Trigger-happy?

I wrote this story for a competition last year. It didn't win, but I still like it!

It was my last day in Maine on a fishing vacation from my home in England. Two fish-less weeks left me desperate enough to hire a professional guide and that is how I met Pete and spent a day with him. I still didn’t catch any fish but we exchanged tales and he told me all about his guns. 

Captain Pete Bedford operates along the coast and up the big rivers that drain into Merrymeeting Bay and on down the Kennebec River to the Gulf of Maine. He really looks the part with his neat uniform, bandy seaman's legs and grey fisherman's beard but, in reality, he is a retired businessman who just likes to fish. Guiding makes him some seasonal income and that helps him to justify his fancy boat, on which he spent more money than he should have. The oversize outboard engine drinks too much fuel, which means that every time he takes it out he needs a client to pay for it.

His house is not an expensive waterfront property but an old painted wooden house in the pinewoods, not far off Route 1, about eight miles from the salt. If you have been there, you will know hundreds of properties that look like his. You drive along a black road with a yellow mid-line, pine trees on either side and no view. Every half a mile a track leads off to a house, a trailer-home or a cabin and you get a quick glance. Try for yourself on Google Earth. Some of them have vintage tractors parked out in front.

Pete’s place is smarter than most; well kept with a trim lawn and no derelict vehicles or fridges to act as rusting lawn ornaments. His boat usually sits under-cover on it’s trailer in the yard next to his white pick-up truck, two snow-mobiles and a variable number of family cars. A snow plough sits greased and ready to be attached to the pickup when winter sets in. Without it, he might not get onto the highway for days. He regularly digs out his neighbours and they repay him in various ways. His mail is left at the roadside in a black mailbox that he can empty without getting out of his car, but he can collect it in snow-shoes if need be. It has “Big Fish” written on it in white capitals.

As you go round the back you will see a rack of canoes and kayaks below a wooden deck with a bug-screen and a hot-tub. The black-flies and mosquitos can be fearsome, but before you worry about the flies you should concern yourself with the dog. His name is Bandit and he is a guard dog; after a single bark he will lick you to death.

Through the trees Pete can see the river, about a mile away across a railroad where wild turkeys perch on the hot tracks to warm their feet. Moose sometimes follow the tracks too, before turning away through the marsh towards the water. It is impossible to walk to the river from the house but Pete likes to look at it anyway. He cut down a swathe of trees to get this view and then the north wind blew through the gap and felled a dozen more, right up to the house. 

Bald eagles have nested on his property and he sees ospreys all the time in summer. More than once he has encountered a bear in his yard; probably attracted rather than repelled by his dog and the smell of cooking. 

In these parts where there is game all around you, rural kids learn to hunt and fish from an early age. Every householder is expected to bring home some wild meat once in a while, but Pete prefers to fish. All the same, he buys a ticket for one turkey gobbler and another for a deer each year. His son John does the same. They each have a rifle and a shotgun and they have tried using cross-bows too, with little success but Pete mostly enjoys hunting for the time it gives him with his son. Like the time he taught him to drive; he has the boy to himself with no distractions. They get on well, he thinks. His daughter is another story. He taught her to shoot and to drive, just like her brother, but when she hit her teens both of her parents became “The Enemy.” She went off to college in a “whirl of heck” and never came home.

Mid-coast neighbours may live miles apart but they tend to know each other much better than they know the folks from “away.” The school is the focal-point of the community for parents, but absolutely everyone uses the local store and gas station. It sells everything you need and they rent movies too. Coffee is free, they make their own cinnamon rolls and you can get a Wi-Fi connection. All the same, most people use the big supermarkets and the stores like Target and Walmart in the Topsham Mall for their monthly shop. The summer folks buy outdoor clothes from L.L. Bean in Freeport but all the locals shop at Reny’s. 

Pete is a steady, upstanding man and gets a lot of respect. He was made a Selectman last year; a town councillor responsible for a community fund that is doled out to the most needy. He tries to be fair, but in truth he does not relate to people who he sees to be inadequate or incompetent. He would die of shame rather than accept a hand-out himself and he particularly has no time for junkies or alcoholics. His sympathy is reserved for the elderly and for young single mothers, of which his small township has it’s fair share.

