Toton - an HS2 folly

The decision to locate the East Midlands hub of the hugely expensive and not universally applauded HS2 high speed rail line at Toton, midway between Nottingham and Derby is, I believe, ill-conceived (like much else about the project, including arrangements for Birmingham, London, and many other places). We’ve had the “experts” reviewing the situation and reaching their considered conclusions, but – I suspect - primarily from the point of view of “making a business case” rather than from the point of view of “making a journey”. I don’t know how they can make meaningful predictions about business that far into the future - most people can’t do it beyond the end of next week - but what one can forecast with rather greater certainty is that in the 2030s, barring catastrophes of an apocalyptic magnitude, towns and cities will still be in the same places as they are today, along with inhabitants who want to travel between them.

The unavoidable perception about the project so far is that it’s all about money rather than about what real people want; it’s about posturing with vacuous slogans rather than in-depth knowledge or practicality. One is provoked into unkind suspicions that London politicians like to imagine that the ungrateful peasants shuffling around with their clogs and cloth caps and polar bears in the tundra beyond the M25 – the perimeter of the metropolitan mind palace, the edge of the known world – will be placated by phrases like the “Midlands Engine” and the “Northern Powerhouse”.  I’m not so sure they are, especially after the EU referendum result. Let’s consider a practical example.

If I’m lucky, extremely lucky as well as extremely old by the time HS2 is built – if it is - I’ll have a flock of great-grandchildren who I’ll want to take to London for the day, or perhaps somewhere further south for a short holiday. Perhaps even somewhere European, if we’re still welcome over there and the Tunnel hasn’t been blockaded permanently. “Stop right there”, I hear you objecting, “HS2 isn’t intended for silly old geezers like you”. Maybe not, but please hear me out, with my pathetically integrated public transport scenario.

Starting in Nottingham, I’ll board a now rather creaky and squeaky NET tram, with said great-grand-offspring, and perhaps a suitcase and a pushchair or two, and enjoy most of the next hour listening to interminable announcements advising me that “this tram is for Toton HS2 hub” at the more than 15 calling points before I have to propel said personnel and attachments down through a subway or up over a footbridge and down again onto a wonderful new train – probably one with windows carefully misaligned with respect to the seating, since the desired sort of HS2 passengers will be doing busywork and won’t be looking at the scenery - that will take us at a fairly decent lick via an imaginative dogleg (gosh, is that Birmingham over there?) and into Euston, with its (compared to KXSP) impoverished connections (to the Underground, to Thameslink, to Heathrow, to Eurostar, maybe to Crossrail 2 depending on its eventual route). At vast public (and no doubt considerable personal) expense, discomfort and inconvenience I and my extended family and possessions will thus arrive in the capital a few minutes faster than is possible at present. If I can remember anything at all by the time this happens I hope I’ll remember to be hugely grateful, and that I’ll still be able to afford to make the return journey. With luck I’ll still have my concessionary pass ready for when I get back on the tram; “the next stop is Chilwell Road” – oh good, only about 9 stops to go now.

Really, of course, it simply isn’t necessary. Not long ago I caught an (admittedly already delayed) train out of St. Pancras which reached Nottingham in 1 hour 31 minutes. “Nottingham in Ninety” is a boast easily achievable today, even without Midland main line electrification. Shave off a few bends near Market Harborough, improve capacity (again) at Nottingham station so as to eliminate the seemingly compulsory waits outside the station, pull out a few fingers, and the journey could be done in one hour twenty. Very soon and relatively cheaply.

However, if we must have HS2 (well, we do live in a democracy and the clever people who decide what the democratic decision will be have decreed thus), I believe we can do better than what is currently on offer. Toton - though close to the M1 and the A52 and potentially occupying a convenient patch of former marshalling yards just pining to be appropriated - has no direct east-west rail connections, so that access to the two major population centres of Derby and Nottingham is always going to be circuitous and clunky. That’s a simple geographical truth. From Toton one is always going to have to change onto another mode of transport (tram or otherwise) to reach the city centres. Avoiding having to make connections, with the physical effort and mental stress often involved, is good policy, and is part of the logic behind Crossrail and its precursors such as the RER in Paris and some of the S-Bahn systems in Germany. Toton will always be a kludge, a nuisance, a pain in the bum for the traveller. Conversely, East Midlands Parkway station, as well as being on the north-south route, already has direct rail access to the centres of Derby and Nottingham, has large parking areas with scope for expansion, and is close to a major highway intersection (M1, A50, A42/M42, A6, A453). The East Midlands Parkway option avoids having to change trains to use HS2 – services will use the high speed line from London and then go straight through to their final destinations. Like they do at present, but slightly faster. A bit of a no brainer, one might have assumed.

