November is slow at Runton Hall. Slow, yes, but not entirely at a standstill. For example, we still have conspiracy groups about the place, although in winter they prefer to stay in the Old Servants’ Quarters where they can gather around flip charts and sort everything out in the comfort of a warm nineteenth century building. The yoga never really goes away either. We have all three sorts at Runton – Bikram, drunk and deaf. I murdered our previous Bikram yoga lady for her own good, and the new one doesn’t expect Joe to maintain open fires all day in the Forest School dormitory where she holds her classes, and thereby clings to life. Drunk yoga is something of a misnomer, now I come to think of it, as only the instructor is drunk. Last week she took her class wearing sunglasses to hide plastic surgery bruises and spent an hour talking about her holiday in Cyprus, and I’m not sure how much longer her tenure will last. Of the three, deaf yoga is the most popular. I’d assumed that in rural areas deaf people would be shot as poor breeding stock, but the instructor claims to be able to ‘fill a coach from Norwich’ twice a week. I for one applaud the East Anglian deaf for their flexibility and commitment, and long may it continue.
The conspiracy groups are a legacy of Runton as a religious/hippy retreat in the seventies, decades before Joe and Becka and ‘Anton’ and I blundered onto the landscape with our Oyster Cards and hatred of rural life. Of all the groups, the Flat Earthers are most often in residence. They are a straight-laced bunch, but I don’t suppose there’s many giggles to be had when you’re up against NASA for what shape the world is. That said, I’ve sat through hours of Flat Earth lectures at Runton because I’m a slag for a good yarn, and a decent conspiracy theory is certainly that. To save you doing the same, shape-shifting lizards from Saturn infiltrated human bloodlines thousands of years ago and created sundry Illuminati organisations with which to exploit the planet earth and everyone on it. That, in a nutshell, is the root of all conspiracy theories. Moon landings, JFK, 911, AIDS, the Mandela Affect, Area 51, chemtrails, new world orders, Paul McCartney being dead since 1966 – it’s all down to the shape-shifting lizards. You can’t
just hide all the lettuce and hope they go away either, as they feed off a low frequency energy field put out by humans in distress, the little buggers. Although there are millions of people who believe this, it’s not for everyone. As ‘Anton’, currently re-wiring the Old Servants’ Quarters, put it recently – ‘it’s not for us to have opinions on all this total fucking bollocks’ and it’s not for me to, broadly speaking, agree with him.
Be that as it may, ‘Anton’s enthusiasm for re-wiring buildings has improved significantly since he became a qualified electrician last week. Like myself, he has not been paid for his work at Runton, which in his case amounts to eight months of optimistic rewiring work undertaken entirely at his own expense. This explains the tacit understanding that ‘Anton’ and I can make a few quid from the glampers as long as we don’t compromise what Runton is – a low key, off-radar place ‘that people can fuck off to for a chill out’, as he assured the Trustees on the one occasion he met them. He is gambling that, with the coming of our Lottery grant and the subsequent establishment of a limited company consisting of him, me, Joe and Becka, he will effectively be hired by himself at consultant rates to check his own wiring, which there is nothing wrong with, thereby enabling him to take a long and extremely well paid holiday throughout the back half of 2018. I think this sort of thing might be how Freemasonry got started, and I certainly see the appeal.
While Runton does have links with Freemasonry, which I’m not sure the conspiracy groups are aware of, religious visitors are less common and mainly confined to the hermitage in the remotest part of the Estate. Officially, Runton’s religious affiliation is secular humanism. In case you are unfamiliar, secular humanism replaces an irrational faith in God with an irrational faith in humans, leading me to wonder how many humans the average secular humanist has actually met. Recently, this line of thought enabled me to formulate my own non-conspiracy theory about the space lizards, centred upon my belief that humans don’t really need help to exploit and suppress each other. Humans are perfect vessels for malice, and while kindness and civility exists on a local and interpersonal level, these qualities are scarce in a wider context amid societies which ultimately exist to be pitted against each other. Therefore, the space lizards act as a form of interstellar ‘othering’: they can be blamed for everything, because the fundamental realisation that humans tacitly demand a permanent state of atrocity in which to flourish is simply too much for us to admit. I am therefore inclined to think that the interstellar shape shifters are a product of a flawed human psyche that refuses to accept that we are all a bunch of wankers. There, I’ve said it.
Photards:
Main – A little semi-outdoor kitchen that the Forest Schoolers use. There are no Forest Schoolers at the moment, so we use it to get pissed in.
Inset top – House martin chicks in the petting zoo earlier this year. They had a lovely time, fledging successfully in August, just in time for the new school year.
Inset middle – Grapes grown in the Victorian greenhouse at Runton. Note Joe’s stubby fingers, ideal for manual labour and showing a lack of education.
