When I arrived at Frome, I imagined Anthony Powell himself must’ve at some point or another been to this light, airy, Victorian-era train station, and so I was predisposed to find something intriguing about it. At first, it was the verbosity of their signage. In London, I’ve gotten used to authority’s childlike pictorial notices, like of the man being struck by a lightning bolt emanating from a utility box, three words above him: “Danger of Death”. In Frome, none of the public notices had pictures and the words were almost always at least three syllables: “This unauthorized advert has been obliterated by the council.” “£60 penalty will be charged for infringement of regulations.” “Ground uneven as a result of graves collapsing.” “Christ Church Frome PCC accepts no responsibility for injuries incurred if you decide to enter this graveyard.” I concluded that the Froomies (as I later learned they were called, the term ‘Frumors’ being reserved for rumors about Froomies) were an educated lot without great expectation that any foreigners would be visiting.
“Run away, you pikey!” The first spoken phrase I heard in Frome somewhat changed my mind, but then, the speaker was an adolescent boy scrambling about a network of bridges with his mates. The bridges crossed over a little wetland with reeds and ducks, and if not for the boys, I could have sat down and had a contemplative moment. The younger boy thus addressed didn’t seem too put-out by the insult; whether he ran away or not, I couldn’t tell, as they were all running about erratically like the dogs in my local park. Incidentally, the bridge seemed to be the only place where there was pictorial signage.
After crossing the bridge, I followed a path through beautiful greenery; I would have called it wilderness, but some bungalow style houses popped up just as I figured I’d left humanity behind. Then the forest took over again; a little meadow lay to the left, ensconced by ancient-looking trees. Maybe they were no older than the trees in my neighborhood, but they certainly looked more mysterious. I could imagine a knight or a deer rambling out from behind them, whereas my local park is mostly populated by old men who shake canes at me, telling me I shouldn’t be wandering around at this time of night, and the aforementioned dogs.
After about a mile through the quasi-wilderness, the path widened into a narrow road. Some old stone houses, very fitting and proper, appeared on the right. On the left, in a little clearing, there was 80s ballad type music playing and a few depressed looking people sitting about; they looked like they’d run out of conversation, but had at least an hour to go before they could politely leave. The sign at the entrance said, “Meet Ellie Watkins, Frome Teenager of the Year! 50p entrance fee." A dread-locked man rode by on his bicycle, a cute baby strapped into the child seat behind him, and complimented me in a manner reminiscent of the slogans on the bridge. He even told the baby about my qualities, as if instructing it in something important, but the baby merely looked confused and unappreciative.
I walked on with a gurgling brook on my left, shaded by trees, and on my right, beautiful stone buildings which looked about as old as the trees. They had such names as “Dyers Cottage” and “Weavers House” and so right away, I could confirm Wikipedia’s assertion that Frome had a textile history.
The pleasant little road and brook came out at an intersection; right away church bells started dinging, as if in welcome, and they didn’t stop dinging until I began to wonder whether they operated on military time. Narrow streets lined with handsome stone buildings led every which way. I followed the sign pointing to the tourist information shop. It kept pointing until it pointed me into an art gallery. I wandered in, thinking the Fromies an artistic lot, if this were indeed their tourist information shop, where the only info you got was in the form of paintings and mineral rock formations with healing properties. I asked the teenage girl tending the shop for some information, noting that she didn’t look as depressed as teenagers tending shops normally do, and she laughed and said, no, the tourist information office was through those doors, down the narrow hallway past the cafe, and I couldn’t miss it.
I felt a cold premonition of horror when I heard the phrase, “You can’t miss it,” as that seems for me only to lead to trouble, but in this case, it led to two kindly old ladies manning the desk, pamphlets of every size everywhere. They were kindly until they’d called about 12 hotels for me, none of which had rooms, and then learned that I had no car...well, the one doing the actual calling remained kindly, but the other, a tall, skinny lady, kept repeating, “Does she know you have no car?”
“Yes.”
“We must stop her calling and tell her you have no car.” As soon as the kindly lady hung up on yet another full B&B, the skinny lady said to her, “She has no car!”
“I knew that.” She said it casually, without looking up from her B&B list, and I sensed a sort of battle for supremacy between them, and rejoiced that my lady seemed to have won.
At last, I started to think that the closest accommodation could be my apartment back in London. The kindly lady stared at me for some moments, as if trying to decide something about my soul, then said, “We’re not supposed to do this, because they’re not on our list, which means they haven't been inspected...but you could try the Blue Boar Pub. They’re close by. Would you like me to call them?”
The skinny lady, overhearing this, shook her head: "We're not allowed!"
This only seemed to increase my lady's resolve. "Let me look up their number."
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