Ghost Town:
I was born and bred in Coventry. For years - from the age of about 12 until just recently - I wanted to get as far away from it as I could. At the end of my last tour I went back to visit my mum and my brother and for the first time in ages found the place intriguing and illuminating. (It probably isn't for anyone else...)
Coventry once boasted a busy, overcrowded, medieval-designed but developing city before WWII. The city centre becamse so congested the council were trying to find ways to relieve the congestion. Then the Luftwaffe blitzed it during the war, and razed the city centre to the ground. From a bustling medieval city centre to a wasteland with a ruined Cathedral in no time at all.
Not wasting any time (and after the allies bombed Dresden in return--see Slaughterhouse 5, so it goes) the city was rebuilt quickly int he post war years around a new city centre design by architect Donald Gibson. His revolutionary idea was to remove all the cars and to pedestrianize the centre of town.
Sadly, this had the effect of making the town centre one of those good-on-paper ideas as it sanitised the city centre and made it bland and lacking in dynamics.
Then, in the 1970s the city got hit badly by the recession when all the car factories and heavy industry started to close. Double-whammy. Coventry changed from a place where my grandmother's generation would once talk about the city's character and craftsmen with pride to turn into the most violent city in Europe. There was nothing left.
This is where I grew up.
What I noticed on this trip is that compared to almost anywhere esle, and with the recent redevelopment, it's not such a bad place. It has a lot going for it. In fact, the main problem seemed to be the people. Many were aggressive and feral looking, almost all of them looked round-shouldered and beaten. When I first walked around the city centre on the recent bank holiday afternoon I was surprised by the sharp stares and skulking aggression I encountered before I realised that I may be a poncey git from New York now but I did grow up a spiteful little fucker, just like the little shits hanging around the precinct trying to menace the shoppers.
Once I got my game-face back on I had a hoot walking around Coventry. The city's improved a thousandfold since I lived there, there are cafes and restaurants and stores open at the weekend and it's not so bleak (but that might be because I don't live there). I felt sad for the people; there was a haunted look to many faces that went beyond the usual English dourness. I remember when I lived there that not only did I feel like I came from nowhere, there probably wasn't much point in trying to aspire to much outside. It's shit, innit, Cov? Women who'd look at home striding the streets of Manhattan pushed prams hunched over; kids who should be developing games companies or starting businesses skulked around the centre of the precinct. If everyone in Cov said it was brilliant for a year the city would go into turnaround, I'm sure.
Friends I've made since, from other regional cities didn't share this view. They might say Leeds is shit but it was never the end of the line for them. Or they'd brag about Sheffield like they were - gulp - proud of their hometown. All foreign feelings to me.
It's a shame that the song that captured the tone of the city in 1981 can still be relevant today. Back then there'd been a recession, now it seemed more like an attitude, or a nickname that's been allowed to stick. Give a dog a bad name....
Enough of my yacking. This is where I'm from.
I'm from Coundon (pronounced Cown-Dun). My mate Graham was in the Coundon Dogs, they rode around on 50cc scooters. I didn't have a scooter so I wasn't cool.
This lush lawny area is misleading. Until I was 10 it was waste ground that we'd ride our bikes over. In fact when they were laying new pipes (water,gas, etc) we used to roll them down the hill towards the traffic, sometimes with people in them. I went down a few times in a steel drum. And we used to roll old car tyres down the hill but they sometimes went into the oncoming traffic and we'd have to leg-it. Kids, eh?
This is the street I was born on. Everyone's got three cars now. Back when I were a lad there was at most one Ford Cortina per house.... Those are conker trees - we used to strip them every autumn, first with sticks and later with a nut tied to a bit of string you could lob up over the branch and then yank on to shake the conkers down. We made a right mess. We didn't care about playing conkers so much as getting them. It was a good place to be a kid. Plenty of fresh air and space.
These flats up the road from my mum's used to be considered a bit fancy. Roger the poncey, short-tempered hairdresser lived in one and he was divorced, which was considered quite outre back then. Now it seems they lack a certain class. I'm a great believer in being able to gauge a nation's pysche by its pornography and its advertising. This truck says it all. This shop used to sell women's clothes now it sells cheap booze.
The road into the countryside just past the White Lion pub at the top of my mum's street. When I was a kid we'd ride our bikes up here; when I was an adolescent we'd drink in the pub and try to go snogging with girls. I did a lot more bike riding than I did snogging. What can I say? I was a late bloomer.
People often jump off these blocks of flats when they can't handle living in them anymore.
Coventry's infamous ring road. It's a local road for local people. Not many outsiders get it right first time.
We used to run across the ring road but someone put up a big boring fence so now you have to walk over bridge. It's no fun. However, it gives a view of the city centre. The brown building is the Post Office. The IRA tried to blow it up in the 70's. Bleak, innit?
Part of the pedestrianized precinct. At night, when the shops shut and the people go home the city centre gets very empty and the only people you can see wandering around are packs of kids on their way somewhere or shitfaced on cheap/potent lager. That's when Cov' gets menacing. Doesn't look so bad here, does it? It's lairy at night. You don't make eye contact.
This used to be HMV where I came to read the music papers without buying them. A forerunner of Barnes and Noble in that respect. Now there are a lot of 99 Pence stores in town and this huge Pawnshop. That's a bit depressing.
The Burges. Where the chip shops, the bus stops and the taxi-ranks are. When the licensing laws in Britain meant everywhere had to close at 11PM (pubs) or 2AM (clubs) by about 11:30 and 2:30 this place was teeming with drunks trying to get chips and buses and taxis. I saw more fights here than I care to remember. You had to keep your eyes open. Anyone who wanted a ruck knew here was the place to start it. And all repressed English towns at closing time are full of angry people who want to fight. We'd walk down here to the Parson's Nose chip shop which was the best chippie in Cov. This photo was taken at 11:30AM on a Tuesday. The pub, the Coventry Cross, was doing a brisk business which made me sad that people didn't have anything better to do. It seemed indicative of the overwhelming feeling of the city.
The Parson's Nose and Mr Porky's. Two late-night institutions. Yes the sign does say Faggots, Peas and Chips All In. No, I'm not going to tell you what that means except to say that it was the primo-after pub meal if you could afford it. I rarely could so I'd usually get Saveloy and Chips. Typing this is making my mouth water.
The woman who ran the Parson's Nose was infamously rude to people--especially girls. There was always someone crying outside of here and often another row brewing.
Mr Porky's - he sold pork batches with stuffing. (Batch is Coventry for bread roll or bun. But it's a batch, right?). Never let it be said we didn't have any choice.
You'd eat your chips on the walk home as you'd never have enough money for a cab (well, townies might, if they had apprenticeships or something).
The station, looking south towards London. That misty strech of track always seemed like the portal to another world. I rarely went to London. It was like Narnia to me as a teen. And when I finally escaped and moved there, the world really did open up. But this view reminds me of being abitious and clueless.
Good. Now I've got that out of my system....
