“The Cromer Co-op ‘spies’ have been busy,” said Albie, “having seen me with Lyndi they’ve told my father!”

www.albiestales.co.uk part four

AS ALBIE HAD HOPED, the ‘Grand Opening Nite’ of the Cromer Cavern was most successful! Just before seven o’clock, on the evening of Saturday 5 October, crowds of youngsters were already queuing outside the Salad Bowl restaurant, eagerly waiting for the doors to open to their very own night club – the first of its kind in the Gem of the Norfolk Coast. A half hour later – with the Cavern in full swing – many teenagers were frantically twisting the night away to music blaring out of the Rock-Ola jukebox, whilst others seemed to prefer a bit of ‘canoodling’ intimately merging in the midnight-blue corners! Albie did try to play some tunes on his guitar and amplifier, thinking it would make a nice change, but Mr Walters complained he couldn’t hear himself think! Or was it he preferred the sound of all those jolly sixpences tinkling into his jukebox?

HIPS? – LYNDI?” Albie shouted in his girlfriend’s ear above the deafening music. “Shall we go to the chip shop? All this here dancin’ is making me famished – what about you?” Then, taking her by the hand, he led her through the wildly-cavorting crowd, up the stone staircase and out into the cool night air.

“Phew!” he said, breathing deeply and instantly exhaling, almost in the same breath, “that wuz too hot in there for me...”

Clutching his arm, Lyndi suggested a walk on the pier, bathed in silvery moonlight. “Let’s go to the end,” she said, as they strolled along the wooden decking, “it’s quieter by the lifeboat shed...”

It was almost high tide. Already the sea had finished its frantic dash for the shoreline, by now gently ebbing and flowing, depositing bulbous fronds of bladder-wrack along the high-water line and softly surging, back and forth, over banks of shingle.

Through cracks in the wooden planking beneath their feet, they could see sparkling jewels of moonlight shimmering and glinting on the untroubled waters. Reaching the end of the pier, Albie put his arms around Lyndi, standing there looking so innocent, her golden tresses gently moving in the breeze.

Returning his caresses, she put her head on his shoulder and said: “What about a fag? Then we’ll go for those chips, shall we?”

As they walked back along the esplanade, Lyndi suddenly stopped under a street light. “******!” she said, peering at her wristwatch, “is that the time? I gotta get home now, due I’ll get a right old b******ing from Mum!”

“But, what about our chips?” Albie reminded her, rubbing his rumbling tummy. “I mean, we hen’t had our chips yet, hev we?”

“You’ll get your chips if my Dad catch you – keepin’ me out late,” she replied, tugging him along by his arm, “I’m s’posed to be in bed by eleven, an’ tha’s now five-to – where’s that scooter o’ yours? I’re gotta go!”

ALBIE GETS THE FIFTH DEGREE

It was a quarter past eleven when Albie returned home that Saturday night and, as he was putting his Lambretta back in the garden shed, he noticed the scullery light was still on. In the living room his parents, sick with worry and unable to rest until their one and only offspring returned home, were sitting by the dying embers of the fire in their night attire. Suspecting the usual inquisition of ‘where have you been?’ and ‘who have you been with?’ and followed by ‘and just what have you been up to?’ he steeled himself to face ‘his welcoming committee’!

“I’ve bin out,” he announced curtly to his parents, as his left foot crossed the scullery threshold, “an’ before you ask me to explain I’ve been to a new club in Cromer... on my own an’ with no-one in partic’lar. Satisfied? Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll hit the sack!”

With that, he kicked off his shoes, opened the hall door and sprinted upstairs to bed, slamming his bedroom door behind him.

“Oh, dear,” said his mother, clutching her hot-water bottle and turning to her husband. “Bin upta suffin’, I reck’n, don’t yew?”

Albie’s father nodded in agreement. “Don’t yew worry your little head, Gladys,” he said, locking the back door and putting out the kitchen light, “We’ll git to the bottom onnit, first thing tomorrow morning, never yew fear! Now the boy’s home, safe and sound, we best git t’bed ourselves!”

