Things haven't really panned out as as promised, at least not that I've noticed. In a rare display of co-ordination with the people doing the work on the bridge, the Gas Board (or whatever they call themselves now) dug up a considerable portion of road to do maintenance of some kind, starting at the bottom of the bridge and stretching along the opposite side of the road from the Broadway before stopping across the road from the Co-op. So far I've witnessed the odd display of busking and hula-hooping along the street but it seemed decidedly underwhelming, possibly due to the intervention on the Gas Board and it's holes, traffic lights, diggers and hi-vis clad contingent of workmen dominating the scene.
The atmosphere has been one of slight desolation, exacerbated by the humid hot weather and additional dust from the road works. People have been marching continuously across the bridge between Petersfield and Romsey, like a stream of the disaffected. Others cycle even more randomly than usual in the road, either no handed or glued to phones. Occasional arsehole drivers with car stereos blaring, taking advantage of the reduced (but by no means abscent) traffic to reach speeds not possible under normal conditions, like aspiring Donald Campbell's with a bad musical accompaniment. Others park just as randomly as normal on yellow lines, blocking half the pavement.
While a bit disappointing, the situation seemed tolerable from a personal point of view and had the air of the temporary. A brief vision of a possible future where the Mill Road resembled a place on the periphery of a post apocalyptic Britain, with surviving middle class coffee joints, kebab cafes and various other places where eating and drinking on the street continued pretty much as before. But news from The Mill Road trading association warned that the majority of their members were experiencing a fall in takings if up to 60 percent and some businesses were threatened, which was worrying.
Things took a turn for the worse about this time last week. The night of a partial lunar eclipse was also the night of signficant disaster as a fire engulfed H. Gee. Gees, for anyone not from these parts, is an institution. The shop has existed since the 1940s selling all manor of electrical items. An Aladdin's cave for radio hams and people who know how to make electric circuit boards, as well as the less technical who just want a lightbulbs or blank tapes. Going inside the shop was like stepping through a portal to another world. A small standing space in which you were surrounded by a chaotic maelstrom of infinate stuff, dust and cobwebs. A place in which time had moved at a much slower pace and in a slightly different direction to the outside world. It felt like there couldn't have been an era when it didn't or wouldn't exist.
It looks certain that H Gee will not rise from the ashes. What is left of the building is almost certainly structurally unsound. 'Mr Gee', not a young man, has been unwell and the shop has been temporarily closed for some weeks. The fire putting an end to H Gee feels akin to an earthquake altering a long standing stable geomorphology beyond all recognition. The shop belongs to part of a series of buidings that have an air of ancientness and familiarity, as if they were formed from just beneath the earth's surface over thousands of years.
I was out of town when happened but read the reports on social media. The Cambridge News was more concerned with 'traffic chaos' than the lives of those affected by the fire. Other outlets were more sympathetic and informative. Thankfully no-one was hurt, but people living in the flats above face uncertain future, including a good friend of mine. Fabios Tattoo studio and optometrists, either side of H Gee, are closed, for an indefinite period.
I took a stroll along the road from the Co-op the next morning to survey the scene. Drifting along the road just as I got there was the stark apparition known locally as 'Dead John'. A man who dresses in the manner of a very aging goth and who I've never heard speak. A slightly sinister figure, often spotted in the more central regions of the city with his cane, big boots and top hat, but almost never in Mill Road. An ominous sign.
As I passed the Broadway opposite, I re-noticed the ABC Barbecue, another long standing Mill Road emporium. It's not been there as long as H Gee but it existed when I was small. The chickens on spits in the window still miraculously turn, despite the arrival a few years ago of the more upmarket (but inferior in my book) Sea Tree next door. The ABC stands as another portal to a previous Mill Road. I recalled something called 'The Amusement Cafe' being next door, in the 80s. I never got to go inside. Nobody I know seems to remember this being there. Whenever I mention it the reaction is the same blank and slightly worried look people give when recalling an obscure children's TV programme that nobody else can recall ever existing.
