Coffee tastes better with friends

11 January 2015

It’s no secret that I hated working at Mad House right from the outset. In fact I only applied for the job because of a rather spooky coincidence that had me thinking the fates were trying to tell me something. My temporary job was coming to an end and my lovely boss, Mac, told me I should apply for a job at Mad House, “you’d be brilliant at it,” he said.
“A call centre! What gives you the idea I’d be brilliant in a call centre?”
“Well, you’re good at talking.”
“Yes, I learned at a very early age.”
“On the phone I mean, you have a lovely phone manner.”
“I worked in a call centre before. It was awful. I hated it.”

When I got home I checked my emails in case one of the three million or so prospective employers I’d applied to had made any offers. The hairs actually stood up on my arms when I saw one from Mad House. How spooky was that? For about a tenth of a second I thought Mac had applied in my name and then I read the email, apparently they had seen my CV on Monster.com and wanted me to apply. My finger hovered over the delete button. Memories of being chained to a headset, the pressure, the nasty customers, the beep as another call came through and the sick feeling it caused in the pit of my stomach. Call centres are awful places. Still, it was a huge coincidence. In a moment of madness, before I could change my mind, I filled in the online application. The rest, as they say, is history.

Maybe the fates were right though because, while the job was all I feared and worse, something good came out of it. The good thing was my enduring friendship with Panda, who suffered along with me, sat next to me and generally made life bearable. It’s been ages since we had a proper catch up and, after a bit of texting back and forth during the week, we finally settled on Sunday morning in Costa by the Bargate. We had a lot of catching up to do.

The sun was even shining when I set off for town, although it was fairly chilly. On the railway bridge the tangled mass of clematis vitalba seed heads was lit by the morning sun. The roads were fairly empty so, for once, there was no traffic jam on the bridge. All week it’s been mayhem because of the lane closures. Behind the flashing signs warning of delays, the big yellow speeding camera seemed slightly obsolete. It’s doubtful if anyone has gone through faster than five miles an hour since the work started.

A workman in a high vis jacket was sitting in a big yellow digger on the central reservation but he didn’t seem to be doing anything much. As far, as far as I can tell, all they’ve done is dig up the flagstones of the island along the middle of the bridge and pile all the stones into an untidy heap right in the centre. If this is almost a week’s work, no wonder whatever it is they’re doing is going to take twenty weeks. I’m pretty sure one man with a pick axe could have achieved more in five days.

In the middle I stopped for a moment to look out over the water and all the sail boats moored in the bay. The rowing club were on the bank preparing to go out, or maybe they had just come back, it was hard to tell. As I walked on through the estate and the run down antique shops in St Mary’s I thought fondly of all the walks to work at Silver Helm.

Before long I’d reached the parks, Palmerston Park to be precise. There was hardly anyone about but I shared the path with a seagull, waddling along looking for scraps. Originally I’d meant to cut straight through the park and up to the Above Bar precinct but, as usual, I couldn’t resist a quick detour through the Enchanted Park. At this time of year most of the interest comes from dried out hydrangea flowers but there was a touch or two of colour from the camelia flowers. Sadly, after Saturday’s wind, most of them are on the ground rather than the bush.

Last winter a tree fell just off the winding path. The park keepers have left it to rot and, behind it, I was pleased to see one camelia that has managed to hold on to the majority of its blooms. I miss my daily fix of walking through here watching the changes, always seeing some tiny new detail.

Time was getting on so I left the park behind and made my way down to the Bargate. This is something else I miss. The symbol of my city, flanked by two lead lions dating back to 1743, the medieval gate to the old walled town of Southampton overlooks both the High Street and Above Bar. Built in 1180, the patchwork of stone and flint that form the castle like gate were originally meant to defend the town against raids by the French. Their purpose has long since been forgotten by most of the city’s citizens, but I can’t help but think of the the men who built those walls, or the many feet before mine walking through that ancient arch.

Some of those feet are, by all accounts, ghostly ones, although I have to admit I’ve never seen any of the ghosts that are said to haunt the old town. The story of the Bargate ghost is a particularly tragic one. Back in the seventeenth century Lizzie Loader lived in the Woolston area and kept a few cows. She regularly made the ferry journey across the Itchen to sell dairy products in the town market. One night, on her way back to the ferry, she was attacked by a group of footpads, the equivalent of modern day muggers. They robbed her of her market takings and killed her.

Those were days filled with superstition and old wives tales and, for some reason, it was believed that touching the body of a murder victim was a cure for illness. Although Lizzie had been buried, her body was exhumed and sat in the High Street where the sick could come and touch it. Imagine a rotting corpse dressed in rags sitting in the street today, it would certainly attract attention but I doubt people would be keen to touch it. If they did I am pretty sure it wouldn’t cure them of anything and might well actually spread disease. To this day Lizzie’s ghostly figure can, apparently, be seen floating around the Bargate and the surrounding streets.

Thinking of poor Lizzie, I stopped for a few minutes and looked at the arched gateway to the old town. The shields above are faded and crumbling, the flagstones worn smooth by centuries of passing feet but I saw no floating corpses. Whilst I was under the arch I looked up just to be sure and almost jumped out of my skin when a woman, probably in her sixties, tapped me on the shoulder.
“Are you waiting to join the garden walk?” she asked, proving herself to be flesh and blood and not the ghost of poor Lizzie, which was quite a relief.
“I’m not, but it sounds interesting,” I told her. “Maybe, another time.”

Inside the city walls a man had set up a fancy looking camera on a tripod and was taking photos. As I didn’t particularly want to spoil his shots by being in them I moved to the side and, in the process, came face to face with one of the gargoyles at the base of the arched doorway to the right of the main arch. For all the times I’ve stood looking at the Bargate, I’ve never really noticed them before. Sadly, time and weather have taken their toll and the face is barely reginisable as such now. The encounter left me wondering what it might once have looked liked but I suppose I will never know. On another day I might have spent time looking at the other carvings, for there were many of them, but I had places to go and someone to meet. They will still be there when I come back I’m sure.

The short walk from Baragte to Costa’s took just a few moments and, in no time at all, I saw the familiar figure of Panda walking towards me. My Sunday walk may not have been the longest but it was worth missing out on the extra miles to spend a couple of hours chatting and catching up with a good friend.