This is not a bad community; not dysfunctional or even under-resourced but there is still poverty. The land is harsh and a lot of the work is seasonal so people often hold down several jobs at a time to make a decent living. At low tide, you might see a middle-class couple digging bait or clams to augment their income and people may drive for two hours each way to do a low-paid part-time job. Despite that, there is almost no crime. 

Most Mainers own sporting guns and at least one hand-gun. People keep them in their bedrooms and kitchens and in their cars when they go out. Women have them in their handbags, but they do not drive around with their guns on view like cowboys. As a visitor, you won’t see a gun because people around here are discreet and understated. Folks do not dress to be different and they do not show off. The summer visitors do that.

The household gun collection is modest, comprised of a couple of .22 rifles that the kids used to shoot targets and squirrels with, a nine-gauge shotgun for birds, a .38 pistol and a Smith and Wesson .45 for self defence. None of the guns is flashy or collectable and Pete spends a lot more on fishing rods than he does guns. 

Late one moonless Friday night, Pete heard a noise from downstairs. It was hot and humid and the stars were obscured by low cloud. The air almost fizzed with static and fireflies flashed green lightning in zig-zag nose-dives above the dark corners of the lawn. 

To a visitor like you or me, the cicadas and crickets would sound deafening, but he really didn’t hear them. Wooden houses talk to themselves all the time, so Pete was used to hearing the familiar creaks and pops as the house breathed. What he heard now was drawers and cupboards being opened and busy footwork on the kitchen floor. 

He lay there, tense in the dark and then he shook his wife awake. Pete signed with his finger over his lips for her to keep quiet while he pulled his stubby black .45 revolver and a head torch out of the drawer on his side of the bed. 

It may seem an irrelevant thing to worry about in a crisis, but he scouted around the room in the dark to find something to cover his nakedness and laid his hands on his wife’s blue night-dress on the back of the door. 

Now, Pete is a big man and his wife, Mary-Beth, is a wiry little woman who stands 5 feet in her shoes. Threads snapped in protest as he tried to drag the flimsy garment over his sweating, bulging frame, but he managed to tie the sash across his belly.

He took the stairs slowly, trying to make no noise, but every step creaked. A low yellow light seeped from the kitchen and there were shadows busily moving about. Raccoons would certainly raid a kitchen if the window was left open but they would not turn a light on to do it. This was definitely an intruder and he was probably armed.

Pete’s gun was loaded, but he felt the chambers over with his fingers to be certain. The metal felt reassuringly cool and heavy, with a trace of oily film on the surface. He steadied his breathing, slipped the safety catch off and cocked the hammer as he leaned over the banister to take aim through the open kitchen door. A long minute passed while he waited to get a view of his target but all he saw was shadows.  

If an intruder has both feet inside your house, etiquette only requires that you call out a warning before letting loose, but he decided to stay put on the stairs and wait for the intruder to show. Time dragged on and tore at his patience, so he decided to take the initiative before he lost his nerve. He shouted hoarsely:

“I know you are in my kitchen and I have a gun. Come out with your hands raised, or I’ll shoot your head off.” 

His voice did not sound like his own and the words seemed ridiculous, but they got the desired reaction. There was a loud clatter, a chair scraped and a slight figure moved into the frame of the door, backlit and silhouetted like a target in an arcade game. He almost pulled the trigger.

Above the pumping hiss of a pulse in his ears he heard a girl’s voice:

“Hi Mr. Bedford. Please don’t shoot me. It’s me, Louise.” 

Louise is John’s long-time girlfriend from college. The couple had loaded his beat-up green Subaru four-by-four and then set out late from Portland to avoid the Friday evening traffic, stopping off in Freeport for supper. John thought it was too late to call his folks and figured that he would surprise them in the morning. 

