Port Out, Starboard Home - a Day in Orford

East Anglia is one of those places that people seem to love or hate. I thought I hated it, but that was before I visited Orford, last Thursday:

Once a bustling medieval seaport, now a sleepy coastal village at the end of an empty, 12-mile road, Orford appears to be an unspoilt relic of an England that died long ago.

There are no adverts, chain stores or grafitti and apart from the occasional car, the only noises to be heard are the cries of gulls and curlews. A good place to set a murder mystery.

Overlooking the village is the keep of the 12th century Orford Castle:

I have no idea why some castles seem to attract coachloads of visitors whilst others are virtully empty, but I'm grateful that there are places where it's still possible to be alone.

I don't believe in the supernatural, but I was intrigued by an argument that ancient buildings are like magnetic tape, resonating with echoes of previous inhabitants. It's nonsense, I'm sure, but it feels true.

The ticket office was staffed by a man who apeared to have taken his inspiration from Uriah Heep, with a manner that was superficially obsequious, but with an underlying menace. He was quietly insistent that I should take advantage of the free audio tour, but I wanted to enjoy the silence.





At the top of the castle, there is a wonderful panoramic view of Orford and the surrounding area. I felt like Roger Livesey in 'A Matter of Life and Death', looking down at the village in his camera obscura.

Free from the usual roar of traffic, I could hear almost everything, from the footsteps of someone walking through the village square to the slow scraping of a boat being dragged by hand across shingle.

Landscapes may be regarded as a symbol of permanance in an ephemeral world, but the view from the castle would have been completely different when Eleanor of Aquitaine began the voyage to ransom her son, Richard the Lionheart.

It is thought that Orford Ness, a long spit of land that separates the village from the sea, didn't exist in medieval times. Today, the only way of reaching open waters is to turn right, out of the port and sail for several miles.



A few miles north is Aldeburgh (pronounced Awlbruh), where Benjamin Britten established the famous music festival. The concert hall at Snape Maltings attracts world class artists and during the Aldeburgh Festival, it feels as if most of the cognoscenti have decamped to Suffolk.

As journalist Stephen McClarence recently wrote:

A MAN in baggy knee-length shorts and canvas shoes is scolding a small boy in sailor-striped T-shirt. “Toby, do behave,” he snaps, brandishing a baguette. “And where on earth has Bertie got to?” Aldeburgh, on the Suffolk coast, is no place for hoi polloi or honky-tonk. Never has been. Even before it became a “Cultural Village of Europe”, even before its annual festival gave it cultural kudos, there was broad consensus about its upmarket appeal.

A half-timbered kiosk on the seafront serves café latte. The gift shops stock designer bath caps at £15 a throw. And at weekends, metropolitan holiday-homers turn the place into Boden-on-Sea, the social embodiment of smart-casual.

This is Umbria-in-Anglia, with prawn-pink and pale-primrose holiday cottages rented out at up to £1,600 a week. Hollyhocks in the gardens, dried starfish and model lighthouses in the front windows, bicycles with wicker baskets propped up against the fences.

On dull days, when the sea is a melancholy browny-grey, it’s a place to read P. D. James and listen to Test Match Special, and watch Ayckbourn or Wilde at the Jubilee Hall summer theatre.

“They’re all lords and ladies here, all Captains and Sirs,” says a shop assistant. “Don’t get me wrong, they’re lovely people, but they’re the only ones who can afford to live here.”

And there, as they say, is the rub. This entire stretch of coast, with its winning combination of beautiful landscapes, unspoilt, historic villages and a thriving arts scene, has made the local housing unaffordable to the average punter. I suspect that many traditional Orford families now live in the less aesthetically pleasing environs of Ipswich.

There were a few fishermen down by the quay who commented on what a "Boo'ful evenin'" it was, but they seemed like extras in a play that was populated by an almost exclusively middle class cast. If Orford seems frozen in time, that may be because the average age of its citizens is several decades older than the national average. During my visit, two days ago, almost everyone I saw was white, middle class and over 50.

The Jolly Sailor pub seemed traditional enough, but my lunch was served by a slightly scary eastern European girl who barked "Fiss? Fiss? Fiss?" until I nodded my ascent. What had happened to the locals?

I don't blame people for wanting to live in an episode of Midsomer Murders, but I'm glad that Lewes is still a working town with a broad social mix (albeit heavily weighted towards graduates). Orford was beautiful, but it felt like a gated community and given the house prices, it effectively was.

