Folk Suburb #4

In the moment you are tired, dog-tired, but near no bed; when one world oscillates with another, and another one can be magicked, accessed through the tired sight of one object, the smell of one some thing, the temperature of something, that is when the folk suburb reveals itself: in the right circumstances, like catching the fairy ring occupied.

In the evening after dark, the blackleg miner creeps to work, with his moleskin trousers and dirty shirt, there goes the blackleg miner!  As I was walking home from work, wagtails were wandering the pavement, the striped hands of crocus leaves heading for the light of dusk, and the blackbird sang its song the same colour as the branches it was on.  When out of one house came a smell of meat and gravy - just like that; there was something about the gravy, or the meat, or the gravy and the meat, that was transportingly of Brain's faggots, and gravied chips, out of the chip shop, in a past similar end of dusk, when the very clouds smelt of drizzle.  Walking home from a school cross country.
Away across the school field where I had shivered in a yellow vest waiting to start the race, was this falling Camelot into disrepair.  I see it now, as I ignored them then, these many, these tucked away, small, condensation wet and drizzly forgotten things of small industry in small farmer's fields.
When young, we played around the bricks and stones as sure in our own minds that these were castles, not mines, like on the public information films before Grandstand; a cross in the country of magick and safety.
Don't go near that mine: across the way they've stretched a line to catch the blackleg miner. To catch the throat and break the spine, of that dirty blackleg miner.

Then, the walking has taken me away from the smell and drizzle, and the image is holdable no longer.

(In passing, I understand this particular mine engine house has been tidied up, and now stars in a bit of landscape in the development mentioned in Folk Suburb #3.)

8: Odd Corners

In an attempt to avoid the closing in of a dank Sunday, we took a walk in the suburb - and here are two odd corners we found.

The first is this wyrd almost circular hollow on the top of a hill -

which put me kind of in mind of an Arthur Machen story.  The hill is, reputedly, where Mary, Queen of Scots, stood to watch some battle en route to Fotheringay.  The circular hollow is not mentioned on the sign board and, in its middle, is this strange tree -

A suitable sized item pushed into the hole at the top comes out of the hole at the bottom. 

The second 'odd corner' is slightly more man made, but affecting nonetheless as the kind of place of which Suburb Folk Memory is made.  The quiet of this square of garages is what you notice, compared even with the none-too-noisiness of the suburban streets you step off to reach it.  It, too, is Machen-like.  Rabbits live in it.

Folk Suburb #3

In the moment you are tired, dog-tired, but near no bed; when one world oscillates with another, and another one can be magicked, accessed through the tired sight of one object, the smell of one some thing, the temperature of something, that is when the folk suburb reveals itself: in the right circumstances, like catching the fairy ring occupied.

Rather than a trigger from far away, this was brought by an actual revisit, though the air smelled much the same.  The stone stile, like two gravestones wrenched out from the nearby churchyard and put one on top the other, leads into a lane of about 1/4 mile, where it ends in another stile much the same.  At the other end was, and is, pretty much opposite, a 16th century farmhouse set facing a tussocky and brackeny common.  Listening recently to Alasdair Roberts' version of Long Lankin it was this house I saw.

At this end of the lane, though, there is no farmhouse; and what was once the end of the city, as I remember it, now has added on a small 'development' - a part of which I have glued, slightly out of its true place, but not much, to the side.  These are cream cubes, rather than Orwell's red. 
The lane itself, though, with its bare bramble stems, is still a passage out of all time, strangely silent on a wintery afternoon, leading to the manor and the false nurse.  Let the doors be all bolted and the windows all pinned, and leave not a hole for a mouse to creep in.  Oh, the doors were all bolted and the windows all pinned, save one little window where Long Lankin crept in. 

Folk Suburb #2

In the moment you are tired, dog-tired, but near no bed; when one world oscillates with another, and another one can be magicked, accessed through the tired sight of one object, the smell of one some thing, the temperature of something, that is when the folk suburb reveals itself: in the right circumstances, like catching the fairy ring occupied.