Sunday morning dawned damp and dismal, with a strengthening wind cutting along the coast from the east. By the time Albie had put in an appearance half the morning had already gone. With the smell of coffee announcing to him it was almost eleven – time for his mid-morning boost of caffeine to help wake himself up – Albie went downstairs into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee and helped himself to a handful of custard creams from the biscuit barrel.

“So, how was last night?” asked his mother, as Albie sat himself down in the fireside chair and dunked a biscuit in his coffee. “Did you have a nice evening, dear?”

Definitely a softly, softly approach, thought Albie. “Very nice, thanks Mum,” he replied, sipping at the hot, sweet cup of coffee made with milk just the way he liked it. “Yes, it was OK. I went to that new club in Cromer – the Cavern – under the Salad Bowl...”

“Meet anyone nice?”

“No, not really.”

“But, there musta bin pletty o’ people there, weren’t there?” quizzed his mother.

Deciding to be truthful, although economic with it, he replied: “Crowded it wuz. Noisy an’ hot. Too much for me, so I had a walk on the pier then came home...”

“Not on your own, were you?” his mother asked, almost sounding sympathetic. “You seem so lost and helpless at times...”

“Well, tha’s the way I feel sometimes,” Albie replied, hoping his dejected looks would fool his mother into asking no further questions.

“But, don’t yew think tha’s time yew met someone really nice an’ settled down?” she asked he son, determined to persuade him to reveal all. “Arter all, yew kin allus bring her home, y’know.”

TROUBLE AHEAD?

After Sunday lunch, Albie went to Cromer again. Parking his scooter outside Lyndi’s home on Westcliff Avenue, he walked up the garden path and knocked on the front door.

“Is Lyndi in, please, Mrs Rance?” he asked the lady who answered the front door, taking her to be his girlfriend’s mother. “If so, can she come out, please?”

Mrs Rance laughed, and beckoned him into the hallway. “You must be Lyndi’s Albie,” she said, walking ahead of him into the front room, “she’s upstairs – getting herself spruced up – she’ll be down in a minute. Taking her somewhere nice, are you?”

After talking with Mrs Rance for well over an hour, it was almost four o’clock before Albie left with Lyndi. Going down the hill into Cromer, they parked the Lambretta near the Jetty Coffee Bar and went inside, sitting at the table by the window looking towards the church. John, the coffee bar owner, was far from happy about something.

“I hope you en’t havin’ nothin’ t’do wi’ that there Cavern place,” he said, bringing two cups of Cappuccino over to their table. “Tha’s hit my bus’ness bad, that hev – last night wuz dead in here, I shudder to think what that’ll be like tonight...”

“Suffin’ will hatta be done about it,” he continued, walking back to the counter, tea towel slung over his shoulder. “If that go on much longer, that’ll spell the ruin on me, that will!”

“Sorry, John – don’t know nothing about it,” Albie lied, quickly drinking his coffee. “If I did, I’d tell you – you know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know nothin’ either,” said Lyndi, getting up from her chair, “Come on, Albie – aren’t we s’posed to be... going... somewhere... or other...?”

They could hardly get out of the coffee bar fast enough for fear their reddening faces would give the game away. “Yes – a walk past the Lighthouse to Overstrand, wasn’t it?” Albie declared loudly, “fancy John thinking we had anything to do with that place?”

“Just you make sure you tell that there Mr Walters,” John shouted after them, “to watch his back – I’ll find a way to put an end to it, I will, just you mark my words!”

CROMER CO-OP CO-OPERATES

Monday morning at Sheringham Co-op was as busy as usual for Albie’s father, Mr Gray, the manager. With the worst of the early morning rush over, he was able to find time to make the obligatory, first-day-of-the week telephone call to head office in Norwich – and not a call he relished.

