This steep street is now the centre of life in the town—certainly of shopping. It aims away from the sea front at an angle of forty-five degrees or so, somewhat north of west. Thus it is like a human ravine, sheltered from the southwest sea winds by the built triangle on the slight ridge between. In earlier times the street led rapidly from the centre to the edge of the town—the edge was at its top—and so it was called West Street.

Much of the time, on excuses such as Lifeboat Week or Christmas, it is gaily roofed with strings of pennants or coloured lights.

Lyme's carnival starts on an early-August Saturday with a parade down Broad Street. It's entertaining, with an exuberant jazz trumpeter, chains of people dressed as snakes, another group dressed as strawberries (campaigning for a controversial football stadium to be built at Strawberry Field), and the usual floats. But locals tell you it isn't like it used to be. "They have to pay so much for insurance, driving their lorries down the steep street with children about, that only the largest organizations want to do it. In the old days they used to have what they called Bumble's Circus. It was always hot, and the fellows dressed in bear suits to make themselves even hotter, and they'd end by walking into the sea. The undertakers had a coffin with Sid Gollop in it, every time he sat up they'd tip some more whisky down his throat and he'd go back to sleep. The dustmen wore top hats and shouted 'Bring out your dead, we only call once a week!'" It sounds as if the old carnival had something in common with Mexico's Dia de los Muertos.

Except when devoted to parades, Broad Street is stiff with traffic.

PICTURE: Broad Street gridlock, bicycle weaving through]

Those guilty of parking on the double yellow lines, or at the bus stop, are local people who feel they have a right to do so when they dash into town on an errand to Boots or the post office; they also complain vociferously about the traffic problem. I don't find it a serious problem. Congestion there certainly is, but it's more a matter for hearty laughter than for worry. Accidents seem to be phenomenally few. No wonder, when no one can move at speed. In the U.S.A., traffic problems are systematically worsened by widening and straightening roads, and building new wider and straighter roads, thus increasing the absolute amount of traffic, its speed, and the accident rate. Fortunately Britain is hampered by restraints on knocking down and widening in old places like Lyme.

A glimpse up from Broad Street on an almost cloudless February day:

Coming to the top of the street you see that it forks. Left is Pound Street, which goes winding on up until it becomes the coast road, running westward into the next county. And the right fork is Silver Street, destined to run northwestward and inland up a valley.

Actually this point is a five-way, because there are two lesser openings: on the left, the forecourt of the cinema; on the right, what appears to be a footpath but is Sherborne Lane.

At the present moment you can't take either of the forking streets. Why? Because it's the first Friday noontime in July, so Lyme's annual Jazz Festival is about to kick off.

A crowd, with you among it, packs the mouths of both streets and the sides of Broad Street, brandishing decorated umbrellas, and leaving an avenue down the midst. The Louisiana Joymakers, or maybe Father Mike's Devon Cream or Sir Alan's Hot Five, are poised on the forecourt of the cinema.

You can't squeeze by into Pound Street or Silver Street. You could, if you would really rather get on than listen to jazz, squeeze around the corner to the right into Sherborne Lane.

Or maybe you could work your way around behind the jazzmen, on the excuse of asking whether that's a trumpet or a cornet, and see what's on in the cinema.

Otherwise all you can do is wait for the jazz to start and then decide whether to follow it back down Broad Street.