The Hitler Postbox

We’ve had pareidolia, everyday apophenia, schizotypal thought processes, visual anthropomorphism. 

Oh yes, we’ve all had them, any of us with even the most modest imagination.

We’ve seen faces in the fire and elephants or fluffy poodles in the evening sky. The luckier ones amongst us may have seen Jesus in the jamjar, the Messiah in the Marmite, the Great Bear in the sky, and the future in the tea leaves, or heard symphonies in the air conditioning, or listened to spooky messages in the hum of the fridge on a quiet night.

Some people have observed or even owned cats that look like Hitler (so-called kitlers). Not that a cat will ever admit to being owned; quite the reverse. Then there’s a house in Swansea that looks like Hitler, and there are websites devoted to objects that look like Hitler.

 
But the full realisation of the insidious extent of this kind of thing caught me unawares the other afternoon, a trick of the sunlight maybe, while passing a postbox that I’ve passed dozens of times previously, without seeing … it. Or rather, him. It’s in Brookthorpe Way, Silverdale, Nottingham. I had to go back next day with my camera. I can’t decide whether it’s more convincing in colour or black and white.

Aesthetic frights in Liverpool 8

Few buildings in English provincial cities possess such a massive, dominant, solid, commanding presence as the Anglican Cathedral that sits atop the considerable incline to the south east of Liverpool city centre. Generally speaking I am reassured by the presence of this building, and from time to time I seek it out as a place of refuge and solace. Inside the Cathedral I feel physically, psychologically and spiritually safe; protected from the rest of a world in which, increasingly, I don’t. Together with the railway termini at Paddington and St Pancras, and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, Liverpool Cathedral is one of the ‘safest’ buildings that I know and love in this country. From the outside, though, I’m not so sure.

But – apparently, and to quote one of Liverpool’s most famous sons - I’m not the only one. In a book called “Liverpool 8” (Murray, 1982) another John - John Cornelius - wrote amusingly and with warped Blakean undertones of the aesthetic fright caused by the Anglican Cathedral, of how it appeared strangely between buildings, sometimes looking unnaturally close, and how its shape changed when seen from different angles. "During the day”, he wrote, ”the Cathedral is weird, but fairly benign. At night? Well, it fairly puts the wind up me, sometimes. I don't mind telling you. I think it's something to do with the shape of it, like a head perched on a huge pair of shoulders. Yes: that's it. It's the slavish symmetry, the fearful symmetry, of the thing that causes the problems. I hate walking past it at night". He offered a drawing of himself scurrying along Hope Street, past the Cathedral, with a couple of "eyes" drawn in the tower. The picture was captioned: "Hurry quickly past, hoping it's not looking". Shudder.

Because of its immense size, in certain lights and from certain angles, the building can indeed be perceived as monstrous and scary, sat there in all its stony solidity on its ridge. You need a suitable state of mind, of course, to fully appreciate the scariness. Because of its great height the tower can be seen from many miles around – even from the Clwydian hills of Flintshire – and naturally it’s also very intrusive into views closer at hand. Combine massivity with height and mental preparedness and you have three useful ingredients for constructing an aesthetic fright, to use Susanne Langer’s term. Add a fourth component, surprise, and you have a complete recipe. Off you go.

As you walk round the surrounding area, not just the adjacent Hope Street as per John Cornelius’s description, but slightly further afield, try and solicit surprise. I know, it’s a bit like trying to tickle yourself, but areas likely to be rewarding in this respect are the Ropewalks quarter and the up and coming Baltic Triangle, and more especially the districts to the south and east, Toxteth, primarily, the area popularly known by its postcode, Liverpool 8. 

 
Naturally, you will expect to see the Cathedral along the line of sight of suitably aligned streets. There it will be, reliably, in the distance. What you may not expect is when it peers over other buildings at you, when it “sees” you, when it “gets” you. Even on a sunny day, even among today’s cheerful replacements for the dark streets of the old inner city, the effect can be to send a shudder up your spine, to raise the goosebumps, to activate the hairs on the back of your neck. If you are feeling guilty – and you must be guilty of something – you may suspect that it isn’t just the Cathedral that is “looking” at you, but that the Almighty is deploying one of his more spectacular architectural minions to take a closer look at you, to inspect you, perhaps to find you wanting - a theistic extension of the pathetic fallacy, if you like. OK, mad, surreal, but enjoy anyway. And while you’re around those parts, take a trip to the top of the tower; the views are wonderful. Partly, of  course, because Liverpool is wonderful and partly, because when you’re up there, on top of it, the Cathedral can’t “get” you.