To begin with, he would phone through an order for stock and provisions to be delivered from the warehouse. Then there would follow the inevitable conversation with some faceless bureaucrat at Norwich Co-op setting him nigh-on impossible sales targets for the week ahead.

It was always the same: an almost-impossible sales target would be set – to be met at all costs– with the following week subjected to an increase based upon the success of previous week.

“And if you can’t do it,” ‘Norwich’ would tell the Sheringham manager, “we can always find someone who can!”

There seemed to be no end to it, worried Albie’s father.

Picking up the telephone in his office, he dialled the Cromer Co-op to speak with, Mr Alexander, the manager there.

“Hello, Andy,” he said, “and how’re tricks with you?”

“Sales were up again last week,” Andy replied, glancing at his ledger, “but Norwich say we’re gotta do better than that this week – how about you?”

“Same here,” the Sheringham manager told him, “there seem no end to it, do there? Tha’s nigh-on impossible!”

Then their conversation turned to more happier subjects – the weather, the success of Cromer Town and Sheringham Minors in the local league, and finally talking about and their respective families.

“Ivy and I were in Cromer on Saturday night,” Andy told his counterpart in Sheringham, “havin’ a meal at the Tudor House, when and we saw your Albie. Large as life, he was, on Cromer Pier, making a fool of himself with some mawther!”

ALBIE HAS A CONFESSION TO MAKE

Later that Monday evening, when Albie returned home from work at Jarrolds in Norwich, his parents were in no mood to be fobbed off by their son’s feeble excuse regarding his weekend’s activities.

“Now, about last Satd’y night,” said his mother, instantly going for the jugular, “an’ afore you say nothin’ happen’d, we’re heard suffin’ to the cont’ry – an’ just who you’re bin seeing an’orl!”

“Yes, Albie,” said his father, looking up from his newspaper, “a little birdie hev told me all about what yew’ve bin gittin’ up to – so dun’t yew even think about denyin’ it!”

“Can’t it wait until arter I’re hed me grub?” complained Albie, going to the oven and getting a plate of dried-up mince, chips and peas off the bottom shelf. “I hen’t gotta clue what you’re goin’ on about!”

“I wuz talkin’ to Andy Alexander at Cromer Co-op on the phone this morning,” his father told him, folding his newspaper and putting it next to the Radio Times in a rack by the fireplace. “And he told me he’d seen yew alonga some mawther making an exhibition of yourself.”

“Your network of spies working overtime are they?” replied Albie, pushing his half-eaten meal to one side, before getting up from the table and heading for the stairs and the sanctuary of his bedroom. “Bein’ very co-operative, are they? Hope they’re gettin’ paid overtime... ”

“Albie! Don’t yew dare talk to your father like that!” his mother shouted up the stairs after him, “... and, another thing, we know where she lives an’orl – ’corse Andy told us!”

LYNDI GETS AN INVITATION

After remaining in his room for the best part of an hour, with pangs of hunger getting the better of him, Albie decided to go downstairs to apologise to his parents for his rudeness. After all, they seemed to have heard about Lyndi – albeit from the Cromer Co-op manager – so, perhaps, it was time to put his side of the story, he thought.

Venturing back downstairs and into the living room he found his father watching television and his mother knitting.

“Just thought I’d say ‘sorry’,” he said, standing between his father and the television set. “And if you’ll give me a chance I’ll explain...”

“Sometimes that seem like you’re takin’ leave o’ your senses,” his father replied, waving him away from the telly. “Can’t yew see I’m watchin’ this?”

“Oh; do give the boy a chance, Father,” his wife said, putting her knitting away in the glass-fronted cupboard at the side of the fireplace. “Why not let him explain? I’m sure we’d both rather hear it from Albie, than anyone else in the street!”

Albie began to tell his parents how he’d met Lyndi – wisely omitting any mention of her less-than-ladylike language – and remarked, although she lived with her parents in a rented house, how very clean, well-furnished and tidy their home was. And in such a nice area with views across the cliff-tops to the sea beyond – if you took a five minute walk down the road that is!

