Singing and counting - 9th June
Sitting on a bike all day I needed to find something to do with my brain at times. This was especially the case when dealing with steep hills, where I started to find snatches of songs insinuating themselves into my mind and repeating over and over again. The first of these was a song called ‘Nancy of Yarmouth’ in a version recorded by a Suffolk singer named Cyril Poacher back in the 1960s. I don’t know why it got into my head, but it did, and I thought I’d better learn the whole thing, so I found a transcription of the words on my phone then copied them onto a piece of paper and slipped it into the map case on my bar bag. The pace of the song seemed to fit the rhythm of my pedal strokes perfectly, especially when going uphill. And of course Yarmouth was over on the other side of the North Sea. Learning this song took me through most of Norway, and when I wasn’t practising the song I devoted myself to learning to count in Norwegian. It was a ...