After a difficult week, the feeling of grey heaviness in my heart is immediately dispelled by the opening bars of George Gershwin’s overture to Oh, Kay! J. S. Bach reminds me that the world makes sense and Gershwin makes me happy to be alive in this world.  The volume is higher than usual when I walk into Chocolate Notes* but I don’t mind.  On the contrary, I let the joyful music wash the remaining cobwebs from my mind.  Gershwin and a warm, sunny day.  Who could ask for anything more?

There is a new face behind the counter.  It looks like Jan is training a new bar person, a petite young woman with a short blonde bob and a strand of fuchsia hair that flops down from her side parting.  Jan introduces her as Chrystelle.  She is from Paris.  A musician.

“What do you play?” I ask.

“The violin,” she replies with soft, narrow Gallic vowels.    

I gather from the brief conversation that she has moved to Norwich because her husband has just started a Ph.D. at the University.

“Norwich.  After Paris,” I say.  “It’s quite a change.”  

She smiles politely.  I wonder how she is going to cope with the inevitable culture shock.

“And you?” she asks, “Are you from Norwich?”

“God, no!”

“How long have you been here?”

“Too long.  Almost nine years.”

Jan takes two crisp white tea towels, hands one to Chrystelle and starts polishing the cups and glasses.  He holds each one up to the light, rubs hard, holds it up again until he is satisfied that there are no smears or water marks.  So Flemish, so un-English, I think.  Chocolate Notes has to be the only café in the country where all the crockery and cutlery is always gleaming.  No tea stains on the spouts of teapots, no dark patches in the crooks of cup handles.  I remember with nostalgia the pleasure of impeccably clean tableware in restaurants and coffee shops in Brugge, Antwerp, Ghent, and in the rest of Belgium.   But also in Paris, in Rome, in Milan.  I also think of the Norwich gastro-pub where I once ordered plain hot water and when I poured it, tea leaves fell into my cup.  “I think someone forgot to wash the teapot,” I told the publican.  He examined the pot.  “No, it’s been washed,” he said, straight-faced.  “They just forgot to take out the tea leaves.”

Chrystelle also starts wiping the cups and glasses, her gestures a little slower, less experienced that Jan’s.

Jan looks at me. “You were going to tell me why you moved to Norwich.”

“Ah, it’s a long story.”

“You always say that,” he replies, a twinkle in his eye.  

“You really want to know?”

“I’d like to know,” Chrystelle says.

I look at them and wonder if, once they’ve heard my story, they’ll think I’m mad, or if they won’t believe me.

London, winter 2013.  It was as though I had fallen off the grid, as though I couldn’t find a spot for myself anywhere.  I felt unnecessary, irrelevant and aimless.  I had just walked out of a job where I was bullied, my cat had recently died, I had no home, so was staying at my mother’s, and I had used up all my friends’ goodwill and patience.  No one wants to spend time with someone who doesn’t belong anywhere or knows where she is going.  I decided to break this consumptive pattern the only way I knew: by leaving London, at least for a time.  It’s not true that running away doesn’t solve problems.  Sometimes, a change of scene allows you to get a panoramic view of your shortfalls, your errors, and give you the required distance for reinventing yourself and forming new habits.  Above all, new places can often offer new ideas, and so new hopes. 

I studied my Penguin Map of the British Isles.  It had to be a city within two hours of London by train.  It had to have beautiful, old architecture.  And a church with a professional choir, where I could go to evensong and watch the notes of countertenors float up to the stained-glass windows.

I drew up a list of seven options and wrote the name of each on a small piece of paper I then folded several times.  Oxford, Cambridge, York, Norwich, Winchester, London (just in case I should stay), Other (what if there was a place I hadn’t thought of?).  I threw the folded bits of paper into a mug, covered it with my hand, shook.  With my eyes closed, I took out one, unfolded it.  Norwich.  I had only been there once, for a weekend, a few years ealier.  All my life I had acted rationally, cerebrally.  It clearly hadn’t paid off.  What did I have to lose by taking a gamble on an impulsive decision?

I packed two suitcases.  One was filled with dictionaries: two days before departure I’d signed a contract for my first ever literary translation.  An actor friend had put me in touch with his wife’s cousin, who had a room to let in her house in Aylsham Road.  

It was Shrove Tuesday, it was freezing.  A ruthless wind blew from the Urals, the locals told me.  The Beast from the East.  I started on my translation, I took walks in a city where there was hardly a human to be seen in the streets after 7 p.m.  A city where coffee shops closed by 4.30 and in some areas street  lights were switched off at midnight.

I spent forty days in Norwich.  Give or take.  Then I returned to London and unexpectedly found a beautiful room I could afford, in a house occupied by nice people, in a lovely, leafy Wimbledon street, a short stroll from the Village.  A couple of days later, I was offered two teaching jobs, with better pay than I had ever earnt and kind employers.  Three weeks later I attended a masterclass in translation and met my husband, Howard.

And so Norwich became known as “the re-set button” as my friends called it.  A year or so later, as it became painfully apparent to Howard and me that we could no longer afford London rents, I said flippantly, “There’s always Norwich.”

Howard looked up from his dinner plate.  He didn’t laugh.

“I pulled Norwich out of a mug,” I tell Jan and Chrystelle.

The glass polishing stops and they both stare at me.

“All right then.  Here we go… It was in February 2013, I had been living in London for  nearly twenty years and, for various reasons, things weren’t going well and I decided to move to another city –”

“Wait,” Jan suddenly says.  “Sorry – before you start – would you like a new concoction of mine? A Chocolate Cocktail à la Menthe?”

I nod enthusiastically.

“We’re all ears,” he says, producing a sparkling champagne saucer from under the bar. 

CHOCOLATE COCKTAIL à la MENTHE

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

Makes 2 Cocktails:

❧ 300 ml water

❧ A small bunch of fresh mint

❧ 2 teaspoons 100% raw cocoa

❧ Oat cream

❧ 1-2 teaspoons dark Moscovado sugar

❧ Fresh raspberries 

❧ Ice cubes (optional)

Wash the mint and bring to boil in a pan, then simmer on very low heat for about 20 minutes.  Remove from the stove, stir in the sugar and cocoa, allow to cool, then refrigerate for a couple of hours.  The longer you leave it, the stronger the mint infusion, so it depends on how minty you want your cocktail.

Strain into a suitable serving glass, champagne saucer, or cocktail glass and add a swirl of oat cream and a couple of ice cubes (optional).  Garnish with fresh raspberries and mint leaves.

* Please see https://scribedoll.com/2023/02/12/feasts-fancies-chocolate-notes/