Socks and the city

Nothing is ever straightforward, is it. Especially when it comes to words. Take the world “adult” for instance; not only does it mean an individual who has passed age-wise beyond adolescence, but it has connotations. “Grown up” as opposed to childish; or erotic, as in the sense of “Adult Shop”.

Another bothersome word is “moquette”. The French original implies a carpet, preferably a fitted one, but the English language has latched on more to the concept of the pile of a carpet or a fabric, and employed the word differently.

Which takes us towards a typically Robagraphic convergence, and to the excellent – although of recent years ever so slightly dumbed down – shop adjoining the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. This would scarcely qualify as an Adult Shop, being family friendly as it is, although catering also for those (mostly male) who have proudly and quite rightly never grown up. If you read on, however, you will discover that it does supply Adult Material - and not just the merchandise aimed at those who drool uncontrollably over photos of Routemasters, lust after T-shirts saying “Mind the Gap”, or whose testosterone levels are elevated unhealthily by roundels reading “Arnos Grove”. (I know mine are).

Those who travel on the London Underground will know that (a) each line has its own diagrammatic colour (Northern – black ; Piccadilly – dark blue, etc) and (b) that the seat covers have a pattern, distinctive to each tube line, which graphically enlivens their thick-piled, springy, fabric – their moquette. I find it slightly disturbing, even in these eerie times of minimal travel, to think of all those people down there every day sitting on their respectively coloured piles, the designs of which can occasionally be quite angular. No wonder so many of them look unhappy. 

At this point the two themes – Adult and Moquette - combine. I’m not sure to what extent socks contribute to the fetishwear market, but the items shown above are definitely Adult Socks. It says so on the label. I hope you’ve been able to contain yourself. They were bought for me as a Christmas present, but thanks to lockdown and consequent lack of opportunity, remain unsullied and virginal (yes, we really are straying into Adult territory). They are District Line socks, and so they come along in pairs at infrequent intervals. The District Line is diagrammatically colour coded green (the precise shade varies between Turnham, Stepney and Parsons) and the moquette of the socks is evidently, er, not green. Line colour and moquette (though not the socks themselves) are delightfully at odds. That’s exactly how I like it. The left sock I shall name Ealing Bdy and the right one will be called Upminster – unless I mislay it in which case I shall go completely Barking.

Over Lord Hill’s Bridge

Over Easter I listened to one of my favourite albums, “The Good, the Bad, and the Queen”, the 2007 offering by Damon Albarn and friends. It’s a very London record, a work of sonic genius; on the track called “Northern Whale” you can actually hear the mud of the Thames estuary. “Nature Springs” begins with the words “Over Lord Hill’s Bridge we must go”. That’s a very promising first line for a song.

Perhaps you haven’t been over Lord Hill’s Bridge, or don’t know where it is, but if you’ve ever caught a train from Paddington you’ve been under it, while accelerating westwards past Royal Oak. A thought which fills me with anger and frustrated desire, because shortly I was hoping to go that way, so as to visit my elderly friend in Berkshire. I hope he’ll be all right. However, if you go over Lord Hill’s Bridge, it looks like this: 

 If you about turn on the photograph and go the other way, northwards, taking very good care as you cross the Harrow Road beneath the Westway viaduct, and head up through pleasant enough grassy parkland between the blocks that form the Warwick Estate, you reach the Grand Union Canal, in normal times jostling with joggers and lined with colourful houseboats, and a footbridge leading to Formosa Street. Park that image for a moment.

Also, over the Easter weekend, I watched the 1951 Ealing comedy “The Lavender Hill Mob”, a gentle farce about a bullion robbery starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway, and featuring atmospheric scenes of early postwar London, including heavily blitzed areas around St Paul’s. Approximately forty-five minutes into the film, for a couple of seconds you see this:

 

The same Grand Union Canal, more or less at the same spot as you would have reached after your imaginary walk from Lord Hill’s Bridge, with the backs of Clarendon Street on the left. Except that it doesn’t look like this any more because in the early 1960s, Clarendon Street and the whole of Westbourne Green, an entire community of tight little streets, squares and crescents, condemned as slums, was annihilated in the process of creating the city of the future, which is now the city of today, the bit you have just walked through  – thinned out, airy but meaning-lite, visually timid, bland, flaccid and lacking in urbanity.

Because I’m made that way, immediately I saw that filmic image from almost seven decades ago I was seized by an almost physiological sense of longing for somewhere that in any realistic sense no longer exists, by a desperate yearning for a time long past, and for a place with which I have absolutely no personal connection. The film was released a week before my first birthday. It’s nothing to do with me and yet it hurts.

