Travels with Jonathan Part 2 - The frozen north

The weekend after attending the reunion in Mansfield I had to travel up to Dalgety Bay in Fife to drop my kids off at my parents for a week's holiday. The A1 was the chosen route and that was the last time I will willingly take that route north. The conditions were terrible and the road is just not fit for purpose. It wasn't helped by the fact that just into Scotland the road was flooded in 2 places and there were still idiots determined to do 100mph in any event.

On the Sunday due to the Forth Road Bridge being closed I had to take the Kincardine Bridge and travel down the M6 route. I did the journey in about an hour less than normal. Partly because I only had to stop when I needed to stop and partly because the traffic was fine until you got down to Lancaster. I stopped at Tebay, the much vaunted service station on the M6. On the same journey I had to stop at Bothwell near Glasgow, and on the return leg Birch and Bolton. Tebay southbound is better than the northbound at the moment largely because northbound there is a building site. But the point is that Tebay may well scalp you on the prices just like all the others but you resent paying the prices less because the surroundings and service are so much better than those provided by the big multiples.

One question that did puzzle me is why in hot sunny weather when common sense would dictate that women would wear strapless undergarments they insist on showing little or no fashion sense and show off every little item they are wearing straps and all.

Edinburgh does have something in common with Mansfield. Yes I know it sounds odd but it is true. Edinburgh for all its wonderful buildings and beautiful surroundings is a grimy city. If the city fathers took more time to clean the place up it would be an even bigger draw to tourists but just a couple of streets away from the Royal Mile the bin bags were piled high by the road side on a Saturday when the number of tourists is huge. The numbers were swollen by the gathering of the clans which boiled down to essentially, a lot of people dressed up in tartan.

Edinburgh is my favourite capital city of those I have visited and I could happily live there and probably go bankrupt in the shops.

Travels with Jonathan

I have in the last few weeks been doing a bit of travelling up and down the country observing places and people as I went. My first trip was to a school reunion in Mansfield. The reunion was something of a washout. I was the head boy of the school at which a teacher attacked and injured three children.

Mansfield was always something of a hole largely because its council refused to recognise that since it had lost its two main injuries (coal and textiles) the town was nothing more than a dormitory town for Nottingham. Most of my fellow students left Mansfield and have rarely returned since leaving for Huddersfield back in 1992 I have only been back about a dozen times. What shocked me about the place is that around my school it feels like somebody just let off a limited nuclear device. Most of the houses and shops around the school are empty or rather the old terraces are. The better houses seem to have remained largely unaffected.

Whilst in Mansfield I drove round some of my old houses and haunts to see what has happened. I didn't visit the Ladybrook estate. Our bungalow in Pleasley has remained largely unchanged from what I could see but the village in general has suffered the same problem located by my school. The police house where I grew up is now an industrial estate which is a terrible shame. The last house in Mansfield where I lived again hasn't changed much. The Nottingham Road end of town has remained fairly constant. The only bizarre change was the sudden appearance of a palm tree in my old front garden.

I had a round of golf at King George V on Berry Hill and rediscovered my enjoyment of the game. The peace and tranquility even though I hadn't hit a ball for about 5 years was great. The hotel where I stayed was functional and had a cat called Marmalade and the service was good as on Saturday they opened up the restaurant for me.

The town centre is stuck in a time warp though. The broken glass makes a scene reminiscent of Kristalnacht but without the poignancy. That is just the way Mansfield is. Those who care can't do anythign because those who don't care about anything shout loudest and everybody has to listen. The chavs queuing outside Greggs for their sausage rolls make the ones elsewhere in the country seem positively cosmopolitan. The interior of the Four Seasons Shopping Centre hasn't changed at all since I left all those years ago.

Another delight of the trip was the chance to go to St Phillips church again. Having attended some relatively humble establishments in recent years it was an oasis of calm in the storm that is life in Mansfield. The clergy may have changed but many of the congregation were there when I was a boy.It was great to speak to people I hadn't seen for years. The particular delights were to speak to my what would be now Y4/5 teacher and one of my headmasters.

Once Mansfield accepts what it is then change may come but if it doesn't then I foresee Mansfield breaking up into lots of small villages with a kind of separation between the areas people want to live and where those who have ambition live and those where the neanderthal indifferent residents currently reside.

More musings from my recent travels later