Tony Walker

So My Adventure in Norfolk was originally broadcast live, so that's its first appearance in the public.

And I think it still carries with it that feel of a story I might just tell you like this.

I'll tell you a funny thing that happened to me, etc.

It was sometime in the mid-1920s.

The story's dated 1924 in the contents of The Best of A.J.

Allen, which would make it one of his earliest pieces, delivered not long after his debut broadcast of My Adventure in German Street.

on the 31st of January 1924.

It was first collected in print in Good Evening Everyone, published by Hutchinson in 1928, which was his first book of stories.

Two further collections followed, A.J.

Allen's second book, 1933, and the posthumous best of A.J.

Allen, 1954.

And My Adventure in Norfolk appears in both the first and third of these.

It struck me that because it originated as basically a chat of a man to his audience, of a raconteur to his audience, he assumes a lot of common cultural concepts that I don't need to explain.

Say if I had just been out for a walk and if I was going to talk to somebody about something that happened, there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't need to explain because culturally we have...

We belong to the same culture, me and this man.

I've just met with his dog.

I'm conscious that both in time and space, for many of the listeners to the Classic Ghost Stories podcast, some of the things will need a little bit of unpacking for you properly to understand what he's talking about.

The first thing, which I think probably most British people know, is a broad, is a particular word used in Norfolk for a shallow lake area.

So the Norfolk Broad is an area famous for its boating.

Now, if you've ever read...