Author Archives: Tim Lenton

After I had got in the habit of turning the sub-titles on during TV dramas as a matter of course, I realised suddenly that it might not be the Geordie, Liverpool or New York accents  to blame after all. I might have a hearing problem instead.

So I went to the opticians – which is where you go nowadays if you have a hearing problem. Doctors do very little. They are too busy.

The hearing expert at the opticians had a good look and said she couldn’t do a hearing test because there was too much wax in my ears. I needed to get them syringed by a nurse at my local surgery. So I rang the local surgery, and it turned out that  they didn’t do that either. They said I should go to my opticians.

Odd, Holmes. This could be a tricky one. I rang the opticians back, and they said they didn’t do it (yet), but they knew a man who did. His name was Nick, and he didn’t have a surname or an address. Just a mobile number.

I know what you’re thinking. Bit risky. I didn’t want just anyone poking about in my ears. But what was the alternative? I took a deep breath and rang Nick, who sounded reassuring. He was a nurse specialising in ears, and he did have an address. Admittedly it wasn’t in the smartest part of town, but that might be a good thing, cost-wise.

The opticians and the surgery had told me to put olive oil in my ears for a couple of weeks, but Nick said this was a bad idea. I could get the job done straight away. It wasn’t a syringe; it was more of a vacuuming. He had the latest equipment.

A trifle hesitantly, I made an appointment, walked to the address and after a while, I found it. It was through an arch which looked as if it led nowhere, but in fact it led to a rather modern-looking glass door, behind which was a reception area. The idea, apparently, was to press a button, and the receptionist would let you in.

Unfortunately there was no receptionist.

Eventually a woman came up behind me, pressed a combination of numbers, and the door opened. I tailgated her. She didn’t seem to mind. I asked her about the ear man, but she had no idea: she was there because her son was having a music lesson. I scanned the reception area, but could find no indication of where anything was.

So I followed the woman upstairs. I am good at that sort of thing. We met a couple of guys in business suits, but they looked mystified when I mentioned ears. I tried various floors and then bumped into someone who looked as if he might have been a caretaker, though he probably wasn’t. He knew about the Ear Clinic. This was a reassuring phrase that I had not heard before. He directed me to it, and to cut a long story short, behind a door marked Ear Clinic (handwritten) I found Nick.

Nick was brilliant. He was calm, professional, explained everything and answered my questions. He then had me lie down while he vacuumed my ears. He warned me about the noise, but in fact it was quite a pleasant sensation. It cost £50.

I went back to the opticians, where I saw a different hearing expert. She reassured me that there was no wax now, and gave me a hearing test. It turned out I was marginal, though good at cognition. She gave me a hearing aid to take on a test run with my wife, but while I could hear the background noise more clearly, and my own voice much more clearly, it made little difference to my wife’s voice.

It would have cost a minimum of £500; so I decided to pass, and take another test next year.

I am quite happy about that, because I know where Nick is now, and sub-titles are not so bad.

If you saw someone wandering around Norwich on 15 September with about 16 people in tow, it was probably me. To be honest, it could have been any number of official City Guides, but they would have known what they were doing. For me it was a one-off Heritage event, and I had been plunged into it almost by accident.

I am a trustee of the Paston Heritage Society – in fact the only such trustee living in Norwich; so it falls to me quite often to introduce visitors to the various Paston-related sites in the city. (If you don’t know who the Pastons were, I refer you to pastonheritage.co.uk; there is also a Facebook page.)

Recently, as the more alert Norwich-dwellers will know, there has been an extensive  Castle Museum exhibition on The Paston Treasure – it finishes this weekend (September 23). There has also been a more general, highly informative exhibition in St Peter Hungate, which continues until November. One of the spin-offs from this was my walk, which was inserted when something much more exciting was cancelled. I cannot reveal what it would have been. If I did, I would have to kill you.

I was a little concerned about how many sites I could include in the advertised 45 minutes. I was also slightly worried about whether I would be blamed if someone fell under a bus or was flattened by a cyclist, but I did warn them about it beforehand. They were a cheery bunch, and took full responsibility.