_______

Saturday breakfast was more like brunch. Mary-Beth had risen first and made waffles and French toast and nuked some maple syrup. Outside on the deck, Pete (in shorts and a garish red surfers’ shirt) had grilled up Canadian bacon, sausage patties and burgers on the gas barbecue. There was coffee, juice and milk on the table. 

John was into his second coffee when Louise came in with her long black hair piled into a towel. Even without her morning make-up she looked exotic with big dark eyes set in a pale triangular face. She said “Hi” to the family and immediately set about pouring herself an orange juice and filling a plate with food. She said absolutely nothing about the night before and chatted amiably with Mary-Beth about the house and college life. Bandit lay under her chair and begged to be patted and rubbed.

Pete felt obliged to say something;

“It’s not every night someone points a revolver at you is it?” 

“No Sir, but I’m from New York so, you know, its not that unusual. But what really freaked me out was seeing you in drag. I mean, do you normally wear something that doesn't cover anything up?”

“I gotta say this though: My folks live in New York City, America’s Capital of Crime, but they don’t own a gun. Out here in the woods where the crime rate is about zero, you are so scared of being burgled that you are prepared to shoot some kid who might be raiding your fridge. Why is that?”

_____________

Out in the fishing boat, after hearing about the incident in his kitchen, I asked Pete about gun ownership in Maine and he told me that guns were the reason for the low crime rate. I thought there must be a lot of other factors at play and I explained that we had a pretty low crime rate in England without guns. 

He made less effort to be sociable after that point.

They call it “New England” and until my day with Pete I felt pretty much at home there, but as our session on his boat dragged on, our differences grew more apparent. He still has my respect and I am grateful to him for giving me more than a tourist’s glimpse of the real Maine, but I think we were both glad to cut the day short, shake hands and call it quits.

Reef

A story that might become a novel:

"Reef"

The entire island looks like it is made of cracked concrete. Bushes sprout from crevices but are laid flat by the salty wind. They soon die from lack of moisture and are bleached white by a merciless sun. It resembles a black-and-white photo of a war zone, complete with the scattered corroded remains of a twin-engined aircraft. 

A laughing gull is behaving like a yo-yo on a string. It keeps picking up a crab or some kind of shellfish and then dropping it in the hope that it will smash open on the coral-rubble shore. It does not break because it is an expensive pair of lightweight rubberised waterproof binoculars.

A black lizard darts forward and swallows a smaller lizard tail first so that the victim is still alive with it’s head gazing out helplessly from the open mouth the victor.

The missing ornithologist’s name was Graeme Douglas but he was known as “Birdy” on the island. Nobody thought that he might be missing until the Governor’s Office noticed that messages for him were not being collected. Even then, nobody was too worried. Bigger things were happening on the island.

It was cricket season. The modern airport terminal was crammed with men watching a huge TV screen above the bar. It was supposed to give flight information, but had been detached from the computer and plugged into a satellite TV box instead. 

The connecting flight from Antigua was two hours late, which was perfectly normal. For the exhausted passengers who had flown from London to Antigua and then island-hopped on the local airlines, it had been a long day that was nowhere near being over yet. The taxi drivers were all watching the big screen and it would be the same with hotel staff.

Iain Douglas had been travelling for four days. The Foreign Office had booked him into a family-run bed-and-breakfast near a pretty beach. Fortunately, it was also a short walk from the air-strip so he walked there. His mission was simply to find his son.

After midnight, in his bedroom, he took out the letter that had brought him all this way.

It was from the UK Overseas Territories Department. Graeme had worked on the Falklands, Tristan, South Georgia, St Helena and Ascension Island, all of them UKOTs - British Islands that were governed from London. He read on:

“Dear Mr Douglas, It is with the deepest regret that we write to inform you that your son, Dr. Graeme Douglas, has been reported missing and that, despite every effort being made by our staff and the local police, we are at a loss to know what happened to him. 

I would appreciate a visit from you as soon as you can come. We will, of course reimburse you for your trouble.

Yours faithfully

John Hunter”

_______________

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a Portland stone palace between the Treasury and Downing Street. Visitors are asked to present themselves at one of two entrances. The front entrance is in Whitehall, but a policemen directed Iain under a grand arch to enter through a gate from King Charles Street where he joined a queue of obviously foreign visitors at a turnstile where his bags were checked. A sandwich board announced the current security level to be “Bikini Black”.

