View from the Bench: Mill Road

The almost total removal of Covid restrictions, for the time being at least, had been heralded by ‘Freedom Day’. I cautiously felt that the grip of the pandemic was finally loosening. At least for the time being. The beginning of the end and the beginning of whatever the ‘new normal’ would look like. 

 

I had been wandering along Mill Road, the main street in the vicinity, on most days during the pandemic. For the majority of the period, Mill Road Bridge had been closed to through traffic as part of an Emergency Traffic Order to help social distancing on the street. The bridge closure and its associated ‘build outs’ initially seemed to bring about an atmosphere of almost static interregnum, layered on top of the already existing Covid-induced pause in everyday life. But as restrictions eased, the street became gradually more populated. At the same time, a noticeably different feel emerged, in comparison to that of the pre-covid era. Random encounters with friends and acquaintances and sightings of familiar faces were (still) much rarer than before. I recognised barely anyone among those on the street or in the shops. Nor among those sitting outside the cafes and restaurants that had installed additional tables on the pavements. Things were different to ‘the before time’. The phenomena that seems most symbolic the changes is the orange Voi e-scooter, a thing barely known of pre-pandemic but now ubiquitous. Its arrival, among a plethora of other electric powered bikes and mopeds, seemed to herald a significant shift in time and place, as if the street had fast forwarded a few years, rather than a few months.

I decided it was time to take stock. I had been walking the street most days, but really in a getting from A to B way, not properly noticing. Rather than just walk, I decided to include a static form of observance on one of Mill Road’s benches. There are a handful dotted along the road and I had a vague plan that having a ‘sit’ for a period on each of these. Maybe using them all over a period of time would allow me to properly immerse myself. A sort of immobile psychogeography. There were several options. There are benches around the Romsey R, one on top of Mill Road Bridge and some outside the Co-op. There are probably others I’ve never noticed. I elected though, to go to the bench on the corner of Coleridge Road.

The bench sits at a four way Junction with traffic lights with Hemingford Road opposite Coleridge Road, and Mill Road passing through the middle. It is somewhere most people probably walk by without paying too much attention. I couldn’t remember ever stopping and sitting here, or lingering in the vicinity. But when I arrived soon found myself in a place that seemed to exist in an almost separate enclave. The bench backs onto a wall, next to a couple of bins and green telecoms boxes. On the wall are two utilities markers. There are several manhole covers on the ground, including a series of concrete grey ones surrounded by tall flowering hollyhocks.

Upon sitting on the bench among these utilitarian objects and (possibly) random selection of plant life, I soon felt like I was in a sort of liminal spectator zone, where I could exist as unnoticed as the telecoms boxes. 

 

Across Coleridge Road was the yet-to-be developed old Romsey Labour Club building. It still exists in its own liminal space surrounded by an area of decaying concrete floor and wild edgelandic vegetation. The windows are now boarded and graffiti is starting to emerged on the crumbling brown walls. But other than that, it remains in a similar state to the last time I mentioned it, in a previous blog from the beginning of the bridge closure just over a year ago. I don’t know what is preventing the development into serviced apartments, which was approved over two years ago now. I suspect the task will be easier for the developer once the building has collapsed of its own volition, particularly the facade which is meant to be retained. But for now at least, I could savour the building, which despite its sorry state, is still one of Mill Road’s best features.

The Labour Club was once the epicentre of Red Romsey or Little Russia and no doubt built to last. But its demise is symbolic of those terms being irrelevant in contemporary Romsey, as the forces of change and gentrification march ever onwards. The building is an outcrop of an otherwise buried layer of Mill Road’s history. As I observed from the bench, a black and white spray-painted Joe Strummer looked on enigmatically from the corner of one of the boarded up windows, while the Coleridge Road sign was being slowly engulfed by vegetation. The only new feature I noticed, other than the street art, is a road sign. This shows the traffic restriction due to the bridge closure to the right. Meanwhile any would-be bridge crossing cars are diverted to the left, down the stretch of Mill Road that seemed least affected by the changes brought about by Covid and the bridge closure. I reflected that the Mill Road Winter Fair, which in pre-Covid times saw the road closed for the day in December, also usually ends at this junction, leaving the leftward stretch as the only part of the road open to traffic. I wondered if the fair would be extended on its pre-Covid return to include the small number of businesses along this usually forgotten part of the street, along with a chance to visit the impressive mosque which I’m not sure was open in time for the last Mill Road fair.

