The Big Eye - Cambridge... no thanks
Last Friday’s Lynn News had me chuntering under my breath. A fellow contributor, who has the confidence to allow his name to be displayed above his column, had written a piece about how we might benefit from being close to Cambridge and the potential joys of having half-hour train services to and from London.
It was all good stuff apart from one line which suggested that us Norfolkers might not be up to working the sexy new hi-tech gadgets that would come with the hi-tech businesses but we were bright enough to get jobs in back up roles with peripheral stuff.
Now, I’m sure the Artful Codger had no intention of deliberately denigrating the good citizens of Norfolk but he did inadvertently highlight something that haunts us as a county... and that is the nations’ tendency to see us as a slightly slow-witted and mildly incestuous ‘race apart’ from the rest of GB.
We’re a great place for vacations and everyone who has a holiday cottage will tell tales of the gap-toothed old character they always see in the pub who cadges drinks off them and talks amiably but unintelligbly to their kids.
We suffer from a bit too much from this stereotyping and it gets exaggerated by media and TV where anyone from Norfolk will speak in the bog-standard Mummerset accent and exudes either low cunning or low intelligence.
Now, I’m not entirely sure that we want to dispense with this image entirely but we don’t want to be seen by Cambridge townies as the people who go there to shop and stare open mouthed at the wondrous sights of the big city like dumb yokels. I’m probably making too much of it but it’s something that does bug me. Once you get over Brandon Creek bridge you’re not in a foreign country.
Yes Roger, we know the Cambridge Primark is bigger than Lynn’s and so is everything else including some eye-wateringly extortionate parking charges that you won’t get in Lynn. But we have more than cheap car parks to offer the sophisticated people of Cambridge.
We’ve got ancient architecture, history, rivers, coasts to marvel at once you’ve ‘done’ the colleges and if you want to start a business in this neck of the woods you’ll find we’ve got cheaper land and financial grants to start businesses that’ll make Cambridge look like a total rip off!
That half-hour train to Cambridge will run in BOTH directions and unless we do some hard selling of ourselves in Cambridge and beyond to get them coming this way, we might as well treat the rail line as a one-way track to cart us into the City to gawp and shop for all the lovely things we can’t get in Lynn or Downham.
Let’s not get too enamoured with Cambridge and it’s allure and try to realise the benefit of being able to park cheaply and walk quickly through your own town without zigging and zagging your way round the crowds of shoppers and tourists orming about the streets... and if you can’t find what you want, yew could goo ter Naarwich ol’ paartner... at least they’ll probbly understand what you’re a goin’ on about! More or less!
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Weather for King's Lynn
Monday 20 May 2013
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 9 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: North
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Cloudy
Temperature: 7 C to 12 C
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