Author Archives: Tim Lenton

My wife and I went for a walk in Bacton Wood the other day. In case you want to follow in our footsteps, I should warn you that Bacton Wood is not exactly in Bacton. It is sometimes called Witton Wood. I don’t want to be more precise, in case you have a dog. There are quite enough dogs in Bacton Wood already.

Someone has made an attempt to direct people round two or three marked walks. The one we chose was interesting, but it would not be unfair to say that a totally random placement of the guide posts would have been just about as helpful.

It goes toward confirming my suspicion that there is a law that states that anyone put in charge of a road or track must have no concept of what is needed. For example, the sparkling new Norwich Northern Distributor Road (or Broadland Northway, as it is much less known) has a very large kink in it that can only be explained by the constructors merrily setting off in one direction, realising it’s wrong, putting in a roundabout and coming halfway back again. 

And while we’re on the subject of roundabouts, whose idea was it to design them like an apple, so that it seems obvious that people have already turned left when in fact they are mysteriously still on the roundabout and about to hit you when you pull out? I know anyone within any sense would shift into the middle lane to go straight ahead, but drivers have been so indoctrinated into driving timorously that changing lanes rarely occurs to them. 

Which brings me to speed limits, without which local newspapers would go out of business. Take it from me, nobody walking through a village has the slightest idea how fast passing cars are going. But people of a certain vociferous type know it must be too fast, because it’s a car, and if they can get into a gilet jaune and start a gang of speed watchers, they’ll jump at the chance. 

I have driven in Norfolk for well over 50 years, and I can tell you that the main problem with Norfolk drivers is that they drive too slowly. They are also incapable of overtaking, but I blame that on the inept road organisers who brainwash them into thinking that speed kills. Slow drivers are far more dangerous, because they don’t concentrate, they do other things at the same time, and all the other drivers get so tired of the endless processions that they doze off. Since almost all accidents are caused by not paying attention, this is a Bad Thing.

Police and councillors trot out all the old misleading statistics, but despite the plague of “safety” measures that afflicts us more and more, road deaths are roughly the same now as they were in 2012. All those speed cameras and ridiculously low limits have never had the desired effect – unless by “desired effect” you mean extracting huge amounts of cash from people who are driving perfectly safely.

It was certainly a mistake to start writing about warm weather, as I did last time. Inevitably it has since turned damp, cold and extremely windy, and made the weather forecasters very happy – or at least enthusiastic.

At the top of our road men in hi-vis jackets (gilets oranges) are measuring up trees as if they intend to cut them down before the wind knocks them over. They taped off a footpath for a while, but as far as I can see nothing else has happened, which is Normal for Norfolk. They are probably waiting for the result of the Brexit vote so that things become clearer. Or they may simply have lost interest.

As has become something of a habit at this time of year, we escaped from Norfolk for a few days to reassure ourselves that roads were just as bad everywhere else, and indeed in many cases worse. No-one, after all, is building smart (aka moronic) motorways in Norfolk, where there are no motorways of any kind. Nor do we, like the otherwise relatively sane county of Derbyshire, have blanket 50mph limits, which make driving tedious and therefore more dangerous.

Buxton, our ultimate destination, remains as stunning as ever. I’m not sure why. It may have something to do with geometry, or the juxtaposition of curves. It may be the way it attracts snow (though not on this occasion), or encourages people to walk.

Coincidentally, one of my local councillors is also keen on people walking. He would like to have a car-free Sunday in our fine city of Norwich, but I’m afraid he just falls into the category of people who are really selfish – not, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, because he wants to do things his way, but because he wants everyone else to do things his way as well.

Cars are not evil. They are quite useful in carrying people and things to places where they might otherwise be unable to go. They also benefit the sick and the elderly, which can hardly be said of bicycles – especially when it’s damp, cold and windy.

I could also point out that if everyone in the UK stopped using a car tomorrow, it would have no effect on global climate whatsoever. But I won’t, because that would make me a climate change denier: any schoolchild could tell you that.

It’s been a warm few days, and so all those predictions that would normally be frozen and probably buried at this time of year have come to the surface and sprouted alarmingly.

Because it’s been so warm, and it’s still February (at the time of writing), this means we will have a warm summer, like 1976. Or it could be that we will have a cool, damp summer, so that things even out.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, has reminded us that if we are shown a number of high temperatures – preferably accompanied by pictures – and are then asked how warm it will be, our answers will be higher than if we weren’t shown anything.