But he kept his pièce de résistance until last.

“Of course Lyndi’s mother always shops at the Co-op!” he said, hoping to really impress his parents and, whether this was true or not, it seemed to do the trick.

“We’d love to meet Lyndi, wun’t we, Dad?” Albie’s mother replied much to his relief. “Then we can all get to know one another better! Bring her home on Thursday night will yew? Arter all, there en’t much on telly...!”

LYNDI IS ON ‘APPRO’...

That Thursday night, on 10 October, as soon as he’d had his tea, Albie scootered over to Cromer to pick up Lyndi. When he arrived, she was already waiting under the streetlight at the bottom of Westcliff Avenue and warmly dressed for the four-and-a-half mile journey to Sheringham to meet his parents.

“Now; whatever you do,” he pleaded, as she climbed onto the pillion seat of his Lambretta, “please, please, do mind your language! Mum en’t too keen on swearin’!”

Pulling her coat down over her legs before wrapping her arms around his waist, his girlfriend replied: “For Gawd’s sake, don’t go on so, Albie – I’ll do my b****y best!”

As they stopped outside Regis Cottage, once more he reminded her: “Please remember what I said – and, another thing, they don’t like smoking in the house either...”

“Is there anything else we can’t ******-well do?” she asked, just as the front door opened.

“Why, hello, my dear!” exclaimed Albie’s mother, throwing her arms around the girl and giving her a big, wet kiss. “Any friend of our Albie’s is always welcome in this house...!”

“******!” muttered Lyndi under her breath and, wrestling herself free, “let me catch my breath for Gawd’s sake!”

Once inside Regis Cottage, Lyndi and Albie sat side by side on the large, imitation-leather bed-settee in front of the fireplace, holding hands and gazing deep into the flames of the coal fire, whilst his parents gave little nods of approval to one another.

“I believe you live in Cromer, Lyndi?” Albie’s father asked her.

“Westcliff Avenue,” was her brief reply.

“And you work in the Pye factory?” asked his mother.

“Yeah.”

“In the offices, no doubt?” Albie’s father wondered, and asked her so.

“Nah – makin’ tellies an’ things,” the girl replied briefly.

So far, so good, thought Albie, pleased that Lyndi had remembered his words of advice.

“Albie,” she said suddenly, just as Albie’s parents went to make some coffee, “I coon’t half do with a tinkle. Outside is it? The bog? Gimme your fags an’orl. When I’m on the lav I can have a quick drag – I’m absolutely ****** gaspin’!”

Perhaps they didn’t hear, hoped Albie.

...BUT IS SHE THE GIRL FOR ALBIE?

The next morning, whilst Albie was still upstairs getting himself ready for work, his mother and father were talking over the events of the previous night.

“I en’t too sure about that Lyndi, are yew?” Albie’s mother said. “ I mean, she’s pretty enough – but her language...!”

“Yis, I know what exactly what yew mean,” replied her husband, “in our day we din’t know such words, let alone use ’em!”

“I really don’t think she’s right for our Albie, do yew...?” his mother sighed.

Just then, their son burst into the living room, grabbed a slice of toast, scraped a knife across the butter dish, liberally coated the golden-brown bread with animal fat and marmalade, and made for the back door.

“Your Lyndi is very nice!” said his mother. “Very demure and so well behaved!”

“Yew’re got impeccable taste!” added his father. “Hoolly attractive this one – I coon’t o’ done better myself...!”

“Oh, by the way,” continued Albie’s mother, as he was halfway out of the back door, “don’t forget tha’s your grandfather’s ninetieth birthday tomorrow...”

With that, Albie slammed the door behind him, opened the garden gate and ran up the road to catch the early morning train to Norwich.

