After
umming and ahhing over a decent setting for my recent novel –
Weekend Rockstars – I
eventually settled on a fictionalised unnamed westcountry town that
was unnervingly
close to the Bideford I
left over a decade ago. As
I found
myself lovingly describing
pubs long gone and struggling
to remember the names of streets
I had walked down a thousand
times I began
to wonder why I ever left; and
then I remembered, that Bideford
only exists in my mind now.
To
make it clear, I love Bideford, I moved there with my family at the
age of five in 1983 and didn't leave until 2004 – my parents still
live there so I still visit regularly. A lot of people I know left
Bideford forever in their twenties because it was too small, rural
and constrictive – and had I left five or six years earlier than I
did it would almost certainly have been for the same reason.
But
I didn't, and it wasn't. Eventually I realised I am a yokel and my
life is an everyday tale of country folk. Despite my teenage
swagger and insistence that I was going to get out of there and do
something, I had always loved the small town life: I could walk into
almost any pub and the staff would greet me by name and have my usual
drink ready before I had even reached the bar (I don't know if that
says more about me than Bideford in the 90s, but it feels relevant)
and I was only ever a short walk from somewhere big and green, where
the air didn't choke.
Some
time at the beginning of the new millennium all that started to
change, the pubs began to close in the wake of Bideford's first
superpub – The Tavern In The Port, cheap prices, no soul and a
disorientingly fast staff turnover rate (see any modern Wetherspoons
for reference). I was having to walk farther and farther out of town
to achieve solitude and my then-dog had developed arthritis in
protest – restricting us to Victoria Park perambulations that had
to be so early that they would encroach on the middle of the night if
we wanted the quiet. The once recession-bitten streets of boarded-up
shop fronts began to be tarted up, new shiny modern buildings began
to replace the crumbling edifices I had romanticised beyond their
almost-certainly-dangerously-rotten reality. I didn't like it,
longing for the return of Scudder's Emporium.
The
famous New Year's Eve celebrations had become massive, highly
organised affairs, rather than the spontaneous outbreak of fancy
dress and crazy it had always been before all the publicity. Plastic
glasses everywhere and no space on the bridge at midnight (though the
latter was always the case). While New Year's is now undoubtedly a
lot safer than back when we used to do the 21 Newcastle Brown bottle
salute at midnight – it's not for me anymore.
I
have since realised that it wasn't Bideford's fault, it was me (it
would have been a real cliché of a breakup letter I would have had
to write were Bideford a lady). The ever-growing nature of all towns
is perpetual, a middle-aged Bidefordian from the 1890s would
undoubtedly have complained about all the horses on the Quay compared
to when he was a lad. No town in the world is ever the same town it
was ten years previously. I ignored London for ten years as well, and
didn't recognise the city I eventually overcame my hatred of crowds
to visit again (for clarification, it is a good deal nicer than it
was back in the late 80s/early 90s).
I
found another place (an undisclosed small town in the middle of
Devon. I would tell you where it is, but if you all knew then you'd
all come here, and I'd be back where I started). The barstaff know
everybody's name and what they drink, if an event is put on, then the
whole town turns up to see it (oh look! A thing! We must go, we must
go...) though if there is nothing on, then the streets are curiously
empty, and any person encountered therein will greet you as a long
lost friend whether you have ever set eyes on them before or not –
city-dwellers beware!
You
are never more than five minutes walk from a completely empty, bleak,
barren and utterly wonderful bit of moorland. Although at certain
times of day it is full of fellow dog-walkers, unless you know the
empty places and how to get to them (I do, it is glorious). At our
annual Chilli festival last weekend, the entire town had turned up –
along with a smattering of newcomers, all of whom were being
interrogated with smiles and enthusiasm. I was in a happy chatting
group ranging from 80 something to 2 years old. None of us were
related to each other (alright, the two year old's Dad was with us).
When
the Chilli chow-down (don't ask, it is hellish) began, several of the
contestants were pretty new to the town, including the winner. They
got as big a cheer as the local institutions who were sat, sweating
and crying until they dropped out. One of the newcomers is a skinny,
odd, twenty something musician with a funny haircut. Just like I was
12 years ago when I came here, escaping the sprawling metropolis of
Bideford, that I had once found so small and constricting.
(Originally published in the Bideford Buzz newsletter - October 2016)