In early May, an author friend, Terry Tyler, mentioned getting a third off the cost of her rail tickets using a special rail card for the over-sixties. Entering the seventh decade of life doesn’t have too many benefits, so I thought I’d investigate. After a quick discussion with Commando and a simple online process, I was the proud owner of a sparkly new Senior Railcard. Actually, it’s an app on your smartphone, not a physical card, although you can order one if you wish. Having shelled out the princely sum of £30 each, we thought we’d better get our money’s worth, so on 7 May, we took our Senior Railcards on a trial run.
Friday 13 January may not have been the most auspicious of dates for my inaugural 2023 walk, but it was the first non-stormy day that I felt well enough to risk venturing further than the local shops. It was still cold and windy, so I planned a route that gave me plenty of chances to cut things short if the weather turned nasty or my post-Covid tiredness got the better of me. I began with a slow stroll along the cut way beside the old St Mary’s College playing fields. I wanted to see if building work had started on the site since the College closed.
For my birthday this year, Commando decided to take me on a mini break to London, and I came up with a list of interesting, non-touristy things to see. To avoid the rush hour traffic, he thought it would be a good idea to catch the train from our local station. They only run once an hour, but it gave us time to have a coffee in the local coffee emporium near Southampton Central Station before our London train arrived. We strolled down the road to the station with our overnight bags over our shoulders, feeling as if we were on an adventure. There was a train on the platform, so we hastily bought our tickets from the automatic ticket machine and ran across the bridge. It looked as if we’d timed it perfectly.
We Brits are famous for talking about the weather. It’s true, we do. There’s a good reason for this obsession. Although our little island rarely experiences the extreme weather other places have to contend with, ours is far from consistent. There are no guaranteed warm, dry summers, winter doesn’t necessarily mean snow, rain is always around the corner and it’s quite normal to get all four seasons in one day. When extremes do happen, we’re really not geared up for it. Our houses don’t have air conditioning and there are no snow ploughs or chains for car tyres. The last week has been a tad on the warm side. In fact, the Met Office recorded a record UK temperature of 40.3°C on 19 July. The media gleefully catastrophised. There were headlines like ‘How the heatwave broke Britain,’ and ‘Gates of Hell are opening.’ If it hadn’t been so warm, the men with sandwich boards would surely have been walking up and down, proclaiming that the end of the word was nigh. When people began saying it was far worse than the famous summer of 1976, eye-rolling in our house reached danger levels.
On 11 January, I stood on the corner of Lyon Street and Onslow Road in the fog and thought about the best route home. The quickest way was to walk to the end of the road and turn left onto Derby Road and then right onto Mount Pleasant. I was so close to the Royal South Hants Hospital, though, it seemed silly not to see it while I was there. After all, it had played a pivotal role in Land Fit For Heroes, and I could almost imagine Percy running along the road in the dark. Of course, the hospital he would have seen no longer exists — at least, most of it doesn’t.
Christmas 2021 was a controversial event. The new Omicron variant of COVID had been tearing through the population but the powers that be were divided on what action to take. On one hand, there were loud calls from some for another stringent lockdown. On the other, there was a lot of evidence that the new variant was relatively benign. The result was a combination of confusion and apathy from the general public. The nations of the UK were divided in their approach, which didn’t help with the confusion. Luckily for me, restrictions in England were ruled out before the New Year. Dire warnings were issued by those who disagreed — hospitals would be overwhelmed — millions would die — it would all be the government’s fault. Hyperbole was flying around like Christmas tinsel. As for me, my Christmas morning was spent at Southampton parkrun.
Once again Commando is pacing the Winchester Half Marathon. There have been lots of Sunday runs with the pacer team. Today though, they were doing a practice run on the course. Despite the early start I went along too. Any chance to wander around Winchester for a few hours is always welcome and this morning I had a plan.
One of the great joys in my life is walking in the quiet places. I am a connoisseur of secluded little cut ways, hidden footpaths, trails and walkways. Finding a way to get from a to b that doesn’t involve walking along a road makes me smile, especially when it is beside a river. On my walks I’m always on the lookout for these hidden gems and the ones I know I use regularly, even if they add miles to my walks. Today I chose a route bursting at the seams with away from the road delights for my early morning walk. Unfortunately some of them are not as accessible as they should be though.
When I’d seen all I could of the Bargate Quarter progress I crossed the road and headed towards some more building work. This has been going on for a lot longer, although things are moving on apace right now. There was a time when I thought I’d be looking down on this project daily and watching things unfold, but a lot has changed since then.
