Newspaper days across the big ditch

For the sake of Parisgirl and Jazz, both of whom expressed interest in my writing stint with the Great Yarmouth Mercury, I offer the following blog about my newspaper days in the UK.

“If you dare to repeat that comment I shall be obliged to take you outside and thrash you,” said Alderman A to Alderman B in another entertaining session of the Borough of Great Yarmouth’s weekly council meeting.

I sat in on that meeting in Yarmouth's butt-ugly, ersatz-gothic townhall (shown above) and found it to be a delightful adjunct to my life in my chosen residence for a year in the Norfolk, England town of Great Yarmouth. Indeed, it formed the nucleus of my column for the next week in the Great Yarmouth Mercury. The Mercury, or the “Owd Marcrar” as it was called in local dialect, ably served the residents of Yarmouth (nobody who lives there bothers with the “Great”) and the nearby communities of Gorleston, Bradwell, Caister, Blundeston, Lound, Somerleyton, Belton, Burgh Castle and others, all huddled together on the chilly Norfolk coast wherein the North Sea wind bites so brutally in winter it has been “known to make grown men weep.”

The question that might (or might not) come to mind was how did it come about that I was etching out a column for a newspaper so far away from my home in coastal British Columbia. Quite simply, my wife of the day went on a teacher exchange for a year and I chose to go along for the ride. Not a free ride, but a ride in which I hoped I’d find some gainful employ as a writer. The Mercury ended up fulfilling part of that need.

I also continued with my column for my hometown paper (the Green Sheet as mentioned in an earlier blog), and also freelanced to a number of dailies, so it was all good.

How I got included in the Mercury’s pages was almost too simple. I sent a bit of a CV and also mentioned that I had won a national award for my Canadian column. That did it for them, since they could throw the adjectives “award winning” in with my column there.

The Mercury was and is a quaint little paper. For want of a word it is “folksy” with a lot of ink devoted to community notes and civic matters of virtually no consequence or interest to anybody living outside the immediate community. When I went back to Yarmouth in late 2006, after a hiatus of 25-years, one of the first things I did was pick up a Mercury. To my pleasure I found that it had changed little. Perhaps it was a bit glitzier and, dare I say, somewhat on the vulgar tabloid side (though no real sleaze or bountiful Page 3 girls defiled its august little pages.

It was fun doing the column there and making such linguistic adjustments as spelling ‘curb’ as ‘kerb’ for the sake of my readers. It was all slightly schizophrenic for me since I was still writing for a Canadian paper so I’d have to be on top of who was my target audience when I was discussing ‘mince’ as opposed to ‘hamburger’, or vice versa. For some warped reason I still will, without thinking, refer to the ‘bonnet’ or ‘boot’ of my car despite all the time I’ve been back in Canada. It’s not an affectation but rather I think I worked so diligently to get my terminology correct for the Mercury that it burned pathways in my brain.

Something I did find – to my pleasure – is that columnists are much more valued in the UK than they are on this side of the Atlantic. During my year I received a plethora of speaking invitations (with stipend included) and more personal letters from readers in that year than I got in all my years of Green Sheet columnizing combined. I’d be stopped on the street by passers-by (my photo ran with the column) and once was quite overtly propositioned by a rather striking middle-aged woman. I declined, by the way, but was thoroughly flattered.

Anyway, I will conclude this by including for your perusal, and I hope pleasure, a sample of one of my Mercury columns. Enjoy, or not, as your whim may strike you:

The following is taken from my weekly column in the ‘Yarmouth Mercury’, from June 5, 1981.

Having been resident in this fine community for the past 10 months, it distresses me to think that my special status is now coming to an end. It seems a trifle unfair when I think that I have seen the Yarmouth area through fire, flood and pestilence. I have purchased her wares, consumed her food and drink, paid for my electricity, undergone the rigors of VAT and a vindictive budget, and have made no complaint. I’ve been involved in no murders, rapes or mutilations. I haven’t even driven faster than the posted speed – yet I am no being victimized by a seasonal whim.