If I were to walk over Lord Hill’s Bridge today, and continue up to the canal and look down on that water, the longing would not be satisfied nor the pain annulled. The object of my desire – a time, a place, a mood, a potential – no longer exists in the real world. So it doesn’t matter whether I go to that spot or not, the longing is the same. Practically, of course, this damned infection means that, even if I wanted to, I can’t.

Longing takes many forms and affects people differently: for times, places, people, ways of life. It’s always driven by absence and loss; it’s a corollary of love. Longing can be for the currently available, the temporarily unreachable, for that which is forever inaccessible, for that which has gone and is never coming back, for that which never was, for times we will never see, for the impossible. All aspects of a world we love and never want to leave. “Nostalgia” would be the cheap sneer, but it goes much deeper than that.

Perhaps it is the constraints imposed by pandemic lockdown that help focus the mind sharply and painfully on that which is missing from our lives. Or perhaps it is a more ambient kind of awareness of the very real, life-devastating losses that so many are suffering around the world as a result of this cruel and unnecessary outbreak. The relentless sadness, the heroism, the heartbreak. Or the increased threat level to personal survival, the memento mori that accompany every news bulletin. 

Or perhaps it is just a chance encounter with music and photography that trips the mind into a mourning mood. Over Lord Hill’s Bridge we must go, and again, I have no doubt, one day we shall.

Information hygiene at a time of crisis

Much is being made of parallels between our present privations and the dark days of WW2. Fortunately, so far, this hasn’t resulted in a supermarket rush on Spam – by which I mean that of the original meaty variety courtesy of the Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota. As for spam of the annoying, virtual variety – and its paper equivalent, junk mail – both are relatively and pleasantly absent from our lives. I suspect at least one airline is still trying to seduce me onto non-existent flights to abandoned airports far from anywhere, my favourite travel company remains optimistic that I could be in need of a 14-day sojourn on the “Corona Princess”, and a flyer for a local pizza delivery service might actually be welcomed, but overall the rubbish content of both letterbox and e-mail inbox is gratifyingly low. 

Thus, unusually in this unusual time, we perhaps become aware that information, like most other commodities that thread through our lives, has an ecology of its own. Obvious rubbish is only part of that ecology; arguably the easiest part to deal with. The front door variety soon finds its way to (a) the recycling bin or (b) a transient benefit-of-the-doubt pile and then to the recycling, while the online species is mostly identified for us automatically. 

Information ecology, now there’s a thought. As practical advice, it has similarities with hygiene, and here we return to the one and only subject of the moment. You’re probably taking in far more news stories than you do usually, ingesting much more than your normal quota of emotionally charged, threatening, disturbing information. Even if you haven’t suffered in a directly personal way, you’re having to cope with all that stressful awareness of other people’s tragedies, as well as all the real anxiety for the safety of your own family and friends. Psychological waste products could be  accumulating that can’t be good for you, throwing a strain on your own personal informational ecology – and your mental health.

As regards the information we are exposed to, the very nature of the coronavirus attack reveals huge areas of genuine ignorance, of the medically unknown, which media types and every homegrown instant expert are only too ready to fill with speculation. Plus a few reliably depressing facts, repeatedly endlessly.

Naturally, everyone wants the situation to end as soon as possible, for the infamous curve to flatten and fall away so that normal life can resume. Everyone wants the best, fastest, least damaging, safest way out of this mess, but nobody has the definitive answer. The news stories cater for a whole range of affective attitudes, from unrealistic optimism to terminal gloom, and of every level of credibility from plausible science to conspiracy theories and paranoia. They provide the reader with plenty of scope for exercising innate tendencies towards confirmation bias, for inflaming natural suspicions, for provoking anger and despair as well as admiration and compassion. You may be undergoing a prolonged spell of emotional hyper-arousal, an excessively lengthy and bumpy ride on the roller coaster.

Much of the news material on offer is deeply distressing, putting up stress levels and nurturing anxiety while lowering mood into sadness and depression, occasionally offering hope only to have it dashed by the next item. The media are quite happy to fill out their schedules with wall-to-wall coronavirus coverage, since little else is happening of interest or importance to most people. Even the happy stories are coronavirus-related. One fears that the situation is “getting to” people - and we’re only four weeks into the lockdown.