Soon Iain was shown into a gatehouse where he was photographed and given a visitors’ badge. John Hunter came for him within five minutes and gave him a firm handshake.

Most of the staff looked like Graeme’s lot at University. Hard working, “bright young things” with a gym membership. Hunter was old-school, a soft-looking man in his fifties wearing the regulation grey suit but with incongruous brown brogues and a tweed tie. He guided Iain by his elbow, out across the cobbles and into a grand hall with a sweeping marble stairway. He asked Iain if he had been to the FCO before. Iain shook his head and said that he would rather be spared a guided tour.

Hunter’s office was a cubicle, not unlike Iain’s old office at Perth Academy where he had been deputy head. Books and bound reports filled every shelf. As his host went to get coffees from a machine, Iain was left to take in his surroundings. There was order here, but the shelves were too full with extra books piled on every surface. There were maps all over the walls and more were rolled up in a wicker waste basket. One map caught his eye. It showed an almost round island, densely engraved with contours. 

“Tristan.” Iain said aloud, remembering the same map from the front of one of Graeme’s reports; a perfect, conical volcano in the middle of no-where, way south of the Falklands. Graeme had nearly been blown out to sea by high winds while albatrosses flew about as normal. The photos had been stunning.

“Please tell me about my son”.

“That was going to be my first question for you! We have no idea why he disappeared. He went out to survey Faro Island for the Cambridge people and we lost contact. C’est tout! I was hoping you could help us find him.”

“You don’t think he is dead then?”

“Hell no! Do you think so? I can’t think of a more competent person in the field.”

When Hunter had told Iain all he appeared to know about the work Graeme was doing, it was clear that only one course of action lay open to him. He had to visit the islands himself. 

As they parted, Hunter handed Iain a small, battered old book called “Birds of the West Indies” and said “Good Luck”. 

_____________

Protocol demanded that he call at Government House first and the obvious next step would be the police, after that he had no idea.

The Governor was out, so Iain asked for directions to the police station. It was a hundred yards away.

Sergeant Don Petty took Iain to a back office where a police-woman was working at a computer. He introduced her as WPC Mary Carty and she immediately dropped her work to smile at Iain and say “Welcome to the Island”. 

He was obviously expected but he did not know if he was being given the red-carpet treatment or if this was the way they did things here.

“Who reported Graeme missing?”

“No-one really. It dawned on the Governor’s Office that they should have heard from him and so they asked us to check out where he was. We started with Faro Island and then searched the smaller reefs offshore. The islands are so flat you can do most of your work from the boat. We also did an aerial search in the Islander.”

“So what was the next move?”

“Well, there are more islands out there but they belong to St Maarten or to the Virgin Islands. You have British, American, French and Dutch colonies in sight of each other. I guess the birds treat them all the same, and so did Graeme.”

“So you knew him then?” 

WPC Carty spoke; “He spent a week on the mainland and got to know quite a few of us. He was interested in everything and everyone. One night he would be with the fishermen at Sandy Bay, another with the SCUBA people or the Yacht Club, but he always finished up at the Coral Bar, which is where we would meet.” 

“If he was known by so many people, why did it take so long to realise he was gone?”

“He just oozed competence. He had been all over the place on his own, mostly on tiny islands and he obviously loved it. He didn’t want to get in the way. He more or less said as much. He told us a lot of stories.”

The Sergeant cut back in: “So, we spread the search to the neighbouring territories. He could have thumbed a lift on any passing yacht.”

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Actually, I don’t, because he was a professional. He would have made contact if he could. I’m sorry to say this to you, but I believe in telling things how I see them.”

He asked the sergeant what sort of misadventure could possibly have overtaken his son in such a benign place.

“Look, it’s no-man’s-land out there. You get drug runners and smugglers and all sorts. Graeme could have stumbled onto something he should not have seen. The bigger fish deal in real estate, tax evasion and money laundering. A few years ago we even had an American millionaire who wanted to build his own rocket base on Faro. You wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of those powerful people.”

