I can’t remember exactly who sparked such a rumour on a dank November lunchtime in 1962.

But like all useful rumours in Norfolk, it took less than 25 years to turn into fact. Our county was changing fast!

My first job as a junior newspaper reporter transported me to Thetford after seven years of daily travel to grammar school in Swaffham by bike and train. I dubbed the big switch a foreign posting as Tom Paine’s first base shed its sleepy image and embraced the joys of overspill from London.

New estates, new factories, new aspirations. All rather scary for a lad weaned on a rural status quo in a small country parish rooted in agriculture. The Red Lion debating society enjoyed winding me up. They knew I would eagerly devour any juicy titbits tossed my way while I haunted the mean streets of England’s fastest-growing town.

“What Thetford does today, rest of Norfolk does tomorrow!” declared a headline-hungry voice from somewhere beyond the daily battle for smoky supremacy between Gold Flake, Park Drive and Capstan Full-Strength.

I hugged my half of bitter, crumpled my crisp packet, fought back the tears it would be easy to blame on the horrors of tobacco and just wanted to go home to the safe world of sugar beet clamps, trundling tractors, snorting bullocks and rich Broad Norfolk accents.

My partial recovery and subsequent decision to plough local media furrows for the rest of my highly extinguished career owes much to a proud resilience, hereafter referred to as “the cussed streak, born out of that Thetford experience and a few other pub rants, rumours and reverberations".

Yes, there may have been useful discussions labelled “whither Norfolk?” in more refined quarters – council chambers, election counts, posh dinners and Rotary Club gatherings spring to mind – but uninhibited bar-room banter has proved a far more telling barometer when it comes to working out what’s really going on in my home patch.

Take the Dereham Fox & Hounds resistance movement warming up for action during the great freeze-up of 1963. There was official speculation over likelihood of Birmingham overspill changing the character of this market town at the heart of Norfolk.

“Hands up all those who think it’s a Brum ole dew!” goaded mine host Freddie Masters, a cricketing legend in that part of the world who honed his communication skills on a milk round. The pub’s top-flight darts team dismissed the whole business as a load of old bull.

The scheme never materialised.

Listen again to vibrant voices in the Coachmakers’ Arms on the edge of Yarmouth Market Place in the summer of 1966 when World Cup football fever overflowed. Texans involved in the burgeoning offshore oil and gas industry wrote off England’s chances and said we quaint locals “sure do talk funny.”

Smiling landlord Bert Price took sixpence from the till and invested in a Singing Postman number on the jukebox. We showed how we could sing funny as well with a raucous version of the Norfolk anthem, “Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy?”

Come with me to Beeston Ploughshare on a blossom-shaker of a 1974 spring day in my home village. I met up with a couple of old school friends anxious to prove that if I’d only paid more attention during maths lessons , the world of high finance would have been my oyster.

They dangled stocks and shares and inflated ambitions in front of an old farmworker cogitating as usual in the corner. He pushed back his ancient flat cap and gently informed them that money was the root of all evil …. “ and I hev lived a fairly blearmless loife.”

Stroll into the Horse & Dray on Norwich’s Ber Street as a Friday teatime session ripens into a put-the-world-to-rights forum in the autumn of 1987. Enter a small but lively team of smartly dressed office workers clearly intent on taking the place by storm.

A gangling youth anxious to avoid being stung at the bar wandered off towards a diminutive figure hunched over the evening paper. “You got a light, Mac?” he gushed. “No,” came the immediate and solemn reply: “But I hev got a dark brown overcoat.”

Fast forward to end of the 20th century and a rare outing for a pair of mature mawthers to the Red Lion in Cromer, They took their drinks and pork scratchings to a table near the window, made themselves comfortable and peered out to sea.

“So what are yew a’ gorn ter dew ter celebrearte this here minellium. Elsie?” asked the one in the hat. “I arnt a’goin’ ter dew noffin” came the deadpan reply’ “I’m a’gorn ter wait  fer the next one …..”

Telling little snapshots from my Norfolk pub album covering well over half-a-century.

Potent reminders of how a dash of native wit and cunning can hold back the remorseless tide of change. Inspiring examples of why cocking a snook at what many regard as inevitable ought to be cheered rather than chided.

Perfect reasons for retaining some of our pubs as places to meet and mardle rather than force them to follow the restaurant bandwagon. Community survival, especially in rural areas, will hinge largely on available places and spaces for native and newcomer to exploit in the name of amiable insults.

Winston Churchill. who knew all about keeping insidious forces at bay, once mused: “The only proper intoxication is conversation.”

A  genuine village pub can guarantee the ideal hangover.