Despite its misleading name, East Midlands Parkway is not adjacent to East Midlands Airport (EMA), though closer to it than is Toton. EMA is a factor not to be ignored in this argument. One of the early proposals for HS2 was that it should burrow under EMA, though apparently a station beneath the airport was ruled out – perhaps for being too obvious and not requiring expensive-enough consultants to come up with such an astonishing insight. It would be rather good to have a station serving a major provincial airport, one might think, joined up thinking and all that. Evidently not. Perhaps the clue is in the word “provincial”.

Naturally, it would be unreasonable to expect HS2 trains to make two stops in close proximity – at EMA and then at Toton or East Midlands Parkway a few high speed seconds later. It would have to be one or the other. The cake and eat it conundrum applies to more than Brexit, but seriously, though, this particular issue does highlight the genuine difficulty of deciding the best public transport solution for the region. The given geography is unhelpful and dilemma-inducing. However, the EMA rail-access problem usefully provokes another idea - and I’m surely not the first to have thought of it. A double tracked railway already runs – currently freight only – from just east of Long Eaton station (on the Nottingham to Derby line) to near Willington (on the Derby to Birmingham line). As a side issue, if used for passenger traffic it could greatly speed up journey times between Nottingham and Birmingham, by missing out Derby, already well connected to both Birmingham and Nottingham. But it isn’t. Never mind, it could be. Returning to the main thrust, from this line, in the vicinity of Castle Donington, a tunnel could be bored beneath the runway and taxiways to a terminal station directly beneath the EMA passenger terminals. Via this tunnel, trains serving EMA could run directly to and from all the principal airport catchment areas, namely in the directions of Derby and Stoke, Nottingham, Loughborough and Leicester, the Erewash valley towards Sheffield and beyond – as well as the HS2 hub.

The same arguments would also apply to a more radical alternative, namely to site the HS2 hub at Trent junction, east of Long Eaton, at the exact spot where routes north, south, east, west and potentially to EMA cross each other. Road access to this point would, admittedly, be problematical, but it’s a possibility.

The merits of East Midlands Parkway versus Trent junction can and should be argued about, but I would maintain that either option – if HS2 has to go ahead in approximately its current format – is preferable to Toton. I’m not the first to suggest it – far from it – but my firm preference would be for East Midlands Parkway. Toton should be binned as quite a good idea but one not quite good enough

My Kind Of Place : An Exhibition of Paintings

Today, 1st October, sees the opening at Bingham Library, Nottinghamshire, of a display of twelve of my recent oil paintings. Called “My Kind Of Place” the show will run throughout October, and all the items are for sale.

Bingham Library is in Eaton Place, off the Market Place, with extensive free car parking nearby, accessed via Newgate Street. The library’s opening hours are: Monday 9-1 ; Tuesday 9-7 ; Wednesday 9-12 ; Thursday 9-7 ; Friday 9-7 ; Saturday 9-4.

Titles and prices are as follows:

Sunny Day, Brixton : £180

Chelsea Embankment : £100

West from Westbourne Park : £250

South Kensington After a Long Illness : £150

November : £80

St Pancras Morning: £100

Gas and Electricity: £150

Sodium Time: £80

Signs of Spring: £100

Boulevard: £100

The Gentlemen at South End Green: £200

Over the Hedge: £100

Five of the paintings are based on largely residential scenes in West Bridgford. Anyone familiar with that delightful Nottingham suburb will have little difficulty in recognising the locations. 

  Signs of Spring    © R. Abbott 2016

 The other seven works are of inner London, with locations that include Battersea and Hampstead, and favouring my interests in public transport, street furniture and heavy industry.

 West from Westbourne Park    © R. Abbott 2016

 All of the works represent “My Kind Of Place”, the sort of locations I find visually stimulating and commanding of affection. It’s so hard to describe one’s own creative efforts without waffling pretentiously, so it’s really much better if you go along and have a look at the paintings for yourself. I hope you will.