“How would you investigate that?”

“We wouldn’t. Not unless we had a body.”

“You make it sound as though justice might be compromised if powerful people were involved.”

“I don’t know if you know it or not, but you have landed here in the middle of a purge. The level of corruption among our officials has become too embarrassing for London. The Americans want the UK to stamp out tax evasion and even the Russians would like us to tighten up. The Island Council has been dismissed and the Governor has taken charge. It’s direct rule from London. So, to answer your question, we would have the full support of the Governor, if we had a case to investigate.”

“And the press?”

“Well, if you want to go down that route, and I think you should, the person to see is Miriam. She runs the radio station and she knows everything and everyone.”

_________________

As he opened the door to the radio station, a wave of bass-heavy reggae music brushed past him onto the street. 

Miriam turned out to be a larger than life Rastafarian lady aged somewhere between 40 and 60. Iain could not tell, but what he did know was that he liked her immensely.

She held out her bare arms and gave him a huge hug. “Mister Douglas, how sad to meet you under these circumstances.” She intoned “cir-cum-stance-es” like a song. He soon found out that Miriam was indeed a musician’ poet, journalist, priestess and a social worker, among other things. 

“How come everyone knows who I am before I call on them?”

“This radio station. The Governor put out that you was coming and I told everyone on last night’s programme. I also played a bit of my interview with Graeme.”

“You interviewed Graeme? What did he talk about? Did you record it?”

“I can make you a CD but basically, I asked him “Why our islands? What makes us so special?” 

“He told me that the more remote and hostile an island is, the more interesting it becomes. On small islands, the fight for the survival of the fittest can be seen at its most lethal. Animals have to adapt to the harshest of conditions and natural selection quickly rejects the failures. Soon you have an endemic species on the island that is quite different from its close relatives on the mainland.”

“And you know Iain, it’s true for wildlife and people. It’s called “King of the Island syndrome.” On really tiny islands you might have a king of cooking, a king of boats and a king of fishermen. Every man has to be king of something!”

“Graeme told me, “If I came along and started fishing for myself, I would be challenging the King of Fish for his throne. Competition on small islands can get very unpleasant.” 

Iain thanked Miriam and she asked him what he was going to do next.

“You should go and see Peter Henshaw. He came here in the ’70’s to manage the airport and never left. He’s got a big house, a boat and his own plane. He could get you out to Faro Island and he is the local bird expert. He wrote the book that the tourist shops sell.” 

________________

They had arranged to meet over “sun-downers” at Henshaw’s bungalow. A heavy shower was passing so a maid brought their drinks into the lounge. Two walls were lined with books, mostly about birds and aeroplanes but there was still space for a huge nautical chart and some valuable looking paintings. A brass telescope stood on a tripod by the window.

Iain had bought a copy of Henshaw’s bird book on the way over and he had also brought his battered copy of “The Birds of the West Indies”.

Peter Henshaws signed his book with a flourish and then peered over his reading glasses at the little field guide in Iain’s hand.

“I see you have a first edition of James Bond”.

Iain looked blank.

“The book in your hand is by James Bond. He was an American ornithologist. It’s a classic.”

“I had no idea. Was he also a spy?”

Henshaw held the book and explained that Ian Fleming wrote Casino Royale while liviing in Jamaica. Flemming was a birdwatcher himself and spotted the name “James Bond” on the spine of his book.

“So the fictional spy became far more famous than the real ornithologist.” 

“I don’t think the original Bond was a spy. Being a birder would have made a good cover though. Actually, I wondered if your son was a spy when I met him.” 

“What on earth made you think that?”

“He spent a lot of time socialising with all sorts of people and was always asking questions. If you add to that the places he has worked and the fact that he was brought here as a guest of the Governor, he was obviously more than just a biologist. He was also very fit. He didn’t walk anywhere; he ran. If they had just wanted a bird survey they could have asked me.”

Iain said nothing for a minute while he took a long cool look at his host. 

