The Regeneration ABC.
A's Anti-Social Behaviour, the sort that's committed by chavs, and
A's Anti-Social Behaviour, the sort that's committed by chavs, and
I was listening to Mike Garry's poem "Regeneration" this morning after another conversation on Twitter with @mikechitty. I decided to have a go at my own South Leeds version . . . it's not as gloomy as Mikes's poem, and I cobbled it together over my coffee break so it hardly constitutes literature. I had fun writing it though. It kept my brain ticking over at least.
Anyone with a delicate disposition be warned, this isn't a pretty verse about squirrels and fake village quaintness. This stuff really happens around the corner. As I strolled out one summer mornIs there anything more excruciating, more desperate, more ridiculous than a one-sided declaration of love? I can't think of much. And what if the suitor wrote you a love letter IN FULL CAPS? What would you think? Needy? Creepy? Slightly deranged? But then what if the declaration of devotion was not only in full caps but underlined and repeated page after page? Would you want to meet that person? Would that approach really win you over? Would you think, Aw bless! They genuinely do think I'm the applet of their iPhone, the best thing since PlayStation 3! Or would you be more likely to call the police and get a restraining order? If you were unlucky enough to find yourself in the same room as that person would you make sure that you had an unimpeded, fast route to the exit, and maybe a couple of cans of Mace, just in case things kicked off?
Of course I'm talking about We Love Holbeck. It's not that I dislike the place or want to do it down. Just the reverse. I live here, got roots in the area going back four generations at least; grandparents lived in Domestic Street
Today I intended to write something about design. Or rather my problems with the design for Holbeck . . . or should that be designs on Holbeck? I had an hour or so free this afternoon so I was going to wander my usual way into town, take a few more photos around the Holbeck Urban Village, then write my blog over a coffee in Out of the Woods. It was a good plan. I'd even scribbled some notes about the democratisation of design, compiled a few links, concocted a witty remark or two. I was looking forward to getting it down on paper.
My usual route into town takes me through the blitzed and boarded up streets off Top Moor Side, passed two burned out and trashed pubs, along bridge Road where the prostitutes work in pairs, and down Sweet Street West, before I finally hit the salubrious part of town. It's a quarter mile of text-book urban blight. I'm pretty much immune to the sights. Nothing can really shock me. Not even the girls who regularly accost passing men between Bridge Road and Water Lane, touting for business, shouting their fees, negotiation is not acceptable . . . twenty pounds for a blow job, twenty five pounds for "everything." I've had several conversations with the girls regarding their unsound grasp of economics and puzzling pricing structure. But I don't think an in depth discussion of the intricacies of business planning is ever going to convince them. You have to admire their entrepreneurial spirit though . . . I've seen some of the girls stop cars! They just seem to know who's likely to be in the market for business. Sweet Street West has recently been improved. The area is still notorious but at least the pot holes have been levelled. Before the improvement the bottom end of Sweet Street was grim. You couldn't walk three yards without the squelch of discarded prophylactic underfoot. The street leads onto some very expensive real estate, however; plush hotels, fancy law firms, accountancy head offices and major banks all have an investment there, big, blank, boring buildings. The council decided that the old Sweet Street was not fit for purpose and laid a very nice new stretch of tarmac so visitors coming off the motorway on the Beeston side could flit through that bit of urban nastiness without noticing too much what was either side. The council didn't touch the wasteland beside the viaduct. Fifty yards or so of high weed, random fly tipping, and dark, gloomy walls. Perfect for "business." Today I noticed a thin line of blue Police Incident tape stretched between three lamp posts. It didn't register what that meant at first. I'd been happily snapping pics on my mobile of scenes that would make anyone love Holbeck; a rat merrily sauntering over the street just outside the derelict Kwik Save, a portly smirking old gentleman leaning to open the passenger door of his company Skoda to a tired and washed out waif of a girl (16 tops,) a bloke oblivious on his mobile who was about to dump a load of old window frames from