Further tensions over North Hoylake Island

This week has seen renewed tensions over rival claims for the hotly contested North Hoylake Island, which is situated in the politically sensitive Liverpool Bay area of the Irish Sea.

 North Hoylake Island (left of centre) photographed very secretly on Sunday afternoon

Despite the United Nations showing little interest in this dispute, angry words have been exchanged between representatives of the interests of North Hoylake Island itself, and of the Wirral, West Kirby, Hilbre Island, Little Hilbre Island, Liverpool, Wales, the EU, and a man with a dog on Hoylake beach.

North Hoylake Island is of course of immense strategic significance since, whoever controls it also controls access to the estuary of the River Dee, with its vast reserves of water, sand, mud and other commodities. The shipping lanes between North Hoylake Island and the mainland of the Wirral are some of the busiest in the region, especially on days when West Kirby boating lake is popular. The value of cargo passing through this stretch of water is simply incalculable.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that North Hoylake Island is secretly being developed, possibly with a fish and chip franchise or even an unlicensed soft drinks stall. There are rumours that a Portaloo may have been installed, ostensibly for defensive purposes only, although – tellingly - its door is alleged to directly face Hoylake. An illicit ice cream van making the crossing to North Hoylake Island from the mainland at low tide is said to have been intercepted by an elderly lady asking for a 99. She has not been seen since.

These reports are, to repeat, unverifiable. However, a man who has lived in Hoylake for many years and was interviewed while exercising his bloodhound on the beach dismissed the very idea of North Hoylake Island. It didn’t even exist, he claimed. It was, he insisted, a well known mirage, a curious optical phenomenon caused by refraction of the air on warm days. The man did not want to be named, but the dog was believed to be called Ponsonby.

No spokesperson from Little Hilbre Island was available for comment, probably because nobody actually lives there.

 
While tensions continue to simmer, resolution of this issue appears to be as far away as ever.

Not West Bridgford Again

On my travels yesterday I encountered the third of the three Tudoresque cinemas designed by Alfred John Thraves. This one, apparently never used as a cinema but for many years a restaurant, is on the east side of North Street in Bourne, Lincolnshire.

The other two are the original Tudor Cinema, in West Bridgford, Nottingham, now demolished, and a cinema in West Kirby on the Wirral, still standing but used for other purposes. Thraves was born in West Bridgford in 1888, in the 1901 census he is listed as living there, at 15 Patrick Road, the son of Joseph and Agnes Rosna Thraves, and he died in 1953. In 1937 he designed the very different and classically art deco Savoy cinema in Sheepmarket, Spalding.

Waiting in the wings

He would have turned left out of Stansfield Road into Dalyell Road, left again into Pulross Road near the point where it joins up with Ferndale Road sneaking in at an acute angle under the railway, round past the post office, and into the main road.  Perhaps in his pram, initially, looking out and “facing the strange” (although it was said of him that he looked as though he’d been here before), then later, on his own two feet. From the quiet, slightly claustrophobic grey back streets, in just over five minutes, into the heart of Brixton, then as now arguably the most sensual, aurally and visually stimulating, informationally intense nexus anywhere in residential London. Markets, big stores, a war-battered populace struggling to get by in those icy, austerity winters, the clatter of green electric trains echoing through gaps in the buildings (the archetypal sound of south London)  – ricochet, ricochet - from viaducts high up and at unexpected angles; steamed up buses, crowds, humanity, the awareness of central London just a couple of miles away. Life itself.

 © R. Abbott 2016

Could these surroundings in any way have contributed to genius, to ambition, to a sense of mortality and of being an outsider, to an urge to make the most of what might be a tragically truncated life? Can places sometimes influence us to become what we become? Can they tell us what to do, can they reflect back at us who we are or should be? Some students of psychogeography might believe so.

I first heard David Bowie in the summer of 1969, on the radio. It was the same afternoon that a short, violent thunderstorm came and went, and had much the same effect – leaving one feeling … what was that?

