Leeds

The North (and almost everything in it)

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The NME always seemed impossibly glamorous to me growing up in the bleak, fucked up Leeds of the late seventies. We had little glamour in the city: Revie’s Leeds United were long gone, replaced by a series of dysfunctional teams that could never fill their stylishly brutal boots. The city centre was a ghost town with fountains perpetually filled with spectres of foam. The North seemed to have nothing going for it and as usual, London was the centre of attention.

Music was one of the ways we could escape the harsh reality of Britain and when music started to become important to me, so did the NME. It was a window into another world, speaking of bands making the big time, fantastically hip scenes that I could only dream of being in, the glamour of touring the UK and beyond and a mythical London that boasted Carnaby Street and The King’s Road. I’ll talk more about myth making later but these were imagined narratives for me that were anything but dark and satanic.

My favourite NME writer was Paul Morley. At the time I knew little of him except he got all the top jobs, wrote the most provocatively and was always at odds with everything, always challenging and probing. He would never review an album, he would pontificate endlessly about philosophy and then write a paragraph on the record. He would provoke and piss off artists with his own seemingly pretentious approach, but he did set the NME apart at the time, seizing the high intellectual ground from the plodding rock journos on Sounds or the inanity of Smash Hits.

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Morley was destined for great things and went on to found ZTT records that, amongst other things, made Frankie Goes to Hollywood famous. These days, Morley can be seen, heard and read across all media forms as a serious writer, observer, reviewer and all round ‘cultural commentator’. Like him or not (and many don’t), his views are well-considered and always demand consideration.

The North (and almost everything in it) is Morley’s latest book –  a weighty tome that although I bought it a few months ago, I’ve only managed to read the first quarter. But I’m not anxious about that, honest. Sometimes big books challenge the reader, daring them to come and have a go if you’re hard enough and there’s no doubting there’s a little of that with this book. The number of pages and scale of ambition screams SERIOUS WRITER!! But the macro experience is much more intimate, drawing the reader in to snapshots, narratives, factoids, lists (Morley loves lists) and a style of writing that can take some getting used to. The combination of stream of consciousness and hard facts set the tone for a philosophical but factually driven journey of how the North is the North and what that actually means to people who live in the North and those that don’t.

We made the short journey to Ilkley (Victorian spa town near Leeds) to hear him talk about his book and his relationship with the North as part of the excellent Ilkley Literature Festival. The event was a well attended, genteel gathering at the appropriately faded glamour of a large hotel in Ilkley. The format worked well with interviewer and questions although I wasn’t entirely convinced that the host had read the book (and who can blame him, it is mahoosive), but perhaps I’m being unfair.

Morley comes across as a suitably dour, erudite Mancunian who grasped his chance at London NME fame at the right time, but never forgot his roots. I was interested in his assertion that he ‘never went to work in London, but at the NME’ and his affirmation that he ‘took the North with him’ and didn’t leave it behind. I liked his thinking there – I work in both Leeds and London and the North/South divide is a well-worn and tiresome discussion most business people are fond of exploring endlessly. Morley contends that the North South divide is an ideological construct, created to keep Northerners in their place. Conversely, he takes the North with him wherever he goes, as state of mind not just a geographic location. I’m aware as I write that sounds incredibly pretentious, but it’s altogether a more progressive discussion.

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I was also taken with another of Morley’s ideas: people and cities can be architects of their own fame. He explored the theme of myth making in the North and charted the rise and renaissance of Manchester’s music scene right back to The Sex Pistols appearing at The Free Trades hall in 1977. Of course, we have no idea if any of this is really true, but we make our own myths and they in turn become reality, part of the narrative of where we live.

There’s a lot to like (and dislike) about Paul Morley, but it’s no dispute that he is good value for money. For his followers, he is a Northern provocateur camped in the belly of the capitalist beast, prodding, annoying, carping. For his detractors, he is a turncoat living not in his beloved North but in the cosseted comfort of a W1 flat, drinking lattes all day long and eating sun-dried tomatoes.

Of course, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but we do need more people like Morley stirring it up in a stereotypically Northern way. I came away challenged to think about my own Northernness in a different way and my own perception where the North begins and ends, both physically and metaphorically. The North is both a comforting, recognisable account of a physical place we all know but also a challenges our pre conceived ideas of what The North is and can be.

 

Train Stations

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I’ve been travelling a lot over the last 12 months – trains, planes and automobiles at times, is my life. But I use trains as my preferred mode of transport because a) by and large they are reliable and b) I can get work done whilst travelling. I do have the privilege of travelling first class where possible – which isn’t cheap – and this does make a huge difference to be honest in terms of the quality of experience. Perhaps I may not be as enthusiastic crammed into an oversubscribed standard class carriage, standing all the way from Kings Cross to Peterborough on the East Coast main line.

 

Some journeys are clearly never going to work by rail because our superb rail network in the UK was essentially dismantled in the sixties off the back of the Beeching report, still controversial over 40 years later. But some journey are simply better and almost essential by rail. It’s on these journeys that the traveller gets to see a lot of train stations.

