind of buffet clearing contest I would’ve been severely trampled, obviously, but fortunately that was not the case. I left the position as the actual, bona fide, victim of gender discrimination, the details of which I am obviously not at liberty to discuss. Anyway. The matter is closed and everyone has moved on, even those whose only way of sustaining motion would be to be strapped to a barge and floated downstream along a major waterway.

My previous manager, who is clinically insane, was in no small part responsible for my current post. Yes, he insists that he was the drummer in the Boo Radleys and yes he claims to regularly run to and from appointments at County Hall from home – a round trip of almost forty miles – but he must capable of string-pulling at some level or other, because he sorted this out quite nicely. There was a curiously hysterical quality to his untruths which I enjoyed. For example, during our final meeting when I mentioned my cycling exploits, he claimed to have a bike so rare as to be uninsurable, having previously belonged to a member of the Basque team in the 2016 Tour de France. I said he could simulate insurance by giving me a tenner a week which I might or might not give back if anything happened to it, but this was a non-starter, because the real reason it is uninsurable is because it doesn’t exist. When I mentioned my Open Unive

rsity course, he claimed to be studying, at five grand a day, a Crisis Management qualification that, when successfully completed, would empower him to evacuate a country. The phrase ‘evacuate a country’ sent me into lolz because it is just so ridiculous, and when he handed me the contract for my current post, I was barely able to focus on it through the tears of mirth. Even the Human Resources lady who was also present covered her face with a folder, although I could see her shoulders going and hear the muffled shrieks. It was quite a moment.

The thing is, though, nonsensical untruths, lol-worthy as they are, ultimately end up rather sad. I mean, everyone fibs, because everyone understands, at least subconsciously, the advantages of being tactically more interesting on an essentially harmless, short term basis. However, my now ex-manager’s fantastic (in the literal sense of only existing in fantasies) untruths must be driven by something greater. I assume it is autism of some kind, or a version of Tourette’s whereby, instead of wandering round Tesco telling people to fuck themselves, you’re claiming to be road manager for the Bootleg Beatles or a senior consultant on the Thames flood barrier. Now I come to think of it, that would make his behaviour compulsive and therefore essentially involuntary, rather than fantastic, because a fantasy needs to be constructed whereas a compulsion happens of its own accord. Be that as it may, it is sobering to reflect upon him going home every evening and thinking ‘What the fuck did I say that for?’. ‘All the lonely people – where do they all come from?’ pondered Paul McCartney via Eleanor Rigby in 1966. If this evidence is anything to go by, they come from Winterton on Sea, and spend a lot of money on running shoes.

So here I am, passing the winter months in an obscure department in an obscure district council until the coming of warmer weather means that operations at Runton can begin again in earnest. Most of my work consists of recording obscure details about the effects of spring tides on the mussel beds at Wells on obscure spreadsheets that no one will ever look at. I also take the post to the post room at quarter past three, and drop off and subsequently pick up the departmental laundry when it is returned from the cleaners. I fold things, put things in envelopes, attach things to emails and discuss the weather, the footie, and amusing stuff toddlers do with the other obscures – there are six of us in total. Most afternoon we have enormous bags of cakes, which is difficult for those of us who like to avoid carbs. It’s even more difficult when those of us who like to avoid carbs are having a binge day, because then we have to buy two enormous bags of cakes – one to share with the team, and one to scoff alone on the far side of the car park. I am kept abreast of Eastenders and Love Island, and in return discuss bits of my studies. Maybe it’s fear of obscurity that drives my ex manager to talk nonsense, although it strikes me that striving to avoid obscurity is a foolish pursuit, especially as oscurity it is, in many ways, comforting, or at least welcoming. For all this upswing in events, however, reminders of my previous job persist: last week I received in the internal post the keys to the Ford Focus that comes with it, despite the fact that left the job five months ago and don’t drive anyway. It is still in the car park, and I use it to put my bike in when it’s raining. Idiots.
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Photards:

Main: rams or sheep or something in a field.

