so, here it is

On the front, this house has an eye-splitting display of yellow-white christmas arc lights and bobbing inflatable santas (illuminated).  But I prefer the quiet back, where this exact square of bluish artificial grass is laid.  An oasis, shop-bought plastic geometric calm in the midst of the hacked-about wild maythorns and raspberry, it has been a boon to the house-holder, recently, as they have been able to simply sweep the snow away and not bother about the irksome trouble of real roots dying.  Merry christmas, everyone.

Park View

Park View is the name of this house, and wrought iron lettering has been, at some time, commissioned to this effect.  The view of the park, though, is at the back, and it is up a steep, dark slope in to an ancient woodland incorporated by the council into a park.  But it has never been incorporated: far from any path, it's dark, brooding otherness and creaking and swishing presses lore-like on the back of this house, which has tried to fight back with its small, suburban naming ceremony.

Thru' The Garden Gate

A lot of planning & execution went in at one time to this driveway, to solve the problem of the side-access to the back garden.  It is an astonishingly daring solution the like of which I have never seen before.
There is an obvious drawback, in that while a car is parked on the precipitous spaces set aside for it's wheels, the access to the garden gate is totally blocked, or at least extremely inconvenient to anyone taller than a cat.
The current occupiers have gone round this by parking on the street rather than using it, although they have at least kept preserved this truly magnificent example of folk-suburban architecture.

Limey Paint

Sadly, my youngest daughter's habit of leaving the lids off the felt tips means that the colour in the picture does not do the joy I felt on seeing this paint colour any justice at all.
The original, however, is an acidy-lime colour, just the green side of yellow, and was popular, I recall, (along with mustard), edged with white, from the suburbs of my childhood - and that was the main reason I was drawn from nowhere to pause outside this house: the sensation brought on by it: my nan's store cupboard (the sun sloshing in electric Alpine limeade and the smell of ground white pepper in plastic tubs).  Hats are off to this householder, for traditional colour use is the stuff of the folk suburb, and this was no left over: the pots (new) were still in the half-opened garage.

Inverted Car Wheels & Chimney Pots

These two chimney pots I have spotted nearby, used as planters for nasturtiums and the like, are now emptied of their summer white'd stems.  These originally unmarket-sanctioned features would once have been the preserve of those with close contacts in the roofing world, but then garden centres began to purchase replica chimney pots from manufacturers, nullifying the folk element.  Therefore, the true folk suburb example of the found plant pot, to me, remains the inverted car wheel, (including the inside out tyre), often painted a dirty white.  Popular in the late-70s to early-80s, I think, I haven't seen one in many a while.
If anyone knows of one still in existence, I for one would be glad to hear of it.

Notes on Folk Suburb & Snow

Despite having been trapped on the services-less M77 for several hours, I would still like to make the following points on snow and the folk suburb:

1) Folk Suburb likes the snow as it rubs out the adult and conformity, even in the apparently minor details of erasing the contours of roof tiles and the division between pavement and car-road.
2) The other day I saw one of my daughters leaning on the table listening intently to the radio. This level of concentration being noteworthy, I asked her what she was doing: ''listening to the list of schools closed to see if ours is on it''.  This was a spontaneous act.  The listening to local radio as they read out alphabetically the list of closed schools is a true tradition of the folk-suburb, and one which I am glad is still observed.
3) I watched the snow falling thru' orange streetlights and remembered playing football in the street in the first darkness and someone going in for their Wembley Trophy orange ball.

cabin'd cribb'd confin'd

A slightly off message post in case anyone is interested in taking a look a the other 'folk suburb' site cabin'd cribb'd confin'd, which is the blog of the print 'zine of folk song & the suburb.  The first issue is nearly ready (stapler assuming) and there is a post about it there.

Front Gardens 2: Sky Sculptures

For the second in this occasional series, this stone satellite dish sits in the front garden, facing its house and away from the viewer on the street. It is either a type of DIY, homemade Folk Suburb art, studiedly uncommunicative in its celebration of the folk traditions and items of the suburb, or it is simply a bird bath fallen on its side, to the cheering of local small birds.
Either way, when I first saw it I thought it was a satellite dish and thus things enter the lore of folk suburb. 

Blue Plaques

I spotted this (all names have been changed to protect identity), and another one that I couldn't draw, which was made of a shard of perspex cut and cross-carved to look like ice.  I am not sure whether to rail against the vanity of this kind of thing, awarding yourself a blue plaque almost; or to congratulate them on putting two fingers up at the viral culture of anxiety about identity, stoked by the media and playing to some of the worst traits of the suburb: the distrust of anyone outside your house, the hostile insularity and defensiveness, and the paranoid protection of what is tedious.

Nesting

One of the marking points of the Folk Suburb year is the revelation of the birds' nests, often in unlikely looking trees, marking autumn becoming winter.  I think Edward Thomas did a poem where, if I remember it right, he mildly chastised himself for not spotting the nests while the trees were in leaf.  I, though, like the revelation of the used nests, black clots in the trees, in laburnums and cherries that have jammed themselves between groups of semis, with the nests almost at touching distance of landing and bathroom windows; the birds having been there all the time without the sealed-in house dwellers once knowing, probably, or caring, probably, that they were there.
In recognition of the birds' secrecy, I have provided no crappy drawing.