As a retired information scientist officially on the decrepit fringes of the vulnerable category I feel that there is little I can do to help in a practical sense, but I offer the following proposal. I suggest that a new personal skill should be recognised and acquired for the duration (and beyond). Information hygiene. What I’m proposing is essentially a mental health strategy, a self-protective manoeuvre, an avoidance technique. I’m referring to the deliberate and selective withdrawal from information sources you suspect you will find upsetting.

Switch off. Look away. Do something else.

While it is important to be aware of official and other practical advice for personal safety, and to understand how the pandemic and its resolution are developing, in the interests of mental well-being I propose that one’s exposure to coronavirus-related news should be restricted. Do it like this. Try to develop a nose for the “fake news”, for the predictable distorted emphases exercised by resources known to have strong political biases, for the gloating-by-proxy horror stories, the accounts designed to engage your emotions, your fears and your sorrow. Try not to read them or watch them, but sense when they are coming. Ignore them. Not out of callousness or indifference but out of self-protection.

Switch off, switch channels, switch to another website, do something else if you find yourself being drawn in. If you must, focus on the uplifting stories, like the splendid example of Captain Tom Moore, and limit your input of news to a few minutes a day. Try to stick to the facts. Stay safe and stay positive.

Making stuff, making places

As we endure this horrible pandemic it is common to hear people say that “when this is all over” – the regular phrase – it would be good if we could carry forward, into the resumption of normal life, new learnings and new behaviours that we’ve identified, under duress, as being desirable. Tellingly, some of these realisations are actually old learnings and old behaviours, since they relate to a slower pace, to quietness, to kindness and community spirit, to caring for others, to national pride, to an appreciation of nature, of beauty, of food, of people, of the good things in life.  To not be constantly dashing around; not being in crowded places, not getting and spending. Learning once again to stand and stare - at what we can see of a world stolen from us for who knows how long. To value “the important things in life”, like talking with people, love, good health, clean air and sunshine, freedom, simply being alive.

Also, motivated by the peculiar circumstances of this plague and inspired by some of our brilliant scientists, doctors, and engineers, there is a desire to regain more control over our lives, to “make things” like we used to, a desire which combines strong feelings connected with national security, purpose in life, and pride in ourselves. Making things ourselves means re-industrialisation, which would be good for psychological well-being and good for society in the sense that productive work provides a sense of meaning and purpose, a sense of community and, of course, wealth. Less obviously, it implies changes to the appearance of the landscape, and leads us to the main theme of this piece, industrial aesthetics and place making.

Some industries, not all, typically require large, varied and specialised facilities which impinge powerfully upon their surroundings.They help to create or intensify a sense of place, they donate character and individuality to their localities. I’m not advocating a return to the scars of open-cast mining, the mills and chimneys of L. S. Lowry, bronchitis-inducing pea soupers, or a stereotyped culture of clogs and cloth caps and trouble at t’ mill, but something more satisfying and specialised.  I want to see in this country lots of high intelligence making stuff, the manufacture of ecologically sound, high quality, high technology, world beating products for a better life, for healthcare, telecommunications, for the home, leisure, transport, housing, everything we need to make our lives easier, richer, cleaner, and more rewarding. Industries exploiting new materials with remarkable properties; commodities made with more intelligent design (not the religious variety) for people of all shapes and ages, abilities and disabilities. Let’s pick up the ball from this catastrophe and run with it. If we’re don’t, we’re stuffed.

Industry, while not necessarily pretty, is – or can be – sensually interesting, at least for those with an eye, an ear, a nose, a taste or a feel for such things. There are many such folk - people who have worked in or otherwise been associated with those industries, for instance, as well as architects, engineers, archaeologists, artists, photographers and local historians.

Here I have to get nostalgic by way of illustration, since there’s little in the way of current examples. I could have chosen the remnants  of steel and chemicals on Teesside, perhaps, a few sites around Runcorn and Widnes, the oil refineries along the Mersey, Thames, Humber, Forth, or Southampton Water. However, not so.

A significant percentage of my childhood was spent in Flintshire, where the estuary of the River Dee - the border between Wales and England -  provided the setting for many distinctive industrial installations. Some of them survive to this day, albeit in modified form. Most became victims to economic non-viability; some would not meet present day environmental standards or satisfy health and safety legislation. Some of the minor outfits were little more than industrial slums, already halfway crumbling archaeology, but all of them gave character to their locality as well as employment to the populace. They enhanced placefulness, they brought people together, they featured in conversation.