Top inset: my son at his nan’s with a litter bin on his head.

Middle inset: coffee made for me at work by an environmental health officer. The residue at the top reminded me of a series of sleighs being pulled by reindeer, although this was around Christmastime.

Lower inset: my dog guarding the stairs in our house when renovations were going on.
The Bleak Midwinter

Jan 14th, 2020

It is January 14^th, 2020 and I have just taken our Christmas tree from the living room to the garden. It is a real tree, so it can come in again next year, but even this is too annoying for me – I wanted a plastic one we could keep by the telly with a tea towel over it till December. Across England, from the mid Victorian country estate of Runton, where Joe is mending llama chewed and goat rammed petting zoo fences, to the Leeds side streets where ‘Anton’ is fixing the faulty wiring of his elderly and distrusting Asian customer base, to the obscure Norfolk council department where I have found employment for the winter months, tinsel has come down, Rudolph and his very shiny clothes are sound asleep, and bopping desktop Santas have had the last tango in Briston. For now, Christmas is old news, and the bleakest part of the bleak midwinter is upon us.

On the subject of old news, imagine if, as a Christmas present, the Labour Party had given us something to vote for. That would’ve been lovely. Unlikely, of course, because it is little more than a masturbatory aid for the woke middle class, and therefore exists only in gentrified London boroughs, Twitter, and Brighton, but a nice gesture nonetheless. Instead, Labour’s ‘Youth Quake’, promised to use righteous paranoia to save us from ourselves by shaking up the social order good and proper, but couldn’t even kick the Tories off its own campus doorsteps, which it puts down to the Many being too stupid to vote for a bunch of semi-posh anti Semites who hate them. The Tories aren’t fond of us either, but they aren’t pretending to be our big mates, and while I’m sure there are Tories with, among other things, anti-Semitic views, they aren’t using them as a vote winner, are they. Incidentally, in case you’re concerned that you might have voted for a racist party – anti-Semitism and racism are completely different things, like twins, so there’s no need to worry.

I was the first into work on the morning after the election. Shortly after I had made my two flasks of Gold Blend for the day, Liz, who is responsible for the beach huts at Overstrand, turned up, and we discussed the previous nights’ events. Norfolk born and bred, a husband working as an agricultural haulage contractor and three children in local state schools, Liz is one of the Many, and had rooted for Labour all the way. Ghost faced and barely coherent, she whispered about where all this would leave the people of Palestine, and how her children would cope without compulsory transgender education in state primary schools. How can we call ourselves a modern society when our internet remains unnationalised? she continued, staring straight ahead at an invisible, but infinitely more welcoming, other horizon. I put my coat around her shoulders and she sobbed quietly. Oh hang on. No, now I come to think of it, it was nothing like that at all. Liz bounced in, said ‘I’m glad Labour lost, they are a bunch of twats’ then sat down, looked at her phone, said ‘Buble’s at Blickling*! Shall we all go for a larf?’ and spent the next forty minutes sorting out tickets.

Upon reflection, I think it would be better for everyone if the middle class left politics alone. They’re always going to be alright whatever happens anyway, and they’ve got the Extinction Rebellion when they want to shout at people for being stupid and what not. This is imporant, because shouting at people for being stupid literally is middle class politics. Also, they already have enough to keep them busy, what with the Winter Olympics, hummus, transgenderism, picnics, yoga, food intolerances, pop up bakeries and telling us how to be working class properly, so it’s not like they won’t have anything to Tweet about. Instead of going to festivals to wave rainbow flags about and leave litter everywhere, they should use them as an inspiration to get into music, where they have a solid track record – my own beloved Beatles are built upon the most middle class musical partnership in history, after all. This became apparant when half of it starting singing about being a Working Class Hero from a recording studio in his stately home, which also featured seventy two acres of grounds, a herd of deer, a lake specially dug so it was visible from the master bedroom and a purpose built heated room for his conceptual artist wife to keep her fur coats in. That said, he did strike a blow for the Many by having his chauffer return his MBE to Buckingham Palace in a Rolls Royce, so there’s that. Then again, he also wrote Imagine, the most patronising song in the history of popular music. I mean, it’s a lovely tune and as a sentiment it’s difficult to argue with, but it assumes, as all middle class people do, that no one except them has ever thought about how nice it would be if everything was marvellous. For all this, though, I remain an enthusiastic supporter of the middle class, because a middle class is how you know you live in a democracy, but they have got to know their limits. These people meddling in things is why it costs fifty quid to see West Ham, why gluten free batter is making fish and chips more and more expensive, why the Labour party wouldn’t save you even if it could and, understandably, why the aliens won’t fucking talk to us.

