Sunday, 21 May 2023
This strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment
On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else.
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Derby is my native town, although it became a city decades ago. I suppose I still have a strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment to it even though we haven’t lived there for almost forty years. Whatever the threadbare attachment might be, it is nothing like my attachment to Derbyshire, its hills, dales, dry stone walls, villages and towns.
These days we visit Derby to have the cars serviced and that’s it. The other day we visited the Derby museum for the Hogarth exhibition, but that’s the first time we’ve wandered around the city centre for several years and we don’t intend to rush back. An accumulation of negative impressions I suppose.
For example, a section of the Derby ring-road near to where I grew up was an ordinary main road in the nineteen fifties. The Airfix model shop was on the other side of the road and as a youngster I could cross it in relative safety without adult supervision. Today it’s a very busy dual carriageway – anyone would be insane to try crossing it on foot.
We don’t seem to be particularly good at improving cities and we aren’t particularly good at preserving what was best about them. They grow and we adapt to the growth and some bits are newer and more modern than they were, but improvement seems elusive.
I remember some years ago, Mrs H and I were sitting by a window in a café on the second floor of the main Derby shopping centre. It was a clear day and in the distance, well beyond the city limits, I could see trees, green fields and a church spire. Below our window were four lanes of busy traffic.
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4 comments:
Truly unfortunate what’s happening.
We're currently considering a move from a picture-postcard village to a very densely populated city. It's always swings and roundabouts, I suppose. Wife's job comes first...
Your surrounding villages are gorgeous, AK, as you know, my old head office was at Hulland Ward, and I always looked forward to driving 'off-piste' to note the beauty of the hills and greenery!
Derby is the most Northern place I ever visited for any length of time, with few exceptions, but I just loved the 'difference' in almost everything, and, especially the Marstons ale, which was nearly as good as Shepherd Neame's offerings..;0)
James - it is, could have been far better.
Sam - good luck with the decision. As we know, all cities have areas which are fine, even Derby has those. The small town where we live is an old coal mining town with nothing much to recommend it apart from convenience and proximity to some very attractive countryside.
Scrobs - I buy our logs from a place in Hulland Ward - had another load delivered earlier this month. Well dried they are, always burn well. I visited the Marston's brewery in the seventies. Like a working museum it was then.
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