the back of his van onto the tiny bit of green space just beside Holbeck Towers . . . usual stuff, nothing spectacular.Today though, no more than a minutes walk from Holbeck Urban Village, something pretty nasty had happened. Without really thinking I took a picture of the Police tape. Just that, police tape stretching between the lamposts. I thought it looked rather dramatic. I'd managed to catch the full tawdry, dingy awfulness of Sweet Street West in the foreground with a hint of Granary Wharf jutting up majestic and flawless behind the Satanic looking viaduct. I didn't notice that an unmarked police car was parked next to the tape. I assumed it was a driver who was lost, or having lunch, or just having a nosey. The police officer demanded that I stop taking pictures. Then she asked me to hand over my phone. I was flummoxed for a second . . . she asked me to delete the pictures. I said that I'd obviously delete anything if she could tell me what I'd done wrong, but I didn't see any problem. She said it's not nice to take pictures of a crime scene. I pointed out that my picture was of a triangle of police tape, a triangle which contained nothing but weeds, smashed bits of concrete, and maybe the odd syringe. I showed her my pic . . . it really was rather smashing as an image I argued. I tried to engage her in a conversation about how the composition was an implicit comment on the regeneration agenda, how the only crime contained in the image was the one perpetrated by the developers and their lackeys in the local council, how really it would be an indictment on the whole charade of community policing if she didn't let me keep my little snapshot of what community has come to in South Leeds . . . I'm afraid she was immune to my rapier like thrusts of dialectical brilliance. She was on her radio . . . for back up! I really didn't fancy my chances against back up . . . if one copper was immune to reason I could only imagine double the resistance from back up. I let her have my phone. She deleted everything. She told me not to write anything about the incident either. I had told her what I intended to do with the image, just part of documenting the reality of my bit of the world. She was adamant that blogging about a crime scene "wasn't nice." When I asked why she just said, "I just wouldn't, sir, " and nodded towards a corner of the square of scrubland that she was intent on protecting. There was some kind of plastic tent. Shabby, sagging in the rain. I hadn't even noticed. I heard her radio crackle and a voice say something about them being on their way. I thought it circumspect to retreat. Later, when I got home and started to tweet about it I mentioned my little brush with the law. I said that I'd experienced Hush Hush Holbeck. Someone said it would make a great name for a website/publication. I'm thinking about doing a subversive little skit about the We Love Holbeck website anyhow so that may be the domain name. Mockery is the poor people's helicopter gunship. Let's face it, they aren't going to listen to reasoned, critical discussion. Watch out for us on Twitter too!Last night I ReTweeted a post from the Creative Class Struggle blog. The blog is dedicated to challenging the Richard Florida approach to urban regeneration. It wasn't a very in-depth critique but I really liked the posters that advertised a conference. They are really worth checking out.Not long afterward I noticed a tweet from the agency I criticised the other day for perpetrating that We Love Holbeck website. They ReTweeted the link from the original source, remarking and...FUCK ME! It's all in CAPS! I took that as a veiled response to my argument that the use of CAPS on the website was a tad excessive. Fair enough I thought, I'm not exactly consistent . . . though the use of CAPS on a political poster with short, snappy slogans did seem more reasonable than on a long discursive website. Just an aesthetic judgment, but one I'm willing to defend. But then minutes after the agency tweeted this;
I was going to play nice today. There really are a lot of positive things going on in South Leeds. Temple Works for instance. I'm definitely going to write lots about that soon. But then I saw the new We Love Holbeck website and I'm afraid I flew into full on fulmination again. I'm not a graphic designer and I'm certainly no web geek so I can't really comment on that side of things . . . though tan text on a brown background did strike me as a bit odd. And I really do feel warm and fuzzy about Holbeck Urban Village . . . I'd love to live there. I wish I could afford to. But I'm one of the indigenous people of Holbeck, which is how we were revealingly described at a showing of Ripples Out at The Round Foundry last month. As that film makes