“Wha’d yew mean ‘yew coon’t o’ done better yourself’?” Albie’s mother asked her husband, feeling rather put out by his comments. “I hope yew en’t comparin’ me to that there Cromer mawther, are yew?”

Getting up from the breakfast table, Albie’s father quickly put on his coat and went out the back door, conveniently remembering he had an early morning delivery arriving at the Co-op!

ALBIE GOES SHOPPING

During his lunch break, Albie made his way to Norwich city centre to look for a present for his grandfather.

“I suppose a book would be nice,” he said to himself as he walked through the main doors of Jarrold Department Store in London Street, quickly heading for the book department. “Something special – a leather-bound, first edition, would be nice – something that Granddad could treasure for years to come...”

Then, thinking about it, he realised there might not be too many years left, and decided upon something a little less expensive!

On his way back to work – clutching a copy of Beautiful Norfolk Buildings by Stanley J Wearing – Albie was sure he’d made a wise choice, with his granddad being a retired Master Builder and all.

HIS GRANDDAD’S 90TH BIRTHDAY

Just after five o’clock, on Saturday 12 October, Albie went to see his grandparents at Wyndham Park on his scooter, taking his granddad’s birthday present with him. Riding his Lambretta carefully down the uneven lane at the rear of the row of terraced house – struggling to avoid the many brick-filled potholes punctuating the rough track – Albie stopped by the back gate of Louis Cottage, opened it, then pushed his scooter up the garden path towards the back door.

Peering through the living room window he could see his grandfather sitting, as he always did, in his favourite chair by the door to the stairs. From the sounds he could hear from the kitchen, his grandmother was getting the tea ready and, as he opened the green-and-cream painted back door, she came out of the larder carrying a tray on which were five glass dishes of raspberry jelly with sponge fingers on top.

“Hello, Albie,” she said, handing him the tray, “take these into the front room, will you? We’re all having tea in there tonight being it’s a special occasion! Will your mum and dad be long?”

“I hope not, Gran,” he replied, taking the tray from her, “’cos I’m famished – they’ll be here as soon as Dad has locked up the Co-op for the night.”

Albie went along the dark, narrow, corridor leading to the front room at the other end of the terraced house, and opened the glass-panelled door leading into the front room, placing the raspberry jellies on the oval, gate-legged table in the middle of the room. Then, returning along the corridor, he went to see his grandfather in the living room.

“Happy birthday, Granddad!” he said, handing him a birthday card. “And may you have pletty more of them!”

“Whoo’s that?” shouted the nonagenarian, “an’ wha’do ’e say?”

“Tha’s our Albie, Elijah,” his wife told him, coming in from the kitchen and shouting in his ear – then turning to their grandson: “Yew’ll hatta speak up, he’s gittin’ very deaf these days.”

“IT’S ME, GRANDDAD,” shouted Albie, leaning over the old man and handing him the present he had brought him, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY and I hope you’ll like your present!”

“There’s no need tuh haller – Oi en’t deaf!” said his grandfather, then looking at the gift-wrapped parcel laying in his lap: “Wha’s this then? All wrapped up in fancy pearper?”

“Albie has brought you A BIRTHDAY PRESENT,” shouted Granny Gray. “And there’s a card an’orl.”

“Birthday, you say?” Elijah replied, cupping his hand up to his ear, “what agin ?” A comment he made every year, on each and every birthday.

Albie’s grandfather opened the envelope and took out his birthday card with a big 90 on it.

“Put this on the mantelpiece wi’ the others, May,” he said, then began the arduous task of opening his present, which Albie had so thoughtfully gift-wrapped in coloured paper, sealed with layer upon layer of Sellotape. Eventually, a book – Beautiful Norfolk Buildings – emerged, which Elijah opened with his huge, gnarled, builder’s fingers and thumbs, squinting at one page after another.

“Wasn’t that nice of Albie?” said Granny Gray, looking over her husband’s shoulder at the book. “How thoughtful of him. Yew’re goin’ to enjoy reading that, aren’t you, Elijah?”