One of the problems with the Pastons was that they did not restrict themselves to a small part of Norwich – an area with a 45-minute radius of the Castle, for example. But we did what we could, taking in the main areas, such as St Andrew’s Hall, St Peter Hungate, Elm Hill and those ruins behind the Cathedral. We also slipped by the Guildhall, and stood for a while on Whitefriars Bridge. We ended up in front of the Cathedral after 90 minutes, having lost a few people on the way (all for very good reasons).

So what did we miss?  Mainly the Music House – the oldest house in Norwich, owned by the Pastons in the 16th century and now containing a Paston Room; and Dragon Hall, created originally by their friend, the equally famous Robert Toppes. But other sites of interest to Paston-lovers are scattered not only throughout Norwich but throughout the entire county, from Paston itself across to Appleton and taking in such beautiful buildings as (part of) Oxnead Hall and Barningham Hall.

As relaxation the following day I sat with my wife in St Augustine’s Church, which has nothing to do with the Pastons (as far as we know), but which is the church where I am a member. The building itself is owned by the Churches Conservation  Trust, and the church hall is used for worship. But on heritage days the church is open to visitors, and the experience is always interesting. This year I met someone who was born in the same place as I was – Earlham Hall.

Afterwards I wrote the poem that appears below.

For my birthday my son gave me a book called The World Needs More Canada. He handed it to me while we were in Canada on holiday, so that I could test the truth of it.

On the face of it, the idea seems unlikely. The world already has a great deal of Canada: it is the second biggest country in the world (after Russia, since you ask). If you travel from London by air to Vancouver – on the west coast – by the time you reach Newfoundland, on the east, you are about halfway there.

I have been to Vancouver once, and to the Rockies twice. The city is beautiful, and the mountains spectacular. The Icefield Parkway, from Banff to Jasper, is the most sensational road I have ever travelled on. It’s too far away, of course, but that is not entirely Canada’s fault.

I have been to other parts of Canada, such as Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Calgary, and I loved them all – a feeling that is partly to do with the people, who are extremely relaxed about everything except stopping at Stop signs. They show great understanding, except about the nature of roundabouts. And they smile a lot.

But most of my time in Canada has been spent in Ontario, which in my opinion is greatly undervalued. Toronto itself is an entertaining and pleasant city, especially by the lake, although it  struggles to accommodate all the vehicles that want to get in there (or out again). Its Highway 401 is a legendary road, 18 lanes wide at one point, carrying up to half a million vehicles a day. It was the first road I drove on in Canada, and the first time I had driven an automatic car. It was a memorable experience. I would commend it to those who find the new Northern Distributor Road in Norwich a challenging day out.

Further west, north and east, Ontario quietens down. It quietens down south as well, but that’s because if you go south you’re in Lake Ontario. We generally stay with friends in Caledon, which is close to the Niagara Escarpment, with its rolling country roads organised in amusing grids. Despite the woods, there is a great feeling of space and openness, and there’s always the chance of running into a coyote, or a bear. Just the one bear, which appears to be lost. It made the local paper.

Yes, there is wildlife. Where we stayed there were snapping turtles and chipmunks, geese and the occasional (non-poisonous) snake. But all the wildlife is Canadian, and therefore good-natured.

Did I mention the wineries? Canadian wine is surprisingly good, and so are the restaurants. Did I mention the malls? They’re big – so big, in fact that walking clubs use them before they open for business. Did I mention the farm shops? I could go on. Did I mention Penetanguishene?

In short, I concur with the book in question, which covered the proposition thoroughly, with numerous quotes from almost everyone except Leonard Cohen who, to be fair, is dead. I presume they left it too late to ask him.  Canada – that’s where the light gets in. That’s what he would have said. Probably.

I was born in Norwich, but between the ages of five and eleven I lived in Coventry, about as far as you can get from the sea in this country. Not that I was aware of that at the time. I’m not sure I was aware of very much except my immediate little circle of activity, which centred on Stivichall School. This was (and still is) pronounced Sty-shull – a fact that rather complicated life when I came back to Norwich in 1956, after the death of my father,  and went to the City of Norwich School.

My new teachers had to make a note of my old school, and they rather expected something like Lakenham, Earlham, Costessey or a name equally easy to pronounce and spell (for them). Stivichall rather stumped them – and embarrassed me, because of course I had to spell it.