My attention wandered from the Labour Club, across the road to the Romsey Mill. At the same time, I began to settle into the micro-environment afforded by the bench. I became dimly aware of the background sounds of car engines, as they waited at the lights next to where I sat before slowly moving off. This sound became repetitive, almost unnoticed and strangely soothing. It became a sort of aid to noticing. Outside Romsey Mill was a tall conical tree, part obscuring the building, and behind it another bench. I had never noticed either of these objects before and wondered how on earth that was possible. The Romsey Mill serves as the local polling station and to vote is the only time I’ve ever set foot in it. It is the home of a Christian based charity that started in 1980, in the building that was formerly a Methodist chapel. I noticed two blocked up apertures next to the main door; a small bricked up arched window and just below that, too low for any sort of normal window to have existed, was a brown oblong, a 1970s sideboard had been inserted to occupy the space and fitted perfectly.

I shifted to observing the people passing by. There was a random and rich diversity among those that I noticed. An enigmatic, sage-like ageing man with what looked like a kit-bag drifted by, possibly on a Saturday morning derive of his own. Maybe just going to the shops. A singing man with dreadlocks went by on a bike, I heard him before I saw him. He looked oblivious and carefree, in comparison to a group of hipster-types who’s man-bun attempts to a similar direction were clearly carefully and self-consciously curated. They were outnumbered by the number of old ladies I saw, heading towards the broadway utilising a range of mobility aids from the walking sticks to the full on electric mobility scooters. These were the pioneers in the new age of electric transport. I only witnessed one Voi scooter, but several white vans. As I became even more settled in my bench enclave and reached a point of imagined invisibility, the background engine sounds aided an almost meditative state.

After a while I became aware of a distant chanting, coming from the direction of the bridge. This slowly roused me and I remembered that there was a protest due to take place, organised by the traders and others from the pro-bridge reopening faction. As mentioned previously the bridge closure had caused controversy and division. The County Council were due to vote the following week to decide whether to keep the bridge closed or reopen it, while a period of consultation took place. The bridge had initially been closed with no consultation, one followed some time later but was disregarded, due to concerns that the councils consultation system allowed the same people to comment more than once. The traders saw this protest as a last stand. As their voices grew louder, I was roused from my immersive state and curious to know what was going on up the road. I realised I had only been on the bench for around twenty minutes but it felt like a lot longer. I wrenched myself into a standing position, then removed myself from its immersive atmosphere, as I passed beyond the hollyhocks and manhole covers. I looked back to the bench and its surroundings, a segment of space that was almost tangibly separate and off-kilter from its immediate surrounds, I felt like it was a protected and protective space.

 

The protest was in full swing as I passed it crossing the bridge. There were chants, with the aid of megaphones of ‘one Mill Road, one community’. Meanwhile, the Romsey City Councillor, Dave Baigent, a vocal pro-closure proponent, stood among the protestors in silence. The scene was a microcosm of the division the bridge closure had created and the chanting seemed almost anacronistic.

Further down the road was a delegation of people from the pro-closure faction, specifically from a group called ‘Mill Road 4 People’. This group had sprung up relatively recently with a professional looking website showing quite detailed ideas for how the bridge could stay closed and asking for views to help make this work. There has been much speculation as to who might be behind the group, with the finger being firmly pointed by several social media commentators at Cam Cycle, a vocal pro-bridge closure lobbying group. While the rhetoric and ideas of both groups seem very similar, I don’t know whether this is true. As I passed through the delegation, one of them stopped me and handed me a leaflet. I expressed my reservations around keeping the bridge closed. I asked what about the traders claims that they were seeing a fall in takings. This was brushed off, and it was pointed out that several new business had opened during the closure and these would attract more to open as footfall increased. I wondered though, who were these new businesses for and whose feet would be falling? The emphasis was largely on the more artisan end of the food market, even beyond this to include something called a ‘Fish Butchery’, which struck me as something beyond pretentious.

