THE DAY THE FOREIGN PRESS CAME

Brownie points were coming down from heaven the day the Foreign Press Association came.

  Paul Dickson from Norfolk Tourism had contacted me about their visit to Diss and Thetford, for Tom Paine links, and Hingham and Swanton Morley for Abraham Lincoln connections.

  The idea was to promote tourism and open the eyes of the world to the delights of Norfolk. The museum, town and local culture would not do badly out of it either. 

  I got some drama pals together and we dressed up as some of the famous people Paine knew.

  I, as Paine, kicked off at the Mere's mouth, telling them about my life and the town in the 18th century. We then strolled around Madgett's Walk to find poet William Blake, played by Alan Huckle, struggling with a new composition.

  Further along we found Benjamin Franklin (Leslie Dumbell) and Paine was able to ask his help in going to the New World.

  George Washington (Gary Alexander) was discovered stirring up the Mere mud and enthusing about Paine's writings, before crossing the Delaware.

  We then visited Ned Pamphilon as he painted Paine's eyes at the Park Pavilion. Under a tree  we found Edmund Burke (Robin Franklin) sounding off about the French Revolution.

  Nearby, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (Diana Courtman) railed about the rights of women.

  Frenchman Michel Boutet bewailed his fate as Danton behind bars in a French prison. Passing the Liberty Tree, planted to commemorate Paine, we made our way up to Beehive Yard.

  There Mrs. Gudgeon (Madeline Lees) welcomed Paine back to his old work place and showed him the new plaque to him, made by yard resident Gary Breeze.

  A visit to the Paine display in the museum was followed by a delicious, period lunch by Fredrick's Fine Foods. If the visitors think we eat like that every day they will be moving to Norfolk.

   The journalists, from China, Pakistan, Israel and Spain, absolutely loved it and went off with Paine booklets, bookmarks and postcard packs.

  Afterwards Paul Dickson wrote to me: "Thank you so much for organising a very memorable visit to Diss for the Foreign Press Association. They all really enjoyed the experience. Please pass on my thanks to your actors who did a superb job - an excellent way to interpret the Thomas Paine story."

SKELTON CLUE TO ORIGINS OF CRICKET

Never one for political correctness, John Skelton has been in the news again.

  The 16th century poet laureate and Diss rector is said to have provided evidence that cricket came from Belgium rather than England.

  An Australian academic found a mention of the game in a Skelton poem called The Image of Ipocrisie.

  In the 1533 poem Skelton was objecting to the number of Flemish weavers who settled in the south and east of England.

  'O lorde of Ipocrites,' he wrote, 'Now shut upp your wickettes, And clape to your clickettes, A Farewell, kings of crekettes.'

  The word cricket may derive from a Flemish phrase meaning 'to chase with a curved stick'.

  Diss museum manager Basil Abbott, who devised the award-winning  2004 Skelton Festival, said, 'Skelton was made poet laureate by the University of Louvain in Belgium, as well as Oxford and Cambridge, but he doesn't seem to have been too fond of their people coming over here.' 

NEW SEASON AT DISS MUSEUM (2009)

We re-open on 18 March, with several new displays. This year I have been helped by collections manager Alison Molnos and her volunteers and also by the Fair Green History Society.

From our store Alison's team have dug out artefacts showing the history of the soft drinks industry that was so important in its day to the town.

A number of cholera epidemics in the 1850s saw a distrust of urban water supplies lead to the success of bottled mineral waters, which were thought to be purer and healthier.

In the beginning, though, a good many of these mineral manufacturers were back street entrepreneurs,with homemade purification technology and bottling facilities in family cellars or outhouses.

Toward the end of the 19th Century with the growth of the Temperance Movement the mineral water industry developed enormously, leading to manufacturing plants on a much larger scale.

Many local people will remember Gostlings, Doubledays and Baldrys as thriving firms.

Another display was inspired by the donation, by Roger Anness, of a splendid pair of scales used in his father's butcher shop in St. Nicholas Street.

The shop, which was later Cullen's the gents' outfitters and is now Diss Ironworks, used to have the shiny scales and weights in the window when I was a boy, although they are less shiny now.

As The Shambles used to be a butcher's shop, the volunteers have devised a display of its history.

The Fair Green History Society's display depicts the history of the green, from the time Henry II granted a charter for a fair, to the present day.

And, of course, we have much about Thomas Paine, to go with the festival that has created so much interest.

TOM PAINE FESTIVAL IN FULL SWING

Three years of preparation are now bearing fruit as the Tom Paine Festival gets into full swing.

  In November we filled the Corn Hall for the visit of TV and radio comic Mark Steel. Since then we have had a Thanksgiving meal with a Paine theme.

  On New Year's Eve we planted a liberty tree in the park, while Gary Alexander, our resident Paine look-alike, read out the great man's poem Liberty Tree. Thanks to Blooms of Bressingham for donating the tree.

  On the evening of Saturday 10 January Hugh Lupton, one of Britain's best-known storytellers, comes to the UR Church, with Nick Hennessey, to present Liberty Tree, a history of dissent from Robin Hood to Tom Paine.

  18th century underwear is featured all day at the UR Church on Saturday 24 January. Ian Chipperfield is the expert and will be giving talks at 11.30 am and 2.30pm. Mere Musicaa will provide music.

  Although it is not essential, you can dress up for the 18th century evening on Saturday 31 January at the Friends' Meeting House. It was such a lively period for novels, poetry, plays and non-fiction.

  So there will be readings and also music from Elaine Halton on the harp and from Rough at the Edges.

  Hugh Lupton tickets are £5 from the library, tourist information centre or on the door. The underwear day is free, while the 18th century evening is £2 on the door.

  There will be more events over the coming months. As with the Skelton Festival, people have had ideas for fringe happenings. So there will be a Paine presence at the Democracy Day in the Spring. Artist Ned Pamphilon is keen to exhibit paintings of the Rights of Man author.

  We are putting the finishing touches to a film, The Staymaker, about Paine, ready for its 'world premiere' at the UR Church on 6 February, the same night as a debate about his merits.

  For a good potted account of his life and works you can also get the CD, Thomas Paine: A Man For All Reason, at the tourist information centre.

  I have done something towards the festival every day since September 2005 and have over 150 computer files on Thomas Paine. Now we just need people to make the effort and come to the events.

WAS TOM PAINE A FREEMASON?

There was a chance recently to see some of the workings of freemasonry, at an open evening at the Montgomerie Hall.

  We had lectures about the history, ideals and charitable works of the movement and were well fed and entertained.

  Responding to the toast of the visitors, I said that the occasion reminded me of the time I went round all the churches in the town and wrote an article for the town guide.

  It was similarly fascinating and privileged to have a glimpse of things that most people would never witness, things going on for centuries in virtual secrecy.

  Many had the notion that freemasonry was something arcane and faintly sinister. We had obviously been invited there to help dispel those myths.

  Naturally, I was interested in the local history side. My Dad told me that there used to be a masonic hall where Woolworths is; but nobody else had heard of that.  Early meetings were all thought to have been in the nearby King’s Head hotel.

  Co-ordinating the Tom Paine Festival, I had just discovered that he had links with freemasonry, although no lodge claims him as a member.

  He wrote about it knowledgeably in a pamphlet, saying that masonry’s embodiment of the sun worship of ancient Druidism was a legitimate alternative to Christianity.

  His love of reason, science and democracy would all have endeared him to the masons. I don’t know how old the Beehive pub, near where he worked, was; but the beehive is certainly a masonic symbol.

  In his day freemasonry was rife in England, America and France. Many of the prominent people he met were masons, including: Edmund Burke, George Washington, most of the Founding Fathers, Georges-Jacques Danton and Benjamin Franklin, who was Grand Master of the St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia, where he encouraged Paine to go.

  The American army, which Paine would join, was almost entirely in freemasonic hands, while the Constitution, which Paine may have worked on, is imbued with masonic ideals. The great seal on the American dollar bill still has masonic-looking symbolism on it.

  Paine was 37 and had achieved little when he met Benjamin Franklin, the larger than life American statesman. But he obviously made a good impression on him. They were both diversely talented and great inventors. Franklin’s great-grandmother, Meribah Gibbs, came from Frenze, so he may have warmed to a fellow East Anglian.

  At the open evening I made the company laugh by saying that an employer had once told me: ‘It’s the only thing that gets you anywhere, which is obviously the reason I have never got anywhere.’ They took it in good part.

  But I do wonder if the masonic connection was what helped Thomas Paine to rise so meteorically.

ADDRESSING THE BURSTON RALLY

The museum had a stall at the Burston Rally. It proved to be a good outreach activity, promoting both the museum and the Tom Paine Festival.

  Booklets and bookmarks sold well, as did brollies. I picked up several in a charity shop for 99p each and sold the lot for £3 each (my one nod to capitalism), as the skies opened about every half hour.

  People come from all over the country. One man asked me why it was called 'Nelson's County' instead of 'Tom Paine's County'. I pointed out that we had Tory councils here.

  The rally is an extraordinary event, very much Old Labour, with an intelligent, committed audience. The media impression of something drab and unelectable is dispelled by the passion of the speeches.

  We heard an MP describing homelessness in his constituency because there are no longer any council houses.

  We heard how the government plans to spend billions on nuclear submarines, when people are being denied cancer treatment as too expensive.

  We realised the disaster of the country moving to the right in a recession, when it ought to be moving to the left. The establishment seemed as implacably against the people as it was in Tom Paine's day.

  I went in 18th century costume and was invited up on the stage to speak. The last performer was Dick Gaughan, a kind of Scottish Billy Bragg, who sang a song about Paine and also one about a Scots lawyer who was transported for distributing Rights of Man.

  The singer ended with a rousing version of the Internationale, which had everyone on their feet and was unfollowable. I had to follow him as the last act of the day.

  Introduced as Tom Paine, I quickly owned up that I wasn't but told the audience about the events commemorating his bi-centenary next year.

  I told them that he was the author of the three best-selling works of the 18th century; that he was heavily involved in both the American and French Revolutions; that he coined the term 'United States of America'; that but for him that country would still be governed by Elizabeth II, slavery might still be practised, women might not have equal rights; over here we would not have the Welfare State, benefits, education funding, pensions.

  In his life, I said, he was burned in effigy, charged with seditious libel and narrowly missed the guillotine.

  Tony Benn has said that the establishment still hates Paine because he still represents a direct threat to its power and influence - extraordinary for a man who died 200 years ago.

  'At a time when the Radical Left needs a boost, who better to lead it than Tom Paine?' I said. 'Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. My country is the world and my religion is to do good. Great words from a great man.'

  My two minute tirade went down well and seemed to end the day nicely. From the reactions of the organisers afterwards, I think they wished they had made more of Paine, because his life and works were so strikingly pertinent to the rally.

RECTORY MEADOW

(Diss Express 12.9.08.)

After writing about the Rectory Meadow last month, I am indebted to Kevin Elvin who sent me two photos.

  One, he said, is of a lovely horse chestnut tree in full bloom, which was cut down to make way for the new cricket club building. 'The tree was supposedly rotten. It looks okay to me,' he added.

  The other is of the small hawthorn tree I mentioned, which has also been cut down. Kevin spent many hours sitting in the top of it when he was a boy.

  Like most of the public at the recent meeting about the future of the site, I expect he will be dismayed by the news that the council has approved the plan to place a two-metre fence around the meadow.

  To people who have been here a long time, places like the Rectory Meadow have a hold on us. To children it was a place where they began. It was their first glimpse of the outside world, where there were other children and things going on beyond the home.

  Maybe society has changed; but I don't remember anyone vandalising the area by smashing windows or half-burying broken bottles to injure passers-by, which is apparently what happens now.

  We didn't have drug problems years ago, so no needles were found then, and we had stronger policing. At the meeting we heard that if the police are summoned they either come with sirens wailing so that the miscreants just run away, or they come two days later.

  I asked about CCTV cameras but was told that their use in the Park Road car park had led to its closure in the evenings. Cameras, it was said, would be all right around the pavilion but not the rest of the field. It strikes me that investment in high-up CCTV cameras around the whole site would be a lot cheaper than a fence.

   One woman was convinced that a fence would be seen as a challenge to the yobs and would last about as long as the wooden one which people took away for firewood.

  I know that, in changing times, you cannot hold always on to the past. I note that a builder with tender memories of the Picture House has saved the building; but it remains empty - maybe too expensive to rent, maybe in a difficult position to get to, with a lack of parking.

  The Board School, Council School or Infant School - your name for it depending on how old you are - continues to slip into ruin, vandalised, attracting evil work for idle hands. One expensive survey concluded that the building was worth saving and developing. Others have been in and reported that it is worthy only of demolition.

  These sites are the town's past, part of the making of the place. They are like the old church hall that stood at the foot of Mere Street, the Bellacre almshouses, the grammar school, the Victoria Hall in the churchyard, the nearby Oddfellows’ Hall, the King’s Head ballroom, the flint gatehouse at the cemetery, the playing field left as a bequest to the children of the town (about where the Morrison’s boulder is now), the graveyard in Croft Lane (still there - just).

  A protest here, a lack of action there, the glint of money and they are gone.

OLD SPEECH/GOOD YEAR AT MUSEUM/ CD & FILM TO COME

(This one, for Sept 08, was not used by Dispatch)

Having written before about my interest in language, I was delighted to hear a couple of examples of old speech still in use.

  You know the rather grand, slightly old-fashioned way that Del Boy talks, like some of the East End characters in the plays of Harold Pinter and Joe Orton. I was talking to a young Londoner about doing some household repairs and he said, "I will endeavour to help you."

  I was coming out of a supermarket with some sandwiches and bumped into a woman who said, "I see you've got your wittles."

  I was so pleased to hear that because I had never come across it except at the beginning of Great Expectations, when the convict demands that young Pip brings him "wittles". ie: victuals (food).

  Charles Dickens uses 'w' for 'v' so often that it almost seems like an affectation. But the woman who still used the word said that that was the way people spoke, certainly in her grandmother's time.

  We have had a good year at the museum, a year in which we have: gained Accreditation, been on national television, brought out our first publication, contributed to the new CD of Diss, gained a new audience via the Grammar School centenary display, taken part in the carnival, helped it take place with funding; and gained Awards For All funding for the Tom Paine Festival.

  It is gratifying to see the Paine booklet selling so well, as I have had to top up the pile three times. Soon there will be a CD and a film.

  The CD features local actors, like Leslie Dumbell and Gary Alexander. Leslie makes a fine Benjamin Franklin, while New Yorker Gary proves ideal as a soldier reading Paine's Common Sense before going into battle.

  We got permission to film at the Friends' Meeting House, which was perfect for 18th century scenes. I have already addressed Congress from the gallery, with the original 'Betsy Ross' flag, with the circle of stars, in the background.

  As we needed a boy to play young Paine, someone suggested 10 year old Simon Moss. "I'm a busy man," he said, but spared us an hour before going off to Alton Towers and was very good.

  I love to get local people doing things. My friend Mike Daly from North Lopham has made me a splendid Brown Bess musket, nearly as tall as I am.

  I expect some people heard Trevor Griffith's radio play about Paine. I have been in touch with Mr. Griffiths several times about coming to Diss next year. He was not happy about the way his script had been cut by the BBC, but he and Richard Attenborough still hope to make a film of it.

  I didn't like to tell him that Diss Museum is already making one.

LIFE WITH MOTHER

(This was written for Dispatch after my mother died in April 2007; but it never appeared.)

My Mum died recently. For the last seven months of her life I was her carer and got an insight into the mind of a woman born during the First World War.

  Whereas I love food, cooking and healthy eating, my mother could not care less. When she and my father came to Christmas dinner I gave them a meal worthy of Delia Smith, but they ate it without a word. It was probably the best dinner they ever had but they didn’t even know.

  From the French Market I brought my mother a lemon tart, expensive and probably delicious; but she pushed it into her face without comment.

  I tried her with a drooling, home-made summer pudding, salmon en croute, French onion tart and an array of tasty vegetarian dishes, without getting more than a grim, “Very nice.”

  The idea of talking about food bewildered her. On successive days I gave her rice, pasta, quiche and noodles and then asked her what she had eaten. Amazingly she couldn’t tell me, looking at me like a little girl made to do hard sums.

  She had no concept of there being different kinds of soup. It was just ‘soop’ and it ‘warmed ye up.’

  One of my greatest pleasures is making bread, but I was astonished to learn that she had never made it in her life.

  In her poor, Irish background there was little food available. Cooking as a creative, expressive, fun thing with many different ingredients did not exist.

  There was no carrot soup or parsnip soup because whatever they had went into the pot over the range fire. So soup was a different concept then.

  She told me that she never made bread because she was afraid of getting it wrong and wasting the ingredients, which her mother could not afford. Soda bread was made on the griddle each day, but my mother never had a go.

  Teachers know that pupils from humble backgrounds show an unwillingness to learn. It involves too much change. It would shake the fabric of their lives. Every day I explained my mother’s hearing aid to her; but the next day she didn’t know again.

  The Irish ‘take’ their food rather than eating it. In my Mum’s case the analogy with taking medicine was apt.

  I gave her the healthiest diet of her life. For breakfast we had porridge with seeds, dried fruit, brazil nuts (for selenium), goats’ milk and honey. For lunch I devised meals with lentils, couscous, pasta etc and several different vegetables, pomegranate juice to drink and yogurt for pudding.

  I realised that the ethos of my cooking was not sinking in when her eyes lit up at the memory of a beefburger she had had at the day centre where she went once a week.

  Then, just a month before her 90^th birthday, she was gone. As the Irish say, “Bye-bye now, mother and safe home.”