very clear me and my kind are not really expected to contribute significantly to the Urban Village economic and creative powerhouse. Best we can hope for is to exercise our "sophisticated concierge skills." I suppose it's nice to think they trust us down there to know how to open and shut a door. So, We Love Holbeck. Made by those brainboxes down in the HUV, showing off their superiority over us poor benighted locals. I was prepared to bend my head low, doff my flat cap, and shed just the one awe engendered tear. Well, I liked the photos . . . I'm surprised I'm not in one of them as I spend so much time at The Cross Keys and The Midnight Bell. Wonderwood looks spiffing and there's a nice pic of Out of the Woods. But why is all the text IN SCREAMING CAPITALS? Why is WE LOVE HOLBECK underlined every time . . . are they anxious we won't get the message? Why is the punctuation so patchy and the syntax so shoddy . . . would it hurt to craft a tight, punchy sentence once in a while? And, most importantly, where is the love? It sounds like it was written under duress by someone who would rather be back home in Surrey;
This piteous drivel is meant to impress us, is it? Frankly, I'm embarrassed to be associated with it. I don't think they should be allowed to traduce the good name of Holbeck. Holbeck deserves better. Holbeck could do better. I could go out into any street in South Leeds and randomly pick ten people who could eat alphabetti spaghetti and crap better copy than that! And I'm not joking. The funniest bit of the whole thing has to be;
The joke isn't the ludicrous sentence structure (HUV is set in an "environment" . . . well, who would have thought . . . an environment indeed.) Has anyone inspected the Round Foundry car park after 6 o clock? Obviously the people who work there do want to go home . . . out of Holbeck! The fabulous bars and restaurants are dead most evenings after 8. Does anyone really believe this rubbish?
Why would anyone come to Leeds? I mean anyone who didn't know the place, who had only the internet to rely on, who visited only the "official" websites. I was ranting on about this the other day after the Social Media Surgery with one of the other surgeons. He was saying how he'd lived in Barcelona for a few years and how the market there was famous throughout the world . . . it's nowhere near the size or the splendour or the architectural importance of Leeds Market, but who would know that? Plenty of people who live and work in Leeds don't even know the market is there. The guy was saying how he'd approached Leeds City Council with some ideas how to improve the marketing, how he'd even offered to do some work for free, but had gotten fobbed off . . . the in-house team are "taking care of it" apparently. I won't post a link to the market website. I can't bear the thing. Maybe if I was five years old and enjoyed clunky flash animations and patronising sound effects it might appeal. I also appreciate a certain standard of literacy. So when the council "officially endorses" a site that advertises
It does make me cringe. And when it says that some of the market traders are not "adverse" to haggling I have to wonder if the council are in need of some remedial English help.
Leeds is so Unique you had to say it twice in the same sentence? Is Leeds doubly unique then? I'd forgive the slipshod syntax and the stodgy, syrupy style if the rest of the site showed me why Leeds was so unique . . . or at least mentioned something tangible that I could get a grip on. But all we get is
I commented on a blog post this lunchtime. The post was about a film, commissioned by Yorkshire Forward, about the impact of its major regeneration project on where I live. I took all these photos this afternoon as I walked my usual way to town, passing through the Holbeck Urban Village. Just a bit depressing.
Why do I do this to myself? Another three hours slumped over the keyboard, driven to despair by the demented chirrup of tweetdeck, a sound which puts me in mind of what Prometheus must have felt when he heard that eagle squawk every morning. Can I survive another day of Twitter torment? My celebrity is gathering pace faster than a particle in the hadron super-collider. I'm beginning to wonder have my genes supplied me with the gumption to satisfy my rumbustious fan base? I cannot guess how many more followers have sought me out already today because when I guess I'm always wrong. By a factor of thousands. I've given up going to the Twitter home page. Every time it refreshes I fear a crash. I feel personally responsible for the fail whale. How many times will Firefox freeze today because of me? How many browsers of lesser distinction can one man, weary, bleary and ever so slightly teary, bring to their knees!
