7 miles and a world apart

We had a day out today. In the morning we went to Hunstanton, a traditional seaside resort on the Norfolk coast, in the afternoon we went to Brancaster, a village along the coast and ended up at the Jolly Sailors for dinner.

In one place we heard kids names like Kayden, Jayden and Curtis, in the other we heard names like Florence, Olivia and Phoebe. In one place a large woman and her parents, probably well over 60 stone between the three of them, intimidated wifey off a bench, in the other somebody dinged our car door by opening their enormous(ly oversized phallus of an) Audi Q7 without caring a jot about our car. In one place, cafes offered Daily Roast Dinners (their capitalisation, not mine) and all day fry ups, the other dressed local crabs and local samphire.

It’s funny how a completely different class of person occupies such a geographically close pair of towns. I’m not about to enter a class war because the middle class has it’s own specific sort of arsehole (although to be fair I don’t think anyone with a professional qualification has offered to break both my legs after cutting me up at a roundabout) that’s at least as bad as anybody elsewhere.

Th North Norfolk coast from Hunstanton to Cley Next the Sea has changed a lot in the last 15 years. Back then, smoky pubs full of locals would serve toast and pate with your pint, there was a sort of ramshackled obstinate beauty about it all. Nowadays everything is painted National Trust shades of blue and green, with joined up handwritten signs. It’s a lot more expensive; people with children called Jocasta have their weekend place here and keep their Discovery 3 up here to churn the embankment of country lanes to buggery. The beauty is still here though.

SHARE: