Blogging Norfolk - Live from Fusion

I’m sitting in Fusion writing the first live blog of the day. Well, not quite live because the wifi isn’t yet working, but here I sit, with 60ft of digital screen playing before me. It looks fantastic: colour as sharp and dense as if it has been written by a giant marker pen, almost 180 degrees of visual magic, wider than the eyes can see.

To the right, a map of Norfolk with pins thrust enticingly into the soil. Stories of Norfolk from Narborough, Belton, Martham, places I’ve never even heard of brought stunningly into the digital age. Pins scattered to all corners of the county, mere hints to the stories contained within. Today, for one day only, Norfolk is a county of storytellers. It is a county of wordsmiths and conjurers, photographers and filmmakers, all coming together to record meaning in the mundane, beauty in the everyday.

There’s my pin, bluer than the sea surrounding Norfolk, jabbed into the landscape between Mildenshall and Thetford. Soon there will be others, siblings of this first snapshot: stories from the A40 on a winters eve, my home on Silver Road, this very spot in the back row of the blue seating in Fusion. All will be recorded for posterity.

In the middle of the screen, playing right now, is a fantastic dragon story created by students at City College Norwich. When it ends there will be pictures from Fakenham, a poem about North Norfolk from million selling author Kevin Crossley-Holland, a story by local writer Kathryn Skoyles. It is all here, running in loop.

And there is a live Twitter feed too, tweets from as far away as Melbourne and Barcelona, from Sprowston library and right here in Fusion. It is amazing to me, how deceptively simple technology has become. You can type a message anywhere on the internet, tag it with #blognor09 and hey presto! in a few days it will be found and appear on the interactive map. And the interactive map has been embedded into the giant digital screen, just like that. It is magic really. Modern magic. Just like flicking a light switch.

At last! Wifi is up. Sitting here without wires or cables I am suddenly, amazingly, connected to the entire world. That is the magic of technology. I am no longer just sat in Fusion, in the Forum, in Norwich, or even Norfolk. Right here, I am a fully functional citizen of the world.

Some images of Norfolk this beautiful Spring morning

Blogging Norfolk - Spring Weeds/Brotherly Love

This biographical short story was written as part of Blogging Norfolk, a Writers' Centre Norwich and BBC project. For more information and to get involved, click here

One of the problems with being the younger sibling is that you never get a chance to do anything nice for them. They are the benefactor, you the grateful recipient. These roles fixed long before you even start school. And the worst thing is, you come to rely on things remaining that way. It is almost as though you do things specifically, subconsciously, to reinforce these dynamics.

Take this as a case in point. We were in a bar yesterday, a horrible modern young peoples bar, with purple lighting in the ceiling and on the walls cajoling couples into cavorting publically. But in the pale daylight of an autumn afternoon is just seemed seedy. My brother was nursing his pint of cider, pretending he likes alcohol to keep me company. I was trying not to drink my beer too quickly. Our partners were with us too – his wife, my girlfriend – drinking their coffees and laughing as they completed a crossword. All very peaceful.

And then the bombshell. The train we were waiting, the train that would take us back to our London home, was not booked for 6.30 today, but 6.30 tomorrow! I had booked the wrong date.

But never fear, Big Brother was there, striding forward to offer us bed and board for another night, “delighted to be able to help.” Well, we thought, Norwich is a nice place. It always amazes me how clean the air is. So back to his we went; to eat food he cooked; watch his TV; sleep in his spare bed.

This morning Big Bro and his wife rose early and headed off to work while we played our expected roles perfectly, sleeping in and pulling a sicky from work to explain our train booking error.

But things changed over night. As the door slammed shut I lifted my head from the pillow. Peeling the curtain back to watch him cycle off my pulse quickened. I showered, dressed, kissed my sleeping girlfriend, and began to weed the front garden. Cutting, digging, pruning; hands covered in soot, the skin made thin by the spent defence mechanisms of frail foliage. Sun shining down, slow-motion cars passing by steadily. I think I began to dream.

A salesman passed by, with wide rosy cheeks and ears that looked like tulips, and offered me two magic seeds in exchange for a glass of milk. Well, how could I refuse such an offer? I ran to a corner shop and came back with a whole carton of fresh milk. He placed the beans carefully in my hands and began to laugh. The laughter didn't die down until he was far out of earshot.

Unperturbed I thrust the seeds eagerly into the freshly ploughed soil, fetched a watering can, and gently watered the magic seeds. Perhaps, when spring springs and Norwich blooms once again, when I am back in grey London, these magic seeds will blossom and he will wonder why nature has blessed him so bounteously.

Blogging Norfolk - The A140

This biographical short story was written as part of Blogging Norfolk, a Writers' Centre Norwich and BBC project. For more information and to get involved, click here

Rain slashes against the wind shield; sludgy ugly rain from a dense and foreboding sky. The road markings, (how few there even are!) dissolved hours ago. All that remains is a thick black tarmac road; terrifyingly, unremittingly black. It is the black of vast distant galaxies; the black of dancing spirits; the black of deepest darkest Norfolk on a December evening. He can no longer tell where the road ends and the hard trees and treacherous banks begin. He is no longer driving the car, the car is driving him.

He passed his driving test more than two years ago but this is the first time he has driven without the aid of an instructor. He felt confident earlier, powerful even, controlling with the flick of his fingers this majestic mechanical being, but that is a distant memory now. Now, he just wants to get home safely.

They hurtle on through Norfolk, careering absurdly out of control. All he loves is in this car: himself, his wife, two young cats newly collected from a small out-of-the-way farm on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. His first ever pets. That is why they are here. That is why they rented the car in the first place. This is all a crazy expedition they are not equipped for, to collect a pair of cats; to make their new home seem less empty. How strange that two living beings can simply be picked up, like a can of beans from a Supermarket shelf. Shouldn't there be tests? forms? gargantuan fees to pay? Perhaps it is true: the best things in life are free...

Like life.

They set off in daylight, just, but already the rain was falling steadily, and soon the fading light had been replaced with this inky dark. They made sure to get an AA Routefinder map before they left, but this three dimensional blackness is nothing like that white printout with straight lines criss-crossing the green landscape. This winding, ululating three dimensional road, framed within trees is all that remains of what he used to know as Norfolk. There are just the four of them, this car, and this endless road. They got lost on the way, mobile phone batteries died when they phoned the farm for directions. Stumbling blind down a country lane he almost fell in a duckpond. But they finally arrived in one piece, blinking against the light of a warm farmhouse cottage. There in a cage in the corner, two scared cats cowered from the visitors. But soon they were loaded into carriers, placed on the back seat of that humming, grumbling beast, and making their way to another new home.

The car is hot, air thick with scared cat diarrhoea and scared human sweat. He has a pounding headache, he cannot breathe. They will not open roll down the windows and let the cold winter sleet in, will not do anything to further discomfort their new housemates. A tiny, pathetic, meow fills the air with mournful foreboding. The car could be tumbling steadily towards a cliff and he would have no idea, not until that plummeting lunge. And perhaps not even then.

He squints his eyes tight, trying to fix the flowing colours (red for the break lights of the car in front, black for everything else) and convince himself that they are indeed still on the road, that these are not all the last flashes of thought in a brain mortally wounded on impact with a reinforced glass wind-shield.

In a nightmarish night populated with a thousand shades if blackness, the most amazing thing, he reflects months later, is that they ever made it home safely, to start a new life together.