It's barely 10 am, and the third pot of coffee of the day is making me ping off the walls. Time to get to the gym to put in a good three hour workout for my Ultimate Fighting Championship campaign. I aim to win this year. Coming second again is not an option. Second is for sissies. I'll barely have time today to work on the documentary film about a lesser known Victorian architect that a good friend has asked me to collaborate on. And I really should get some writing in on that NaNoWriMo project if I'm going to finish my 15,000 words for the day. Once the reporters start calling it's a devil to concentrate. Yesterday it was Wired, the day before Fast Company, they all want a piece of me. They all want to know how I did it, how I became a Twitter celebrity. What does it feel like to be in such demand? I am bashful. Modest even. Shy and retiring most would say. I tell them that anyone can do it, that there's nothing special about me. But that's a blatant fib. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to pull it off. My life is no longer my own. I don't know if I can even call it a life any more, it's more a constant performance, one endless, interminable show time. I can't remember what life was like before Twitter and I live like a beast in a cage with nowhere to hide, prowling and preening all the time, my followers constantly, insatiably, demanding more. The trouble began a exactly 647 days ago when an advisor from West Yorkshire Business Link who was mentoring me at the time, mentioned social networking. At the time I knew very little about the concept, but I'd been an avid blogger since dinosaurs roamed the Earth and had already taken FaceBook by storm; like everything else in my life, I mastered the skills in the blink of an eye. From the very start my tweets, which were intimate, revealing, and life-affirming as well as being profound, were the toast of the internet. Bloggers blogged about me, journalists wrote articles, and I was much sought after as a guest on late night radio talk shows. At first I didn't think anything of it. I was just being myself. Of course, people found that incredibly charming. It was effortless and I have to admit that I found the attention entrancing. It had been some time since I had been in the spotlight; my last major literary prize was over three years ago and I was missing the adulation. Lots of the emails I got came from young women who wanted to get to know me on a more intimate basis. Occasionally I disappointed myself. I'm getting bored of this now so off to do something sensible . . . like the washing up . . . maybe some ironing.A significant moment of etiquette marking the transition between serious life-changing relationships concerns the correct timing of an event that few of us even own up to. Who hasn't told the new man/woman of our dreams, "no, darling, you're just perfect as you are", and sincerely, genuinely meant it without reservation? But then proceeded to trim, tinker, tweak and train them into being the sort of creature we really knew was in there all along just waiting to be teased out by our tender ministrations? Women are generally more forthright about this and will deliver increasingly more direct suggestions, applying sexual sanctions and penalties until it becomes more of a bother for their bloke to continue to pootle along in his predictable rut than to make a bloody effort. Men tend towards passive-aggression to manipulate their partner into more acceptable ways. I personally have perfected the art of the non-committal, hands deep in pocket shrug when I'm determined to get my own way in matters of the significant other's appearance. For instance I don't like dyed blond hair particularly. A few years ago however I was smitten by a woman with the body of Britney Spears and the coiffure of a Rovers Return landlady, a compromise I could handle for a while as it was winter and we spent a lot of time indoors with the lights off. She would often ask in the way women do of seeking repeated reassurance if I liked her hair this way, or would I prefer it some other style. Well, style was not my issue. The bleachy, screachy brassiness was. So, whenever the issue arose (ie whenever she found herself in front of a mirror) I'd say something like, "it's your hair, sweetness; if you like it that's fine by me", which in retrospect I can see was hardly convincing, but then I would then spare no opportunity to mercilessly traduce any passing trailer trash and their blackened roots. She got the message and went all natural. But like Billy Bragg said, "then one day it happened; she got her hair cut and I stopped loving her". Desire, I suppose, is all about the chase and not the attainment.