My earlier fears, which had dissipated earlier in the protective environment of the bench, returned. The street was in danger of becoming something beyond the parody of Nathan Barley, with its various forms of e-scooter transport gliding along the road, a proliferation of serious faced joggers and high end eateries with outside seating becoming ever more prevalent, making ambulatory activity that bit more awkward. I wondered if the solution to Cambridge’s pollution and traffic problems had to be the imposition of a ‘continental cafe culture’ and the creation of a destination resembling Hoxton aspiring to be Hampstead in Mill Road, which is what many on the pro-closure side seemed to be pushing for. Certainly, the Covid-era seems to have accelerated a move towards such an environment. It was probably on the cards anyway, but the shift has been stark in its rapidity. I felt like I had been suffering from ‘Future Shock’ over the last few month as a result. As I moved along the street, it didn’t help when I noticed Fagitos was still ‘closed for refurbishment’. I wondered if it would ever really re-open and of so in what form. The legendary late night kebab joint has been unrivalled since the 1990s and is one of Mill Road’s most iconic institutions, but has been closed for months. This seemed an ominous portent that the direction of travel was set for good. There would be no return to the comfy, slightly grubby Mill Road of ‘the before time’.

As I retracted my steps, I passed by the protestors banner still standing at the foot of the bridge. ‘Open The Bridge. Consult!’ its shouted. In my deflated state, the banner seemed to express the futility of any attempt to prevent the worst extremities of gentrification imposing a more sterile and expensive version of Mill Road. But at least the bench was there, unaffected, at least for now.

 

Footnote: The week after the walk/bench sit, the County Council voted to re-open the bridge while a period of consultation takes place. I can’t say I’ve noticed the traffic get much busier as a result but I suppose it is the school holidays. I’ll find another bench to try out during this next stage of flux, until the next stage of the bridge saga.

Psycho-geographic post-card no. 3: Hemsby

 

I've finally got around to finishing writing and 'posting'  this final 'postcard'', just shy of a month after we got back from Norfolk. Thus even surpassing my usual tardiness when sending physical postcards.

We walked from the car park at Winterton, where sadly the cafe on the clifftop had disappeared, leaving behind just part of its floor.  A coffee concession  had appeared in its place, slightly more inland, but not far from the remains of the old cafe floor.  The concession of two silver round edged vans that somehow managed to look like they belonged to both space age and of 1970s American dragster racing tracks.

Winterton is a village near Yarmouth, but a much quieter concern. It is primarily of interest for the beach and the peripheral natural area which consists of a gorse-infested green corridor separated from the beach by the higher sand-dunes. It is also the beginning (if starting to the North)  of a continuous zone of connected coastal villages and  holiday parks, that become more built up until finally becoming Great Yarmouth.

As we emerged onto the beach, it appeared a wedding was taking place. A long table had been laid out  with a white cloth and places set. The table was perpendicular to the sea's edge and not far from it. A bunch of people were gathered photographing a couple dressed in bride and groom attire. A little further along, another gaggle of people were photographing a young woman posing in a dress/sheet type affair. These people all seemed connected. We couldn't tell if we had walked through the middle of a photoshoot for some type of high-end magazine, a student art project or possibly even a real wedding (this seemed unlikely). The people seemed oblivious to us and other people and their dogs drifting through the middle of whatever event they were part of. It was as if the wedding scene had been superimposed, as if projected from another place where it really belonged. It was only when we got a bit further away from it that I realised how off kilter it seemed.

Soon after, following a relatively deserted and uneventful beach strectch, we headed inland to the green corridor behind the dunes. The environment here had a prehistoric quality. On entering 'the valley'  as it is named on the map, we became the people that time forgot.  For a while the environment resembled a pre-human landscape. But after a while we began to emerge back into the present. Sporadically, bungalow-like dwellings appeared in the dunes. Inland, chalets began to replace the wilderness. Soon we arrived alongside the 'Funpark' at Hemsby. A large slide loomed up like a relic from a golden age of the seaside's more garish maifestations, rudely interrupting an environment that had up until now been mostly devoid of human paraphernalia or people. The slide marked the point of a definate shift from one type of coastal experience  to another. We entered a realm where most of the elements of 'The Seaside' that I recalled from childhood holidays were present.

Away from the near deserted beach and sand-dunes, where the only sounds were the sea, wind and birds, we were thrust into a cacophony of very different noises. And smells. Hemsby Beach, as distinct from the more inland village part of Hemsby, consists of one main drag that bifurcates various holiday parks/resorts. We had emerged somewhere about halfway down, in the epicentre of a realm of fish and chips, amusement arcades and cheap gift shops selling all manner of seaside ephemera. A number of  plastic moulded garish anthropomorphic characters, most representative of junk food items that were available in the various food outlets, appeared at various intervals along the street.

