Z - Norwich and the Mercenary

Norwich is unavoidable now I live in it. It's everywhere the lowly
traveller sets his foot, and emerges in large, ragged patches that are
sown very roughly with bricks, concrete and roads, a giant scrapbook of
history. There are patches of woodland and lake - the UEA broad,
beginning and ending in a river, down beyond the left flank of Nelson
Court, and behind it a boarded footpath unwinding into fields and
marsh, not forgetting Waveney half-hill's slanting red clay face.

There are patches of the medieval city that all the brochures boast of
- the cathedral, the St. Peter Mancroft church near the market, and
Norwich castle, which is built on top of a large bank and mound rising
forty feet above ground level and surrounded by high flint walls.
Patches too of Victorian ecclesiastical architecture, carved monuments
from the fifteen seventies and eighties, and of Tudor timber in the
secreted streets that might have survived the fires that raged through
early sixteenth century, burning thatched houses. The nineteen-sixties
are also in patchwork evidence - UEA itself, for example. The Demon
Fiend Craggs has complained bitterly about the emphasis of her art
history course on the 'futuristic' ziggurats that are Norfolk and
Suffolk Terrace, which are nothing less than concrete monstrosities in
the light of day, and pretty pyramids of hazy orange windows at
night.

All these historical pieces melt very readily and suddenly into the
much larger patches of modern consumerism and futurism. Around the
castle, for example, stands a fleet of bus stops, and beneath it is the
Castle Mall, a multi-floored shopping centre that houses all the
familiar chains, as well as less common outlets such as the glorious
Tea Junction, which sells hundreds of varieties or tea and coffee.
South Sea Island is my favourite flavour thus far, with its promising
aroma of mangoes and passionfruit, but onwards, onwards?

?to the matter of the crooked Tudor timbered buildings leading up to
the very seedy-looking Waterfront club, a UEA-run nightjoint at the
banks of the River Wensum. I went there first with several members of
Wolfson Close to celebrate Lauren's birthday, but found it a little
unconventional drinking to someone's advancing years in a strange
gloom, surrounded by murky grey-blue walls and sitting at metal tables,
bending the ash trays into miserable creature-shapes. I've since come
to love the place, for all its dankness, and journey there frequently
with Cole, Cliff and Kettle, or sometimes the harpies, to drink and
dance to the indie music.

St. Peter Mancroft, the great medieval church near the market, is
surrounded by the Tesco Metro, HMV, Next, and numerous other high
street stores, and the worn cobbled roads between and around them are
home to beggars, salesmen and performers - a violinist in a nook, a
South American pan pipe duo in the centre of the street, a
silver-painted man pretending to be a statue, a loudmouth selling cheap
wrapping paper outside a shop that routinely changes its name to fit
the season. The market itself is brightly coloured, and filled with
shouting. I've never ventured into it.

Down one of the corner roads from this area is Captain America's, one
of Norwich's many, many eating-places, and one that was recommended to
me by an older ex-UEA student and fellow Al Stewart fanatic called Ray
Miller. Manley and I went to eat there recently and found it fair and
pleasant, if expensive. The old American atmosphere of the place is
broken up by the clamour of present day radio stations, but I was
pleased to see the Marx Brothers featured on a large black and white
wall mural.

Further down from Captain America's and to the left is St. Benedict's
street, a patch of curiosity and faint mystery, home to science fiction
and fantasy culture shops, second hand record and video shops, the Ten
Bells pub (which holds a poetry night on the last Sunday of every
month, and has a red telephone box inside it,) and a little place with
very dusty tome-filled windows called 'Books &; Scientology.' The
writing is archaic, white on a black background, and there are large
stacks of undust-covered books guarding the entrance. It's closed most
of the time, it seems, and when it is open, a white-haired, cragged man
sits in the doorway observing passers-by. I hope to gain entry to the
place some day, even it is by illegal means.

You can't go far in any direction without walking into a pub, and yet
I've barely dinted the film of the surface in my travels. The Bell Pub,
owned by Wetherspoons, is cheap and luxurious, but houses an imposing
and ugly plaster figurine. The Belgian Monk serves very yeasty beers
that intoxicate at an extraordinary speed, while the Crypt Bar is set
in the most interesting of medieval patches - part of a vaulted crypt,
as its name suggests, with worn stone arches that rise from the ground
like massive skeletal spines, and a low stone ceiling.

I should mention Rampant Horse Street, just for its name, and the old
market area of Tombland for the same reason, while the Riverside
complex, near the glass-roofed railway station, is the most modern of
patches, almost untainted by the long fingers of history. It is filled
with expensive clubs, neon signs and large, balding bouncers. At its
end is the Odeon cinema, where they serve Ben &; Jerry's ice cream
for a high price, and the New Orleans restaurant.

It is in this environment, and in the many clothes boutiques of the
city's bollarded sidestreets, that the Mercenary Lianne Robinson seems
to feel most at home. I've trailed in to the city centre in the company
of her and the cynical Vampire Countess several times, and chased them
both around autumn discount stores. The Mercenary, deeply tanned and
dark-wavy haired against the Countess' snowy pale, the youngest and
second-most buoyant harpy (after the Demon Fiend,) seems to light up
with a fervent energy at the sight of the next high street shop, or
even the next rack of tops on special offer. This makes me think of her
as a kind of magpie, attracted to the fresh, new shine of things and
forever in search of the next moment's emotional high. She likes new
films more than any harpy, and old films far less than any of them, and
I note that she becomes bored extremely quickly, relying on her Sony
Playstation and radio CD player for in-room diversions and spending
vast amounts of money on new items, particularly manga books ordered
from French publishers. There, at least, is an interest I share with
her: manga and fantasy, and she too has discovered the delights of St.
Benedict's street. She is notably an artist also, since this seemingly
provides for her another distraction from the mundane, and she studies
French as half her degree - clearly not even content with command of
one language.

"Ou!" she will exclaim. "C'est mal! C'est tres mal"

She doesn't even seem to like staying in the same place for very long,
having already left for a weekend away at one of her other bases and
made certain subtle promises to do more of the same. What leads me to
suspicion and, indeed, outright terror is my observation that where
there is much breadth in her interests, there is very little depth.
While eager to move on to French, she doesn't seem at all interested in
what fathoms English still has to offer her, and is very wary of my
over-indulgence in its complexities. More worryingly, I am informed by
the Vampire Countess that she has tried to sever previous contacts so
that she can start afresh here. I don't look forward to being
severed.

"Happy now, Jon?" she asks, as at last we enter a boutique that stocks
something other than women's clothes. I grin, because like most
untroubled merriness, hers is infectious.

"Good! That's the smile I like to see."