Come right back

One of the themes of psychogeography is that the historical past can linger into the present, co-existing with the physical surroundings, if only we could see. Supposedly, events from long ago hover in the air above the city streets, or adhere to buildings, sometimes lending a frisson of evil or an aura of sadness, pervading the surroundings with a permanent mood for those sensitive enough to detect it. Physical science demands that, if no molecular or conventionally energetic traces remain, this is a delusional belief, and that any such claims are “all in the mind”. I lean towards the scientific viewpoint. However …

The centre of Nottingham is conventionally held to be the Old Market Square, known to some older residents as Slab Square, and colloquially simply as The Square. It is, in fact, anything but square, more of an awkwardly warped irregular quadrilateral, but it is the largest central space of its kind in England, allegedly, originates in pre-Norman times, for centuries functioned as a market, was rebuilt in the 1920s in an attractive but bastardised art deco style, and then again in 2007 was expensively reconditioned - despite popular protest - in a style felt to be more appropriate to our times. Which, unwittingly perhaps, it is. Along the southern side, known as South Parade, is the NET tram stop. Here I quite frequently alight, do what I have to do in town, and head home. Town isn’t somewhere I want to linger these days. To the extent that I notice anything at all, I see and feel the Square as it is today. Why would it be otherwise?

Until, that is, 7.30 on a Sunday evening a few weeks ago, and the first episode of BBC1’s “Hold the Sunset”. This is a gentle enough sitcom set in the leafy avenues of Richmond. The only reason I watch the series is because, along with Alison Steadman, it stars John Cleese, and therefore it ought to be good. Oh dear. How I long for Cleese to say something outrageous and funny. He plays a congenial character, one with which it is easy to empathise (we share similar height and paunch). But wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could erupt with a torrent of that famously inventive invective, of surreal, over-the-top, Sydney Opera House and wildebeest sarcasm. It almost happened last week, almost, but no. I look at that face, a TV face I’ve known now for half a century, now chubbier and less angular, but the herald of literally hundreds of well-remembered priceless moments from ‘Python’ and ‘Fawlty’. I can almost feel the hilarity waiting to burst forth again, that curiously feline twitching at the corners of the mouth, an aged and updated version of that Anne Elk (Miss) look. Alas, no. No theories about the brontosaurus. Not this time. A couple of weeks ago I managed a smirk when Bournemouth, Weymouth and Ilfracombe were cited as “front runners” in research for a holiday destination. Conspicuously not Torquay or Weston-super-Mare, but in the same humorous direction. But that’s about it. Sorry, I digress.

The opening credits to “Hold the Sunset” are accompanied by the song “Have I the right?”, by the Honeycombs. The moment it starts, it is the summer of 1964, and I am in the Old Market Square as it was, no trams and pedestrianised nothingness, only buses and trolleybuses, chunky urbanity, boys and girls on their way home from school. Me, just turned fourteen, raging with testosterone and teenage angst, ogling a girl from the school across the road from ours, a girl whose name I will never know, who I will never dare speak to, a girl who will catch a different bus. But all the same, a girl with whom I imagine myself to be deeply in love. The Honeycombs are high in the charts and during the holidays they will reach Number One. I am waiting on South Parade for the No. 14 bus due at 4.35 at precisely the spot where – more than half a century later - I will step off the tram, with no recollection of the past and only the vaguest memory of what that girl looked like.

Now, back in the present, one unexpectedly re-encountered piece of music has succeeded in piercing decades of tired acceptance of a familiar scene and taken me back to somewhere that - so it seems - still exists, co-existent with the physical template of today’s Square. Instantly, it is all there, the total experience; in the (misappropriated) words of the song it has ‘come right back’.  A Proustian madeleine delivered via a record charged with adolescent hormones and produced by the brilliant but troubled Joe Meek and now used on a mildly disappointing comedy programme. Out of the blue.

A couple of other relevant points. One is that this experience seems to refer back to one of those moments when, slightly self-consciously, one thinks “I will remember this” – although often one doesn’t. I don‘t think this mental quirk has a technical name, at least, none of which I’m aware. The other point, more psychogeographic, is the old and very iffy business of thoughts and feelings attaching themselves to physical objects, so-called psychometry. As I implied at the beginning, I have my doubts, but this particular Honeycombs-triggered remembrance opens up for me two related episodes of musical thoughts “posted” at about the same time around the Square. On the north side, known formally as Long Row, is a large branch of Debenham’s, for many years Griffin and Spalding’s, somewhere I always thought of as an ‘old lady shop’. A Nottingham institution, after which we named our two goldfish when the kids were little. Now, once again, as it used to be until I forgot, attached firmly and at a slight angle to the columns in front of the main entrances to the store is an audio memory of “Concrete and Clay”, a catchy little number by an outfit called Unit 4 + 2, which reached the top of the charts in April 1965. A little way down, on the west side of the centre of the Square, where the 41 and 43 trolleybuses used to pause on their route down to Trent Bridge, is a sound trace of Tommy Roe’s 1966 hit “Sweet Pea”. I’m not sure whether this song title has any olfactory connection with the adjacent subterranean loos that were there then, so central and publicly convenient that they were “rationalised” at the last revamp, in favour of a less useful water feature.