This disturbing change, which will soon be forthcoming, is not the result of malice on anybody’s part; it is just that I am destined to suffer because I speak with a different accent. And the reason I will have to go through torment is because tourist season is upon us and I am certain to be taken for a tourist by dint of my dialect. What’s even worse is that I’ll no doubt be taken as a Yank tourist.

During the long winter months if I went into a shop or pub, nobody really batted an eye. It was assumed that because I was here in the off-season, then I must belong here, even if I did talk funny. Either that, or I had specific business here and local people have the endearing trait of never interfering with another’s business, so questions were rarely asked.

But now, this time of year, come the teeming hordes of aliens, and I will end up being massed in with all the Americans, Germans, French, Australians and even Canadians. I will be forced to queue in shops I have come to take as my own, and will have to respond to such verbiage as “Is this your first visit here?” or “Isn’t the weather dreadful? You should have been here last week when it was much nicer.”

“I was! I was!” I want to cry out. “And, I was here the week before that, and the month before that!” But, I know my protestations will be lost in a muddle of camera-bedecked interlopers rummaging through Gorleston-on-Sea pennants, Norfolk Broads T-shirts and crystal ball snowstorms stamped with ‘We Visited Caister.’

I have always tried to avoid being seen as a tourist. It’s a bit of an obsession of mine. I believe that if one can blend in with the local scenery then one is somehow treated differently. I have even gone so far as to attempt local dialects in the vain hope that I will be seen as one who belongs where I find myself. Be I in Devon or Ireland, I will try to sound like Long John Silver or Barry Fitzgerald. I will invariably be asked: “What part of America do you come from?” Sigh.

My words should not be construed as an attack on tourists or tourism. They are what they are. They come to places. They stay for a fortnight or a month. Most important, they spend money. Tourists are an integral part of the economy of any place that has attractions to offer.
Tourists, love them or hate them, are sometimes challenging. They can be rude or patronizing. Not endearing traits. And locals that have been treated boorishly or patronizingly build up natural defences which can manifest themselves all the way from assuming a cool and relatively unfriendly reserve right through to pulling the odd rip-off.

But, the snotty creeps from abroad are not representative of the majority of tourists. The bulk of visitors, as tiresome as they might be, are polite and decent folk who are genuinely interested in the place they are visiting, and want to head home with plenty of splendid memories.

However, it might just be that my attitude towards tourists and my role in the scheme of things resident and visitor is wrong. Perhaps instead of trying so hard to not be taken for a tourist, I should go the other way. Maybe I should become the consummate tourist? I should become that guy that all the travel brochures are written for, and all the coach-tours are organized for. I mean, if I am going to be greeted with a “Here comes another one,” attitude in my home-away-from-home, I may as well satisfy everybody’s worst expectations and indeed become “another one.”

I will buy fifteen or twenty used cameras and string them around my neck. I will purchase a loud Hawaiian shirt and some Bermuda shorts. I will take to wearing a ball cap. In my shirt pocket will be a packet of ‘Luckies.’

I will speak disparagingly of local sights, passing them off as being “old”, and wonder why “they don’t tear down that crap and build something modern.” I will complain that I cannot get a decent hamburger anywhere, or a cold beer. In a loud voice I will condemn hotels, restaurants, prices, efficiency of service, trains, buses, car hire firms and the limited TV schedule, not to mention the “filthy” programs. I will always barge in right in front of other onlookers just to get that “perfect shot” at a cathedral or historic site.

The logic behind this idea is based on the fact that since I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to pass myself off as a native in the past, perhaps my attempts to pass myself off as a tourist will fail just as badly. Then people might think I am truly part of the local scene and that I am simply out for a lark. Then I too will be able to sit at my pub with the other locals and grumble about the invasion of “bloody foreigners.”