 

There are the majestic main line stations, built in a time of growth and railway pomp, standing testament to the ambition of a brave new world of railway travel. And there are the local branch line stations, tucked away in half forgotten towns where the station is a lifeline to another world. Over time, I’ve become a bit of a connoisseur of railway stations, not in a train spotter way, but in an observational, slice of life kind of way. I love how the stations are essential, transitory hubs yet at the same time they have personalities of their own.

 

London stations are all about status – the astonishing St Pancras, recently refurbished and home to the Eurostar has to be the king of the hill. It’s breathtaking sweep and grandeur providing an emotional backdrop to trans European travel. Paddington and Euston are functional and unituitively bewildering. The almost finished Kings Cross has the potential to rival its next door neighbour St Pancras in terms of ambition and style. Of course Kings Cross has the direct line to Yorkshire too which has to give it the upper hand.

 

Regional mainline stations are largely modern, horrid affairs. Leeds (cobbled together), Manchester (sprawling, confused), Birmingham (entirely underground), Edinburgh (cramped) and Bristol (commuter torture) are just the tip of the depressing railway station iceberg. Notable exceptions such as Newcastle, which still retains its Victorian elegance and York where trains sweep in like the Flying Scotsman. It is a joy when the true romance of the golden age of rail travel is evoked – and it’s lovely that some of stations can still deliver this.

 

Local town and village stations have a functional quality all of their own. Some are recently built bus shelter affairs, perfunctory and workmanlike, a very specific and narrowly defined job to do. These are barren, soulless and often non-manned operations. Others are thriving hubs offering a warm welcome to weary travellers with time to kill waiting for a connection. This variety are often stations built in the golden age, home to great pubs serving real ales and essential components of the town itself.

 

But here is beauty in the isolation of a desolate platform in the West Country at 5am on a winter’s morning. And a reassurance that there will be a train that will deliver me to Birmingham New Street and then in turn, on to Leeds – my final destination.

 

The best breakfast in Leeds?

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A while ago I conducted a highly scientific survey to find out which restaurant / cafe / bar served the best breakfast in Leeds. It resulted in me gaining half a stone in weight but the winner was Harvey Nichols, hands down.

But does that still ring true?

We recently took advantage of a Living Social deal for brunch at Anthony’s Piazza which included a bottle of Prosecco and full breakfasts etc for two. The deal was £26 all in – which we thought was great value. I can confirm that the food was a stood as it looks and the only downside was that we were too hung over to take advantage of the full bottle as we could only manage a glass or two (shocking I realise).

The best breakfast crown may have to be handed over. Over to you, HN.

 

 

Me and my owl

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I went to the Get Stuffed exhibition at long last today and saw myself and my fellow Get Stuffed participants immortalised in photographs alongside their taxidermic companions. It really is a great project and on at Armley Mills until this Sunday – well worth a look if you’re in and around West Leeds this weekend.

It was quite odd to see myself large scale in an exhibition but thankfully I looked Ok on the photograph so no shame there!

Thanks to Jane Earnshaw for making it happen. It is an inspirational project and huge fun to take part in.

The unbearable Leedsness of being

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The Promised Land, Leeds Carriageworks Theatre

The Promised land is a fantastic book by Anthony Clavane plotting the rise and fall of his beloved hometown team Leeds United set against the backdrop of the rise and rise of on of the powerhouse cities of the industrial revolution, Leeds. Clavane is also Jewish and the way he weaves the history of Leeds’ Jewish population (once the largest outside of London) into the rich history of the city and its love hate relationship with its football team.

I was fascinated then to see how it would be translated on to a the stage. Billed as a Northern Love Story, the documentary style of the book had to be fundamentally translated into a narrative that could be told in a theatre and I have to say I thought it was a huge success. The production was by local amateur company Red Ladder and full credit to the company: this was a production of professional standards from the staging, design, direction and acting.

It was a touching, thrilling and at times uncomfortable experience as the starstruck lovers at the centre of the story played out their awkward North Leeds Jewish and South Leeds Beeston relationship against a backdrop of racism, hooliganism and dead-end opportunity of Leeds in 1975. The book told the fascinating story of immigrant jews in Leeds and how they came to dominate the city’s sporting clubs, first with Rugby League and latterly Football – this was very well handled in the stage production using the descendants of the central couple to tell this revealing story.

The title of the post by the way came from the programme notes for the production written by Anthony Clavan and I really quite liked it. He talks a lot about the “Leeds Attitude” that permeates the city – we’re used to being hated (particularly in the context of LUFC) and as such we’ve developed our own coping mechanism, a kind of ‘us against the world’ approach. This phrase kind of summed up my own personal love hate relationship with the city which over the years has provided me personally with a wealth of opportunities (and I am blessed) but also can frustratingly hold us back with a lack of vision and old-fashioned parochialism.

But having said that I still live here and I like to think that in doing so, I’m playing my own small part in The Promised Land.