I am paraphrasing slightly. If you want the full story, buy Deep Thinking, his excellent book on Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity, in which he also says that weather forecasters are no more likely to affect the weather than economists are to affect the economy.

In a nutshell this more or less summarises my theory of climate change, which is that the climate changes.

This is not a prediction I would make if it were a normal February, but it seems appropriate in the circumstances. What is undeniable is that since I am about to have a weekend away in Derbyshire, it won’t be warm for much longer.

That is by far the most common way that humans influence the climate. For some reason Mr Kasparov doesn’t mention this in his book.

They tell me that Norwich City have the oldest football song in the world. If not, they almost certainly have the only one with the word “scrimmage” in it.

I suppose you could say I am a supporter of the Canaries. As a schoolboy (in the early 1960s) I stood in the South Stand on a fairly regular basis, and was part of the 40,000 swaying, cheek-by-jowl crowd who watched City play Leicester one memorable Saturday. The capacity for the current, rather larger, seated stadium is around 27,000, and my wife has a season ticket.

I don’t, which is why I wasn’t at the derby match against Ipswich Town recently. I do go to Carrow Road on occasion, but I am not a die-hard fan, slotted into the Barclay End, waving a flag, making up witty topical songs to fit the players’ names and being generally abusive to the opposing fans, especially if they come from Suffolk.

I am not against a bit of banter, such as the chant “You don’t know what you’re doing” directed at the referee. Similarly “Who are you?” or “What’s the score?” directed at the opposing fans or manager.

What I don’t have any truck with is the real abuse, verging on violence, aimed at small groups of individual visiting supporters. Mixed in there is heartfelt hatred, frighteningly close to riot and affray, causing real harm to real people who are just like us.

It’s one small step from calling Ipswich supporters “scum” to punching them in the mouth.

Admittedly, Ipswich is in Suffolk. But to be quite honest and risking personal harm, I have to confess that I quite like Suffolk, despite its nonsensical speed limits. Is there any real reason for Norfolk and Suffolk people to be at odds? How far are we from having a hard border, a backstop, bombing and other atrocities?

Bit extreme, you may say. All this violent talk is just a bit of fun. Maybe it’s a safety valve of some kind. No-one gets hurt.

But they do, don’t they? Words turn into deeds, and all too soon you have a little scrimmage, bones get broken, bodies cut and bruised.

I should emphasise that Norwich fans are not known for this sort of behaviour. But once passions get unleashed, almost anything can happen. It has in the past, and it will again. It stems from repeated insults, mindless abuse, creeps into hatred and without thinking – yes, definitely without thinking – it goes too far.

Just like Brexit, really.

My wife is an optimist. If she weren’t, obviously, she wouldn’t have married me, and things would have been very different. Oh, yes, they would.

I too have always considered myself an optimist in a general sense, but when I say this, she laughs. I guess the sense in which I am an optimist is too general to be of much use in daily life. I believe in life after death, for instance, and while this can and should colour what I am doing every day, you can’t always tell.

My wife’s optimism is sometimes frustrating. She actually believes that you can find a Sent folder in Outlook Mail, for instance, and she almost convinced me that one of the methods described on the web for finding it might actually work. To a realist like me, the fact that there are so many methods described on the web for finding it is an indication that something is basically wrong with Outlook Mail, but of course we all know that.

Why Outlook Mail finds it necessary to hide the Sent folder is beyond me. Possibly because it is designed by technicians, and not people. This is what will happen on a global level if Artificial Intelligence ever gets beyond playing chess. All folders will be hidden, and we will eventually starve.

Happily, I am not worried, because I have a Mac, which works well in adverse weather conditions, especially rain. And you can find the Sent folder.

Sorry, I got a bit distracted there, because my wife raised this problem with Outlook Mail (again) in the optimistic belief that I could fix it. Sometimes I can fix things, but not alien technology.

As a couple we have a few problems with time, but of course that is much akin to alien technology too. I work out how long it will take to get somewhere, my wife sort of agrees on a time to leave and is prepared to leave about ten minutes later than that, while I stand around in the kitchen trying to keep my blood pressure down.

To me, leaving late like this seems to be asking for trouble, because people drive so slowly nowadays that nobody can get anywhere in a reasonable time. But she is never worried, and quite often, against all the odds, we do get there in time, which is pretty annoying.

I am not complaining about my wife’s optimism. It is one of her many endearing features, like her beauty, her compassion and her forgiveness, and her willingness to let me choose a time to leave.

I am not leaving her, of course. I am realistic enough to know that. Why would I? She is optimistic about the whole thing. She also supports Norwich City.