Working on the absolutely final revision, the third so far, of “Tourist In Your Own Town”, I thought it would be revealing to put some of its ideas to the test. “Tourist” is my projected book on “the subjective geography of everyday life” (a wider take on the subject than ‘psychogeography’ as commonly understood). So last weekend, coincidentally the weekend of the awesomely imbecilic Eurination contest, I visited somewhere “new”, to see how some of the principles played out.
The town in question was Marlow, on the north bank of the River Thames, in Buckinghamshire. I’d visited it three or four times previously, very briefly, and mostly while on my long distance saunter along the Thames Path in stages from Goring Gap to Westminster, but this was the first time I’d actually stayed there. What happened, as so often, was that I completely failed to explore Marlow, but used it as a base for visiting places nearby. However, I can report several observations.
Part of the town, especially that towards the railway station, looks slightly miniaturised, like a 75 per cent scale model. The houses are low and squat, the roads and pavements unnaturally narrow, so that neither cars nor pedestrians (all of normal dimensions, as far as I could tell) are well catered for. The street map I had printed off prior to the visit showed the thoroughfares as being narrow, but I assumed that was just a cartographic anomaly. Not so; they really are. So, this was a noticeable first impression, not an outstanding feature overall in the greater scheme of things, or Marlow in particular, but a comment-worthy one. In terms of the subjective appreciation of places, first impressions are important.
Another interesting aspect of subjective geography consists of those things that the locals no longer notice because they’re so all-pervasive. Well, perhaps they do, but what struck me as an outsider was the constant aircraft noise from the flightpath out of Heathrow, the ambient roar of traffic on the bypass, the sight of red kites soaring and wheeling and swooping, the cheerful bunting across the High Street and, it has to be said, the friendliness of everyone.
Hereness and thereness are important subjective geographical qualities. We’ll skip hereness, as in this context it’s a little pretentious. Thereness, though, is more interesting, can be manifested in several ways, and helps to contextualise places. One artificial technique for enhancing thereness is official twinning. I failed to notice where Marlow is twinned with but, most unusually, it is “bridged” with a major European capital. Marlow bridge, the suspension bridge across the Thames, was designed by William Tierney Clark, who was also responsible for the design of the very similar though larger Széchenyi chain bridge - built by Scottish engineer Adam Clark (no relation) between 1839 and 1849 - which spans the Danube in central Budapest in a single 1,250 feet span. A plaque on the Marlow bridge commemorates the “bridging” of the town with Budapest. I don’t know if there is a similar plaque in the Hungarian capital, but I hope to find out later this summer.
Orientation: absolutely no problem finding my way around, but some intriguing dog-leggy passages near the weir.
The weir: weird.
Cultural associations: Mole, Ratty, Badger, Mr. Toad. There may be others.
Unusual names: Higginson Park, the sort of name that should be Oop North rather than in the Home Counties, but a delight all the same.
Adjacent places: Henley, Bourne End, Cliveden. Disappointed that ye Cliveden gifte shoppe didn’t sell replicas of that chair. After all, it is the half-centenary this year.
Overall verdict on Marlow: a thoroughly nice place and I must look at it properly next time. Forget Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ruritania, Outer Slobodia and other back-of-beyond Euro-dribbles: this one is truly worthy of douze points.
No comments:
Post a Comment