 
I know people often claim that certain songs remind them of particular events or places, but I wonder if this example of induction of involuntary memory by music is unusual in the annals of psychogeography. Does it ‘take the biscuit’?  Without the promise of Cleese it would never have happened. I await to see what happens on “Hold the Sunset” tomorrow evening.

Beyond my Ken

The popularity of e-mail, text, and other asynchronous keypad-based messaging systems may mean that these days we engage in fewer phone conversations with people we don’t really know. I’m excluding, of course, the unwanted nuisance calls such as:

·        

          (1)  The tiresome old tosser who declares “this is a free message”. I suspect this is PPI-related, but he’s never got beyond this vacuous announcement, so I don’t know;

·       (2)  The caller, who after a delay of several seconds and a few electronic clunks, states: “I am Adam [sometimes it’s Adrian or John or another very English name]. Oh dear. You are having an accident the terribleness of which is mightily flabbergasting. I am having to ask you some questions. What is your name?”;

·       (3)  The chirpy young guy who always rings in the middle of tea, has an impenetrable Celtic accent and an unspellable name to match, but as far as I can tell is (a) on chummy terms with me and has known me for most of my life, (b) is concerned that I’m having a good day, (c) is not ever so concerned that I’m in the middle of tea, and (d) is very interested in offering me a uniquely special and evanescent deal on a complicated tariff for one of the less interesting utilities - all right, gas.

I’ve no idea what any of these people look like, yet instantly I hear them, with their time-wasting crass intrusions upon my privacy, a fully formed image fills my mind’s eye. It is, respectively:

·       
      (1) Someone who looks like Gene Hackman in “The French Connection”, wearing a moth-eaten blue overcoat, and for whom – given his apparent age and respectability - I feel pity. That anyone has to make a living in this dismal way, even though he’s only a recording;

·        (2) A crusty, lavishly white –whiskered old fakir (or words to that effect), but again someone for whom I feel a degree of sympathy. No sensible person would do this if they didn’t have to. I can almost hear the monsoon beating down on a corrugated iron roof;

·         (3) An extremely irritating one-hit Irish “rock star” with an aggressively  sanctimonious ego of galactic proportions. No, not that one, the other one. No sympathy.

I’d be quite happy never to hear from any of these unfortunates again, and since signing up a year or two ago to the Telephone Preference Service – touch wood – I haven’t.  But they do allow me to introduce a topic, namely, the sort of mental picture one forms of people one has spoken to several times on the phone, but never met in the flesh, nor seen a photograph of.

Back in the bad old four letter days of work I frequently – say, once a fortnight or so – had to phone a colleague called Ken, who was based a couple of miles away. Ken was always friendly and helpful and a pleasure to talk to, but I didn’t meet him face to face until several years had passed. From the outset I had formed a strong mental image of him, that he was aged about forty, not all that tall, had a moustache, and looked a lot like George Orwell, as per the classic photos. The image was unchanging and enduring. Then one day I had to meet him in real life, for an hour or so, in his office. A delightful man, as I expected, but looking nothing like how I imagined. Instead, he strongly resembled another Ken, a more famous one, comedian Kenneth Horne, he of “Beyond our Ken” and “Round the Horne”, those innocently smutty radio highlights of my childhood Sundays. Completely bald, very tall, not a hint of a moustache. A few greying wisps round the temples. In his early fifties. Not in the least Orwellian. I was astonished that my mental picture of him was so utterly wrong.

Over many years I continued to have pleasant phone conversations with Ken, and I continued to visualise him as before, as George Orwell, never as he actually was. The mind is a wonderfully inventive facility and in this instance was determined to overrule the evidence of my eyes. So much for the phone. I wonder if an ability to deduce erroneous and indelible facial features from the terse acronyms and emoticons of e-communications will ever become a topic for discussion, or whether another tiny opportunity for exercising the delusions of the imagination has been squeezed out of our lives by “progress”.