Henshaw had a perfect tan that contrasted with his cream suit and white shirt. He had kept his white Panama hat on his head which made him look like Wilbur Smith; everyone’s idea of a retired ex-pat author. He was sharp eyed and precise but Ian had noted the slight sideways curl of his upper lip. This man was jealous of Graeme, the successful professional ornithologist who was popular with the locals, while he was demoted to the rank of gifted amateur. 

“How did Graeme get to Faro Island? Did you take him?”

“I flew him around for quick look and then arranged for him to be dropped off from a visiting yacht. I didn’t hear anything from him after that.”

“What was the plan for getting him back?” 

Henshaw shrugged.

Finding America in Oxfordshire.

The pretty village of Stanton St. John lies in rolling countryside close to Oxford. We had intended a  family gathering in the city but there was a carnival in the suburb of Cowley and the Royal Henley Regatta was on the Thames not far away. Worse still, the British Formula1 Grand Prix was happening at Silverstone, right on our route to Oxford.

The Tour de France was happening in Yorkshire, maybe 180 miles away, but everyone who had a bike seemed to be out wobbling along the lanes. We abandoned any attempt to get into the city scanned the map and the Good Pub Guide for alternatives.

That's how we ended up at The Talkhouse in Stanton St. John. It took several trips around the village to find the abandoned Star Inn that lies at the end of a closed off lane where, tantalisingly, we could smell Sunday roasts from the empty car park. Sure enough, The Talkhouse was next door, but only accessible by driving a a mile around the village to the other side of the wall.

After a good lunch with seven of us sat around a big oak table, we needed tho stretch our legs. No-one fancied driving anywhere so we just strolled around the village, heading down-hill towards the church, past picture-postcard cottages made of Cotswold stone, all with pretty gardens that spilled out flowers in all directions.

The church-yard was obviously managed with wildlife in mind. Lime-loving flowers sprouted in every corner and in strips where the grass had been deliberately left long. Flowers attract insects, of course, especially bees, but I was pleased to see my first garden tiger moths for years. You can't miss them because they are big like butterflies. They fly in the day and are coloured red, black and white. We also saw marbled white butterflies that we know from the horse racing course above the city of Bath on the edge of the Cotswolds.

Looking across from the graveyard we saw an imposing stone house that we took to be the old vicarage. A plaque above the door stated that this was the birthplace of John White (1575 - 1648), Fellow of New College Oxford and chief founder of the Colony of Massachusetts.

Now, Mainers will tell you that founding Massachusetts is not a thing to be proud of.  For one thing, as the Bee-gees found out, it doesn't rhyme with anything.

The rivalry between the states in New England dates back to White's time, which was dominated by religious and political rivalries between Puritans and the established church what we remember as Roundheads versus Cavaliers,  Parliament versus Royalists or Cromwell versus King Charles the First, that climaxed in the English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651. Troubled times in England, and a good time to head out for the New World.

My textbook knowledge of the period tells me that Parliament dominated in the East of England, and the Royalists held the West Country. It seems that the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts called their towns Boston, Cambridge, Ipswich and Haverhill after the East Anglian places they left behind. Your typical Puritan was not well suited to settling the land but they had good connections back home and soon carved up the rest of new England between themselves. The people who came and cut down the trees and made a living directly from the land were farmers and fishermen from the West Country; places like Gloucester, Wells, Exeter, Plymouth, Bath and Biddeford that are all place names on the New England coast, and they were largely not Puritans. The next wave came from Protestant Northern ireland and Lowland Scotland, hence Derry and Londonderry in New Hampshire and Belfast in Maine. It seems the Scot s came too late to name many places in New England.

All that is an over-simplification. The Civil War rampaged around England at an alarming rate and it seems that Royalists and Puritans could be found everywhere, even in the same village and possibly in the same house. Oxford, which is north-west of London, was at one time the King's HQ while the colleges were an academic centre for Puritanism.

Dorchester, Boston MA

After his university days, our man John White married a girl from Peterborough near Cambridge and settled down in Dorset where he became the Rector of Holy Trinity Church in the county town of Dorchester. He was not active politically but concerned himself with the reform of his church, but he had other fish to fry as well.

