I love rundown 1970s shopping centres;
the piss-stained multiple story carparks,
dangerous pubs with flat roofs and
mugger underpasses of tiled murals.
Those failing covered markets
in leaking modernist blocks –
Birmingham, the Bullring.
It’s from my childhood,
Welwyn Garden City –
the trips through shabbier bits
of north London to Brent Cross,
then moving to Salisbury.
Of course, that’s partly
a towering medieval city,
alongside its random atmosphere of
pubs with brawling squaddies and
apprentice junkies, closing shoe shops,
frequent Army Surplus Stores plus
an inland pier – a truncated flyover
jutting over the scary Baptist church
and a potholed car park. All the towns
of Wessex and the West Country with
drugs problems! The central market,
unbelievable tat on offer, flogging
tartan 70s jackets, itchy front-door mats
spun from nylon pubes. I’ve old longings
for the windswept bus station, the dingy
bedsit land of the railway station by
Fisherton Street with its sordid
takeaways and pubs. I see Dad
by ‘The Yorkshire Fisheries’,
whey-faced as he recounted
the horrors he’d encountered.
The biscuit-brick bus station in
Endless Street was demolished.
We lived a lengthy school-bus
away so I’d spend days
there, the canteen from
Ten Rillington Place –
I now get flashbacks of
the corned-beef pasties.
I should mention those
twin Renaissance beauties of
Staines and Slough, places
I stupidly worked for years.
Their names enough
to capture this detritus.
Slough with its latticed
Brunel bus station over
England’s deadliest
underpass – making
A Clockwork Orange
seem urban perfection.
Staines High Street and
its Aberdeen Steak House
run by Assyrians – beef from
Chernobyl, Black Forest gateau
from a packet; the railway bridges
raining sparks as trains crossed.
Beneath them burger vans like
atrocity scenes from some
Congolese civil war.
Good days perhaps,
compared with identical
superstore retail parks.
Though hopes remain as
parts of those are perfect –
the kebab van by Wickes,
the cafe in Home Bargains.
Paul Sutton
.