*Michael Buble, performing at Blickling Hall in north Norfolk.

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Main photard: Red sky in the morning – can’t stop yawning, as the old country saying goes. Still, the cows don’t seem to mind. NB I’m pretty sure the sky won’t be visible on most devices, but it really is a lovely deep shade of red.

The other screenshots are all from the night before the 2017 election, when I was being pestered by some Labour person while walking the dog. The next day saw them losing yet again, but as ever claiming, somehow, to have won. They’re always doing this. The exchange went on for ages in this vein, until they ended it with the classic ‘elderly relative who, with his dying breath, urged people to vote Labour to save the NHS’ fib.
Skinny Jeans On Holloway Road

Sep 10th, 2019

There was once a small clothes shop on Holloway Road, just past the Lion pub, opposite Archway tube on the way to Camden Town, and in the window was a sign saying ‘Skinny Jeans Can Fuck Off’. This would date it to around 2008, when Joe and I would tumble in to and out of the Lion after Saturday trading, tumble into Planet Kebabs, and tumble back to his squat in Bracegirdle Street which, as it turns out, was next to a money laundering operation. These were fearless times: the most we had to worry about was the DJ who used to play outside the veggie burger place at Camden Lock Market, who would corner us on the Northern Line and explain how he was changing his DNA to counter CIA mind control techniques. Someone mugged us on Archway Road around this time, and even he was a larf, once he stopped waving his butterfly knife about. We ended up sharing our chips with him, and I think we might even have given him a tenner. What we should have given him was a solid kicking of course, but I had a downstairs flat in Kentish Town and a vintage Vespa with chrome and mirrors all over it, Joe and Becka were about to get married and, in that vanished world of N19, it was a veritable Summer of Love.

2008 was also a good time for Portsmouth, who won the FA Cup that year. I was reminded of this by Matt, our new chef and Portsmouth fan, during his event debut at the recent Runton wedding, while setting up a ‘hummus cannon’, ie, a middle class buffet. A hummus cannon is like any other buffet but gluten free, vegan and funless. This is how you know it’s middle class, because normal people can’t afford to eat like that. Also, everyone has to say ‘I don’t suppose we’ll be able to get this after Brexit’ every time they put a kale vol au vent or whatever on a reusable plate they subsequently leave in a hedge. The wedding party was typified by a Boden catalogue who rampaged across the cous cous while snarking on about a recent dentist visit she had undertaken. The treatment, for a root canal, had required a subsequent appointment. The dentist told her there would be a four week wait, but the ‘good old working class receptionist’ had managed to squeeze her in next Thursday at three, with the overall impression that between them they had scored a victory over what counts as oppression for white girls like this. I was tempted to explain that, when you think about it, the job of dentist and dental receptionist are quite different and, to illustrate this, perhaps next time the dentist could take care of the appointments while the receptionist has a bash at her root canal surgery, and see how that works out. Also, had I been the receptionist I would have been tempted to take advantage of the fact that she was full of anaesthetic by leaning over my little reception desk and punching her in the fucking mouth.