White set about founding a colony around a new settlement to be called Dorchester. It is now a sprawling suburb, just south of Boston. If you have landed at Logan Airport, you may well have flown over it. His son became a trader in Boston, but John White never visited the New World at all. Prince Rupert's cavalry raided his library and many of his papers were lost but, despite the wars he remained quite a wealthy man.

Terra Firma in Suffolk

Soft geology 

In a mummers' play version of "St George and the Turkish Knight" the (almost) slain villain says,

"I've been hurried, I've been scurried, I've been dragged from door to door, now here I lie on this squallid floor."

"Hit me a wallop, strike me a blow; where I'd have been if the ground had not caught me, I do not know!"

We used to talk about "solid ground" or terra firma, as though the land around us could always be relied upon to support us from the abyss below, but today we talk about continental drift and soft geology.

I came upon a fine illustration of the latter while walking on the Suffolk coast, north of Southwold where the road to the beach from the village of Covehithe simply leads you over a cliff. Thankfully that road is closed now, but I guess it is only a matter of time before the cliff erodes back to the village and the church.

This entire stretch of coast is sinking and has been for a long time. Where there is an inlet or an estuary the effect is like a slow rise in the tide, but on the exposed coast each new winter storm pounds ever higher up the beach, lapping at the foot of the soft cliffs and causing further collapse. Dunwich is the most famous local town to have disappeared beneath the waves and the heart of the village from the pub to the church would go under if the shingle bank was breached anywhere between them and Walberswick.


Most of the sand and gravel that falls from the cliffs is mobilised in the cloudy shallows close to the shore and carried southward by the current to be deposited in the lee of somewhere solid. That's how Orford Ness was formed.

Fishing is a characteristic industry of this coast but there is a shortage of accessible harbours. Most boats are pulled up onto the steep shingle beaches using static winches or aged, rusty tractors. The exception is at Southwold and Walberswick where the River Blythe runs deep enough to form a navigable channel that has been reinforced in various ways to form landing stages along a quayside.

On both sides of the river there are rows of black-tarred wooden huts that hold fishing gear for the boats that moor there.  Piles of nets, floats and ropes gather among clumps of white chamomile, sea campion and purple asters. A couple of larger premises are ships' chandlers and repair shops while some of the smaller sheds sell wet fish. There is also a grand old quayside pub called the Harbour Inn but it is getting some serious competition from some new ventures that include an excellent smokery and restaurant.

The Southwold harbour area still has a great deal of character and Walberswick has retained a lot of it's charm. Go there before it becomes almost too gentrified.

Vinyl Night

Wenhaston is a small Suffolk village that lies along the foot of a sandy ridge. Below the village there are old fields, hedges, marshes and woods. At least one local farm has gone over to catering for tourists and that is how we found ourselves in a cabin nearby.

On the edge of the village the Star Inn sits in a narrow wooded lane about 8 miles from the sea so it cannot rely purely on tourists like us for it's survival. The landlord has to take care of the locals too.

The tourists want meals and a bit of atmosphere, while the locals probably want a good pint at a reasonable price and the chance to socialise with neighbours. What everyone wants is a warm welcome. Happily the Star seems to please everyone and we certainly had a couple of memorable evenings in there. Small hand-bills proclaimed a "Bring Your Own Vinyl Night" and we vowed to return and join in.

We have quite a good collection of vinyl albums at home, but they are not the sort of thing you take on holiday. Luckily we had a means to get them to us through Dan's carers who travelling up to join us. Hanna ordered up her copy of Carole King's "Tapestry" and some Cat Stevens and I asked for the big brown gatefold double album "Deja Vu" by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Unfortunately the carers forgot to bring them, but the story didn't end there.

You can pick up vinyl records at a lot of charity shops and there are some really good ones in Southwold and in Aldeburgh, but we went one better by visiting "The Vinyl Frontier" in Westleton. Hanna and Dan waited in the car while I had the first look.  I fancied replacing long lost copies of singles such as "Sabre Dance" by Love Sculpture,  "America"  by the Nice, "Wheels on Fire" by Brian Auger and the Trinity or "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat.

