Seafood and Crabbe

Seafood and Crabbe

To Suffolk the next morning with Miki on assignment from UK Jack to photograph the Butley Orford Oysterage. Orford lies on the wonderfully desolate Suffolk coast, protected from the North Sea by Europe’s longest spit, a 12-mile tongue of shingle lying parallel to the shore. A place at once inaccessible and 2-3 hours from London is irresistible to the military. For half a century Orford Ness was a prohibited area as the RAF used it to test experimental aircraft and bombs; now it is open to hardy hikers. At its landward end the stubby aerials of the BBC World Service’s transmitters cast their short-wave signal into a huge sky. And at Orford Quay the fishing boats unload their catch to the local smokeries.

After Orford, a quick look at Dunwich, the village that has been disappearing beneath the sea for three centuries, then down for fish and chips at the famous chippie in Aldeburgh. It’s thirty years since I visited Aldeburgh, a pilgrimage on bicycle to the home of dead poet George Crabbe, a longtime favourite of mine for the way he straddles the Augustans and the Romantics, telling psychologically acute short stories in heroic couplets. “Pope in worsted stockings” — was that Leavis’ crack? Good bedtime readings, say I.

Grave Jonas Kindred, Sybil Kindred’s sire,
Was six feet tall and looked six inches higher.

Aldeburgh is no longer a fading fishing port, but boasts smart shops and restaurants serving the London owners of second homes — is this an improvement? Still, rich and poor alike enjoy the best cod & chips in the country.
» George Crabbe at Project Gutenberg Posted by SJT at November 26, 2006 02:10 PM