As some of you may know I spent 3 years living in Norfolk before I went to live in Australia. You may also know it was the most miserable 3 years I have ever spent.
Don't get me wrong, Norwich is a pretty town, all mediaeval lanes and ancient market places, old churches and pubs. But it is a strange place to live. It's only 120 miles from London but feels a lot further. It's insular and the people are not the most welcoming I've come across. I spent 3 years with basically no friends and no life outside work.
So it was a bit strange to be back there this week. The feeling of dread when I drove past Thickthorn roundabout was palpable. The tight feeling in my chest when I walked into town was unpleasant to say the least. And weird because I knew I was only visiting, not staying this time. Does anyone else get this when they go back to a place they have had unhappy times in? Do normal people slip into depression just because they are in a specific location? Maybe it's just me.
You might wonder what exactly I went back for if I disliked the place so much. Well it was to meet up with the people who kept me sane during my time there, and it was great to see them. I have missed them more than I thought (and I'm not just saying that because I know Philip will read this). They are really the only reason I stayed there so long, as I actually liked going to work. So thanks for keeping me sane(ish) we must keep in touch more (I've said that before as well).
Norwich itself has changed a lot since I was there in the late nineties, infact it's changed a lot since I was there four years ago. New houses everywhere, new trendy buildings in town with the library and the BBC in them, new hospitals, new roads and (as this is the UK and our entire economy depends on people buying stuff they don't really need) a new shopping centre. It's called Chapelfields and used to be the old chocolate factory and is pretty flash. It's also the only mall I've ever seen with a graveyard in it. It's been built on and around St. Stephen's (I think) Church and never have I seen the sacred and profane so close together. Now they just need to teach the staff in the shops about customer service instead of how to treat the customer like an inconvenience. It was like being back in Kalgoorlie.
On my way back from Narrich I stopped in at the Secret Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch, Essex. Actually it's not that secret now, in fact all the signs for miles around have "Secret Nuclear Bunker" written on them. So not secret at all then. The place was built in the fifties in a farmers field and finally shut down in the early nineties when they decided that we weren't going to be nuked by those Commies in USSR (mainly because there weren't any any more, see how your tax dollars go to pay these brilliant analysts?). It's the weirdest, creepiest and most interesting place I've been to in a long while. To walk around and see the long blast proof entrance tunnel (designed so the inhabitants could shoot any survivors trying to get in) the BBC studio (to tell the population what to do to survive i.e. not much) the planning sections and the office of the regional controller (whose first order would have been for the euthanizing of all disabled, elderly, sick and injured members of the public) was like stepping into the past to see a future that never happened. Thank God.
Apparently after the bombs went off this would have been the site of central government, linked to a network of other bunkers around the country. The Prime Minister and head of the armed forces would have been here, along with 600 other civil servants and military staff, for at least 3 months keeping the country running. This does beg the question "running for what?" but no one ever seems to have asked what the point of it was if when you came out the entire country was destroyed and radioactive. The oddest thing is that this all seems like ancient history now, but I can clearly remember the Protect and Survive pamphlet that the government sent round in the 80s. This was full of great information on how to survive the nuclear blast. By sitting under a kitchen table with a mattress on the top seemed to be the best way for the public. Strange then that the politicians had a bunker with 3 metre thick walls to protect them, by their own advice all Maggie Thatcher needed was a table in Number 10 to hide under.
If you want to read the pamphlets they are here
(The National Archive has actually got loads of the Public Information films that I remember from when I was a kid. They were mostly really creepy. Especially this one about drowning.)
No I didn't read it.
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