“The wuds is too small! Squitty!” he replied, “shorn’t be earble t’mearke ’em out!”

“But there are some lovely pictures as well,” continued his wife, pointing to the drawings on each page. “Yew’ll recognise some o’ them, won’t yew? Look, there’s Old Runton Hall, where you used to work...”

“Tha’s orl fuzzy! Wun’t like that in my day that wun’t!”

ALBIE HAS A NICE SLICE OF CAKE

Albie’s mother and father arrived in their car, and parked it in the lane opposite Louis Cottage. With them they brought a large, rich-fruit, birthday cake, baked and beautifully-iced by the Norwich Co-op. Sticking out of the white royal icing – just above the wording neatly-piped in gold wishing ‘Happy 90th Birthday Elijah’ – were a great many candles, far too numerous to count.

“Happy Birthday, Dad!” said Albie’s father, placing the birthday cake in front of Elijah sitting at the table waiting for his tea, “yew’ll enjoy this, won’t yew?”

“That en’t fruit, is it?” said Elijah, “that allus gimme wind, that do.”

After devouring a mountain of salmon-paste sandwiches, ladling spoonfuls of raspberry jelly and ice-cream into his mouth as fast as he could go, Albie was ready for a slice of cake.

“Yew’re hoolly wolfin’ your food, Albie,” his mother scolded, as he munched his way through a second slice of birthday cake, scattering crumbs all over the tablecloth, and leaving the hard icing until last. “Yew’ll give yourself wind at that rate!”

“Yew do keep lookin’ at the clock,” Granny Gray told her grandson, “do yew hev a train to catch, or is there suffin’ else yew watta be doin’?”

“Albie’s got a girlfriend!” his mother announced, in a very matter-of-fact way, “tha’s why he’s in a palaver – lives near here she do! Just up the road – Westcliff Avenue – no doubt, tha’s where he’d rather be!”

“Oi kin remember them there council houses bein’ built,” Albie’s grandfather told them, in between mouthfuls of cake. “Right lot live there an’orl, rough ’n’ ready they are, an’ tha’s a fact!”

“What’s her name, Albie?” his grandmother asked. “Perhaps we might know the family.”

“Lyndi...” he replied, quickly getting up from the table before any more awkward questions were asked. “And, if you don’t mind, I really oughta be goin’ as me an’ Lyndi are goin’ to the pictures...”

LYNDI HAS A YEARNING

Lyndi was already waiting outside the Cromer Regal cinema when Albie rode up on his scooter. Parking close by – outside the parish church – Albie sprinted across the road and towards the cinema in Hans Place where his girlfriend was standing looking at the poster displaying that night’s film.

“Tha’s suffin’ from outer space tonight,” she said, taking him by the arm, “hen’t got no-one I like in it, it hen’t. B****y waste of time, I reck’n.”

“Never mind, we don’t hatta watch, do we?” laughed Albie, paying for two seats on the back row, “after all, it’s nice and dark, and, if we’re lucky we can sit in those courtin’ seats!”

After the first film, to which Albie and Lyndi paid little attention, there were some local adverts followed by the Pathé News. Then on the widest of wide screens the title of the main feature film began to appear: 20 Million Miles To Earth.

Sitting in the comfort of the two-in-one seat, especially for courting couples, Albie and Lyndi took little notice of the film, only looking up when there was a loud ‘ooh!’ or an ‘aah!’ from the audience, most of who were spellbound by Ray Harryhausen’s monsters from outer space, created by his special effects.

“I really don’t know what that was all about,” declared Lyndi at the end of the film, as they quickly joined the panic-stricken throng all intent on avoiding ‘standing for the Queen’. “Like I thought – a total b****y waste of time!”

“I thought it was pretty good,” replied Albie, who found it quite amusing at times, at least the parts he’d been permitted to see. “That wuz a rummen when that there elephant sat down on the photographer, wun’t it? Squashed flat he wuz!”

