Tue, cloudy morn but they say it is going to be warm today and it is going to stay this way for another week. Heatwave. Not yet mid-April. Gonna have to watch closely and see how things shake out. Not that watching will make any difference. In bed by 10 last night after a couple of days in Suffolk. The flatlands. We were by the coast and it was teeming with people. Used to live in that area 30 years ago in the mid-70s in a place called Beccles and I never remembered it being so busy as it was this weekend. Where have all these people come from? Must be that everyone has cars. Must be that everyone can afford the leisure these days as the rough work is carried out by people from Eastern Europe and places like that. So many people! Thousands and thousands of people. Kinda made me wonder where you would have to go in this country to be on your own these days. Probably would have to travel kinda far. Further than these shores that's for sure...
Couple of days in the flatlands. It was dry and sunny. Weather was good. Countryside looked kinda stunning I have to say. Tamdin and me and my parents. All staying at the Westleton Crown in the village of Westleton. It was on the folks. They booked and paid for the rooms. Mind you I ended up paying for one of the meals which came to a cool 150 quid. Ouch.
Slept badly both nights I was there. Both times woke up in the middle of the night and was staring into the dark, heart beatin' fast. Too much food, too much red wine and beer, too much easy livin'. It was kinda OK waking up there 'coz the place was quiet and dark. Lying there different kinda thoughts passed through my mind, thoughts I now can't necessarily remember but their quality was fine. Nuthin' too disturbing at least. First night I was awake long enough for the dark to slowly turn into light, accompanied by the birds singing. Must have dropped off of course as you always eventually do but I was still up by around 7.40. Walking the village before breakfast, with Tamdin and me poppa.
Aldeborough and Southwold. The two main places on the coast. We went to Aldeborough on the first day we were there. Full of people, the kind of place it might be better to go to in the middle of the week when the weather is grey and mysterious, and it is a lot more empty. You can walk along right by the sea. Shingle, pebbles and sea. All there is to it.
On the day we were there the sea was blue which is rare I think for the North Sea which usually specialises in a kind cold brown sludge. The sea was blue and calm and the visibility was good enough to allow you to see for miles and miles. Not much on the sea though. To the disappointment of my dad who loves looking at ships even if they are just hunks of steel full of containers.
Demographic in Aldeborough was decidedly white, decidedly English. So many of 'em. Makes me kind of think there must be ghost towns out back in the counties when so many people are at the seaside for the day. Fish and chips. Lots of fish and chips being eaten. Fish being gutted in little huts on the beach by the fishermen. Fresh fish to buy from them if you fancied it. Fish guts thrown on to the ground behind the cutting table where a gaggle of seagulls waited noisily to pounce. Tamdin was fascinated and later she told me she thought it was kinda primitive to witness. Guess it was. Reminded her of Tibetan sky burial. Fish guts. They certainly caused a stink. Blended into the fish and chips coming out of peoples paper bags as they unwrapped them on the sea wall and got stuck in. Fish chips and a can of Coke. The new language.
Next day we went to Southwold which was busier. Bigger and busier. It has a cliff and a sandy beach, so, different to Aldeborough which was simply flat beach and pebbles. Supposed to be an expensive place to live these days, Southwold, and you kinda of got the feeling walking round the place that the actual number of locals born and bred who lived there was most definitely very small. Outside money had bought it up. Cottages and little sea houses. Huts on the promenade with the usual names tacked onto them. Sea Breeze. Dolphins. If I had one I would have called it Fuck You. Guess those kinda thoughts belong to another life and they will never see the light of day in cold reality. Wood hut by the beach. Reading the paper. Trying to get my bit of sun, with thousands of people walking past me every hour. Fuck you.
Ended up in Southwold having a sandwich on the beach. Everywhere was full and in the end Tamdin used her genius to buy a loaf of wholemeal bread, fresh ham and organic salad from Somerfields in the centre of town, a store which had nearly been stripped bare. Made them up on the beach. The sandwiches. Far healthier and more memorable than just getting one of their foul looking prepacked efforts which were all coming up to their expiry dates. The ones that were left that is. Coronation chicken, big breakfast...urgh!!
Suffolk. To be honest it aint my favourite part of the world. Lived there for a couple of years back in the 70s, ended up getting bullied to shit at school and couldn't get out of there quick enough. Beccles, that was the town. Small town and even smaller people. Beccles and Bungay. Actually we went there this weekend, me, my folks and Tamdin, just for half an hour or so in the middle of the afternoon. Brought back a few memories but maybe not as many as I was expecting, or maybe they are still lurking in brain somewhere, waiting to crawl out in the middle of the night. Main thing about Beccles this time around was that it looked completely deserted...probably because it was Easter, but all the same I saw enough of the people who were hanging around the centre to know that cruelty there still existed. Oh yeah, aint no doubt about that.
Dusty sleepy Shittles where sex was a major occupation for most of the kids I knew when I was there 30 years ago, either real or fantasised, and no doubt it still is today. Probably more real now than imagined. We just went for a cup of tea which was pretty hard to find on an Easter Sunday afternoon in Shittles and eventually we had to get one from a pub. Pretty smelly boozer in the centre of town which no doubt on Friday and Saturday nights will be full of Shittles thugs. Pubs in Shittles are for serving beer, not tea and coffee that is for sure. Beers like Adnams and Tolly Cobold...local brews. Primitive farm labourer culture is what lies underneath. Shittles is on the river Waverely (the gateway to the Broads no less) and about 14 miles inland from the coast but feels like it is much further away from the fresh sea breezes than that. Good place to have in the Deep South of the US. Heat haze afternoons, nothing on the streets, old red brick buildings and curtains twitching.
