www.albiestales.co.uk part two

APRIL LOVE
(Words by Paul Francis Webster, music by Sammy Fain)

April love is for the very young,
Every star's a wishing star that shines for you,
April love is all the seven wonders,
One little kiss can tell you this is true.

Sometimes an April day will suddenly bring showers,
Rain to grow the flowers for her first bouquet,
But April love can slip right through your fingers,
So if she's the one don't let her run away.

EARLY IN APRIL 1960, just before the Easter holidays, Albie began looking forward to a well-deserved break from studies at the Norwich School of Art. Mainly due to Roz’s guiding influence, he had worked really hard, producing designs and artwork to the highest standard, which would stand him in good stead of passing the Intermediate Examination in Arts and Crafts, when the time came for him to retake it during the summer term. Meanwhile, his friendship with Roz was blossoming, ready to burst into bloom with the coming of Spring, and neither of them could bear to be apart for more than a day!

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY, Friday 1 April, began just like any other day with Albie’s mother taking him an early cup of tea in bed.

“What no custard cream biccy?” he asked sleepily, as he plumped up his pillows against the headboard of his bed. His mother didn’t reply, more incensed, it seemed, with pulling back the curtains to let the early morning sunshine invade the privacy of his room.

“Come on, learzybuns,” she scolded, turning to face him and pulling back the sheets, “git a move on, do you’ll miss your train. Besides, tha’s snowing outside so you’ll hatta tearke care walkin’ up to the station...”

Albie leapt out of bed and rushed to his bedroom window, only to be confronted by a lovely sunny morning!

“April Fool!” shouted his mother, laughing all the way downstairs, “I caught you – at last!”

Dressing quickly, putting on a clean shirt in his favourite colour – yes, lilac (one of three: one in the wash, one to iron and one to wear!) – Albie ran downstairs to have a quick breakfast before catching his train to Norwich where Roz, his girlfriend, was bound to be waiting for him at Thorpe Station.

ROZ IS INVITED TO STAY

“Soon be Easter,” he said, in between rapid mouthfuls of Force, his preferred breakfast cereal, “an’ we’ll be on holiday for a week or two, so do you think I could ask Roz to come an’ stay for a few days, Mum – ple-ease?”

“Better ask your father,” she replied, making a fresh pot of tea.

“Da-ad..,” pleaded Albie, trying to attract his father’s attention from behind his Eastern Daily Press.

“Hmm, what is it now?” he replied, looking over the top of his newspaper.

“Mum says ‘Roz can come to stay if tha’s awright with you’...”

“Hmm, hmm,” came the reply, which Albie took as a ‘Yes’!

“Great!” he said, as he left to catch his train, “thanks, Mum, thanks, Dad!”

Once in Norwich, Albie met up with Roz. As usual she had cycled from her home in Thorpe St Andrew and was already waiting for him outside the station.

“Hi, Roz,” he said, as they put their arms around each other and exchanged kisses. “Tha’s a pity your bike’s gotta flat tyre, en’t it?”

“Oh, no, not another,” she groaned, glancing down at the back wheel.

“April Fool!” laughed Albie, happy that he’d caught someone out that day – the first of many as it happened!

“Sorry, Love,” he said, quite apologetically, “it was only a joke – but, to make it up to you, Mum said would you like to come and stay with us for a few days over the holidays?”

“Oh, yes, please!” Roz replied excitedly. “As long as it’s no trouble...”

“No trouble at all,” said Albie. “Besides, I’d love to have you...”

“I bet you would,” laughed Roz, giving him a friendly dig in the ribs. “Yes, I’d love to come, we’ll have such a lovely time together, won’t we!”

ALBIE HAS A HAIRCUT

On Friday, 8 April, Albie finished at the Norwich School of Art for the Easter holidays and began looking forward to his girlfriend coming to stay.

“With Roz coming next week, you’ll hatta spruce yourself up, lad,” his father told him later that night. “So I suggest you git down to Bob Obie’s for a haircut, first thing tomorrow!”

“But, Dad,” Albie protested, “I quite like it the way it is – an’ so does Roz!”

However, his protest fell on deaf ears and, at quarter-past eight on Saturday morning, Albie joined the queue outside Bob Obie’s Barber’s Shop in Co-operative Street for a ‘short back and sides’ as dictated by his father. Not exactly what Albie had in mind, with less of an assault upon his tousled mop with scissors and clippers, and more like a quick trim with the scissors kept at a discreet distance!

Bob ‘Obie’ Sadler lived just up the hill from Albie, in Cliff Road, and was the father of Adrian, a golf professional and a friend of Albie’s.