In 2013 I was working on the top floor of an office block overlooking the old East Street Shopping Centre. The views, especially the sunsets, were spectacular. The shopping centre, built in the 1970’s, was the first in the city but it was never completely successful because it was too far removed from the centre of town. In 2012 the last retail unit closed but the building remained open as a car park and for the public to walk through from St Mary’s.
In the summer of 2013, the doors were closed for good and, shortly afterwards, we watched from our office window as the demolition work began. Often I’d take a photo from the window of our little kitchen while I was making coffee. It felt like watching history in progress. Soon we learned that a supermarket was going to be built on the site and a new walkway joining St Mary’s to East Street. We watched the old shopping centre disappear with interest and anticipated watching the new building go up and then popping into the supermarket at lunchtime to buy our groceries.
2013 from my office window2013 from my office window2013 from my office window
None of these things were meant to be though. Not long after the work began we learned our office was closing. We were all being made redundant. Watching the building slowly disappear became a metaphor for our jobs. Then the supermarket owners pulled out and, for a long time, work stopped.
No longer working in the city centre meant I lost touch with what was happening at the bottom end of East Street, although I occasionally walked past and looked through the site gates. Driving past recently I noticed some new apartments have been built and Commando told me about a pedestrian walkway that has now opened. Today I thought I’d take a closer look.
Since I last came this way the row of shops opposite Debenhams has also been demolished. Often in my lunch hour I’d walk past them and occasionally go into the little bric-à-brac store, Scoops, to look around. This row of shops was where an IRA bomb exploded in the late 1970’s. In those days there were bomb scares all the time but this was the only actual bomb I remember exploding. Luckily, no one was hurt although the carpet shop where the bomb was planted and the surrounding area, including Debenhams, was damaged by the blast.
The IRA Bomb aftermathThe IRA Bomb aftermath
The bomber was caught some years later and jailed for seventeen years. Now the shops have gone. They weren’t especially attractive or busy. In fact, the whole area always felt a little down at heel. Soon there will be new commercial units, car parking and apartments. From the plans they look much nicer that anything there before and the whole thing will complement the Bargate Quarter.
The proposed new apartments
A little further on a few shops still remain. These are older buildings with character. Hopefully they won’t be torn down but time will tell.
What I really wanted to see was the new walkway and buildings. The first thing I came to was the tall office block where I was offered a job before I accepted the one at Silver Helm. For a while I thought it was going to be pulled down like the shopping centre and pub beneath it but it’s now had a revamp and is looking very swish.
Just past the office block are the first of the new flats. As they are student accommodation I imagine the moaners hate them and are complaining bitterly but I quite like them. They’re made of light coloured brick and have the look of old fashioned warehouses to me.
The walkway is wide and paved in light coloured stone. It feels a safe and pleasant place. Between the buildings there are little areas of greenery. This is something else I like and will like even better if some seating appears at some point. My only frustration was that I couldn’t see through the hoardings and find out what was going on on the rest of the site.
Out on the street opposite the end of St Mary’s Street I discovered that the underpass that was closed when the demolition began has been reopened. Before I went through it I walked around to the other sid of the remaining building site onto Lime Street to try to satisfy my curiosity. What I discovered was a lot of nothing. Just some containers, probably being used as builders offices and a few cars parked up.
When the underpass was blocked off it was a bit of a blow. It was a nice easy place to cross the road without having to wait for traffic lights to change, important when you’re in a rush to get to work. The murals all along the sides of the sloping entrance ramp always made me smile too. They were representations of the local people in all their diversity. When it was all boarded up I often wondered if they were still there. Today I discovered they still were, albeit faded and, in some places peeling. Maybe the artist will come back and repaint them now?
Emerging on the far side of the underpass felt like a walk back in time for me. I could almost imagine I was going to pop into the cafe in Central Hall and grab a coffee before going around the corner and back to my office to arrange ship visits, entertainers and turnaround days. Sadly, those days are gone now though so I kept walking, past St Mary’s Church retracing the steps of so many walks home.
It was December 1972 and Pappy was ill. He’d caught a cold from me, a cold I’d brought home from school and, as always, it had gone to his chest. He only had one lung after all. For days he’d been coughing and wheezing. My own cold had turned into a chest infection and I was off school myself which was almost unheard of. Mother made me go to school no matter how sick I was but they’d promptly packed me off home when they saw my feverish face and I’d been sent to the doctor for some penicillin. The little capsules proved impossible to swallow so Pappy opened them up and I had to take the bitter tasting powder on a teaspoon. Continue reading Memories of the early seventies – Arguments and a giant chair