Quick! Run! I don't know what it is!

It would be all too simple to mock this almost certainly self-designed and built extension, extraordinary in it's proportions, and by all conventional measures an ugly thing; but I think there are a couple of things in it's favour.  When passing it, it gives a fleeting, jolting, impression of being a 1950s-style earth-invader (a Quadropod?), with its long tentacles and scaly finish.  In its homemade DIY-ness, and blatant refusal of the off-the-shelf, it is an example of almost punk-suburb architecture and what might be termed Folk Suburban Brut.  Memories of passing it becomes the material of Folk Suburb.

Secret Garden

When I was but small, and a ball playing centre half in the primary school team, the pitch of one of the suburban primaries we used to play was got at through a door much like this.  Obviously it had a door and not stones, but the effect was the same, and it was truly like stepping in to a secret garden, not dispersed by actually going through, where the scene was like that of a Thomas Hardy novel.
Corners of an earlier time are a key to Folk Suburb.

Front Gardens Series No.1 - Tarmacadam Lawn

For the first in this occasional series of Front Gardens, I have selected this. 

Unlucky Thirteen

I only hope that Friday 12th is alright for this.  While returning my library book the other day I noticed that, in the street adjoining ours, number 13 was missing.  Obviously the house was there, but it was numbered 15 not 13.
I understand that certain aircraft manufacturers do not label the 13th row 13, but had unobservantly not noticed this in the suburb before.  Well, now I had, I thought I'd check a few other streets on the way to the station today, only to notice that they all didn't have thirteens.
I mentioned this to my dad and he said "oh, that's common."

Folk Suburb Traditions: Firework Collecting

A folk suburb tradition was the gleaning after the local 'Round Table' fireworks display in the park.
Our park was reclaimed from a farm within living memory, and some of its stone gateposts survived.  Windswept and raw, radiating out from the angry and still glowing, and fenced off, mound of ash, groups of kids would range surprising distances collecting up as many of the damp, spent tubes and cones, and sticks, of fireworks as they could.
This gleaning had no aim, other than the gathering in of the magical things themselves, with their thicker-than-normal carboard, their fragments of fantastical labelling and their smell; and no songs were sung about it.  But it would nevertheless take place, and extend riskily beyond the park; into gardens for an especially alluring roman candle husk.
These would be presented at the home and, part of the ritual, immediately binned by your mum.  But this was a tradition that endured, taking place every 6 November.

Car Port



 The car port is a greatly modern thing, and this example sports some fine slender metal supports coyly crossing their ankles.  There is a faint 'satellite' (space, not tv) feel to them that suggests the port was knocked up in the 60s sometime.  No-one in either of the adjoining houses seems to use it now, but I imagine it would've looked good in the late-70s with a TR7 lit through the yellowy corrugated plastic roof.
It is also a good example of the Neighbourly Construction of the suburbs, which, as one household is now bent on being totally isolated from its neighbours, I guess doesn't happen so much any more: where (usually non-adjoining) neighbours would get together to design, commission (or build it themselves) & pay for, items in between the properties; like garages, walls and, here, car ports.

Pet Graves

The pet grave is a hard to spot thing, often marked by but a simple garden stone or twig.  In an age when no-one can be bothered having any earth in their garden, I imagine new ones are far and few between, but here is an example, in the front garden of a house, just by the front steps.  The shells are a thoughtful addition and I hope it is a fish.

Dead Green Man

This piece of landscaping has long caught my eye.  The householder has recently tried turfing over the bed, but only got so far (I'm guessing it's too late in the year to turf).  Now it looks like this.
Previously, in rain, it turned into a tan pond.
Once, it contained a tree of some sort: the trunk is razed to mud(ground) level.  Probably a cherry - as usual.

Decorative Concrete Block #2: Fences

When I have recently looked at our old family photos - the ones that look like the world is seen through that yellow film the local gents outfitters used to have behind the glass, and where the world seems to fade to a blinding white at its edges - I noticed the flimsiness of the dividing fences, from one garden to the next.  Often these were no more than one silvery wire, loose, like a broken guitar string, or a shin high strip of sagged or ripped chicken wire strung between low posts.
Beginning I think in earnest in the 60s, and certainly accelerated in the 1970s, these flimsy fences began to be replaced, and, in the front gardens in particular, this often took the form of the decorative concrete block wall.  In this example the house has been walled in by two of these walls made out of different styles of block, making for a dizzying effect to this day.

(could it be that the flimsy fences of the old photos were the original builders fences, and were they not replaced for so long because no-one thought to replace them, or because no-one wanted to be the first?)

Decorative Concrete Block #1: Castle

 What I am interested in here is the suburb, the suburb's relation to it's own past, it's own things; and it's relation to that that it is built on: the country, the rural (and not the town).  Here is a ruined castle of the suburbs, it's Norman concrete blocks, modish but prone to ruin, a-top its mound, it crumbles in the faint drizzle.  Note the filled in block towards the bottom left.  Unlike the ruined Norman castle, though, no booth to collect ticket or issue guide book, no gift shop or cafe, and all will soon be lost, to heritage, away; to be replaced by one of those reversible wooden fences - a retreat to the Saxon's wooden past.