Puffing on his ‘Senior Service’, Bob Obie turned the key in the lock and opened the door as the jostling crowd of fishermen – and Albie – crowded forward to be first inside. Alas, it mattered not who was first in the queue, or how long they’d been there, the first through the door was the first in the chair – and that certainly wasn’t Albie, who was brushed aside in the stampede. So, it was to be a long wait (as usual!), and all the lad could do was watch, listen and learn!

“Who’s fust?” asked Bob Obie, electric clippers at the ready, turning to the group of men waiting their turn to be shorn.

“Tha’s me, Oi reckun,” replied old Butterballs, getting up from the bench and scratching his backside.

“No, that that en’t,” declared young Downtide, indignantly, “that en’t yew, yew ole waarmin yew, tha’s me!” With that, he pushed the other fisherman aside, and sat down in the barber’s chair.

“An’ Oi’ll hev a shearve an’orl!” he continued, rubbing an oily, weather-beaten hand up and down his three days’ growth of stubble. “Mearke shore that watta uz hot, an’orl, wun’t ya!”

“Now, between yew, me an’ the geartepust,” whispered Bob Obie, though loud enough to attract everyone’s attention, “I heared that young mawther, what wark in the bearker’s, is up the duff agin!”

“Not agin, is she?” replied the fisherman in the chair. “She en’t married, is she?”

“No, ’corse she en’t,” said the barber, lathering up his customer’s face and wielding a cut-throat razor like Sweeney Todd. “Tha’s har second an’orl! I jist dun’t know what the young’uns are comin’ to these days – dew yew?”

Albie was suddenly aware of all eyes turning in his direction.

“They never larn, dew they?” said Bob Obie, drying Downtide’s face. “Wuz there ennythin’ fur the weekend, Bor?”

“Yis, Bob,” the fisherman replied, handing over his money, “Oi’ll hev moi usual, thankee verra koindly…!”

Ten o’clock came and went and Albie still awaited his turn in the chair. To the lad it seemed that the rigmarole was always the same; firstly, the defoliation of facial fungus following a few deft flicks from Bob Obie’s razor-sharp blade, or metallic chattering of his electric clippers throwing many an unkempt quiff in an untidy heap on the already fuzz-laden floor.

Then came the inevitable question to each and every customer, but what was the ‘usual for the weekend’? How would he answer when his turn came, he wondered? He was soon to find out.

“Come on then, young Albie,” said Bob Obie, shaking thousands of minute hairs off the gown before covering the lad from neck to knee. “Let’s be havin’ ya – short back an’ sides is it, boy?”

“Just a trim, please, Mr Sadler,” Albie replied, wishing to look his best for his girlfriend. “An’ dun’t take too much orf – I like it straight across the back...”

“Curved, more like,” laughed one of the latecomers. “Ole Bob’s puddun bearsen en’t that strearte!”

As Albie sat in the barber’s chair being divested of his fortnightly growth, he was amazed at the hairdresser’s skill – apparently gained from his wartime service in His Majesty’s Warships – as he continued to snip away at the lad’s tresses, whilst engaged in ‘gatepost’ banter and facing in the opposite direction.

Albie began to prepare himself for the ‘anything on?’ question, with his emphatic negative reply waiting on his lips. But no such utterance came and he was treated to a liberal, but unwanted, dosage of Brilliantine administered from something resembling a fly spray!

As he went to pay, Albie braced himself for the question that all the others had answered so confidently – but none came.

“That’ll be one-an’-nine,” Bob Obie said, holding out his hand for the money.

“But, what about my usual for the weekend?” replied Albie, handing over two shillings and waiting for his change.

“There, wha’ did I tell ya?” declared the barber, turning to his other customers, “the young ’uns of terday! Wha’s the wuld comin’ to? Oi arsk ya!”

“Git out, yew mucky waarmin,” Bob Obie continued, pointing to the door, “just yew wearte till I tell yar father in the Co-op!”

ROZ ARRIVES AT THE STATION

The following Monday morning, 11 April, Albie ran all the way to Sheringham station to meet Roz off the mid-morning train from Norwich. Racing up the well-worn steps of the lattice-work iron footbridge, taking them two at a time, he ran down the other side and stood, slightly puffed on the far platform waiting for her train to arrive. In the distance, he could just see a fluffy plume of steam and smoke as the train made its final approach to Sheringham.

In the Station Road East signal-box, Joe Beckett, the relief signalman from Runton, began frantically turning a huge iron hand-wheel, which began closing the level-crossing gates to the road traffic. As they clunked shut, with his routine of switching points and raising signals over, he ambled down the signal-box steps and stood by the railway track, ready to accept the token, or ‘tablet’ as Albie called it, from the approaching train working the single line.