What sparked this rumination on the tendency to relinquish control of how we look under the gaze of a significant other? Well firstly and principally I am having to come to terms with my singleton status and the repercussions this unfamiliar arrangement is having on my life. Have I committed myself to a program of purposeful dating with a view to finding that someone special who'll be the one. Na! I'm just distracting myself right now with shallow and meaningless assignations, and I must add that as lifestyle choices go this one rocks. Obviously I can't hand over control of my appearance to every stray lady who gets to share in the delight of me in front of the shaving mirror each morning, so the decision over every aspect of my being is solely down to me, and that's quite scary. For instance dress sense. I really wanted for my last partner to help me out here, having about as much sartorial savvy as your average marmoset. But, fuck it, I can experiment and play around, and I'm not doing too bad and it is quite good fun, plus there are loads of really hot women in clothes shops who are just dying to help a guy out. Bonus. Then there's after-shave and grooming products, and again an excellent way to meet attractive women. Double whammy. It's the hair though. Well not exactly the hair; my cranium has been subject to the human equivalent of desertification for the past decade and a half at least, and not even Mary Mary quite contrary herself could work a miracle and make that garden bloom again. On the positive side I am spared the temptation to trek down the path of the pony tail. Fortunately all evidence of my previous experiment with this particular fashion faux pas has been lost; well, when I say lost it would be more accurate to say incinerated, along with a few favourite shirts, a cartload of books and whatever photographic images were laying around at the time. I really cannot say why it is that I select partners who all display a penchant for the farewell and nice to have known you possessions pyre. It's not something that I want to pursue right now, so moving swiftly along. What finished me with the whole hirsute look in the end though was waking up one morning and seeing the visage of the then England goalkeeper staring back out of the mirror, an image I could not simply dismiss as a distortion due to the perception-altering effects of the vast quantity of alcohol that was swilling through my system. Horrifyingly I did bear more than a passing resemblance to Mr Seaman, and the shock was enough to jolt me out of my fashion stupour sharpish. There was no time to find a barbers so I did a Delilah on myself. I still shudder when I think of the hank of sleek black hair that used to hang between my shoulder blades. So, having not much on top all I have to play with in the hair department is everything that sprouts south of the line between the bridge of my nose and the tops of my ears. Beards are out. I seriously don't fancy cultivating serial-killer chic. And the moustache is so 70's disco. I have always considered myself a punk, though in reality I was just a shabby scrag-end and the safety pins were in my case a utilitarian necessity and not a badge of anti-aesthetic rebellion. Plus I look bent enough thanks, and I've been told I'd look like Magnum PI if I grew a tash. Who needs that liability. Therefore the only available arena in which to differentiate myself from the herd style-wise is the side-burn. I've been growing mine now for about six years. A razor blade has not scraped upward of my earlobes since the then love-of-my-life decided that she liked me best with sideys. And that was fine by me. It added to the mornings chores, all that shaping and measuring and making even, made even more tedious by the fact that I cannot shave without my glasses. But it pleased her and that was the main concern. When the heartless calculating shallow harridan did the dirty on me again late this summer I was almost moved to sheer them off, and would have but for an old ex who took pity and persuaded me to go in the opposite direction, longer and leaner. Now this was even more hard work as I not only had the length to consider, making certain that each was trimmed to the exact same drop, but also the width and even the grade the stubble was shaved to. I was forced to become proficient with ruler, mirror, razor combination, and what a palaver it became. Fortunately a recent falling out with said ex has thrown me back on my own resources and made me reconsider the state of my sideys. I was thinking anyway that they had become far too long and pencil thin, lending me the aspect of the kind of person who would be first up for ferrying the next bunch of hapless mandarins toward the low tide at Morecombe bay. For the past couple of weeks they have been subject to a program of careful pruning, and I think the result is quite cute even if i do say so myself. We'll have to see how they work