Beyond tired, I buy a packet of Tooti Frootis from the newsagents, to get change for something.  I bite a purple one and immediately I see a corner, clearly.  On my right side quiet, semi-detached houses, their small leaded panes reflecting unevenly the whitish light in the silence.  And a privet, in an unfelt breeze.  I know someone who lives in one.
But then opposite rises this giant suburb-megalith.  They came to the high castle where my lord he was sitting at meat.  "If you did but know what news I brought not one more mouthful would you eat,"  "What news have you brought?  Is my castle burning down?"  "Oh, no, your true love is very very ill and she'll die before ever you can come."  But then opposite rises this suburb-megalith, giant stone wall, grey, broken by a coach arch and a single doorway.  Like a castle wall.  Above this door, is a look out window, or a lantern window: its glass, in the aspect facing me, red; a red film or paint, peeling.
"Saddle me my milk-white horse, and bridle him so neat.  That I may kiss of her lily lips that are to me so sweet."
What callers found themselves watched from that window?  The place is occupied now by a mysterious Oz-like doctor, who, if he practises at all, practises a Victorian medicine, with Victorian instruments.  But the window is already now disused.  All kinds of spirits jostle.  Carts, and horses and bicycles pass; beneath it.  Before the suburb arrived, surrounding it with privets and ornamental cherries.  The last bone-shaking rider has passed, out of the village.
They saddled him his milk-white steed at twelve o'clock at night.  He rode, he rode till he met six young men with a corpse all dressed in white.  The roof is not visible, nor any building behind the wall.  A cloud passes another shadow across the wall and a woman in a pac-a-mac walks out of the arch.
Then the sweet is finished, and the wall; and with it passes the street, and the wall disintegrates
once more.

Postscript: I passed the original of this at the weekend and was astonished at its smallness - I remember it as high; featureless.  It is now hemmed by 90s houses.  It does retain the two X ceiling supports (I suppose they are) which I had forgotten in the earlier picture, but were definitely there. 

Folk Suburb #1

In the moment when you are tired, dog tired, but near no bed; when one world oscillates with another, and another one can be magicked, accessed through but the tired sight of one object, the smell of one some thing, the temperature of something: that is when the folk suburb reveals itself: in the right circumstances, like catching the fairy ring occupied.
I wish, I wish, but it's all in vain, I wish I were a maid again; but a maid again I never shall be till apples grow on an orange tree.  Swaying looking at a stand of trees so that the noise of the robin is as if they were on your shoulder, I saw, quite clearly, a broken asphalt path, broken by roots passing beneath it.
I wish my baby it was born, and smiling on its papa's knee, and I to be in yon churchyard, with long green grass growing over me.
It was blue coloured, in the shadow, the asphalt path, and rose into a stand of trees.  I don't recall the type of trees and cannot see them, but they were there.  And then, away to the right through the trees, a blue - it is definitely blue - blue wooden door in a high wall appears.  There is a flinty stone arch, like arrowheads, above the door.  Leaving the path in the stand of trees, opposite the door, I walk through the tussocky, ankle high grass where the park keeper's mower hardly ever goes, but twice a year, June and August, and enter by the blue door.

Suburb magick.  When my apron strings hung low, he followed me through frost and snow, but now my apron's to my chin, he passes by and says nothing.  Across a gravel border path a lawn, clipped and striped, and white metal tables laid for tea, outside the black 'french' windows spaces, hung with fluttery white curtains, of a 3 or 4 storey Regency house - actually a hotel but who would stay?
I myself took a dish of ice cream here once, when I was very small, one hot afternoon.
But already it is getting late, each flat in the Regency building has a light on against the bluing day, each tile fronted house hemming it in with TVs.  The grass is gone, car parked.
Oh grief, oh grief, I'll tell you why - that girl has more gold than I; more gold than I and beauty and fame, but she will come like me again.

7: Electricity Substation 14/3/1956

Site: Electricity Substation 14/3/1956
Amenities:  None
Parking: Street (some)
Public Transport: No
Access: Fine view from street

Notes:  rendered building with pagoda style slate roof, set in its own garden with cherry trees.  Remains in use and therefore well maintained.

Further Notes:  The curve of the roof put me in mind of Brunel's 'pagoda' waiting shelters on the GWR.  A lot of effort went in to the design of this, so as not to offend the neighbours in 1956.
Postscript:  Anyone who saw the first post on this blog (the crumbling decorative concrete block wall) may be interested to know that, this last weekend, the wall was demolished, apart from its 'gateposts', and a brick wall put in its place, finished in pebbledash that reminds me of those Heinz sandwich topper things.  If you imagine a pebbledash washing line, coloured like sandwich topper, you have the image.