This amazing musical emporium is situated in a garden shed along-side an innocent looking house in the main street. The owners literally led me up the garden path, bearing a big bunch of keys and beckoned me inside. It would have taken me a couple of hours to work over the collection properly, but by then I would be in big trouble within my family. Even when I concentrated on the boxes of "cheapies" I could not find what I was looking for so I plumped for a few classic singles: "She's Not There" by the Zombies, the Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" and Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life".  For Hanna I picked up albums by Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor. The whole lot cost a tenner! I must go back to check-out the working American jukebox and so much more.


My Dad was an audiophile. He worked as an electrical engineer but would also describe himself as a musician.  Jazz was his thing; the jazz of the 40s and 50s, and he liked it LOUD. Our next door neighbours, the King family, complained about the noise all the time but he went ahead and built his own hi-fi system. Just before stereo arrived, he reconditioned an old gramophone unit; a beautifully veneered piece of furniture with a lid and a pair of opening doors. The deck, which was inset into the top, ran at multiple speeds which you controlled with a lever so you could speed up or slow down a track to suit your taste. If you wanted to play the speeds accurately you needed to calibrate it using a cardboard disk that you placed on the turntable. Concentric black and white "bar codes" were labelled 33 1/3, 45 and 78 rpm. As you ran the machine, the spinning bars would appear to stop and then spin backwards, like the waggon-wheels on old movies.  It was called a stroboscope.

I can't really remember the amplifier, but I think it was set vertically into the woodwork by the deck. It had 3 "Radio-Spares" Bakelite knobs on a brass plate and these simply controlled volume, bass and treble. The speaker was the big deal.

The problem with big speakers is that they cause the cabinet to vibrate. You need a solid case that does not resonate, but in those days there was only wood, or plywood or steel and they all vibrated. The answer was to build the speaker into the corner of the room so that two walls of the "cabinet" were made of brick. The front side of the triangular cabinet was made of two sheets of plywood set about an inch apart and you filled the gap with sand to stop the boards from resonating. The plywood front had to be cut to fit your speakers and we had a huge "woofer" and a smaller "tweeter".  The bass was incredible but the rest of it sounded very trebly to me. There was no middle ground so I played the albums a bit slower. Thankfully the walls we used were not shared with the people next door, although it probably made little difference. I loved the big noise we made.

Actually, I think that they made records with a lot of bass and treble and no middle in those days because most people's systems were rubbish. In fact I think that, as home hi-fis improved, the quality of LPs improved too, but singles were still designed to be played on Juke Boxes and cheap gramophones.

Dan and Hanna in a pub. 

I remembered all this on the night of the gig because we heard amazing jazz and funk on an old analogue system while my 45s sounded cheap and metallic. Technically, 45s could sound better than album tracks but they don't.

The two young men running the show were very reverential about our records and loaded each track carefully. I heard a bass-heavy "dunk"........ and then silence: no hiss or rumble before the music began. The effect was electric; like hearing everything for the first time and I vowed to use my own turntable more. Aided by the beer, we were all having a great party by simply listening to old records played as they were meant to be: loud, but undistorted.

This was our 31st Wedding Anniversary and, just to round the evening off, Hanna nipped outside and bought me a pair of tight blue jeans from a rack of retro clothing displayed under a spotlight in the garden. An enterprising young lady called Jane had brought her business to the pub and this only added to the fun. Hanna also bought a skirt for herself. (Yes, a skirt!) We are cool grandparents after all (Note this Thea and Jake).

Now that I am home, I have crawled around in the loft for bits and bobs, including my brother's old mono PA system. I think I can replace the speakers to make it sing again. I also have an old mixer up there but I need a better deck than the domestic one that I have. Then I will be available for Retro-Nites in the local pubs!!

Seriously, this is a great way to get people of all ages to party. It is reminiscent of the days when we only owned a couple of treasured and worn albums each and a lot of kids didn't have a gramophone. We always took our albums to friends' houses after school. Why not come round and bring your own vinyl!