The Twilight Zone

It’s that time of year when the pulling in of the evenings accelerates noticeably. Given the right kind of weather, this can lead to some interesting qualities of the light as twilight progresses.

The perceived quality of natural light is something we rarely observe abstractly, except perhaps when we visit somewhere with noted unusual and attractive light, for example at St Ives in Cornwall, or many places in Australia or on the French Riviera. Places, typically, that have attracted artists.

On Wednesday this week, at around 6.20 pm, in the banal local setting of a road junction with an excess of traffic lights, the ambient light was such that it took me straight back to autumn evenings in childhood. The sun was setting with long pink streaks of cloud contrasting with the bright cerulean blue of the clear sky. As a child, I adored this time of the year, since it implied the suddenly decreased probability of thunderstorms, which I feared, the start of the steadily darkening and excitement-mounting season leading towards the cosiness and comforts of Christmas, and what, in Nottingham, the locals call “Goose Fair weather”. This is typically a spell of calm and sunny weather with a degree of mist and fog, which coincides with the annual funfair, traditionally held in the week of the first Thursday in October.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, gas lamps were being phased out in our district, and were replaced by sodium street lights, usually of a swan-necked variety, concrete and modern. I loved to watch them coming on while the daylight still persisted: first of all the deep red of the neon trigger, and then the intense orange so characteristic of the sodium spectrum. I started to call this magical time – which a little later in the year falls before teatime – “sodiumtime”. Later on I poeticised the idea further as “The Odeon Sky”, incorporating other associations of gentle suburban civilisation. The future would be like this, always.

 
On Wednesday, though the street lighting is no longer sodium and the suburbs are scarcely gentle or civilised any more, just for a moment I was able to recapture the precise sensation and, just for a moment, felt extremely happy.

Not West Bridgford No 15

When I posted “Not West Bridgford No 14” in July 2015 and “Not West Bridgford Again” almost a year later, on both occasions I intended for them to be the last in a series of quirky reports on places which subjectively resemble aspects of West Bridgford, the suburb of Nottingham in which I grew up. Recently, however, I visited somewhere that was far too good to exclude from this selection of scenes that could be West Bridgford, ought to be West Bridgford, should be West Bridgford, but aren’t, and hence I felt the compulsion for another blog on the same theme.

For this is West Bridgford on Sea. For some strange reason, a high proportion of West Bridgford-alikes are seaside towns, despite the original being located almost at the geographical centre of England. I know – as per earlier blogs – that previously  I’ve detected traces in seaside resorts as far apart as Frinton in Essex, Ansdell and St Anne’s in Lancashire, and Colwyn Bay – jewel of the North Wales Riviera – but the photograph above is, atmospherically, the best yet. It is, in fact, a very pleasant  road in Rustington, West Sussex, and if you carry on down the thoroughfare in the picture, it turns right at the far end, briefly joins another road, and then there you are – at the sea front. Though neither West Bridgford nor Metroland, this is the perfect suburb, leaded lights in the front doors, the whole number … and with the breeze and shingle of the English Channel a couple of minutes’ walk away. It makes me so jealous !

Not West Bridgford No. 7

It was gratifying last week to see that fabled supergroup The Catford Tendency’s video of “Dream Politicians” had received approximately 200 views on YouTube in the four days between release and the start of polling. After which, as expected, it stalled and stiffed. Huge thanks to all those who privately offered kind comments on the song and the video; positive feedback is always so encouraging and rewarding, and your support is greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile, West Bridgford looks much the same after the election. Ken Clarke is still the MP, albeit with his habitual majority eaten into by UKIP, a party that for some reason appears to do well in seaside resorts. West Bridgford, being slap bang in the middle of the country could not be less like a seaside resort, although in its quintessentially suburban nature it shares much stylistically with the likes of Durrington-on-Sea in West Sussex, Frinton in Essex, and Ansdell in Lancashire. A little to the north of Ansdell, bordering Blackpool, is St. Anne’s, conventionally coupled with Lytham.

The photo shows a typical thoroughfare in St. Anne’s, just off the seafront on a summer’s evening, and the scene reminded me - overall, though not in detail - of the area around Cyril Road in West Bridgford, the subject of a painting, shown below, that I perpetrated last year called “Brownes’ and Bellamys’”, named (with conceited allusion to Andrew Wyeth) after former residents.

Not West Bridgford No. 6 … and “Dream Politicians”

West Bridgford is often thought of as one of the most affluent parts of Nottingham, yet it includes areas hinting at pretty well all socioeconomic levels, and is very mixed, even within individual thoroughfares. This intense sense of variability, from one road to the next, is a factor that enhances the sheer interestingness of this suburb. It is also perhaps reflected in the ironic nickname “bread and lard island”, where the inhabitants wear “fur coats and no knickers”. The demographics include a large student population and many elderly people.

A general tendency – with a great many exceptions – is for the affluence to increase the further south in the district one goes and – as in Hollywood – wealth tends to correlate with altitude. Some of the most wealthy thoroughfares, not just in West Bridgford but in the East Midlands as a whole, are up the hill in the direction of Edwalton (itself very mixed), and include Valley Road and adjacent roads such as Croft Road and a stretch of the main A606 Melton Road. The picture below looks a lot like part of Valley Road, but is in fact Dulwich Wood Avenue, in Dulwich, one of the richest and leafiest suburbs of south London.

 
Somewhere along the wealthiest stretch of Melton Road resides Kenneth Clarke, who has been the Conservative MP for Rushcliffe for longer than anyone can remember. He’s standing for Parliament again in the general election of 7th May, and there will be gasps of surprise if he isn’t returned with his customary huge majority. Which gives me an excuse to plug a performance by one of my favourite bands, the Catford Tendency, and their gently whimsical political song “Dream Politicians” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHv1P1Nu2Cc&feature=youtu.be Click on the above to follow the link to the YouTube video, set to “full screen”, turn up the volume, and enjoy.

Not West Bridgford No. 5

The underlying and essentially pointless theme of these “Not West Bridgford” pieces is the discovery, in some other place, that one’s surroundings are reminiscent of a scene in the archetypally suburban district of West Bridgford, Nottingham. As well as, subjectively, needing architectural and/or atmospheric qualities to be present in order for this to happen, there can be something about the Proustian ‘involuntary memory’ phenomenon in all this: the unexpected stimulus, the absolutely trivial occurrence that powerfully triggers recollection.

Therefore it’s entirely appropriate that one of Marcel Proust’s special places should feature here. Cabourg, on the pleasant Normandy coast between Arromanches and Honfleur, was fictionalised by Proust as Balbec, the location of happy seaside holidays. Improbably, given its location, it’s uncannily Bridgfordian.

Cabourg’s central area is geometrically planned, with extensive open spaces, its architecture is undeniably French; the town possesses a long promenade and a fine sandy beach, and it survives delightfully out of time. For those who know Albert Road, in West Bridgford – as you make your way from Tudor Square towards Bridgford Park - how about this for its Cabourg equivalent:

Or better still, continue round into Edward Road and find, just a block or so to your left, not the aforementioned Park and the cut-through to the Co-op supermarket, but the sea. The cold waters of the English Channel are just over the horizon up the road on the left.

If we revert to an earlier discussion about the role of fake Tudor style as a default design form for West Bridgford, we might want to head a few miles along the coast from Cabourg to Deauville, where we can enjoy this:

 
In a way this is not so much “Not West Bridgford” as “More WB than WB”, a long forgotten childhood dream where a maroon-and-cream WBUDC vingt et un is purring at the stop outside Ethel Llewellyn’s, picking up passengers for its uphill journey to the rue Alford.