Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

mud, mud, glorious mud

Well, for the time being, that's me done with Bury St Edmunds, I pulled the show out on monday, an unseasonably mild and sunny day that saw midges dancing under the trees and soft cold mud everywhere.

Hopefully the theatre's get-out will not take them too much longer, the tractor that shifts stuff from the tent to the road had created ruts about three feet deep by the time I left. I think the site might have been more carefully chosen; it seemed to be spectacularly badly drained. If they do the show in Nowton Park next year, I hope it won't be in the same place.

While I was spending more time in Suffolk, I became slightly aware of a local controversy; apparently Debenhams want to build a major shopping outlet on the site of the cattle market in BSE. Not surprisingly there has been a lot of opposition, rather more imaginative than in many cases in my opinion. I should point out that my opinions are essentially neutral on this issue, I'm against the lack of choice, blandness and uniformity that 'shopping centres' bring to city centres, but I'm also aware that other people like them. Regular readers of this blog will probably be aware that I view property developers as lower than cockroaches, and just as hard to extinguish.

Anyway, the main opposition group seems to be a group of loons calling themselves 'The Knights of St Edmund', shortly before christmas they had a candle lit procession (in chainmail!) through the town before invoking the curse of St Edmund on the property developers, and it would appear, the christmas decorations. Quite apart from raising uncomfortable comparisons with the KKK and Mississippi Burning, they seem to have taken on board another cultural reference with their campaign slogan; 'Local shops for local people'. I commend you to their site; http://www.knightsofsaintedmund.com/notes.html

A couple of years ago, my local council, seeking public approval for yet another shopping centre (we already have two), sent out a questionnaire in a pretence of consultation, amongst the many gems contained within, was the question; would you like Ealing to be more like Hounslow (downmarket) or like Chiswick (upmarket), the concept of trying to create an individual identity for the place having, it would seem, passed them by. Although, historically, Ealing has always been a bit bland, suffering from being the first place where you changed your horses on your way to Bristol. It has always been a good place to go somewhere else from, not an ideal premise from which to start, and a concept that the council has embraced whole-heartedly; why bother to have any arts provision when there's plenty in the adjoining boroughs for example. We are going to have a new shopping centre behind the town hall, all four possible options have been presented for our delight. and all are the sort of stockbrick crimes against architecture that we should be unsurprised to be offered, how you make a choice in those circumstances is beyond me.

By way of a post-script, I spent most of yesterday in a freezing warehouse in Bow cleaning mud off the cables, don't let anybody fool you into thinking that this is a glamorous life, it has its positive side I grant you,but there are some very big negatives too, maybe I ought to blog something about them, but as this is meant to entertain, maybe I won't.

posted by Lampy @ 1/11/2006 11:11:00 am