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Running up that hill
May. 4th, 2015 04:13 pmIt takes longer to get to Marsden than it does to Paris, although some of this is waiting around in Leeds and then Huddersfield. On the London-Leeds train, a party of four women d'un certain age, sit and quibble with each other about who had the worst time in London and take selfie stick photos whilst downing M&S Bucks Fizz. On the Leeds-Huddersfield leg, a solitary empty tin of Carling on our reserved seat shows that someone's got the Friday feeling. Ah, the north. Its icy grip grasps me. A list of places once known but now forgotten scrolls past on the train screens: Catterick, Keighley, Skipton, Pontefract, Poppleton, Knottingley.
We travel through a series of handsome mill towns to Marsden. Tanya's house is situated on the edge of the wild and windy moors, her back gate literally leads onto the Pennines. From the front room, there is a vast view of the Colne valley: a massive grey sky with a flat green horizon, optimistic photovoltaics on roofs, a sheep farm atop the moor awaiting a Bronte to pop by, the M62 running like a fast brook to the side of the town.
It feels like we've gone back in time, not to the Victorian age, but in the year. In Paris, pollen-sniffly, it was if we'd gone forward a month: the cherry blossom had gone and the city was on the cusp of summer, here, the daffodils are still out and the magnolias are just coming into bloom.
*
In the morning, we walk down to the town, past the stunning mill, now lying empty. If this were London, it'd be home to artist's studios and arguments about gentrification. We stop in at Tanya's friend's house to feed his cat, and then onto the canal to walk to Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawit), the next village along. The canals lie below locks, murky-green, murderous-looking. In Slaithwaite, we visit the very charming Handmade Bakery and, as a special treat, are allowed to sit in the staff area, as there're no tables free in the dining area. We walk on to the centre of the town and visit a vintage shop, where the side tables, blown glass and old telephones look like I'm back in my grandma's house in Bramhope - it might quite literally be her stuff from the house-clearance. The rain is a constant drizzle and the wind is troublesome so we get the bus back to Marsden and visit a museum about how the canal failed (before being reborn in the 21st century) with a real indoor canalboat (and an outdoor one too).
In the evening, Tanya makes lasagne and we play board games, as well as a risqué question and answer game from the '70s, presumably used as an ice-breaker at Annabel's Party-eque dinner soirées; "Have you washed your neck?" "Would you like to come up and see me some time?" as well as "Do you still beat your wife?" and "Are you one of Those?". I expect "Have you ever been intimate with a native of a foreign land?" was rejected.The questionee has to pick an answer from a card e.g. "I'll tell you later" or "I have never been so insulted in my life", or, my fave "Gwaan wiv yer!" I imagine a modern version: "Does your milkshake bring all the boys to the yard?" "Can you slut-drop?" with "Fo Shizzle" and "Safe, yeah" as the answers.
*
The Tour de Yorkshire is coming through the village - it's official, signs have been put up. People gather in the forecourt of a garage where a swing orchestra plays standards and a caravan sells tea and coffee, hot dogs and home-made flapjacks, whilst a woman hawks tuna and rice (?) pasties from a tray. The Marsden Jazz Society hand out leaflets. Opposite, a family has set up a gazebo and a gas barbecue and are drinking in the almost coming out sunshine. Further down the hill, people are sitting in windows above white rose flags. "It's nice they've put flags out," remarks one woman, inconsequentially.. The tour is apparently a response to the popularity of le Grand Depart 2014, but it's obvious to me why Yorkshire folk would like watching road cycling - it's free. We watch the cyclists come round, slowly, almost anti-climatically, and we try to spot Wiggo or Kittel, but even with the leisurely speed needed to take the sharp corner, it's all a bit of a blue-black blur.
We have lunch in the Riverhead, where Dave invents a new dish - spring roll roast dinner, and look at the 3D map of Marsden and the kids playing in the beck, jumping from wet rock to slippery stone (this would never be allowed in Stoke Newington), before setting off to the Butterley reservoir, up hundreds of steps to the glassy water, the lonely boarded-up house, the sheep up the hill. Tanya points out the saplings she helped plant as part of the Marsden Tree Society (I'm starting to see that village life is a bit like the first term of university - you have to pick a society to join).
We wander past the zombie brothel from In The Flesh, the old mill cottages, the big mill villas, the new houses made to look old, the spooky looking Crow Hill, where the Crowthers, who built the mill, lived (possibly). The sun has come out and washed clean the hills, and suddenly the moors have definition rather than being a green mist. The piebald stone houses gleam grey in the sunshine.