Inset lower – Christmas tree at Leadenhall Market. They do a lovely carol service, too. Be careful though, because Leadenhall is in the City of London, and the City of London crest is flanked by dragons, which are Illuminati symbols and what not. I think I might need to stop going to conspiracy theory lectures for a bit.
I was happy to report to the Trustees during this morning’s weekly board meeting that our Runton Bollywood wedding was a tremendous success. All concerned had a marvellous time and the whole thing went on till dawn. It also raised a healthy chunk of cash for the estate, even after numerous expenses and wages for me, Joe, and ‘Anton’, who drunk heavily for several hours while generally jollying things along. Becka was on the payroll for the day, amusing younger guests with face painting, which sadly did not extend to painting each child to look like one of the other children, as was my suggestion for causing chaos among parents and spicing up the end of the evening. Saturday Night Feverishness and their Seventies/Eighties covers went down a storm, especially their stirring rendition of Adam and the Ants’ 
Anyway. Weddings are nice, and the bride, groom and guests looked marvellous in their Bollywood gear, hired at massive cost by the wedding planner I employed to plan the wedding instead of me. Glampers, wandering over to see what the fuss was about, were cordially invited to join the celebrations, as were a bunch of yoga enthusiasts from Great Yarmouth who had arrived that afternoon. By the end of the night, pissed Flat Earthers were bopping happily among the guests, even when Saturday Night Feverishness played I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me by Nik Kershaw. The sun can’t go down on a flat earth, can it, and stauncher Flat Earthers consider this sort of thing to be propaganda put about by NASA. Yes I know, but they do, and I have to nod indulgently as they explain why, in the line of duty. A flat-earth compliant lyric in this instance would be ‘I won’t let the sun leave the part of the sky directly above where you are standing and transverse to the other end of the planet’, which is less catchy. A few Flat Earthers even got hold of other guests, which they probably didn’t bargain for when they arrived at Runton for a weekend of debunking the Theory of Relativity again, including a couple of gay blokes who doubtless saw the night out with acts of Greek love under the peaceful East Anglian firmament. We have another, smaller, wedding booked on the 8th July, but I shall not be around for it as I will be leaving Hackney that evening at 20:00 to ride to the Suffolk Coast, it being the annual 
nton’ and I were putting up a Robens Prospector Tent for some bunch of glamping fucktards or other when a figure approached us through the mist that sometimes makes the Runton estate look uncomfortably like a scene from The Others. It was Graham, who handles the more complex animal culls around the estate with ferrets and dogs and so forth. Graham is every inch a son of the soil, able to tell the time by the position of the sun, whittle things from sticks, get tractors to run on cooking oil, and do that thing where you pull a small sheep out of another, larger sheep. Conversely, ‘Anton’ is a shag happy Deptford wide boy, once the terror of the Lewisham menopausal and now, like myself, little more than a grumbling Cockney in a field. Those familiar with ‘Anton’ and I’s years of trading at Greenwich Market will recall the feud between him and Keith, a fine art and photography vendor, whereby ‘Anton’ would regularly offer to nip round and give Keith’s wife Barbara ‘the full half pint’, among other horrors with which I will not trouble you. My favourite part of the feud was when ‘Anton’ attempted to convince the market management that Keith was incontinent by pouring water over the cushion Keith liked to sit on, advising them to ‘have a quiet word with him about it’, and that Keith was a proud man in deep denial and it might be a good idea to call him into the office to discuss it privately, insisting it’s nothing to be ashamed of at his age and fatness. Sadly for ‘Anton’, his ambition of replacing the words ‘A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight’, which dominated the Nelson Road end of the market, with ‘Keith is a fucking fat fucking wanker’ will now never be realised, as that part of the premises has since been demolished and lost forever. Sometimes we can just dream a little too far. Anyway, as an adolescent, ‘Anton’ used to flog zoot suits outside the Lacy Lady* and, like myself, has time for someone who knows how to dress themselves properly. Incidentally, I don’t want any backchat about not judging a book by its cover at this point, because judging a book by the cover is efficient and speeds up the judging process a great deal.
most importantly well away from him and his numerous children. As we talked, we waved to the Flat Earthers, who were jogging past at that moment. Most people don’t think of hard core conspiracy theorists having an exercise regime, but then most people don’t think there’s a gigantic ice wall stopping the oceans from sloshing over the edge of the planet and into outer space either. Incidentally, the Flat Earthers are off next week, to be replaced by PID believers. In case you are unfamiliar, ‘PID’ stands for ‘Paul [McCartney] Is Dead’, and the theory is roughly as follows: McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a look and sound alike by the Tavistock Institute, a front organisation working on behalf of shape shifting lizards from the rings of Saturn for the purposes of spreading drug use among the young, thereby making the human population easier to control. Obvious really.
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.
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.
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 
ne 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.
The Runton Diaries 