Oh Noz

The advert was cryptic, which should have been a warning: "Vacancy. Foppish positive thinker with a will-ring-bell attitude. Good time-keeping essential...."
I was intrigued and more importantly, skint, so I shined my shoes and made sure I was 5 minutes early for the interview. This seemed to piss them off but no-one else applied, so I was officially named Town Crier (maternity leave cover) for Hoveton & Wroxham, Norfolk. Oh, yez.

What it didn't say in the advert was that I then had to buy my own uniform - luckily there is a fancy-dress place in Wroxham so the coat and hat were easy. The bell had to be hired (flat rate or so much per "dong") and the shoes were handed down from the previous maternity leave coverer, complete with three-inch heels. Shouting tax was to be deducted from gross wages. The induction course involved a sundial, a divining rod, the sacrifice of a live chicken and amphetamine sulphate. I was fast-tracked through all this with worrying haste and shooed onto the streets within 34 minutes and 21 seconds or thereabouts. Luckily I had a watch. Luckily I had a mobile phone to keep up with current affairs. Luckily nothing much goes on in Hoveton & Wroxham when out of holiday season.

My boss knew I was desperate for cash and needed this. He put me on the graveyard shift, then the vicar complained so I was given the dreaded '24/7'. Oh yez, the '24/7' - you can't work more hours than that, think about it - "..twenty three thirty seven and all's well..." using my little night-time bell so as not to wake anyone. And the wages were not that hot, not for the abuse from the kids, "Oi, you're on the end of a bell, that makes you a campanologist. Oh, bollocks I meant 'bell-end', come back here and let me insult you properly..." Relentless. To earn extra I started to freelance, giving out bits of local gossip at 10:30 when the old biddies left the post office, or promoting Mrs. McFiggis's newsagent: "..alls well and 20p off a packet of sherbert lemons with every fifth purchase of 'Ladder Awareness Monthly'..."etc. It was tiring but I was happy - Wroxham F.C. were thriving in the Green Dodecahedron League and the mood of the population was cheery with only a wistful remembrance of rationing and powdered egg to worry about.

Sadly the hours of duty started to catch up. One day, a Wednesday I think it was, about 2 minutes past the hour of 4; I realised I wasn't getting much sleep. Or food. Like Flavor Flav, I always knew what time it was, but I wasn't getting 'mine'. Things came to a head when the clocks went back that October. I had to walk backwards for a whole hour, then they told me I'd be docked an hours wages for the hour that I'd just walked backwards during. They tried to calm me down with talk of repeat fees for the 1 a.m. broadcast, but I knew the time had come for not only the repeat of the 1 a.m. broadcast; but for me to make a stand (albeit a walking one, ringing a bell as I went). "...eight thirty nine and all's sweet as..." slipped one of those in an hour "...five sixty one and all's well..." that'll fox 'em "....five seven oh five, and there's no reply...." "... all the nines, ten past four..." and so it went on. No-one noticed. Seems Hoveton & Wroxham was blasé about the new maternity cover Town Crier, so much so that I blended into the background like the roadworks outside the Garden Centre or the fella in top hat & tails collecting litter.

Then I heard that Aylsham's Crier had a mere two-cornered hat, honked a clowns horn and had more groupies than you can wave a bell at....
There is no sadder sight or sound in the world than a Town Crier who has lost the will to crie. I hate myself to think of what I had become in those final days. I wore a balaclava outside the Salvation Army. Dungarees. A prom dress. "Suck On My Attitude" t-shirt. Pogo stick. Stilts. Dalek voice. Kenneth Williams. And finally, sarcasm, "Oh, yeah, no really, oh, yeah, its three thirty and everything is absolutely marvelous, really it is, no, couldn't be better, whoop-de-doo...."