Once Upon A Time in West Norfolk

With thanks to Sergio Leone

https://youtu.be/lWOpyHbeA4M

(If the link doesn't work, just pretend you can hear a rusty wind turbine squeaking)

The wind blows northerly. The wind turbine is squeaking - painfully, rustily, squeaking as it turns.  I am in the far west of Norfolk, wearing a duster.  A fly bothers me.  Water drips on my hat.  I crack my knuckles. The wind pump squeaks as it turns, a plaintiff, scary sound, haunting me.  I think I am waiting for a train.....

But I am mistaken - it isn't a train station:

There hasn't been a train near here since Saturday, May 3rd, 1969. And, would you believe it, barely four months later, on August 31st, 1969, Sergio Leone's epic film Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) was released in the UK..... 

How's that for a coincidence?

I may just be dreaming.  It's the monotony, the drudgery, of an almost featureless 14 mile walk.

This morning I set off from home to explore the new King Charles III English Coast Path extension to the Norfolk Coast Path.  Officially, even now, the Norfolk Coast Path starts at Hunstanton and ends at Hopton-on-Sea on the east coast. But now sign posts lead you down from Hunstanton, past Heacham, past Shepherd's Port and the RSPB Reserve at Snettisham, and direct you to King's Lynn.  And that is what I wanted to do.  To get to King's Lynn.

The signs aren't good. Keep to the landward base of the flood bank says one. Guns unloaded until reaching shooting area says another. Is Jack Elam waiting for me?  Woody Strode?  Am I going to be surprised by the ice blue eyes of Henry Fonda as he walks out of the brush?  Please don't let me hear you call him Frank.....

Another sign says Private Shooting. Membership card to be carried at all times when carrying a gun.  I have neither card, nor gun.  My vulnerability screams. Will I be privately shot?

Another sign says Toilet 9 miles.  OMG!  What kind of hell is this?

I obey the signs. I keep to the landward side of the flood bank. I keep my eyes peeled for the livestock that apparently may be in the coast path corridor. I stumble over tussocks, my duster flapping in the wind. The train is two hours late, how will I ever get to Lynn?

Some kind of bird flies at me - but it's a lie.  It's just a cut out. What is this never-ending torment?

I dream of Claudia Cardinale.  It's the only thing that keeps me going. She's just arrived in Sweetwater.  She searches for her husband.  Am I the lucky one?

She looks past me - Am I not part of her dream?  (I know she's 86 now, but she's still gorgeous.)

And then her eyes brim with tears as she finds her new family lying shot down. Was it the King's Lynn and West Norfolk Wildfowlers?  For a moment I quake in my boots.....

And then I hear the squeaking of the wind turbine and I am at the station, harmonica round my neck.  With respect to Buster Keaton (Steamboat Willie Junior) [not to mention Federico Fellini - 8½] I step off the train on the wrong side......

My opponents are one horse shy, so I gun them down, even though I have no membership card.  Ha! So Frank sent you, did he? Squeak, squeak.....  A lone cow eyes me suspiciously.  What will I do next?

Well - if I had any rubbish, I might take it with me.  And if I had a dog......

But it's all a dream.  The wildfowlers are snug in their houseboats:

Or in their cabins (which used to be houseboats) even though there isn't a duck in sight:

They don't frighten me!  I'm on King Charles III's English Coast Path, and I've got the signs to prove it!  And I'm warning you, there's no toilets, cafes, or public transport options for 11¼ miles in that direction!

In fact there's nothing.  Just sweet nothing.  

For a coast path it's lacking something. The last time I saw the sea was at Snettisham RSPB, some ten or so miles behind me.

The only sign of life is a tractor harrowing up the reclaimed arable land, flocked by hungry gulls.....

Until I reach North Lynn farm, where a Welcome sign instructs me to stick to the footpath - OK! What else would you expect me to do?

Did you think I might swim in your ditch?

Or burn your corn?

No! I am now 13¼ miles from the nearest toilet, cafe or public transport, and my dreams have come to nothing. I don't even have the squeak of a wind pump to keep me company, so, please, let me out of this impossible world, this Escher mezzotint.....

