Mousehold Heath Confusion

The original plan to walk between two WB Sebald exhibitions, from the Castle Museum out to the UEA, was abandoned. Emerging from the Museum, fresh afterimages were imprinted on my mind. Grainy scenes of Orford Ness and Sizewell sat alongside grim reminders of World War 2 concentration camps and colonial brutality. These were superimposed onto a liminal vision of the rural Suffolk coastal zone with its vast swathes of deserted beach and countryside peppered with strange wonders such as The Sailors Reading room and Somerleyton Hall. Into the mix flew the taxidermy seabirds in the Museum's natural history section. Not part of the Sebald exhibition but merging  into the images left by it they didn't seem out of place. In particular the absurdly grotesque large pelican, apparently shot by the Prince of Wales in 1802. I could imagine it instigating a Sebaldian diversion into an arcane and possibly fabricated tale of the Royal family. Pelican shooting as a relief from the day job of ruthless colonial surpression at the turn of the (19th) century.

It felt like a visit to the second exhibition might be a bit much to take in. The first needed to be properly digested. Instead we decided to drift to Mousehold Health, just North of the centre of Norwich. It was a place I knew little of, my expectations formed by a brief appearance on ITV Regional Television news and on a programme where Dr Alice Roberts visited the heath while discussing historic Norwich. It would be good to get to higher, more spacious ground and observe the city  from what I imagined to be a deserted grassy mound.

The heath is bifurcated by a road, which was the route we took. An earlier attempt to follow a path through a wood accessed via a promising looking gate, that looked like it would allow us to shadow the road unseen, was abandoned after it ended at a BMX/Skatepark. The road, trees either side, was a fast one and peppered with speeding cars and vans passing at irregular intervals. This slightly monotonous scene eventually opened out to one side. An ice cream van and a map board were signs that we had arrived at an entrance into the heath. Also in sight was what I took to be the pavillion shown on the map, a platform featuring a hexagonal or octagonal pointed roof, which is something I've always associated with the word 'pavillion'. The seemingly random piece of victoriana seemed to placed Tardis-like, as if providing a portal between the now and an imagined past.

Based on the presence of the 'Pavillion', we headed into the woods on the left hand side of the road, since the map had indicated the clearing Regional Television had planted in my imagination was somewhere just beyond it. The map also indicated several abandoned towers from an abandoned  brickworks at various intervals in the woods, adding intrigue.

The path/track we followed through the woods suddenly veered left and we found ourselves on a concrete path overgrown with brambles and budlia. On one side there was an apparently abandoned windowless building, part brick, part corrugated iron. It lurked behind a thicket if brambles. The broken warning sign hanging off the gate featured a simple exclamation mark on a yellow background. What it warned of remained ambiguous.

Opposite the building was a playing field, the other side of which stretched a long wall in front of a building which we took to be Norwich Prison. At the abandoned building, playing field/prison nexus it felt like we had shifted suddenly from an unremarkable but pleasant wood into a sinister peripheral zone. Our sense of direction, which we had previously felt certain of, became disoriented. The map board we had relied on to point the way suddenly made no sense. Checking Google maps, it seemed impossible the clearing could be this side of the road.

The concrete path went not much further before a dead end of brambles marked it's it's conclusion. Still disoriented and keen to extract ourselves from this zone, we retraced our steps and crossed the road.  On the other side was a diner, located in what looked like a former pub or house. Signs pointed to it indicating toilet facilities were also available. Up close there was no sign of a toilet block and the building appeared closed. The silence as I approached was uncanny. But upon opening the door I was greeted with the site of families gorging on burgers to a soundtrack of 'La Bamba' style Latin music. I closed the door again and the silence resumed.

