A conversation from my first term at Oxford:
“Where are you from?”
“Norwich. Have you ever been?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“Have you seen that film, The Wickerman?”
I can see where the impression of Norwich as a pagan commune headed by Christopher Lee may have come from. Norfolk can seem like an odd, silent place; the sort of place where to venture out of the main city centres is to subject yourself to the distrustful gaze of the deformed locals; where the landscape’s oppressive and unbroken flatness means you can run but you can’t hide; a place where, aside from the odd Sloane-on-tour to their country houses or a seaside resort, few come to and fewer seem to leave.
Reaching Norwich by train from London (a city which, for several of my angst-ridden teenage years, was the proverbial Moscow to my combined Three Sisters) takes the traveller across the fenlands. These sparsely inhabited marshes are where punting was supposedly invented, so the local people could silently approach herons and capture them before they had the chance to fly away. They also have the dubious distinction of having been the focus of studies into the psychological effects of inbreeding for decades.
Arriving at Norwich, a sense of this otherness remains: there is a certain type of facial formation which I like to hope is unique to the Norfolk county capital, and an oddness which I am not the only one to have felt. The Norfolk accent and dialect, I am told by English-studying friends, are of particular interest to linguists owing to their insularity: for a brief idea of those Norwich-vowels, try pronouncing the local joke, “Q: What do you call a transparent woman from Norfolk? A: Clare”.
But aside from the underlying impressions of otherness, Norwich is really just a medium-sized city – pop. 367,000, including suburbs – like any other. Less The Wickerman, more Desperate Housewives. When I told a friend from home that I would be writing this feature, she asked, “How do you write five-hundred words straight down the middle of the road?”, while my (non-Norwich) housemate sighed, and wistfully quoted Larkin: “Nothing, like something, happens anywhere”.
The essential Norwich facts: The city prides itself on having been ‘England’s second city’ in the middle ages, due to it having been the centre of the textiles industry; a claim which I feel has something of the modern day celebrity claiming to be big in Japan. It has the rare distinction of two cathedrals (only Liverpool can match the East Anglian jewel on that count), so is technically a city twice over. It is the home of Colman’s Mustard, Delia Smith and Alan Partridge.
Perhaps most surprisingly, it’s also one of the frontrunners to become the UK’s capitals of culture in 2013. When my mother told me the news I – like the two dimensional parody of the young man who goes to Oxford and attempts to distance himself from his provincial origins I am – almost choked on my Pret crayfish and avocado. Norwich: where town planners built a Pizza Express into the main library? Norwich: where ‘street entertainment’ consists of The Puppet Man, an elderly gentleman with clear learning difficulties who takes to the main shopping street and dances to pop tunes with his hand puppets? But, at the same time, Norwich: home of the annual Norfolk and Norwich Festival, dozens of independent restaurants, shops and bars; green spaces, medieval architecture, a few theatres and a University. Why shouldn’t it be there?
Like the road sign says on the approach to the town: Norwich is “a fine city”. It’s true, it’s a fine place, and anyone would be lucky to grow up there. Perhaps there’s a reason why no-one ever leaves. (Disclaimer: I’m not going back).