Stood by the church overlooking the river. Place actually seemed much smaller than I remembered. Maybe the thing was that I was a lot smaller when I lived there so naturally the place seemed bigger back then. All those hours spent riding around on my bike. Down the dusty summer streets and through the fields. Playing in the summer evenings. Timeless yellow summer. '76. The long hot summer, I remember it well.
Flat yellow fields. Land of crops an' machinery and farm labourer nastiness. At the time I was there this w/end it didn't hit me so much but on reflection I now see that during our little visit Shittles managed to betray those tell tale signs to me that things had not much changed and that if you stood out in the wrong kind of way you might find yourself in trouble, just like I did 30 years ago, not much older than a nipper up from Plymouth. Fact was that as far as the natives went you had to be of them, and if you weren't then that was when the problems started. Big problems in terms of trying to avoid getting your face punched in.
Maybe it was just the look of the man I saw standing in the doorway of a shop in the empty town centre that gave it all away. Balding with a paunch but mean ferret eyes darting out of his head. That was all you needed to know. When he was younger he would have been a lot more dangerous, one of the ones who would have pounced on a little fresh faced sucker like me walking through the school gates. The sleepiness of the place was still intact but that was what was most deceptive about it then and still is now no doubt. Behind closed doors it wasn't sleepy at all.
Labourer cruelty. A town raised on the backs of farm labour, now long gone of course to the machines and to the Eastern Europeans. Best of luck to them. Back then workin' in the fields was something available to all in the summer months, even a punk like myself. I remember clearly spending days working in the fields picking strawberries, back breaking work aint no doubt about that. But then the sheer delight of having enough money to race back into town on my bike and buy records made it all worth it. Records from Norlings in the centre of town. God Save the Queen by the Pistols followed a few weeks later by Pretty Vacant the intro to which just completely and utterly did my fuckin' head in. Ultra magic. Sweet Johnny Rotten. Gone, but not forgotten.
So there we are. A snapshot in time, an untidy bundle of Shittles memories comin' outta me fuckin' head. Think I can say that as much as these things can be certain I will never go back to Shittles again. It took me 30 years to get there for my first re-visitation and that was enough for me to know that, just like Mars, as far as I am concerned there aint no life there. At least not life as I would call it. Sleepy, sleepy Shittles. It can piss off.
Back in London. City of my dreams, even though at times it drains me and makes me feel like cryin'. Thurs morn, weather bright. Busy day yesterday hosting a Tibetan lama, Akong Rinpoche, and Tibetan friends for lunch. Drove down to Elephant and Castle to pick up Rinpoche, at his new London centre just off the Walworth Road. Horrible roadworks on the Walworth nearly screwed up all my safely worked out plans to arrive spot on time. Yeah, nearly totally an' utterly screwed 'em.
Trouble was that the roadworks put me back a good 15 mins and then when I turned into Manor Place where the Buddhist centre was located there was no indication as to where exactly on the road it was. Absolutely no indication at all. Ended up driving around in circles, seriously horrible circles, and at one point I had to go the wrong way down a one way street or else I would have ended back on the dreaded stinkin' Walworth which was something I wanted to avoid at any cost. Scraped the underneath of my Toyo Avensis quite badly on a speed bump as well. Disgusting fuckin' sound it made that made me cringe.
Just didnt realise the bastard bump was there as I frantically drove around in a panic trying to find the centre was Rinpoche was waiting. Nothing worse than that I can tell ya. Not being able to find the place you are supposed to go to... In London it means pulling over and squinting at the A-Z and if your eyes aint great like mine aint then you are soon in trouble. Staggeringly 'orrible. Finally had to call the centre and a pleasant sounding nun stepped outside into the street so that I could spot her robes and so know where the place was. Saw her. Panic over. But it was a close call.
Later in the day had to drive Akong back through the City in order for him to get to a restaurant in Chinatown where he was due to have a meal with people before heading off to see Casino Royale somewhere in the West End. By the end of the day yesterday I was pretty shattered. Lots of driving in London, figuring out the best way to go here and there, sometimes not too good at it I have to admit, other times completely fuckin' spot on.
Coming back from town was much quicker than going in which was kinda strange because early evenin' time it shoulda been the other way round. Put on Bob's Modern Times and had it playing loud on the Toyo CD system. So good, so very very good. Amazingly didn't even get to the end of the album before I was home which meant that I made it from Shaftesbury Ave back to Woodford in under 50 mins. Pretty damn good, aint no doubt about that. Going in was a lot longer maybe an hour 15, an hour 20 or maybe not quite so long, maybe an hour 5, an hour 10.
Cut down Bethnal Green High Road going in but then made the mistake of slinging a left down Bishopsgate and ending up slap bang in the middle of the of the City, managed to keep cool and get along Poultry onto Holborn Viaduct and then Shaftesbury Ave that way. Always nervy when you are taking people somewhere they have to get to sharpish. Best thing about it though was that I was able to ask Akong Rinpoche questions about my meditation, told him exactly how far I thought I had got and what I was doing. He gave me good advice on the basis of the information I gave to him. Good sound advice and I hope I can build on that and get down to some sitting in the coming months. There has been too much of this and not enough meditation. Think I'll soon need to call a time out on all this bloggin' and get down to some serious sitting. Need to do it, want to do it.
Yeah, bloggin' it an' poddin' it. Too much of both. Just got back today for example and there was a CD waiting for me that I had ordered a coupla days from the Zon. A Wishbone Ash album from '79 - Just Testing. Good deal I have to say, only just over 6 quid and that was including the postage and the packing. Bought it after getting back into Argus their classic from '72. Both albums remastered of course, with bonus trax thrown in as well. The Ash, still going strong but known these days to hardly anyone. Well, in the 70s they were big for a while. Now they play pubs.
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