The smells and sounds were overwhelming in their sensory assault, but at the same time reassuring. With one or two minor updates, they remained exactly as a recalled from holidays with my parents in the 1980s in nearby Great Yarmouth. Great Yarmouth was a much larger concern than Hemsby, but here many of the essential elements were contained in microcosm. 

I drifted past an amusement arcade, 'Palace Caesar'. It's facade was apparently unchanged since the 1980s, other than the presumably originally bright red plastic frontage having faded to hot water bottle pink. From the blur of sound coming  from inside, a distinct few seconds of arcane ZX Spectrum era noise emerged that I recognised from an ancient arcade machine, but I couldn't place which one. I passed a 'Captain Pugwash' children's ride out the front, a character I'd assumed long forgotten by most and probably unknown by children today. 

The whole stretch felt like it had never left the era of space invaders, sugary donuts, fairgrounds and dangerous blow-up things proffered by gift shops to take in the sea. There was a faded quality, slightly washed out like a Polaroid photograph, accompanied by an analogue soundtrack of off-kilter  seaside noises and arcane seaside smells.

There were no dangerous inflatables or 'saucy' seaside postcards for sale (or indeed any postcards). Otherwise the place was the seaside of old, nothing had changed. It felt immune to the sort of creeping gentrification found elsewhere along the Norfolk Coast (and more widely) as if it existed within an invisible shield that preserved it.

I felt reassured by this small enclave of old school 'seaside-ness', and wished there was time to visit Great Yarmouth up the coast, but that would need a full day to do it justice. Possibly two.

Later back at the caravan, I read that Great Yarmouth had recently been ranked sixth from bottom in a Which survey of the UK's best seaside resorts. The findings at first, seemed puzzling. The Which commentator said something along the lines of 'biggest definitely is not best' and suggested that places with fairgrounds (of which Yarmouth has two) had done particularly badly. When it became apparent that one of the main criteria used to rate resorts was 'peace and quiet', then the survey results made much more sense.  The inbuilt assumption was that peace and quiet is always more desirable  than the sort of noise, smells and sights places like Hemsby and Great Yarmouth had to offer. This bias meant that the quieter, posher resorts did much better. But my feeling was that Which were asking an incomplete set of questions to a limited set of people.  There was apparently no balancing questions about 'largest and noisiest fairground', 'best Victorian-era seaside resort architecture' or 'finest so-bad-its-a must waxworks', which surely would have moved Great Yarmouth up the ranking considerably. I doubted many of those I'd seen wandering along Hemsby Beach earlier had been among those surveyed. I doubted also that they would give much credence to the survey rankings of post lockdown 'staycation' resorts, which had a definite smug 'crap towns' quality about it. 

The Which survey, and it's inbuilt bias against places like Yarmouth or Skegness, along with my all to brief dip into the old school seaside resort in Hemsby, gave me an immense  yearning to visit Great Yarmouth. I vowed to get there before the year is out. If I do, another psycho-geographic postcard will be forthcoming. To consider such an excursion a 'staycation', now the parlance used to describe a holiday anywhere in the UK, not just one where you stay at home, seems ludicrous. Instead, particularly post lockdown, I'm imaging the trip will be more akin to a journey into another world. 

Psycho-geographic postcard no.2: The Walcott/Bacton Interface

 

I headed out of Happisburgh, along the 'Byway to Ostend (1/2 a mile)'. I didn't follow the Byway to its conclusion at Ostend, a   hybrid of a chalet holiday park, old people's bungalow estate and Essex pioneer settlement, which seemed to be a sort of addendum to Walcott.

Instead, I took a left turn to follow another route, across a field, through the grounds of  All Saints Church and past the Lighthouse Pub. The pub was a roadside affair which featured a campsite, large beer garden and further up another piece of land that appears to be under development. This was fronted by a parade of flowerbeds and no less than four large blue signs announcing 'Walcott says thank you NHS' and in smaller font at the bottom 'Thank you NHS love from Steve'. 

The Church and pub were outliers of Walcott proper, the only buildings for about half a mile. But I soon emerged into the beginnings of Walcott, past it's worn village sign and the village hall, which had an impressive floral display in a bathtub out the front. The parish notices displayed above it talked of typical pressing local issues; car parking, traffic volumes, 'the defribulator' and dog theft. Additionally there were inevitably Covid issues added to the usual list, including a missing sanitiser station that would be 'investigated'. 