This sort of thing, and the wedding party looking, as you might expect, like an Extinction Rebellion protest, did not detract from a happy and heart-warming event. Unfortunately, I missed most of the reception, including Princess Leo and his Star Wars cabaret drag act, because Joe and I were reintroducing the Confederate reenactors – who as you may recall, have been living in the woods for some time – to the twenty first century. They were in good shape and high spirits and sat in a minibus eating pizza and checking their phones while Joe and I hefted their stuff into the back. I was tempted to offer them hummus cannon leftovers but felt this might be a let down after subsisting on squirrel meat in a forest for three weeks.

Along with banjos and replica firearms, we carefully folded their flags into a suitcase with an Ibiza sticker on it. Confederate flags are often reviled as a symbol of slavery, being that the Confederacy was a slave economy, but I can’t really think of anywhere that isn’t. The Pyramids were built by slaves, and no one’s boycotting Egypt. People are worked to death making iPhones or handbags or trainers, but no one really minds. There are many many more slaves these days, but I suppose we don’t mind because we can’t see them. Anyway, at least the Confederates were up front about the unpleasent nature of their society, and in that regard perhaps their flag is the most honest that ever flew. For some time we reflected that, while the world of the Archway clothing shop and its views on contemporary legwear are long gone, as is the Lion public house and our Camden trading empire, the world of the Confederates is more evident than ever and we may therefore assume that they won their civil war pretty easily.

With our minibus loading complete, and Princess Leo’s rendering of I Like Big Hutts And I Cannot Lie, 99 Problems But The Sith Ain’t One and Sand People Are Made For Each Other drifting across the Estate, we waved the Confederates off and went in search of overlooked bottles of cava among the wedding party. Another summer at Runton has begun to wind down.

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Photards:

Main: Norfolk level crossing.

Top inset: Joe’s ex post office van. A bit scruffy, but surprisingly robust.

Middle inset: Fat stormtrooper at a Norfolk carnival.

Lower inset: A Confederate re-enactor, or possibly ghost.
Never Say Die

Aug 15th, 2019

Shortly after ‘Anton’s claims of Graham putting ‘about a billion volts’ through his ‘fucking bell end’, Runton’s Romany beastmaster and I took his dogs on their evening trot around the Estate, discussing names for the new stables block as we did so. This had not, however, been the original subject of our conversation. Originally, it was the question of how to reduce the rabbit population of Runton in a manner that the RSPCA won’t find cruel, the only workable solution being to continue to use the same dogs happily bouncing along beside us. I find talking about country things with Graham intimidating, because he invented the outdoors and I am something of a dunce anywhere other than the Northern Line. As a result, I often find myself babbling about things I do know about, to compensate. So, while being shown how to discharge a shotgun or mend a fence, I will divert proceedings to contemplate the corrosive effect of monetarist economics on free market capitalism, or the German invasion of the Soviet Union or, as in this case, a chestnut mare called Never Say Die, who won the 1954 Epsom Derby and in doing so became the fifth Beatle. Make no mistake: without Never Say Die’s efforts on that rainy Derby day, there would be no Beatlemania, no pop music and, to paraphrase Hey Jude, which would not have been written, the world would be a little colder. As Graham gave instructions to his dogs by whistling implausibly loudly through his teeth, which no one born in a city can do, I embarked upon a story.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, Mona Shaw, 17 years old and the firebrand daughter of a British army Major awaiting the expected Japanese invasion of British India, gave birth to a son. The father, Donald Scanland, was killed on duty with the Royal Navy before the child was a year old. Three years later, Mona married an army boxing champion called Johnny and, with the fortunes of war irreversibly with the Allies and Indian independence looming, the little family boarded a troop ship for England, arriving in a Blitz-battered Liverpool on Christmas Day 1944. In her

suitcase, Mona carried a quantity of her parents’ jewellery. Whether this was a goodwill nest egg or acquired by other means is unclear, but Mona felt it might come in useful in her new life in the Motherland. She was not wrong.