Lyndi told him she’d missed that bit, as she had her eyes closed at the time – as his should have been! Then she stopped to look at the posters in the foyer advertising forthcoming attractions.

“We must see this!” she said, pointing to a poster of Doctor in the House, “tha’s got my fav’rit actor in it, Dirk Bogarde. Oooh, I love a man in uniform...”

“But, he’s a Doctor,” replied Albie, pointing at the poster, “I hardly call a white coat a uniform...”

Lyndi half-closed her eyes. “I don’t care – makes me shudder an’ go all goosey-pimpled he do,” she moaned, putting her arm around Albie’s waist and her head on his shoulder, liberally dusting his jacket with face powder. “I can feel his warm hands now, all over me – oooh – so soft an’ gentle... and... ...when’s it on?”

“You’ll hatta wait till next month – third week in November,” laughed Albie, walking over to his scooter parked by the roadside, “but if you can’t wait that long, I could always borrow one of dad’s white grocer’s coats – and, besides, my hands are just as warm!”

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?

For the next three weeks, Lyndi talked of nothing else but going to see Doctor in the House!

However, when the time came, there was one little problem, concerning another doctor – Dr Who – and one which needed to be resolved, urgently.

Dr Who was due to make his debut on British television at a quarter-past-five on the evening of Saturday 23 November, and Albie just didn’t want to miss it. So, after a slight difference of opinion with Lyndi, they agreed instead to go to see Doctor in the House a day earlier than planned, on Friday night – 22 November 1963.

To be honest, even Albie didn’t want to miss the film as it also starred the gorgeous Shirley Eaton, secretly one of his favourites and, as he put it – though not to Lyndi – a ‘bit of all right’!

Arriving in good time that Friday night, they settled down in their favourite courting seat on the back row of the Cromer Regal, and waited for the ‘big’ film to begin. The moment Dr Simon Sparrow walked onto the screen, Lyndi, sighing softly, laid her head on Albie’s shoulder. Slipping his right arm around her shoulders, his hand wandered downwards to the top of her blouse.

“Keep your b****y hands to yourself!” Lyndi shouted, snatching his hand away. “Behave yourself an’ watch the fillum!”

Suddenly, on the back row of courting-couples, several more hands were also quickly snatched away!

Just then, Sir Lancelot Spratt stormed onto the hospital ward, accompanied by an entourage of nurses and trainee doctors.

“What’s the bleeding time?” he asked Dr Sparrow – words which were to immortalise the heavily-bearded actor in the years ahead – but, before an answer was forthcoming, the picture disappeared from the screen and the house-lights came on, only to dim again as a brief message – hastily-scrawled on celluloid – was projected onto the screen:

President Kennedy
Assassinated in Dallas

A deathly hush fell on the packed house at the Cromer Regal, followed by audible gasps of disbelief – who could have done such a thing? John F Kennedy was so popular, so well liked – no, this was not possible, it just had to be a cruel joke.

Then people in the audience remembered; this was the height of the Cold War and only a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis and, after all, didn’t Krushchev and the Soviets still hold a grudge against the Americans with their leaps and strides in the Space Race?

No – the Soviets were responsible. The word spread round the audience in that small, seaside cinema like wildfire– it was only time before the sky started falling.

“Can you take me home now, please, Albie?” Lyndi pleaded, leaping up and letting the flip-up seat rise with a loud bang. At the noise, other members of the audience quickly got up – some in tears – having but four minutes to get home to their families and loved ones before the missiles began to drop out of the night sky, the film all but forgotten.

WHERE WERE YOU THAT NIGHT?

Where were you that night? How did you hear the news? Please let Albie know and we’ll add your accounts to this page.

NEXT: As November 1963 nears its end Albie suffers from a bad bout of toothache, and Lyndi begins acting strangely. What is going on? Find out in Albie Is Suspicious.

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 Sid Kipper

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