Diss-affected
There’s Lady Deech going to elegant grand concerts in Oxford (I’m jealous of course, it sounds wonderful) but up here in Diss we did frequent the newly launched arts programme at the Corn Hall last saturday night. A revue Taboo-be-doo, billed as ‘a shamelessly cheerful celebration of the outrageous, the ill-considered and the downright inappropriate’ starring Terence Blacker, Derek Hewitson and Victoria Hart. Something to offend everyone and thoroughly enjoyable. But today on a cold, bright but intermittently showery day I’m painting the weathervane from the barns ( a naval captain looking through a telescope who infuriatingly never points in the right direction to the sea) and one of the beehives. The Theoretical Chemist does DIY but only theoretically.
I can talk about Diss now since all of us peers have had to declare within the last month where our primary residence is and have it declared on the parliamentary website. I don’t actually live in Diss but in between Diss another small south Norfolk town Harleston in the Waveney Valley. The Diss Game is pretty good for children bored on a long car journey. The aim is to describe your imaginary feelings in as many words as you can remember beginning with “dis” or “diss” eg “I’m feeling dissatisfied, disaffected, disgruntled, distorted, disagreeable, disenchanted…” but if there’s a pause, the next person comes in with their list…and so on. Someone wanted ‘disestablishmentarianised’ but it was disallowed…
Westminster seems so far away…I had to return to London last week for a meeting and a dinner with two other organisations I work with and how lovely it was to return home so quickly. David Cameron is promising longer parliamentary terms…..I approve in principle, the long breaks serve no purpose, but only if they allow longer better scrutiny of LESS not more legislation.
Diss has suffered from some bad planning decisions in recent years and I tend to shop in the local shops in Harleston, now a prettier place, but I still feel an echo of the pleasure arriving by train described in John Betjeman’s poem
Dear Mary, Yes, it will be bliss
To go with you by train to Diss.
‘Dear Mary’ was Mary Wilson, wife of Harold Wilson and born in Diss.
Politics round here is true blue Tory with a smattering of Lib Dems. The Labour Party is all but invisible. I guess UKIP may get some support too but I shall be very surprised if the election produces any surprises round here.
Baroness Murphy,
By way of your game, in the dialect known as Jive or more specifically Gangsta’ Jive. The word disrespect (which as a verb is among the most important in that dialect) was rendered “dis” and is usually so preserved in songs, raps and poems of the speakers. However, because it is said with a hiss when properly enunciated and because “dissin’ ” is the preferred form the tense that correlates to “disrespecting” the form is sometimes “diss”. So your town name is a a word in a rarified form of a subdialect of our modern development of Post Chaucerian Mercian Anglo-Saxon – commonly called English. I am just pointing this out and not dissing Diss.
Speaking of bad planning applications….I`m an avid watcher of home restoration programs, a little too old and skint to partake but I love them.
Why oh why in this country are we prepared to see old buildings decay and rot rather than give people a little leniency in their intentions to rebuild these old buildings. Most of the time these buildings are out of view of most of the public and Councils differ so much in opinions. Some councils will insist you build in keeping with the old, others that any extension must be completely different which denotes old from new.
There appears no rhyme or reason to Councils judgement and many buildings are just rotting due to their inconsistency and silly ideas.
As for Council building in their own towns, well let`s see what they put on the beginning of the old Victorian Southend pier.
http://www.petercatonbooks.co.uk/system/files/114.%20New%20Lift%20to%20Southend%20Pier.jpg
And the High street was paved with expensive foreign paving which has had to be lifted more than once by the foreign company…..Ooooh and the Cliffs are falling down but we don`t have any money to do anything unless we put up rates !
Frank W Summers 3. We also now have that usage of diss imported from rap music, curious, the name Diss comes simply from the word ‘ditch’ which is both the water filled dyke and the earthwork around it.
Carl H, I am completely in agreement with you about the incomprehensible and often unpredictable decisions by local planners, who also may well disagree with English Heritage. In the case of Diss the planners allowed two huge supermarkets on the edge of town which have sucked the life blood out of the High Street and left it full of charity shops and building society banks. The ugly areas now filled with the tat of the supermarkets, traffic jams pile up through the town so people avoid coming into it. Now in Harleston a modest supermarket is actually in the town centre but with good parking so the local shops thrive around it and provide the specialist deli, butchers, pharmacist, greengrocers, pets, florists, electrical and clothing shops that make a town feel like a town. Harleston’s also avoided ‘redevelopment’ of its shop fronts and still feels like the comfortable liveable place most people want.