Crossing the bridge, the atmosphere was subdued. Oddly, I bumped into at least three people I knew but rarely saw within the couple of minutes it took to get across. It was a midweek lunchtime and more deserted than normal so these encounters seemed particularly unusual. Among the paraphernalia of the works a sign reasurred us that Mr Safety was there to prevent any sort of disaster, but he had failed miserably. The Earl of Beaconsfield looked on in disdain.
Arriving on the other side I was confronted by the cordoned off buildings, the shell of H Gee in the centre. A burnt stench permeated the air. The building looked almost certainly beyond repair and the re-appearence of 'Mr Gee' very unlikely. Another fire in some nearby flats on the Bridge had displaced another much loved character of Mill Road only a couple of months ago. The disappearance of these people and their type seems in keeping with a creeping gentrification that has been going on for years along the street with a certain type of middle class-ness now firmly embedded as the dominant force. The hipster-types of the previous few years being replaced by, or turning into, young families with cargo bikes.
Back across the bridge I paused at the 'Romsey R'. A fairly recent addition to the streetscape, being a statue of a giant letter R with names of destinations and departure points important in the lives of local people. I don't recall being asked for my contribution but I probably wasn't paying attention at the time. It is meant to commemorate the railway heritage of the Romsey area and the letter is based on a rubbing of a letter from one of the victorian street signs nearby. To me the sculpture symbolises a sort of anachronism. While it 'celebrates' the railway age which is the reason the terraced streets of Romsey exist, it also seems to be a symptom of the particular sort of gentrification seen in the area in which the past is both celebrated and replaced with something different. The terraced houses once occupied by railway workers and their families with the area was known as Red Romsey, due to the working class heavily unionised population that dominated the area. It's unlikely that the workmen on the Bridge would be able to afford to live and bring up a family in one of these houses now, without a substantial lottery win. It's unlikely that any shop units becoming vacant due to lack of takings will be replaced by an ABC Barbecue, H Gee or Curry Queen or anything else resembling any other old staple of Mill Road.
The R also occupies a site where previously an inconspicuous bench provided a place for a small inconspicuous group of people who used the place as a quiet social gathering point, to drink and chat. They seem to have disappeared with its arrival, although a bench is still there. The sculpture is not quite as welcoming as a 'Soviet Bus Stop' style shelter might have been for such convivial activities.
The Romsey R has emerged in a period where the Romsey Labour Club building has been subject to two planning applications, one for student flats which was initially passed but the decision reversed in order to comply with 'The Cambridge Local Plan'. The second, for serviced apartments , was passed 5-4, the casting vote going to the chair. A perplexing decision, not least because the City council is Labour controlled, as is it's planning committee. The volunteers that built the club, including my Great Grandad, must be turning in their graves. Ironically just across the road the Salisbury Club (the Conservative equivalent of similar vintage) still survives. Surely this has to be on the Developer's hit list for future applications. I finished my walk at the Labour Club building. A pity it wasn't still functioning to provide cheap beer and cheese and onion sandwiches during these irregular times on the street. Within its crumbling and plant festooned facade lurked the ghosts of it's Red Romsey past, soon to be buried beneath another computer generated clone development owned and to be occupied by people that have no regard for the previous or current communities. A sorry site indeed.
*A parklet is a concept first tried out in San Francisco and involves car parking space or two in a street being reclaimed for pedestrians, by turning them into a mini public space with seats and sometimes plants for people to sit in, relax and enjoy The Mill Road parklet (so far there is only one) appeared the weekend after the Gees fire in a space normally occupied by double yellow lines. Designed to last the duration of the bridge closure, it was assembled out of chipboard and pallets outside a cafe and deli/cafe, looking very much like an extension of the spaces already occupied on the pavement by those establishments and protected by similar barriers used earlier in the week by the Gas Board. It's too early to say wether this prototype of possible future Mill Road parklets will/can be used as a neutral space where, say, the people who used were ursurped by the Romsey R could mix with the wider community and share a tin of Super-Bock from the shop up the road. Let's hope so. I'll watch those spaces...
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