Rockwell Kent and Moby Dick

Moby Dick is one of my favourite novels and for a while I became quite obsessed with it, to the point where I made a pilgrimage to New Bedford and visited the Seamen's Bethel church that appears in the first chapter of the book. I expected to find a nice, twee tourist site. Surprisingly, the church had hardly changed at all in 150 years and the entrance was blocked by a gang of menacing-looking sailors. They even had proper beards.

It is a tribute to Melville's genius that he managed to make such a boring book so compelling. In the hands of a lesser author, the seemingly endless digressions and meditations on whaling and life at sea would be intolerable. But Moby Dick is like a long, utterly mad, epic poem, in the tradition of The Wanderer and The Seafarer.

Last week I came across an edition of Moby Dick published in the 1920s, with wonderful illustrations by Rockwell Kent. I looked the book up, hoping that it worth be worthless enough to give me an excuse to keep it for myself, but it was worth £30. It sold three days later.

Here is a brief selection of Kent's brilliant illustrations:

Still More Bookmarks

I feel as if I'm in one of those James Bond films where 007 is on a treadmill and the hand of an unseen assailant suddenly turns up the speed dial. Obviously you or I would just get off, but for some reason Bond always remains in place and tries to keep up (if it's Roger Moore, a slight eyebrow movement conveys extreme distress).

I'm in the same predicament. Every day I receive an increasing number of deliveries of secondhand books and I am struggling to keep up. But on the plus side, this has resulted in the discovery of some wonderful impromptu bookmarks:

It's nice to know that some people can find these sorts of photo opportunities amusing, even when they're in their fifties.

I think it's the same man, but this time he's presenting a bouquet of flowers to a mystery woman who could be Margaret Thatcher. The costumes look flammable.

Continuing the British Prime Ministerial theme, I found this in a collection of poems by Mary Wilson (the Prime Minister's wife, not the soul singer). If Harold Wilson doesn't mean much to you, he was the Prime Minister of Britain during the Swinging Sixties and two of his most controversial decisions were awarding the MBE to the Beatles and refusing to join the Vietnam War.

This is the Magna Carta memorial at Runnymede. It's a pity that the memorial looks more like a 25th century teleportation portal, because it deserves something either grander or simpler, if that makes any sense. I like the woman's trouser suit. Without the Magna Carta, she probably wouldn't be wearing it.

This is a lovely poem about Heaven and the animals. The assertion that animals don't possess souls has been a matter of theological controversy for some time: "But when I die, I know that Tiddles will be up there waiting for me." Unfortunately, the poem's earnest message is slightly undermined by a simple typo:

On a more serious note:

I used to be the Chief Prosecutor of the Anti-Baby League. I would wince at the sound of cryinging infants and cringe at the insipid coochie coo talk of their mothers. I'd probably find this photo a bit soppy. But I've crossed the line and in addition to now being impervious to the most ear-piercing infantile screaming, I find this picture very touching.

The name Annie Besant may be familiar to some. She was a prominent campaigner for women's rights during the Victorian age and today, is perhaps best known for her role in the Matchgirls Strike of 1888. I found this signature in a book published by the Theosophical Society. I've added a link to her name, as Besant was a remarkable person.

I've no idea who this is and I'm hopeless at reading handwriting, but if anyone can decipher the name I'd love to know more.

Welcome to the discomfort zone. If you ever succumb to nostalgia for the past, just remember that this sort of thing went on. The woman looks familiar. Wasn't she Chinese a minute ago? But if the sight of people "blacking up" is beyond the pale (pun intended), it's nothing compared to this:

This comes from a 1932 edition of Hooey Magazine and next time I feel depressed about living in the 21st century, I shall look at this cartoon and remind myself of the alterative.

To continue the racism theme, here is an advert from a 1955 edition of the Daily Mail Ideal Home book:

Here's a world where white people can whizz around Africa in fast cars, occasionally condescending to stop and buy some trinkets from the locals. See? Everyone's happy. I doubt if the Daily Mail's readers were aware of the existence of the ANC or of a young man in his 30s called Nelson Mandela, who was already making a name for himself.

This is what I'll be watching on Friday...

These days we refer to businesspeople, but they're still nearly all men and I've never liked the macho culture that goes with it. This sketch is a good-humoured dig at all those self-important men, sitting with their laptops in the Business Class section of the plane:

*(I've just discovered that this can't be viewed outside the UK. So much for the global village. I'll try and upload a new version after the programme is broadcast)