Miss Haddon’s Little School in Great Yarmouth was pleasant enough, as schools go. Six-year-old Charles Paget Wade would walk there each term-time morning, along the pier, beach, and via the jetty - the lifeblood of the town’s seafaring industry. The jetty was much-admired: John Constable even painted its battered timbers, complete with tilting yachts and great sailing ships tossed on the waves. Yet Charles – who loved nothing better than to lose himself in his own artistic endeavours – was a forensic spectator, too.
How was that jetty built to withstand storms? How did the bustling harbour berth those majestically rigged ships with their fascinating loads, or the drifters brimming with salty herring?
It was the same enquiring mind that Charles demonstrated at home, in austere Wellesley Road, where he had been sent to live with strict Grannie Spencer. An archetypal Victorian matriarch, she
