An Afternoon In Poppyland

 

Not long after we started buying Cornerstones, I picked up a beautiful framed railway poster for £10 in a CS in Holt. It dates from the 1930s - but the coastal area around Cromer had been named "Poppyland" half a century before by Clement Scott, a poet and theatre critic. He visited the area in 1883 and wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph, encouraging people to come up on the train to this beautiful, unspoilt corner of East Anglia.

On Monday evening, Bob spotted an ad for "A Silver Social Music Performance" at Darby's [the pub at the other end of the village] and suggested we should go along on Tuesday afternoon and listen. OK I admit, I wasn't really listening - I vaguely took in the words "local history" and "cake" and said "OK, we can do that..."

Well, it was a superb afternoon. We got there just before 1pm, and went up the steps at the back to the big gazebo in the pub garden - and found my SIL and her two friends finishing off their lunch. They had also come along for the music. How lovely to be with friends and family unexpectedly. The musician finished her setting up and began the programme - and her story was fascinating.

Bertie Anderson Haggart [do check out her website here] was born and grew up in Sidestrand - the coastal village 3 ½miles south east of Cromer. Very much part of the Poppyland territory. Her family have lived there for well over 100 years. In 2014, her father found some journals belonging to B's late great great aunt, Kit Hood. Kit had documented the lives of the people who lived around her in Sidestrand - and had kept notes of their songs and poems, and tales of smugglers and farm workers and blacksmiths, local folklore and legends. Bertie has researched these journals, found the relations [many still in Norfolk]  of the original characters, and put some of the poems to music.

She sang to us, and told us stories and it was lovely. For a mere £2 I bought her booklet "Notes on Poppyland" which contained poems, and song lyrics, and pictures, maps and old photos. One song was about Black Shuck, the mystical howling hellhound said to roam the countryside at night - if you see him, then ill will befall you. As B sang to us, the dog belonging to another pub customer started howling too, which was slightly weird. 

I loved the songs, and the stories behind them. Some were really sad, about young women treated badly by their menfolk, others celebrated the local area - sea, sands, streams, cliffs and farmland. Many were about local characters. Bertie is a very accomplished musician and composer, with an attractive singing voice. [listen to her songs on the website]

It was so delightful to relax and listen, and be taken back in time to a place where life was simpler and people lived closer to the land. To imagine families with their sheet music standing round the piano in the parlour, singing these melodies together - no TV, or tablets, no single-use plastics, eating simple foods, sourced locally...

I'm not denying the horrific abuse of women and children, or the struggles of those in deep poverty - and the poor health when there was no NHS free at the point of need. I certainly wouldn't want to live as they did - but I appreciated the way that Bertie took us on a gentle, but challenging journey to imagine life in Poppyland, back before the young men marched off to the Somme and Passchendaele. Thank you so much Bertie.

Thanks too, to Creative Arts East for facilitating this free event, as part of Breckland's Silver Social Programme. I really enjoyed the free coffee and Bonne Maman madeleines too!

It was such a shame that there were only a couple of dozen of us there! I may get to the August activity [that depends on when Grandchild #4 arrives in Manchester] They define 'older people' as aged 50+ so I am definitely in that bracket!

One song I really liked was about the Mundesley Beck [aka the River Mun- barely 6 milers long] Written in the late 1800s, by Tom Thurlow, a local shepherd, it talks of the way the locals regarded it as a divine gift - bringing them precious fresh water. The song is written from the point of view of the river itself, and describes its part in the water cycle [clouds, rain river...] The song ends thus - 

But lo! I'm drawn again on high

And float in clouds along the sky

And soon descend in drops of rain

To refresh the thirsty plain

And thus a witness I would be

Of Him who still sustaineth me

And with a soft sweet murmur tell

The Lord has ordered all things well.

We certainly need some drops of rain on the thirsty ground right now!