Grey power rules as summer holiday season starts in Cromer

A typically poetic turn of phrase worth pinning at the top of our August calendars as we prepare to grouse about traffic, trippers, sunburn, soakings, noise, nettles and crawling nasties… and take all the good things for granted.

It’s the main holiday month, shorthand for rigorous examination of tolerance levels in family and community where varying ages and interests tug in different directions.

One man’s carnival is another man’s cacophony. One woman’s shopping is another woman’s shudder. One child’s cry of boredom is enough to inspire cosy thoughts of a new school year and getting late earlier.

Now, when I was a lad and harvest holidays beckoned we had the good sense to go into virtual exile for a few blissful weeks. Parents saw us off early in the morning with sandwiches and a bottle of cold tea and then provided soap and water for tired, dirty bodies as the dusk trumpet sounded.

Such freedom could come at a price. Picking fruit alongside bossy grown-ups and carting corn with grumpy old sons of the soil could turn tedious after a while.

Even so, we relished trust invested in us to follow the country code and honour the family name. We knew the grim consequences of failing either.

Perhaps our social climate and holiday habits have changed too much to regard all that as anything but simple Norfolk nostalgia. Still, a chance to catch a whiff of independence ought to remain one of the more useful by-products of a long summer break.

Since becoming a full-time resident of  Cromer in 1988. I have watched the good, the bad and the seemingly inevitable vie for attention as the town prepares to welcome charabancs packed with discerning  tourists.

Experts tell me it’s all to do with embracing change - reinventing, rebranding, regenerating, revamping, reviving, reanimating refurbishing and reverberating with bold ideas.

Take the Norwich Road entrance into town as the parish church and sea paint a gloriously welcoming picture. Where else can you find such a stirring example of a Murray Walker-inspired design coupled with genuine feeling for a foreign tongue?

When the junior school went up at the side of that alarmingly busy thoroughfare, drivers were encouraged to slow down and learn how to pronounce ”chicane”.

Half of them still don’t know what it’s for  but appreciate it’s a different sort of challenge and aesthetically superior to Gorleston’s Cresta Run.

That sort of vision can only hasten return of mixed bathing machines and a regular change of accumulator to keep the wireless system going in boarding houses and the lifeboat shed.

There’s even renewed talk of multi-coloured commodes on the clifftop and deckchairs fitted with panic buttons below as “Crusty Old Cromer!”  works overtime to be better equipped than most to cater for more mature trippers.

“Shady Old Sheringham", offering half-price haircuts and help with holiday heating, and “Moody Old Mundesley” , where nude sunbathing nearly comes up to your expectations, are beginning to make inroads into the lucrative grey market.

But Cromer easily leads the way.

In my capacity as  unofficial tourism advisor to the district council, an unpaid post with no discernible perks apart from a free bus pass to Sidestrand – you walk back – I have prepared a discussion document entitled “Putting New Punch Into Poppyland – And Make It Scott-Free”.

Main thrust is to drain away all those flowery Victorian images of genteel picnics and poetry readings in The Garden of Sleep and replace them with a dynamic website aimed at affluent and trendy pensioners with a clean mobility scooter driving licence.

Stand by for www.elastistockings. com, boasting the only genuine Blogg in the world. It must open up countless fresh channels of pleasure to growing flocks of over-80s heading for the fleshpots of Cromer and district.

That tired old label “Saga-lout” has to be unpeeled in favour of positive images like “Epiloggers” and “Timecheaters” as the wrinkly revolution hits the Costa-del-Crabland.

Outline planning permission  has been granted for a nifty old folks’ nightclub near the hospital.

“Dentchers – no entry after The Repair Shop” – will advise patrons to remove teeth  before crowd surfing or samphire suppers.

Lifts back to sheltered accommodation courtesy of a friendly milkman or traffic warden may be allowed following Friday extensions featuring old party favourites such as You’ve Been Zimmerframed,  Sedation, Sedation, Sedation and Have We Got Snooze For You! 

I will be conducting my annual survey to find out what tourism can mean to Cromer on a hot afternoon in August.  Out of 30 local business questioned last year, 29  said there were plenty of people about -  but thy were invariably suffering from a common Norfolk affliction: ”They ent spendin’ noffin’.“