Back in Leeds, the station is bigger and brighter than it used to be, there are sunshiney seats upstairs where you can watch the trains come and go, but I kind of feel nostalgic for the grime of yesteryear.
We travel through a series of handsome mill towns to Marsden. Tanya's house is situated on the edge of the wild and windy moors, her back gate literally leads onto the Pennines. From the front room, there is a vast view of the Colne valley: a massive grey sky with a flat green horizon, optimistic photovoltaics on roofs, a sheep farm atop the moor awaiting a Bronte to pop by, the M62 running like a fast brook to the side of the town.
It feels like we've gone back in time, not to the Victorian age, but in the year. In Paris, pollen-sniffly, it was if we'd gone forward a month: the cherry blossom had gone and the city was on the cusp of summer, here, the daffodils are still out and the magnolias are just coming into bloom.
*
In the morning, we walk down to the town, past the stunning mill, now lying empty. If this were London, it'd be home to artist's studios and arguments about gentrification. We stop in at Tanya's friend's house to feed his cat, and then onto the canal to walk to Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawit), the next village along. The canals lie below locks, murky-green, murderous-looking. In Slaithwaite, we visit the very charming Handmade Bakery and, as a special treat, are allowed to sit in the staff area, as there're no tables free in the dining area. We walk on to the centre of the town and visit a vintage shop, where the side tables, blown glass and old telephones look like I'm back in my grandma's house in Bramhope - it might quite literally be her stuff from the house-clearance. The rain is a constant drizzle and the wind is troublesome so we get the bus back to Marsden and visit a museum about how the canal failed (before being reborn in the 21st century) with a real indoor canalboat (and an outdoor one too).
In the evening, Tanya makes lasagne and we play board games, as well as a risqué question and answer game from the '70s, presumably used as an ice-breaker at Annabel's Party-eque dinner soirées; "Have you washed your neck?" "Would you like to come up and see me some time?" as well as "Do you still beat your wife?" and "Are you one of Those?". I expect "Have you ever been intimate with a native of a foreign land?" was rejected.The questionee has to pick an answer from a card e.g. "I'll tell you later" or "I have never been so insulted in my life", or, my fave "Gwaan wiv yer!" I imagine a modern version: "Does your milkshake bring all the boys to the yard?" "Can you slut-drop?" with "Fo Shizzle" and "Safe, yeah" as the answers.
*
The Tour de Yorkshire is coming through the village - it's official, signs have been put up. People gather in the forecourt of a garage where a swing orchestra plays standards and a caravan sells tea and coffee, hot dogs and home-made flapjacks, whilst a woman hawks tuna and rice (?) pasties from a tray. The Marsden Jazz Society hand out leaflets. Opposite, a family has set up a gazebo and a gas barbecue and are drinking in the almost coming out sunshine. Further down the hill, people are sitting in windows above white rose flags. "It's nice they've put flags out," remarks one woman, inconsequentially.. The tour is apparently a response to the popularity of le Grand Depart 2014, but it's obvious to me why Yorkshire folk would like watching road cycling - it's free. We watch the cyclists come round, slowly, almost anti-climatically, and we try to spot Wiggo or Kittel, but even with the leisurely speed needed to take the sharp corner, it's all a bit of a blue-black blur.
We have lunch in the Riverhead, where Dave invents a new dish - spring roll roast dinner, and look at the 3D map of Marsden and the kids playing in the beck, jumping from wet rock to slippery stone (this would never be allowed in Stoke Newington), before setting off to the Butterley reservoir, up hundreds of steps to the glassy water, the lonely boarded-up house, the sheep up the hill. Tanya points out the saplings she helped plant as part of the Marsden Tree Society (I'm starting to see that village life is a bit like the first term of university - you have to pick a society to join).
We wander past the zombie brothel from In The Flesh, the old mill cottages, the big mill villas, the new houses made to look old, the spooky looking Crow Hill, where the Crowthers, who built the mill, lived (possibly). The sun has come out and washed clean the hills, and suddenly the moors have definition rather than being a green mist. The piebald stone houses gleam grey in the sunshine.
Back in Leeds, the station is bigger and brighter than it used to be, there are sunshiney seats upstairs where you can watch the trains come and go, but I kind of feel nostalgic for the grime of yesteryear.