Ten years later, the clan were settled in Liverpool’s agreeable West Derby district. Life was relatively comfortable, but Mona yearned for a home like the spacious colonial property in which she had spent her childhood. On a whim, she sold the jewellery and staked the proceeds on a horse in that year’s Epsom Derby. Never Say Die was priced at an unappetising 33-1 but, with a teenage Lester Pigott at the helm romped home. With the considerable winnings, Mona decided to buy a windmill in St Helens, ten miles away, and move the family into it. The day before the sale was to complete, however, her son told her of an allegedly haunted house his schoolfriends had been talking about. The property, 8 Haymans Green, wasn’t haunted, but it was derelict, overgrown, and without occupants for many years. It also had fifteen bedrooms and three acres of land. Mona bought it on sight.

Renovating the house in a whimsical Oriental style, she opened a coffee bar in the basement and began taking bookings from local bands keen to play anywhere that would take them. Although miniscule, the Casbah, as Mona had called it, became a notable venue and, one afternoon in 1960, earnest 16 year old guitarist George Harrison, always more business savvy than his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney, blagged a residency for the Silver Beetles there. Harrison had decided against mentioning that the Silver Beetles didn’t have a drummer. Without a drummer they weren’t a band. If they weren’t a band they wouldn’t get the residency. Unbeknown to everyone, destiny was hanging in the balance. Happily, Mona’s eldest son was a drummer. A somewhat pedestrian, limited drummer with little in the way of flair, but a drummer all the same. The three Silver Beetles pounced on him, and became four. The energy and originality of their shows put them in demand, their reputation eventually securing them a gruelling musical apprenticeship that would take them to Hamburg, the Cavern Club, and unimaginable realms beyond. Never Say Die‘s Derby triumph had underpinned everything, and the four human Beatles were on their way. The countdown had started. History held it’s breath.

Sadly, it released it again quite quickly with regards to Mona’s son, Pete Best, who was sacked by the band after two years and hundreds of shows, six months before Beatlemania screamed itself into the world. He had to go, of course – Ringo Starr was galaxies ahead in terms of technique, musicianship, charisma and pure Beatle-ness, but it is impossible not to feel sorry for Pete as the Sixties raced ahead without him. His best friend, Neil Aspinall, did little to soften the blow by first becoming the Beatles’ road manager and then getting Mona pregnant. In fact, Never Say Die had a longer career than Pete Best, who never went on to win the St Ledger by eight lengths or be rated the fifty-third best racehorse of the twentieth century. Admittedly, Never Say Die didn’t end up with a road named after him by a sympathetic Liverpool Corporation employee, but didn’t repeatedly try to kill himself as the result of having the ultimate showbiz millstone around his desperately sad neck, either.

My story over, we trudged on in silence, the dogs scampering hither and yon in the airy early evening.

‘So what I’m saying,’ I said at length, ‘is that I’d call the stables ‘Never Say Die’. You know, the efforts we’re putting in and all that. Bit of a story to it as well.’

There was another, shorter pause. Graham spoke.

‘You know the rabbits?’ he said, ‘will the RSPCA think it’s cruel if you bore them to death by talking to them about the fucking Beatles?’
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The 1954 Epsom Derby.

Photards:

Main: The Fifth Beatle, Never Say Die, painted by Red Rum.

Top inset: Our hero, front left with all his legs going like mad, ushering in the Swinging Sixties.

Middle inset: Mona Best. Good eyebrows, nice frock, ace tipster.

Lower inset: The Casbah Coffee Club. This is the entire venue. The bands played at the end where the picture of the three Beatles who aren’t Pete Best are.
The New Chef

Aug 12th, 2019

Public executions have been illegal in Norfolk since 2003 so, despite what appeared to be an enormous gallows being built by Graham and Joe by the new stable block, that obviously wasn’t what it was. No, it is the framework for run-in sheds* in the paddock, and while Joe and Graham heft and hammer, ‘Anton’ replaces the elderly wiring in the existing stable buildings. There is a lot of work to do, including the removal of a non-working electric fence, although my main contribution thus far has been to wheelbarrow recycleable cobblestones to the main stable yard from elsewhere on the Estate. Having completed this last Thursday morning, I went off to chat to our new chef, Matt, who is handling the catering for the upcoming Runton wedding. He has been providing Flat Earth Society finger buffets all week, a change from whatever he was doing before I should think, although none of us are sure what this is and assume he was in prison.