Eventually we did reach a clearing on higher ground, covered in ferns and gorse, and heavily populated by dragon flies. It was as if we had crossed a line into the Jurrasic period. The clearing didn't look and feel like the one I had in mind. We sat on a lone memorial bench and had lunch. Upon checking Google maps again it suddenly became clear. The diner was the Pavillion, while what we had taken to be a Pavillion was a bandstand.  The diner lacked a 'pavillion-esque' roof or other features so had thrown us off the scent. It more resembled something from an American horror film, a creepy house in the woods. Things suddenly made sense. The confusion disappeared and the weird atmosphere with it. Soon after we left the Heath and headed back to lower ground via a long path hugging an allotment, which allowed a view of Norwich similar to the one expected but unseen from the Heath. A city whose outskirts required further investigation. But not today.

Liminal lunchtime

Lunchtime walks had  yet again been on a bit of a hiatus. The overbearing heat of a globally warmed summer and work and non-work based busy-ness being the main barriers to ability and motivation to get out there. The malaise brought on by both factors had impeded any will to write about any of the sporadic walks I had done in this period. Edited highlights will be forthcoming once (if) these prohibitive factors subside sufficiently for any length of time.

Last week I did get out for a 30 minute(ish) drift. After aimlessly heading up Eastfield Road I unconsciously took a right turn into Dickens Road. Past the Salem Chapel, the locus of my first Peterborough post, then onwards into a zone made up of a Rec/School Field on one side and on the  other a strip of green which is apparently  vunerable to fly-tipping, it's trees and bushes obscuring the sight and sound of the Parkway just beyond. The zone is bifurcated by 'The Airfield' cycle path which is part of a network of cycle paths shadowing the various Parkways, weaving under them at various intervals via Clockwork Orange-esque underpasses.

The transition into this zone was marked by a dilapidated house featuring a makeshift sign bearing the legend 'Site Keep Clear'. I wasn't sure which sort of site the sign was supposed to indicate. A building site, where work was ongoing to make the house inhabitable again at some future point. Or just a 'bloody site' as my mum used to say when referring to any sort of shambolic mess beyond immediate hope of being sorted out. That the facade of the house appeared unchanged since my first memory of it over a year ago indicates the latter.

The fly-tipping prone zone is also apparently a location subject to public outbreaks of drinking. A sign warned that I had entered a 'designated public place' which meant risking arrest and a £500 fine on refusal to surrender booze to the law when asked.  There were no imbibers present as I passed. Maybe the sign was effective. Or maybe it was just less hassle to go to one of Peterborough's Wetherspoons, which are in their own way 'designated public spaces' for the disaffected daytime drinker.  I considered whether there was a difference between a 'designated public spaces' and a plain 'public space' other than the threat of being fined a monkey for drinking in one and not the other. I couldn't think of one.

Emerging from a bush behind the sign was an impressive array of deposited rubbish. Too much to be the product of discarded items thrown from car windows on the Parkway.  I don't recall seeing a no fly-tipping sign. Presumably rubbish is considered less of a threat than booze on the scale of public menace in the zone.

I passed the Mellows Road underpass with its impressive graffiti and lure into the opposite liminal fly-tipping zone the other side of the Parkway. I resisted the urge and kept going forward.

Soon after, having followed the curve of the Airfileld Cycleway, the route passing under another underpass. I didn't record the name of this one and the memory of it has since faded. At the 'mouth', three posts which were all appeared to belong to separate eras resembled inadequate static guards. The white painted rectangle on the floor between two of them was ambiguous. The legend 'NCS' stenciled onto the concrete above at first glance seemed official, like a construction company logo. But closer examination indicated it was something to do with football.

Within the underpass, I was engulfed in a profusion of incoherent graffiti tags, slogans and symbols. 'Just say neigh' seemed a particularly odd thing for a tagger to write.  The ambiguous message possibly something to do with a pro-horseriding oppressed minority campaigning for the right to share the cycleway. Or maybe a jibe from a visiting Yorkshireman.