A series of small mosaics on a low wall outside somebody's house marked rememberance day (a large poppy motif), Walcott itself ('where the land meets the sea') and (presumably) the latest, a rainbow motif marked 2020, the (first) year of Covid, and support for the NHS and key workers. This display of folk art was the first example I noted as I entered Walcott and headed to the sea front. I knew it would not be the last. I was heading to a spot I knew to be ripe in the sort of ramshackle, homemade decoration that is such a great feature of seaside spots around Britain, particularly the ones that have yet to be overly, or at all, tidied-up.

I was heading for the Walcott/Bacton Interface, the zone immediately each side of the where Walcott ends and Bacton begins, at least according to the road signs. Without them, there is no obvious point at which one becomes the other.

Equally abitarily, I decided this zone really begins to emerge, on the Walcott side, where a sign displaying a forlornly sad looking wooden fish reads 'No Beach'. The creature was a folk art classic in its simplicity and the words seemed to match it's sad visage. On the other side, the word 'parking' was added, or more accurately, had not been removed. I should have guessed, considering that probably nearly all notices in the wider vicinity, official or otherwise, are concerned with either parking, private property or usually both.

At the very epicentre of the Interface is a series of four or five walled or fenced off enclaves, most containing at least a caravan and usually other ephemera, detritus and an occasional vehicle. The strangest and most impressively 'folk art' of these featured a wall embedded with all manner of creatures and appendages around all sides. A small child would probably have taken it for the exterior of tiny fairground or amusement arcade. Among the menagerie cemented into or onto the wall were stone fish, birds, gargoyle heads and a large Aslanic lions face. Also there was a letter box constructed out of blue and white tiles, embedded into the wall, and which contained the single word 'Correio'. Correio  is apparently the name of a Portuguese language newspaper published in Luxembourg. This gave the enclave an extra dimension of enigma, indicating strange international connections   The only other phrase displayed on the wall, 'shifting sands', did little to dispell the mystery.

An opaque 'window' in the wall revealed little of what was inside the enclave. Whatever was beyond was distorted and obscured. The only thing visible was a caravan or possibly motorhome, rising slightly above the wall. There was no sign of life. Around the back was a slightly rusting and apparently out of action white van.  I wondered if the enclave was a permanent residence or some kind of bizarre holiday let. 

I moved on and passed the other enclaves, less impressive but equally puzzling. One contained just a small caravan, a sandy floor and a couple of raised beds that were still under construction. A sign on the fence was advertising 'North Norfolk Coast and Country relaxing places to stay'. I assumed this was one of them. It's immediate neighbour was hidden by a six foot wall made of breeze blocks, with a canon-cum-weathervane amalgamation perched on top. A flagpole rose up from within the compound, flying the flag of St George. I didn't attempt to look over the wall.

Past these unexplained enclaves, at the Bacton extremity of the Interface,  was the Poachers Pocket Pub. The large car park extended from the main road across to the path above the beach where I was walking. The outdoor benches were abandoned, partly due to the wet weather and partly because today was the day Covid restrictions were relaxed to the point that people are allowed back in pubs. I could see a handful of people sitting in the rear window of the cavernous looking establishment, taking advantage of this situation. I didn't feel tempted to join them, thinking it would be better wait a bit and see how things panned out with the Indian Variant before re-visiting pub interiors.

Around the back, a decrepit and formerly white painted outbuilding of some kind featured a fading sign that suggested passers by 'Try our Superb Calvery'. The smaller fonted addendum 'Sun', revealed that a full seven day a week 'Toby Calvery' style operation was not being offered. Indeed, the apparent age of the sign gave doubt as to whether anything was still being offered at all. But back around the front of the pub, newer signage gave assurance that it was.

I headed back, past the enclaves and a giant metal replica seagull marking the boundary of one of them. Across the street, a ramshackle bungalow, with a large Esso sign on the side, shared it's plot with a green nissen hut, heavily covered in logos and badges. At first I couldn't work out why an apparently randomly placed 'closed' sign was displayed half way down the garden, until I saw another sign offering 'MOT' tests near the bungalow. 

The bizarre Nissan hut/MOT garage/bungalow amalgam was the penultimate manifestation of the Walcott/Bacton Interface I encountered, before I once again passed the Sad Fish, bade it farewell and left the zone.