This Grauniad article on love and disappointment the northern steel-making city of Sheffield - not far from where I was born - is heart-wrenching. I think it sufficiently details the reasons why I don't live there right now.
The remark about brides who live on the upper floors of the high-rise apartment blocks taking the freight elevator on their wedding day so as not to crush their "frocks" in the cramped passenger elevator made me wince with recognition - and a strong memory of those elevators, with stinking stains down the walls from crotch height and the dull, cobwebby fluorescent light in the ceiling behind its vandal-proof (but not graffiti-proof) plastic panel.
The overall tone of the article was a bit too "it's grim up north" for me. I'm used to being from the Kentucky or Alabama of the UK but after 12 years living in London where people assumed I keep coal in the bath and gave me all the respect that stereotype engenders, it was eye-opening to move to the US where suddenly I'm in the top tier because I have a "British" accent. It isn't *that* grim. We have Hebden Bridge. And the Dales.
Why do Southerners assume Northerners keep coal in the bath? I've never known. Orwell mentions it in The Road To Wigan Pier.
"Moreover the pithead baths, where they exist, are paid for wholly or partly by the miners themselves, out of the Miners’ Welfare Fund. Sometimes the colliery company subscribes, sometimes the Fund bears the whole cost. But doubtless even at this late date the old ladies in Brighton boarding-houses are saying that ‘if you give those miners baths they only use them to keep coal in’."
The Daily Telegraph was still giggling about it in 2008 in a book review.
"Jenni Murray would like you to know that she keeps a very clean toilet - you could eat your dinner off it. Eating your dinner off toilets seems to be one of those strange northern customs, like keeping coal in the bath, that has never caught on down south."
Fuck off, Torygraph.
The Guardian's story about Sheffield's Park Hill Bridge at least is grounded in reality, even if the reality is as gritty as the ash-heaps behind the steel mills.
7 comments:
Hi Sis
I think your being a bit harsh on the North of England, even though it might on be a little bit. There aren't any 2ash heaps behind the steel mills" primarily because there aren't any blast furnaces left in England. The steel mills in Sheffield are rolling mills that re-heat sheet and bar steel to make specialist sections, Maggie sold off the blast furnaces remember.
As far as the people in the article you may have a point, but still living in a deprived area in the North of England it is nowhere near as bad as in the article and I have been reading a few books about LA recently (fiction- granted, but I am sure they are based on somewhere approaching fact and LA seems to be 10 times worse than Sheffield with LA's only saving grace being the weather.
We are going train riding in Portugal next week, a country with a lot higher unemployment than the UK, so it will be interesting.
Bruv
Hi Sis
Sorry about the typos!!!! :-(
Bruv
I felt the article was far too sensationalist and that's what I intended to say. No, the north isn't that bad. Where I live is definitely better than the place described in that article, though, if it's accurate.
As for LA's shortcomings, I live 60 miles from LA and only go there once or twice a year if I really have to. I find San Diego equally depressing. Well, probably more so, as LA at least has rich (and fabulous) enclaves.
I'm sure you're quite right about the blast furnaces, and I probably shouldn't have said anything on the blog about power stations without checking with you first, as all I know about it I learned in school at age 11 whereas you've been an actual power station building person for decades.
Hi Sis
I was 70 last week and one of my bucket items is to go back to Batley and the district to see what it is like now.
The area I live in now on Teesside is adjacent to probably one of the most deprived areas in the UK with the worst social indices on virtually every count. There were 40 blast furnaces on Teesside after WW2 the last one closed in 2015, the world famous ICI (worked with DuPont on NYLON (NewYork- LONdon) and the site of one of the first experimental atomic reactors - later shipped to Los Alamos) chemical plants has been sold off piecemeal and the company now only employs 3 people to deal with "legacy" issues. Unemployment in some tower blocks is 100%, with no hope of finding jobs and the people reverting to feral economies with drugs and drink being the main avenues of "enjoyment".
Years ago when I was working on the major substations linked to the Enron power station I did what at the time was probably a stupid thing and stopped to talk to a group of youths outside our work compound who had been throwing stones at our vehicles as they left the site, to ask them why they did it. There were several older youths and 2 younger ones aged about 13 or 14. One had a plastic milk carton with the top screwed on and the other had a glass milk bottle, both containing a yellowish liquid, which I assumed was cider or lager, but they said it was petrol. One of the kids was squeezing the plastic container and from a pin prick hole in the side was squirting a fine mist of petrol into his mouth, the other kid had his nose stuck into the glass bottle and was sniffing the petrol. I asked them why they were doing it and they said that "Why not by the time we are 18 we will either be dead or in jail!", with that outlook on life there isn't much hope for them, but I wish I knew how their lives actually turned out.
Bruv
For some reason I don't have your birthday in my calendar, so I'm sorry I missed it. Belated happy birthday!
Your description of Teesside is even more grim than the article on Sheffield. I'm just watching BBC at the moment and they showed the figures for manufacturing jobs over the past forty years and it's quite depressing. I don't think there can be any doubt that since our Neoliberal friends Maggie and Ronnie and their pack took over, the goal of society has not been to keep society livable, but to extract maximum materials and labor in order to enrich a select few. Which is why I'm still a Clause IV Labourite. I'll even take the modern phrasing of it over the mess we have now. I do worry about the next generation and what will be left for them. May I share your comments above on Facebook? I'll take off the identifying information.
By the way, re: Batley. Since Spen Valley has recently become famous as somewhere MPs can be murdered in daylight, I'm not holding out much hope for it. But please do a photo tour. I would put it on the blog.
No Problem sharing as it is a true story, even though it is now almost 10 years old and you can refer to me as your brother if you want. It is an area of Middlesbrough, or more correctly Redcar and Cleveland, called Whale Hill, the fish and chip shop in the row of shops has a metal grill above the counter and you get your order passed through a small gap at the bottom, that is how rough it is.
Shocking thing the Cox killing, I recognised everything, the building in the background across the road was the cinema I used to go to for the Saturday morning matinee. For the first 3 years of my life I lived only 200m from where she was killed and did you note she went to Heckmonwike Grammar like Dad.
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