Notes on Norwich (Revisited) (November 20-23, 2025)
November 20 (Thursday). Aberystwyth to Norwich. 8.30 am: A return to Norwich, where I spent part of my summer holiday this year. (See: Notes on East Anglia II (July 19-25, 2025) and Notes on East Anglia III (July 26-30, 2025).) I wanted to experience the city for a second time in a different season. The trains took from me from Aberystwyth (through a frosted mid-Wales landscape) to Shrewsbury to Birmingham to Peterborough, and, finally, to Norwich. The speaker on the automated announcement stressed the second syllable of ‘Newtown’ when approaching the station, but the first syllable on arrival. Which suggests that the former utterance was a composite made up of two separately spoken words.
2.00 pm. Through towns and cities I’d never visited. I had an Auntie Nun (who wasn’t my aunt) from Nuneaton. As a child, it struck me as curious that someone’s name should chime with the place where they lived. I didn’t have an uncle Peter from Peterborough — a city I’d first encountered on the Saturday afternoon’s football results. It was typed-out by a manic teleprinter — and read with a gravitas that I associate with the Shipping Forecast — on BBC 1’s Grandstand, in the mid 1960s: ‘Peterborough United 2; Partick Thistle 1’.
3.15 pm: No sooner than the train passed into East Anglia, I was (as it were) back on the plains of Holland, travelling through a landscape by one of the Ruisdaels. 4.12 pm: I arrived at Norwich [full-stop] in the rain and blistering cold. My apartment was at the city’s centre, in a building erected in 1650. In Norwich, even the 19th century barely passes for history.
5.30 pm: Dinner. ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation’ (as the Apostle Paul wrote): the first mouthful of a pizza tastes exactly the same as the last — whatever the quality.
The market area was teaming with adults and children enjoying the Christmas fair and fake snow.The Mayor would turn on the lights sometime after 7.00 pm. Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ (1973) blared from the PA. I’ve never liked the song, but I’m always glad to hear it played. Norwich has a palpable sense of community. People rub shoulders with equanimity while the police stroll round in pairs, with nothing better to do other than smile.
November 21 (Friday). 8.30 am: Noticing things. On the apartment walls hang copies of historic photographs of Norwich, still sealed in the plastic bags in which they were bought. A tawdry and lazy, but novel and economic, response to framing.
Rather incongruously, there’s a unwrapped print of Marilyn Monroe on the wall adjacent to the fridge. Did she herald from this part of the world? I’d like to think so.
Into the splendid, low light of the morning. 9.30 am: A bus ride to the UEA campus and Sainsbury Centre. It’s housed in a purpose built museum/gallery designed by Norman Foster. In some respects, the packaging upstages the contents. Magnificent architecture. I took a guided tour of the collection, which helpfully told the history of the acquisitions and curatorial policy. There are some impressive works from the UK, Europe, Africa, East-Asia, and other continents and countries, on display.
There’s also a particularly poor painting of a Pope by Francis Bacon, which Sainsbury bought directly from Bacon’s studio, even after he’d slashed and consigned the work to the dustbin. (It’s claimed that 90% of Bacon’s output was likewise disposed of if it didn’t pass his quality bar.) Thus Bacon’s decision to release the painting was, to say the least, surprising. Nevertheless, its inclusion does serve to highlight the merits of the other reasonably good works by the artist in the collection.
1.00 pm: En route home, I looked in on the Plantation Garden. You’d have to know it was there to find it. I’ll return on a future visit to explore this wonder further. The garden has a charmingly idiosyncratic, Italianate, and playful quality reminiscent of Portmeirion in North Wales.
1.30 pm: Lunch back at the apartment, before the arrival of friends whom I’d met on my first visit to the city. I took dinner in a pub by the river beyond the Cathedral. Bangers and mash in onion gravy: what’s not to like?
November 22 (Saturday). 9.00 am: Onto the streets and into the food department at Jarrolds. Much of what’s sold conflicts with my food intolerances. Moreover, my culinary tastes have been shaped by my working-class upbringing. I’ve an unsophisticated palette. Left to myself, I eat cheaply, simply, and quickly. 12.00 pm: My elder son arrived. We ate an early lunch before embarking on a riverside tour of the city … in the pouring rain.
2.30 pm: We took shelter at the Adam & Eve pub, Bishopsgate. It’s claimed to be the oldest in Norwich. The original structure was patronised by workers who’d built the cathedral nearby, 900 years ago.
6,30 pm: Dinner at a local Japanese restaurant. There were odours of fish, meat, sweetness, and spice that together transported me back to that country. (See: Notes on Japan I (March 16-28, 2024) and Notes on Japan II (March 29-April 9, 2024).)
November 23 (Sunday). 9.00 am: Breakfast at a highly recommended cafe close by. Clearly, my elder son hasn’t quite grasped the concept of group selfies. 10.30 am: A return to Jarrolds for provisions, before sending him off at the railway station at noon.
A small, wet, and unclaimed tip from the previous evening. 12.15 pm: An afternoon of searching, walking, advising, and renewing friendships, with the return of little sunshine and blue sky to boot. Initially, I thought Vernon Castle was a historic building rather than a person. What a remarkable breadth of achievement. Had his flying skills been tutored by his choreographic ability?, I wondered. 12.45 pm: Back into city centre (which is never far from anywhere) in search of a phone repair shop at one of those bland and ubiquitous shopping malls that could be anyone anywhere.
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Studium; Academia; Facebook: The Noises of Art; Bluesky; Instagram; @Threads; YouTube; Archive of Visual Practice