At the heart of Deeside (a bureaucratic term not then in general use) was John Summers and Sons steelworks, across the river from Shotton, and extending a long way downstream towards the estuary. My grandfather worked there all his life. At its peak in the early 1960s Summers employed over 13,000, and produced steel of the high quality that was the routine expectation of British manufacture.  Subsequently it declined in scale and ambition, under a variety of owners, buffeted by the economic storms of the late twentieth century and into the present. Some steel related manufacturing survives there to this day, but the old drama has long gone.

  Shotton steelworks, late 1960s

While Shotton steelworks was the industrial giant of the area, all the communities along the dead-straight left bank of the Dee from the suburbs of Chester almost to the resorts of the North Wales coast had their manufacturing offerings, and their distinctive architectures. Among them were the De Havilland aircraft factory, now Airbus, at Broughton; a power station with three massive cooling towers at Connah’s Quay; three large textile mills, belonging to Courtaulds, at Flint; a major chemical works, also owned by Courtaulds, at Greenfield near Holywell; an ironworks at Mostyn; and at Point of Ayr, where the Dee enters the Irish Sea, a colliery with miscellaneous surface structures and workings that extended far out under the sea.

Much of this was not conventionally pretty, some of it was malodorous, but it was interesting and it spoke of a society that was productively looking after itself, that had something worthwhile to do, some purpose in life. It was certainly a lot more fascinating to look at than today’s big sheds full of “stuff” in transit, or the many small business parks that have sprung up in the same area, for instance around Sandycroft, Queensferry, Sealand and Bagillt.

But back to the virus, the loathsome virus. I mentioned Airbus at Broughton. We learned a day or two ago that more than 10,000 ventilators for the NHS are to be built there. This is excellent and uplifting news. Maybe this could be just the start of an industrial rebirth not only along the Dee estuary, but throughout the UK. And, as a by-product, the start of a new growth of interesting features in our landscape, in which we can take pride and – for some of us at least – a sense of visual pleasure. Something for future artists to tackle.

Social isolation dream #1

It’s the last day at college, and I wander round looking for my colleagues to go for an end of term drink with them. Strangely, they’ve all disappeared, but there’s a guy there who I’ve seen around before, passing through. He lives in the next block. I think he’s called Richard; he’s tall and friendly, with freckles and ginger hair. We head into town together. It gets busier and busier, and the street bifurcates. It’s so narrow and busy that we can’t walk side by side, and Richard leads the way. The thoroughfare divides again and the crowd grows denser. I try to follow Richard, but eventually I lose sight of him. He must be somewhere up ahead. On the right is a bar with some empty tables inside, cream painted wooden tables and chairs. I’m sure this is the place we were supposed to go. No sign of Richard but I’m sure he’ll find me.

I sit down and wait. A barman comes along to take my order and I explain that I’m waiting for my friend. I wait for a few minutes and then go outside to look for him. No sign. Back to my table and there are four students wanting to sit down. The whole place has become impossibly crowded, with people wedged into every available space. I reclaim my seat. The guy nearest to me seems annoyed with me, and has a foreign accent, vaguely central European. I gesture to him that there’s enough space for me as well as for him and his friends.  He appears placated, loses his accent, and starts to look a lot like Hugh Grant.

A smiling middle aged barmaid in a pretty country-music dress arrives to take the orders. I explain I’m not with the others, who all want Diet Cokes; someone says something about Durham University, and that they come here because the drinks are so cheap. I’ve been studying the menu, which consists mostly of very potent Belgian beers. I’m unsure about strengths and sizes. I ask for a large one of the principal brand on offer, shown as an illegible green logo at the top of the page. It’s the most expensive item available, and the barmaid gives me a congratulatory knowing look along the lines of “good for you; you do realise it will blow your head off, don’t you”. Well, I hope it will. I’m suddenly very thirsty.

I turn to my companion. “So you’re all from Durham University, are you? I used to have a friend there”.

Immediately it occurs to me that I’m 50 years older than him, and he’s never heard of my friend, notorious though he was, involved later in life in a very public scandal.

“He lived in a kind of castle”, I say. I visualise huge black walls. “Student accommodation”.

“Ah, yes, I know. Was he in charge of the fire regulations ?”

At this point Richard reappears, very concerned and apologetic that he had lost me, blaming himself. He’s somehow pushed past me and is squashed into a triangular corner where the walls are covered with images of theatre bills. He offers to buy me a drink by way of apology. “I’ve already ordered”, I tell him. 

I turn to my new  acquaintance. “Can I introduce you to Richard?”, I say, realising that I don’t know the Durham guy’s name. “Richard” doesn’t say anything but gives me a look which I’m very certain means “my name isn’t Richard”. Which I’ve kind of suspected.

Then I wake up. I’m still thirsty.