Houses are not just for living in.
Here we are in Richmond, Yorkshire. A place I haven’t visited since I was 17 or 18 about 3,000,000 years ago. As we get closer, I say, ‘My memory of it is that it is very posh.’ –realising, almost immediately, that this was, at the time, because I wasn’t. It is a standard market town, much like many in Yorkshire and it is interesting going around it today to realise that I have in fact, moved on, and that it is not so much posh (although there is a Hunter Welly Shop) as different, and that for a girl from the City, that difference was a world a way from my experience. The town is a hive of activity – but there are properties, and shops standing empty, and in the half rain there is something a bit bleak here. Older women are doing lunch – and I am guessing they are making moves to put the world to rights. These are the kind of women who fix things, hold fetes and are part of the Women’s Institute.
There is that green/brown woollen jumperness to it. The Barbour Jacketness of the place just rings out, so far as it is possible for Barbour Jackets to ring. In essence the difference is not in monetary terms (although it is richer here, and I am certain there is also poverty), but the real differences lie in class, and in terms of politics (William Hague) and in terms of expectation as to what you do. (There are no factories here, and no fishing industry.) It is not like Hull. People do not come from generations of unemployment. (They do move out to find things to do, and I can and do accept that that is a difficult thing to have to come to terms with. This is not better or worse, necessarily, but it certainly is different.)
As we walk back to the car (we are those sort of tourists) we notice an enormously large house. It is a huge mansion of a place, with Virginia creeper dying back, with something slightly unkempt about it, and yet it is singing money, and it reminds me of something that happened years and years ago after returning from a Rangers camp in Durham.
We were travelling back on a mini-bus, and dropping off young women as we got closer and closer to the centre of Hull. This was not my first trip to places like Cherry Burton, and Swanland, and Willerby and so on, after all I had been cycling for a number of years through these places and onto other equally exotic places like Welton, Malton and Wetwang for years and years, and yet somehow, this was the first time I had ever really noticed that people lived there. It was, as we dropped off each of these lovely, well-spoken girls, the first time I realised that people lived in the whole of these houses. And it was the first time I noticed just how big they were. And how they were not joined together, with shared back alleys and ten-foots. It was the first time I really noticed how different the world was from this angle. I’m not suggesting, either, that we lived in a minute, shrunken property by comparison (although, in comparison to these properties we did), only that it was evidently a different kind of world.
Looking towards the houses, as girls carried rucksacks up their paths, it occurred to me that they did not share bedrooms, did not have to go to the park to get some space, or buy the opportunity to ride a horse (although, to be fair, I would rather have eaten my own head than ridden a horse). These girls did not have to run the gamut of the Tilsons, or the Fureys to get to their house, or pick their way through wild running dogs and their shit. These girls’ mothers did not, I was guessing, go out of an afternoon and wash the step and/or windowsills, or sweep the front yard. I realised that quite probably these girls’ mothers did not pick up the gossip in this way. I sensed their fathers did not cycle to and from work, either. And I noticed there were no bloody shops. Where did they do their paper rounds from? Where did they run to if they’d forgotten something? How did it work? No one was playing in the streets. No one was in the street at all – it was like a ghost town. How then did news travel?
The world is different now of course, but those girls’ mothers, like the women doing lunch, did not let the news come to them, but affected it where possible. They did not wait for the world to change around them as bystanders, but found ways of developing a commentary, or manoeuvred themselves into positions that enabled them to support their communities in ways that mattered. And they drove cars, and had a freedom mothers like my mother did not enjoy. And I was guessing, they did not work in Smith and Nephew putting the lids on Nivea, or serving fish and chips.
There is that green/brown woollen jumperness to it. The Barbour Jacketness of the place just rings out, so far as it is possible for Barbour Jackets to ring. In essence the difference is not in monetary terms (although it is richer here, and I am certain there is also poverty), but the real differences lie in class, and in terms of politics (William Hague) and in terms of expectation as to what you do. (There are no factories here, and no fishing industry.) It is not like Hull. People do not come from generations of unemployment. (They do move out to find things to do, and I can and do accept that that is a difficult thing to have to come to terms with. This is not better or worse, necessarily, but it certainly is different.)
As we walk back to the car (we are those sort of tourists) we notice an enormously large house. It is a huge mansion of a place, with Virginia creeper dying back, with something slightly unkempt about it, and yet it is singing money, and it reminds me of something that happened years and years ago after returning from a Rangers camp in Durham.
We were travelling back on a mini-bus, and dropping off young women as we got closer and closer to the centre of Hull. This was not my first trip to places like Cherry Burton, and Swanland, and Willerby and so on, after all I had been cycling for a number of years through these places and onto other equally exotic places like Welton, Malton and Wetwang for years and years, and yet somehow, this was the first time I had ever really noticed that people lived there. It was, as we dropped off each of these lovely, well-spoken girls, the first time I realised that people lived in the whole of these houses. And it was the first time I noticed just how big they were. And how they were not joined together, with shared back alleys and ten-foots. It was the first time I really noticed how different the world was from this angle. I’m not suggesting, either, that we lived in a minute, shrunken property by comparison (although, in comparison to these properties we did), only that it was evidently a different kind of world.
Looking towards the houses, as girls carried rucksacks up their paths, it occurred to me that they did not share bedrooms, did not have to go to the park to get some space, or buy the opportunity to ride a horse (although, to be fair, I would rather have eaten my own head than ridden a horse). These girls did not have to run the gamut of the Tilsons, or the Fureys to get to their house, or pick their way through wild running dogs and their shit. These girls’ mothers did not, I was guessing, go out of an afternoon and wash the step and/or windowsills, or sweep the front yard. I realised that quite probably these girls’ mothers did not pick up the gossip in this way. I sensed their fathers did not cycle to and from work, either. And I noticed there were no bloody shops. Where did they do their paper rounds from? Where did they run to if they’d forgotten something? How did it work? No one was playing in the streets. No one was in the street at all – it was like a ghost town. How then did news travel?
The world is different now of course, but those girls’ mothers, like the women doing lunch, did not let the news come to them, but affected it where possible. They did not wait for the world to change around them as bystanders, but found ways of developing a commentary, or manoeuvred themselves into positions that enabled them to support their communities in ways that mattered. And they drove cars, and had a freedom mothers like my mother did not enjoy. And I was guessing, they did not work in Smith and Nephew putting the lids on Nivea, or serving fish and chips.
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