When you’re just starting secondary school, the last thing you want to do is stand out, but I had no alternative. All those other eleven-year-old boys were strangers to me, and I was now even stranger to them. Who was this lad from a school they’d never heard of? Why did he have to spell it? I don’t remember ever being bullied – just feeling an outsider, something that I suspect has never really left me.

I was befriended, however, by a boy named Fred Riches, who turned out to play a big part in my life. Later, he introduced me to my wife, and was best man at our wedding. We were out of touch for a while, but now see each other fairly regularly. Like my wife, he became a primary school head teacher and then took on other educational roles.

He also developed  a lifelong love of Gilbert and Sullivan and sang in the school performances of their operas every Christmas. Despite being self-effacing, he was gifted and talented in that area (as in quite a few others). I too developed a love of G & S, despite being much too shy to get up on stage. I just loved the brilliant word-play of Gilbert and the ingenious way that Sullivan wove his music around it.

Last month I got a fresh taste of it when Fred took part in the latest CNS “Class of 61” reunion. These get-togethers – looking back to our year in what was then the fifth form, where we took what were then known as GCEs – were started by a couple of CNS old boys, Adrian O’dell and Tony Friedlander, a few years ago.

On each occasion it has become customary for one of our number to talk about his life, which is a lot more interesting than it sounds. One of us worked at CERN, for instance. He used to be quite a good country runner, but I could beat him at chess. He beat me at everything else.

As well as talking about his life in education, Fred chose to pay tribute to the former teachers (Doe, Court and Harvey) who had inspired his love of Gilbert and Sullivan. And, with the help of a few brave colleagues and a drafted-in female singer, he performed excerpts from such memorable shows as Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and of course The Mikado.

With a minimum of rehearsal and costume, this came over remarkably well, and I for one could have done with more of it. The performance took place in St Martin at Palace Plain church, close by Norwich Cathedral, after an excellent lunch in the Louis Marchesi nearby.

The following day my wife and I had what was nearly an encore, when Fred spoke again at our golden wedding party and produced a brilliant adaptation of “I am the very model of a modern major general” in which we featured fairly strongly. A very special moment.

Stivichall seemed a very long way away.

It’s not often you find yourself in a congregation that includes top broadcasters Michael Buerk, Michael Portillo and David Starkey – as well as several others who I sort of recognised but couldn’t pin down.

The occasion was the funeral of my old friend David Coomes, who spent the major part of his working life as a radio producer at the BBC. He died after an incapacitating illness, and I was fortunate enough to spend some happy times with him and his wife Kristine fairly often during the last few years of his life.

We met when I joined a newspaper called The Christian back in 1966. It was my first job in journalism. I knew practically nothing, I was alone in London, and his infectious good humour was a great help in an office where I sometimes felt out of my depth. The paper was closed while I was on a year of absence at university, and he was made redundant too, working to start with on Middlesex County Times newspapers and helping me to get a job on the Acton Gazette as a sub-editor.

We were living opposite him in Winchmore Hill when our son was born. He and his first wife, Jennie, who was pregnant when we met, had a boy called Phil who became close friends with our son. So our families remained linked, even though we soon moved up to Norfolk to buy a house. Eventually David divorced and married newspaper editor Anne, moving up to Cheshire. She now edits the parish pump website for parish magazine editors.

When that marriage too broke up, David married Kristine, a highly talented German radio producer, researcher and trainer. It says something about him (and about his wives) that all three were at the funeral.

David was not only very, very good at what he did – hence the respect shown to him by people at the top of their game – he was generous, witty and kind. I don’t think he was ever quite sure about God, having periods of doubt and cynicism, but he never let go, and his love of the highly spiritual singer Leonard Cohen reflected that.

I would like to think I introduced him to Cohen, but my memory is not quite good enough to be sure. We certainly shared a love of his work, and it was absolutely right that instead of hymns at his funeral, three recordings of Cohen songs were played (You want it darker, Anthem and If it be your will). The words could not have been more appropriate.

David was a voracious reader of novels, and every time I saw him in the last few years, he presented me with two or three (or more) from his library to read – and to keep. He was making sure my brain kept working, and it was much appreciated. I will try not to let it slide, but it may be difficult.