By the end of the Sixties one was used to musical oddities, but this one, ‘Space Oddity’, was clearly something else. Apart from being a brilliant and timely song, as the manned Apollo lunar launch approached, after a few listenings one realised that this was in a league of its own. Here was a singer/songwriter who thought differently from most, who was thoroughly at home with wordplay of all kinds and with the most peculiar kinds of synaesthesia and obscure allusion, and who wrote about unconventional subjects in offbeat ways. To start with, the punning title itself, then the amazingly physical sensation of lift-off and bursting through clouds and atmosphere into space; the economy of the lyrics – “the papers want to know whose shirts you wear” and the double meaning of “planet Earth is blue”; the homonymic segue “can you hear me Major Tom, can you hear/here am I floating round my tin can”; and most bizarrely of all, the distortion of the vowel sound in “Major”, its increasing “cockneyfication” simulating Doppler shift. Even Lennon-McCartney rarely managed anything quite as concentratedly, cleverly weird.

Then nothing much for a year or two. I was on a train in Italy, joining a compartment of young Americans. “Hey, you’re British”, they exclaimed. “Do you know David Bowie?” There was some transatlantic difference of opinion about how to pronounce the surname; ambiguity even in something as fundamental as that. Interesting.

So, over more than forty years, we have been treated not just to an amazing  productivity of gorgeous songs, but to all kinds of extramusical and verbal intrigues,  fusions of styles and genres – as well as all the haircuts, the outfits, the different voices, the chameleonic adoption of styles and personas, the teasings about gender and sexuality, the acting roles, the manipulation of celebrity, that wonderful laugh, and all the rest of it. This was a man who, even at the age of 68, could invent funky yodelling (‘Girl Loves Me’) and produce the fabulously enjoyable cacophony that is “’Tis a pity she was a whore”. Genius, surely, if not actually a superman.

And it all began in those echoing streets near the railway lines. Though he never penned a specific anthem to the city he loved, in the way that Ray Davies wrote ‘Waterloo Sunset’, there were plenty of references, in ‘The London Boys’, ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’, and elsewhere, to central London as an attractant, albeit a fickle one, for a suburban adolescent craving escape and success. While domiciled in Berlin, LA, Switzerland, Mustique, Manhattan or wherever, London was, I suspect, always his psychological base.

Finally, posthumously, “Our Brixton Boy” was claimed back, by a district in some ways unrecognisable since the late Forties but in other ways unchanged. The trains are no longer uniformly green, the railway bridges have been boringly cosmeticised, the markets sell more exotic items, more languages are spoken, the tube has put in an appearance, but for the things that matter, still the days seem the same.

Bowie’s death was shocking, not only because it came so suddenly, so early, so unexpectedly against all the apparent evidence of continuing creativity but because, totally unreasonable though it is to say so, this was a man who, if anyone could manage it, would be – should be - immortal. All the while, though, as I’m sure he knew from an early age, time was waiting in the wings, its trick being David Robert Jones himself … and you and me. All the while, in those south London streets, from Brixton to Beckenham and Bromley and even the much maligned Penge (where you can sleep while dreaming of walking about in New York), time has been waiting. It’s still there, seeking another victim. Meanwhile, the sounds of those magnificent songs in the mind’s ear still haunt the streets, streets for now emptier, sadder, less hopeful.

From what we can guess, Bowie was a religious person, perhaps not conventionally so, but one who took the parable of the talents to the extreme. He set out to do what he was capable of doing, didn’t just do what anyone else can do, made the most of the gifts he had been given, gave immense pleasure to millions along the way through his extraordinarily fluent and glorious creativity and, while having fun with all the poses and images, remained just an ordinary guy from a backstreet. Any one of us. Well, almost ordinary. That is one of the reasons why we admired him and why we feel the loss so intensely now; he appealed to the outsider in us all, to anyone who has ever plodded the city streets wondering what to do with one’s life, asking forlornly what does it all mean? A protean human being onto whom we could all project ourselves.

 
In the end, though, not the air crash he for so long feared, not the loony’s bullets that did for his friend and hero John Lennon, but just a common and cruel disease. As mortal as the rest of us, for “everybody gets got” and, as is so often observed on such occasions; how utterly stupid and tragic and wasteful. His death, after and despite such immense achievements, after such a fascinating journey through life, brings home to us all the inevitability of our own future demise. But we were blessed to have had him around during our lifetimes.