East of Eden
Flushed by the success of its barley-enriched golden ales, East Anglia’s breweries are going from
strength to strength. Dominic Roskrow reports
If there’s one thing we don’t like up here in Norfolk and Suffolk, it’s folks from elsewhere assuming that we’re stupid and backward.
Now admittedly the accent in both counties doesn’t help much. Nor do the colloquialisms, particularly the Norfolk ones, such as ‘drive you steady bor,’ ‘on the sku’ and ‘on the wonk.’ And then there’s the pronunciation of local words. Stiffkey is obviously pronounced stu-key, Wymondham is wind-ham, and Roughton is row-ton. None of this is odd –merely designed to root out strangers.
Backward? Well it is true that some East Anglian people do come out and point when a plane flies over, but it’s not because we haven’t seen one before, silly. It’s because… well, when it comes to the sport of spotting, trains are so very last year, darling.
So definitely not stupid. What we might admit to, however, is being more than a little odd. And in some cases, barking. You know that old fun sticker ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’? Well that’s the eastern counties, but it’s only because there’s a short corridor between the room marked ‘genius’ and the one marked ‘mad’.
That’s where we live – in the corridor of uncertainty, to the east of Peterborough.
In fact rather than being backwards we’re actually trend-setters here. Plane spotting, for instance, is an activity for advanced anoraks.
And then there’s our barley, breweries and beer. East Anglia is blessed with arguably the world’s finest barley and from it we produce some of Britain’.....
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By Dominic Roskrow
Section : Brewery Focus
Page number : 47
