Town crier ROger Bourgein writes for the Journal.
From a choral scholarship to New College choir, to singing with the Exmouth Shanty Men, that 60-year span from the formal to the informal has mostly been without the music my voice can produce.
For as a child I suffered the brutality of beatings with a heavy cane that left my buttocks raked with vivid purple bruising accompanied with the final humiliation of having to say, 'Thank you Sir' as I left that prep school headmaster’s study fighting back the tears.
After three years of that trauma I didn’t sing for the next fifty years!!
Now as Town Crier of Exmouth I am given free rein to cry shout holler and bellow and by golly do I enjoy myself!!
Exmouth you have adopted me, fastened me to your bosom, allowed my smile to grow and grow, so now armed with the formidable weapons of bell, voice and smile I’m certain not only can I bowl a maiden over at 50 paces but her entire family as well!!
Last night (December 26) was a night of storms, Storm Bella raged through most of the dark hours battering my bedroom windows as if shouting, 'let me in let me in or by the hairs on my chinny chin chin I’ll blow your house down' and she very nearly did!!
A short few words more I murmur to myself, as I wait for original thought, after staring at blank sitting room wall, going for a seafront walk all to no avail, no I shall not so thanks for listening. Cheers and may every one of us be blessed with a serendipitous happenstance before this year is out!
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