‘If you believe that reality is controlled by shape shifting lizards who literally eat human negativity for sustenance, and manipulate our DNA with telepathy so that we can’t see them, even though they walk among us all the time, what method could we employ to get around this?’, I asked him while he mucked about with cous cous. I won’t give Nid cous cous because I don’t want him to grow up resenting me, but the same can evidently not be said for the wedding party. The answer is ‘photography’ because, obviously, a camera can’t be telepathically influenced, so photographs unexpectedly featuring alien lizards looking suddenly quite sheepish should be popping up all over the place. I’ve been feeling rather clever about working this out and intend to torpedo the Flat Earth Society with it the next time they forgot to bring me back shortbread fingers from shopping runs to Sainsbury’s in Bungay.

‘With photography’, smiled Matt, simultaneously finishing the cous cous and pissing on my chips, ‘a camera doesn’t have DNA’. He is friendly, smiley, and has the flicky hair of someone who looks like they say ‘brah’ a lot, which is another way of saying that you want to be waterboarded. He doesn’t though, which is nice, although the first time ‘Anton’ and I met him he was playing Stairway To Heaven quite loudly from a Spotify playlist, leading to concerns that he might be Australian – ‘This is Australian music, it’s music for Australians, like Hotel California and Layla’ remarked ‘Anton’ at the time – but he is from Portsmouth, with ‘PFC 1898’** among his many tattoos. Joe managed to get him past the Board of Trustees – who have got shapeshifter written all over them, if anyone has – on the entirely truthful grounds that we will be better able to cover events with an actual chef on board, rather then the rest of us just cutting sandwiches diagonally into fours and hoping for the best. Revenue for events goes to the Board members and with regards to his suspected prison record, After Lunch***, with the carefree manner of someone who probably sacrifices children to an owl God with Bill Clinton, said that ‘…as long as he wasn’t in for poisoning or arson, we should be fine.’

Matt’s kitchen for the time being is in the Keeper’s Cottage. It was busy because Hugh the Wedding Planner, a scam artist fleecing the happy couple, and Princess Leo, a drag artist providing Star Wars cabaret for the reception, were also in attendance. I learned about blending stick foundation and disguising your Adam’s apple from Princess Leo while Matt and Hugh talked about food allergies among the wedding guests, because it’s not every day you get to talk to a drag artist. Outside, it was a beautiful day. The sun shone upon the vegetables being harvested by tiny Forest School hands in German Field and upon glampers and the petting zoo. It shone upon East Field, it shone upon the West Field and it celebrated all the trees and greenery across the entire Estate. It also shone upon the furious and protracted shouting that followed Graham’s decision to reveal that a circuit breaker only needed to be flipped in a forgotten junction box for the electric fence around the paddock to once again carry quite a substantial current, shortly after ‘Anton’ started urinating on it.

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*Basic auxiliary stables where horses can shelter from bad weather or hang out if they fancy a bit of a change.

**’Portsmouth Football Club [founded] 1898.

***Not his real name. I don’t know what it is because he is so posh I couldn’t understand him when he told me. He and his wife, whose name sounds like ‘Falafel For Lunch’ when he says it, own the Runton Estate, and live in the Big House.

Photards:

Main: Framework of Runton run-in sheds.

Top inset: Greenwich Market book vendor. I bought tons of stuff from here, also Black Gull books in Camden.

Middle inset: The programme from a Larry Grayson end-of-pier show framed as a birthday present by John the Boxes, the richest market trader in London. One of my earliest memories is seeing my old dear weep with laughter at Larry Grayson, and I have loved him ever since.

Lower inset: North Norfolk beach hut. Must try and bump myself up the waiting list for these while I’m still at the council, as I think it would be nice to open a tiny barbershop in one.