And then, as the camera crane rises above the industrial activity before me, I reach the end of the trail, Ennio Morricone's score swirling around inside my head.

Though the wind turbine still squeaks:

Either

https://youtu.be/QML28YQBvyc?feature=shared

Or

https://youtu.be/QML28YQBvyc?si=XzOdEFPmBPO5ONtY

and if those links don't work just look up the opening sequence of 

Once upon a Time in the West online and enjoy.....

Winterreise

 A sad tale's best for winter....

These are the last words spoken

Soon I’ll be out of sight

A simple farewell message

Good night, my love, good night

I am sure there are those who know about these things, but I still find it fascinating that Black-headed gulls simply do not have black heads in winter......

Also, it may be perverse of me.  But the fact that Common gulls are not that common perks me up, just a little......

However.....  Here we are.  Life is not necessarily what we expected, or wished for, and winter conditions exacerbate that dull numbing feeling that swimming from the Titanic tends to excite....

There are clouds on the horizon.  They may not eventually blow our way, but they instil in us a sense of boding that exceeds the usual fore.....

Dark clouds are drifting

Across the bright blue sky

Soft breezes gently sigh

In the dark forest

But then the sky can suddenly be filled with the blare and honk of passing V signs, v signs to cold, to coronas, to contrariness.  We should go with the flock.....

Lynn (does it need the King's?) is cold and empty - of life, or trade, of laughter, as is to be expected in these ghastly days.

In 'my' village (how presumptuous can you get after three weeks?) no one knows what to do with themselves....  It could be worse.  It may well be colder, or wetter, or darker, or more infected, tomorrow, but we will worry about that..... tomorrow.

At least the Herdwicks don't grumble....

And on the coast there's Dunlin in good numbers to remind us that the essential is food.....

Not far away Castle Rising stands clear of the snowy carpet.  It's a hulking lump of masonry with some of the most splendid earthworks for sledging anywhere in these troubled isles. 

I photographed this keep one summer long ago for Treccani, the Italian Encyclopaedia of Medieval Architecture, and, for some reason I thought at the time that this had been the last home of Henry VIII's surviving wife, Catherine Parr, to whom I can claim a link. 

Funny how time plays tricks?  Catherine never lived here.  She died, aged 36, at Sudeley Castle, from complications following the birth of a daughter.  We are still related, but not quite as I remembered!

Not far away, close by another well defended castle, is Castle Acre Priory.  A Cluniac foundation that dates from 1049, and which was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII in 1537.

These 'romantic' ruins stand empty in the winter snows.  We are finding our way around this corner of England, exploring as far as we dare, without the excesses of a Cummings. Our daily exercises are not distant from our new home, but we go just far enough to call it a winter journey. 

Schubert's song cycle Winterreise is painfully beautiful and perfectly fits my current mood. I listen to Ian Bostridge's interpretation, and read something he wrote about it in The Guardian....

Winter Journey – a cycle of 24 songs for voice and piano based on poems by Wilhelm Müller, was composed by Franz Schubert towards the end of his short life. He died in Vienna in 1828 aged only 31. Piano-accompanied song is no longer part of everyday domestic life and has lost its one-time primacy in the concert hall. What Germans know as Lieder – is a niche product, even within the niche that is classical music; but Winter Journey is an indispensable work of art that should be as much a part of our common experience as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Picasso, the novels of the Brontë sisters or Marcel Proust.

The 24 songs are forerunners, in a sense, of all those songs of love and loss that have been the soundtrack of generation on generation of teenagers. But the loss of love, which is only sketched ambiguously in the first song, “Goodnight”, is just the beginning of it. Schubert’s wanderer embarks on a journey through a winter landscape that leads him to question his identity, the conditions of his existence – social, political and metaphysical – and the meaning of life.

Schubert himself wrote the following, in a manuscript of July 3rd 1822 entitled My Dream: With a heart filled with endless love for those who scorned me, I ... wandered far away. For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.

There are no trains at Wolferton Station.  The snow lies untouched across the rails.  No Queen steps from the royal carriage.  No fat controller punches my ticket.  There is no journey here.

Is this nothing?

Why then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing:

The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,

If this be nothing.

The Winter's Tale

(Leontes, Act 1 Scene 2)