I emerged out the other side near a MacDonalds set on the edge of the Eastfields Induatrial area. I could see a communications mast rising in front of me to the left located somewhere deep in the maze of industrial units and warehouses. The same one I had noticed from my office window numerous times. I had tried to walk to it before and failed to reach its base in the labyrinth of roads.  This time I headed up the main drag (if such a thing exists in an industrial estate). Soon, directly ahead I could see the towers of Peterborough power station. This edifice was another site visible in the distance from my office window. That bit too far to reach in a lunch time. This was the closest I'd got. The road was partially blocked by roadworks, lorries and white vans. A silent checkpoint Charlie. I had the irrational feeling I would be challenged if I carried on, and felt like I didn't have the right paperwork. I had no business here and I probably couldn't speak the lingo. This 'barrier' appeared as if to remind me it was time to go back if I was to get back to work on time.

As I paused before retracing my steps back to the underpass I looked left at the communications tower. There was no obvious way to get nearer from this point either. It remained tantalisingly close but elusive.

Just before leaving the industrial estate, I noticed the roof of the Pizza Hut rising above the petrol station, in the cluster of 'servces' that include the previously mentioned MacDonalds. Catching it out of the corner of my eye I mistook the roof as being thatched. For a brief second it resembled a giant hut-like village hall from an earlier age. Then the brown brick and glass reality of the building coalesced. The cluster of services was typical of those found in this type of liminal environment having marginalised greasy spoons, makeshift cafes and burger vans that once would have prospered in such places.

I had found a grease cafe on Google maps  located somewhere near the communications mast in a similarly obscure location that I doubted would be easy to find. Two pictures that came with the map location and address. One featured a small industrial unit with its shutters down. The second was inside where a man with his back to the camera was in the kitchen, flipping eggs and looking not unlike Phil Mitchel from EastEnders. I also noticed a burger van not far from the main drag. It was good to know old school eateries still survived on the margins of their more corporate and bland nemisi.

On the return journey the lure of Mellows Road underpass this time pulled me in. The profusion of graffiti/street art was of a different league here. No reference to football. Instead a bloodshot eyed weed smoking Homer Simpson and the tag 'Talos' were two things that lingered in my mind upon departure. An image came to mind of the Bronze giant of Greek myth relegated to spend all enternity in a piss-soaked underpass with a dim-witted middle aged cartoon man.

The 'road sign' had been customised to feature yin/yan symbols, which coupled with the word 'mellow' suggested a  mystical element to whatever proceedings had been taking pace here with Talos and Homer Simpson.

I followed the footpath through the greenspace which was parallel to the Airfield Cycleway zone, except this time with the addition of Peterborough indoor bowls club behind a perimeter fence on the left. I emerged on Star Road and shortly afterwards re-encountered another locus of an early Peterborough lunchtime walk. The ex-church building, featuring memorial bricks with carved names of various apparently once important people, again drew me in. I re-read the inscriptions and noticed some i'd not seen (or forgotten) when I was last here. I lingered for a while, pondering  why 'J S Anderson for Deeping St James' or 'Mr T Farrow for Thornley' might be important or whether the places named on the various bricks might have some significant pycho-geographical connection. The last 'brick' I noticed, emerging from behind some ivy, was 'Mr J Alley for New Road'. New Road' being close to my office, I took this as a direction to go back to work. My time was up.

Bridge Closure: Bleak Interregnum on Mill Road

At the time of writing,  Mill Road bridge has been closed to traffic for a couple of weeks, due improvement works for the railway below it and to facilitate the Chisholm Trail bikeway. In the run up to the closure there seemed to be lots of excitement being touted on social media of the possibilities the situation might bring. The lack of through traffic along Mill Road would mean an almost car free environment which would present opportunities for alternative uses. Street parties, markets, music, 'parklets'* and just generally walking about without worrying about getting run over.  This spirit of opportunity had echoes of the Reclaim the Streets party that occupied Mill Road Bridge on a Saturday in September  1996. Sort of. On this occasion the Bridge was closed and inaccessible, other than a narrow footpath corralling pedestrians across, and this was to be shut off some of the time. This time it was the stretches of road each side of the bridge that would be free space.  The spirit was a bit more 'polite and establishment' than 'chaotic rave with police confrontation', the 'Mill Road Summer' promotion being led by local councillors and associates who are co-ordinating and promoting events during this near traffic-less interregnum.

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...