industrial by katharine eastman
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a kind of MT I suppose. Not my favourite of these sorts of things, but I've only just started listening to it and it's growing on me steadily and who knows where these things will end ?
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Just back from a few days up in the north-east. I like the places that look a bit out of the way on the map, a bit neglected, and an obvious area is Hull and beyond and that is where I've been. I'd never been before. The countryside beyond Hull - to the east and northeast of the city - is as beautiful as any I have ever seen - and this was even without any sunshine whatsoever. As flat as Norfolk, but I loved it even more than Norfolk.
My favourite place was Aldbrough - not to be confused with the differently-spelled Britten-y place in Suffolk of course - though Aldbrough too is on the coast with the grey depressing and also uplifting North Sea up close. And getting closer all the time. On my map (2015) there was a pub and car park at the end of the road that leads to the sea. But that's all been washed away - the road literally just stops at the edge of the cliff and you can look over the edge and see e.g. the big curve of the pavement edge halfway down the cliff-face.
I was most disappointed by Withernsea. It didn't even have the romantic struggling seaside townishness of e.g. Great Yarmouth etc etc. It was just nothing, nowhere. However the biggest surprise of all was Hull itself. I have never been to such an unfriendly place. Everyone was clearly very depressed, miserable, nervous, worried - pretty much braindead really.
Yes it is even more unfriendly than Southampton or London - it actually makes those places look like happy-clappy smiling-beguiling hippy communes in comparison. Dear oh dear oh dear. Hull and Southampton have much in common. Indeed, sitting on a seat on the edge of Hull's version of Mayflower Park I sometimes forgot that I wasn't in Southampton. You look across a great wide strip of water to semi-countryside and an oil refinery (smaller than Fawley) and, well, no, Hull's version of Mayflower Park is a cold soulless unpopulated concrete expanse of unfriendliness - probably what Mayflower Park will become when the developers win in the end.
But Hull the city has so much going for it. It's far more photogenic than Southampton - though admittedly Southampton is the least photogenic city on the planet. Hull has many grand old buildings. It reminded me of Hastings a bit - Hull is Hastings without any of Hastings' self-conscious artistic pretensions and with a populace who seem to think they're extras in a gloomy prison drama.
Being a Hastings-loving artistic pretentionist I did visit the big art gallery in the centre of town and was delighted to see they have that very famous self-portrait of Wyndham Lewis there - if you love Wyndham Lewis as much as I do then you will know the picture for sure. I've only ever read one of Wyndham's books (Tarr) and when I re-read it 20 years later I thought it was rubbish and couldn't understand why I'd rated it - but by then it was too late - and anyway I only really love Lewis because he pissed off all the people who needed pissing off.
Maybe my NE foray was prejudiced by the fact that "they" clearly didn't want me to arrive there. I tend to drive long journeys overnight, which nowadays is awful, what with the new fashion for closing motorways at night seemingly at random. The M1 had one closure, the M18 ditto, and so did the A63. My problem is that I am a typical lazy southerner and don't know where anywhere is up north - no idea if e.g. Leicester is near Sheffield or north of Nottingham or where Coventry is really or even Leeds or Manchester. Places on the coast are easy enough - Newcastle and Liverpool etc. But get inland and it's all just random, nothing makes sense. So when I get lost up north, without a satnav of course, I have absolutely no idea where I am or which direction I'm drifting off in.
Not only did they close all the roads to try to stop me entering the city. But once I was in the city they seem(ed) to have decided to dig up half the pavements too - diversions all over the place. Other things I noticed about Hull are e.g. pedestrians get a raw deal and have to wait about 20 minutes at every crossing for the lights to change. Also, Hull is the most parsimonious place in the UK for public benches for old people (and middle-aged failed musicians) to sit down on. In the centre of Hull and around all the big shops you won't find one. Unlike Southampton, Hull isn't plagued by drunken pavement-hogging speed-freaks on electric scooters
Hull has an HMV. Oh lordy. I of course went in. And yes the woman on the till was as rude and offhand as you'd expect - that's probably not a "Hull" thing, that's just a record-shop thing. The friendliest people I met in Hull were a couple from Sheffield. And the only other friendly person (for "friendly" just read "human-like") I met was a woman on the checkout in the big Tesco in the centre of town. By this time I'd pretty much taken it as read that everyone in Hull knew that the city was so unfriendly, so I asked her straight-out how she copes with all their coldness and rudeness and she was totally unfazed by the question and told me that it all just passes over her head.
And I think that's it - I think the rudeness must be an act. You live in Hastings or Brighton and you know you've got to fit in with the local arty hipster boho stereotype, and you live in Hull you know you've got to keep up the city's reputation for rudeness. And for that, I feel the place deserves to be admired. Don't get me wrong - I loved Hull - I was stimulated by it. Genuinely I would commit suicide sooner than go and live there - but I felt (and feel) fired up and delighted to have gone there and to know that, roads-willing, I shall return, hopefully many more times.
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(recorded hastily this evening, photo a bridge in the centre of Hull yesterday)
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