Leaning out of the cab, the engine-driver’s mate, the fireman, handed over the token, relinquishing possession of the line from Cromer, and the train from Norwich puffed into the station, letting off a great deal of steam in the process!

Stationmaster Blanchard, resplendent in his smart black uniform with a gold-braided peaked cap, stepped out of his office to welcome the train.

“Sheringham – Sher-ing-ham!” he cried, first opening this door, then that, and politely tipping his cap. Heads began to appear out of every window, hands clutched at door handles, passengers steadied themselves, ready to alight, as the train began to stop.

All this time, Albie stood on the platform edge, scanning each and every compartment as, with much squealing of brakes, metal to metal, the train ground to a standstill.

“Take care, young Albie,” warned the Stationmaster, glancing in the lad’s direction as he stood, patiently waiting on the platform. “Stand back and mind the doors, please!”

With the train stopped and all the doors open, passengers began to alight, in an orderly fashion, many clutching bags advertising Jarrolds or Bonds of Norwich, whilst others remained seated in their compartments wishing to travel to more distant parts, such as Weybourne, Holt, Melton Constable or further afield to the Midlands.

Meanwhile, Albie just stood there, watching, waiting, until all that was left was a row of open carriage doors, all gently-swinging back and forth on their rusty hinges, with hordes of passengers streaming back over the footbridge, homeward bound with their armfuls of city-centre shopping.

Other passengers, for Weybourne, Holt and beyond, began to join the train that was soon due to depart, leaving Albie looking rather crestfallen.

“C’mon, Albie lad,” said Stationmaster Blanchard, “if you’re gorn, go – an’ git on the train. If not – clear orf!”

“I’m actually waitin’,” blurted Albie, “for me girlfriend!”

The man in the black and gold uniform was rather astonished, and somewhat intrigued, by what he’d just heard, as, although he knew Albie by sight, he knew his father at the Co-op even better and there’d never been any talk of his son having a girlfriend!

“Well, tha’s a rummun ter me,” laughed the Stationmaster Blanchard, eager to wave the train off to Weybourne, “looks like yar mawther hev missed this one!”

Albie was just about to turn on his heel and go home, when a familiar figure stepped out of the very last compartment. It was Roz, struggling with two suitcases, trimmed with tartan, and the lilac umbrella he’d bought her for Christmas.

“Hello, Albie, dahling” she breathed sensuously, giving him a really big, sloppy kiss, much to the lad’s embarrassment, “sorry I’m late, but I had so much luggage to bring with me!” Following this, the April lovers indulged in their usual, lengthy canoodling session!

Stationmaster Blanchard viewed the ‘goings-on’ with great amusement and almost forgot the send the train off to Weybourne!

“Jist weart ’til I git down ter the Co-op,” he muttered to himself, as the train whistled and puffed out of the station, “I’ve gotta thinga two ter tell that boy’s father, I hev an’orl!”

“Oh, Roz,” exclaimed Albie, as they both surfaced for air, “it’s so lovely to see you – Mum says, you can have my room, an’ I can have the bed-settee in the front room!”

“Won’t that put you out?” she asked, dropping her luggage on the platform, “I really don’t want to be a nuisance...”

“No, tha’s all right,” he replied, stooping to gather up her suitcases and umbrella, but then noticing her colourful new skirt.

“What d’you think of it then?” she asked him, twirling like a model on the cover of a magazine. “Do you like my new skirt? I made it specially for you.”

“What a magnificent creation!” Albie declared, standing back to admire the colourful garment, made up from fabric with an all-over design of a nautical theme, with galleons and islands. “But, where did you get that material?”

“I thought you’d like it,” Roz replied, proudly displaying the fullness of the skirt to show off the fabric to its best advantage. “I designed it myself – and printed it – in Miss Sherlock’s fabric design class!”

“But, how very appropriate,” Albie said, taking a closer look. “It’s like a map of Treasure Island!” And, indeed it was, complete with a map of Skeleton Island, showing the the Stockade and with the Hispaniola about to set sail, Jolly Roger and all – almost everything as described in Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous book.

“And I s’pose this is where I’ll find the treasure,” Albie laughed, pointing to a spot on the map, “maybe I shall... one day!”

“It could happen sooner than you think,” replied Roz, giving him a knowing wink!

NEXT: The moon stands still on Beeston Hill, but there’s a large dog lurking in the shadows....

SOME OF ALBIE’S FAVOURITE WEBSITES A Norfolk Entertainer A Moment in Time Enjoy North Norfolk Enjoy Norwich Flint Holiday Cottages Norfolk Churches Norfolk Dialect Norfolk Village Signs Norwich City Hall and the Lions Picture Norfolk Remember Norfolk Sculthorpe Spyplanes

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