ambushed by unexpected friendliness (plymouth diary)

after 40 years in the capitol I got the keys to my new flat on 7 march, exactly two months ago — and a bigger space, with higher ceilings, where I can at last unpack all my stupid books. I lived in a strangely peaceful corner of Hackney, but here is quieter still. People smile in the street and strangers stop and chat! I am having to teach myself to get used to this and to respond in kind…

for now this is mainly a hullo to ilxors who live nearby (cornwall, dorset, somerset, the bits of devon that aren’t in the far west corner) and also to ilxors who visit these parts for holidays or indeed for work — it wd be nice to meet up so let me know!

if the weather’s nice we can go and get a drink on the quayside near devil’s point, or look out across firestone bay

https://i.imgur.com/2B7MmQJ.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/0DsPqQu.jpg

"People smile in the street and strangers stop and chat! I am having to teach myself to get used to this and to respond in kind…"

This is very nice indeed.

Good to hear how you are settling into Plymouth. Looking forward to hearing more about it as the months go on.

If you ever come down to London again let us know, we can always make a FAP happen.

They’re softening you up, ready for the kill. I’ve seen enough episodes of Midsomer Murders to know how it works.

Other than that, good you’re settling into rural life and getting a warm welcome from the locals.

All seems very nice!

just too pleasant of a thread title not to post something in - sounds like a nice change, enjoy!

Welcome to the West! My lover. Cheers then

Hello mark s! Move all sounds like ... a good move. My niece is studying in Plymouth, so I was there for an afternoon with very elderly folk, mostly in a car, last year. Plymouth actually seemed quite big - with distinct 'zones' - my niece delighted in pointing out the red light district. We liked the quayside area too. Lots of family jokes about Mutley, which seemed to have more barber shops per square foot than any other English high street I've seen.

barber density seems v high all over! i was talking abt this with my sister -- like asking did i just not spot the same thing in london or hastings? i get my hair cut at HAIR PORT

aside from mutley the other area with a good name is EGGBUCKLAND

It was a nice day yesterday so I walked up to mount wise park, which looks across to cornwall and also devil’s point, and overlooks the mouth of the tamar. There’s a monument up there to my lovely antarctic bungler captain scott — who was born hereabouts and was also based here for a while during some of his less sea-bound (not to say ice-bound) naval work.

Anyway here are some photos. It was erected in 1925 and is IMO very silly in theme (the winged lady apparently represents ”IMMORTALITY”) and plus a wee bit fash stylistically: isn’t that an actual real fasces below the cross? Tho I guess the sculptor (who died before it was completed) could say “dude they’re skis not sticks and also there’s no axe!”

https://i.imgur.com/R13MR3x.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bGlnwb8.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/WDa8EJF.jpg

There are caesar-type medallions of the faces of the famous five who died, and the four panels (to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield, from tennyson’s ulysses) are also very muscular and stylised, angular and stern. The horse they show is more AMAZING MYTHICAL STEED than the actual miserable starved little pony it would have been and I feel the rest of panels are also a bit misleading: they were starving too and scurvy fvcks with the jawline (bcz yr teeth fall out)

by contrast the walk home -- along a little cliff lane -- was very likeable

So you’re saying that yesterday you went outside and may have been some time?

and i'll do it again!

A touching reference to a very old thread title - unsure it was Mark S himself who created the original, or the fabled Carmody (who come to think of it may be in the West Country himself).

Glad to see the pictures and hear the positive reports, Mark S.

i enjoyed reading your description of the statue quite a lot. i feel like many, many statues are just excuses to make a hard dick out of stone.

so the first free weekend i had here i hatched a plan to walk along the various seafronts from the yachting marina to royal william's yard (pictured above)

it turned out this was far and my legs were still v flabby from years of sitting at a screen during pandemic so i only got as far as the HOE (where drake played bowls as the armada loomed etc) and then cut off to sainsburys and home

yesterday i set off do attempt some more and was pleased to find that a couple of months of walking round town have toughened me a little and i could clamber up the hoe and over it without pausing for breath

on the the top there is the (or a) bowling green, a little lighthouse in stick-of-rock colours ("smeaton's tower"), an expanse and a slope, and then this little bay, filling up with ppl eating ice cream

https://i.imgur.com/Y38XLX4.jpg

i walked down to it and looked back and realised i was gazing at something my friend (and legend of the board) dr vick had once told me about

https://i.imgur.com/IU7uStM.jpg

in particular she told me that local youth used to dive into the sea from that top rail: as this looks insanely dangerous not to say impossible i checked with her on IG and she said "they did! the lovely nutters!"

below is what we are all gazing out at, ice-cream eaters, young (less insane) divers and me, it was a pleasant sea-side day:

https://i.imgur.com/y21bDsz.jpg

"no tomb-stoning or diving" is a regular warning on notices -- i will find out but maybe tomb-stoning is just what happens when you bodly dive off somewhere too high and far from the water and miss the sea

it’s a fully vertical feet first jump (as opposed to a headfirst/hands first dive). you might cross your hands over your chest as you do so.

aha

(the plymouth herald appends some dissenting etymologies):
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/why-is-tombstoning-called-tombstoning-402713

Hoe, foreshore!

I've been in Potters Bar for the morning so the content itt is almost hilariously dissonant with my current experience

aha

(the plymouth herald appends some dissenting etymologies):
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/why-is-tombstoning-called-tombstoning-402713🕸

What is Potters Bar like?

Not much like Plymouth I assume.

ambushed by fairly expected lowrise developments

Fizzles OTM. Also fk the Argyle Herald forever.

"Hoe Foreshore!" my new affirmative.
I did a lot of tombstoning in HIGH school.

it's not hard to discover why it is called tombstoning. I'm not employed by some shit local rag and looked it up years ago to find out.

Jumping off rocks into water is one of the great pleasures in life tbh. A bit of added danger is part of the thrill.

First post to thread. Good luck mark s. Been to Plymouth a few times and, swivel-eyed loon contingent aside, always liked the place.

That's no way to talk about new Plymouth resident Mark S.

Hahahaha.

One of the best ways to launch from Plymouth Hoe into the sea is to use the swivelled eyes of said loon as a pivot.

Fulcrum?

I read a piece by a young person who I think ended up completely paralysed from the neck down after a bad jump and can only think why not only consider the non-tombstoning options

is the red light district by the hoe?

the one thing i noticed when i went to somewhere that wasn't london was how everybody had the same accent. it was quite striking.

trouble oop cove

three months in: friendly nature in the building's back garden -- 1 (one) uk magpie, 1 (one) blackbird, 1 (one) squirrel

https://i.imgur.com/lrXivAE.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/XcsXlqa.png

is that huge wall anything special?

not really no, it's a relic of what this whole site used to be (naval hospital)

there's just a very ordinary road on the other side -- it cuts down traffic noise but on the other hand it's a long way round to the chemist

ok, makes sense. looked too big and expensive for a normal house-owner to build

it's too wet for photos today but weather and walking to lidl in the rain reminded me today of family summer holidays in wales on damp days when i was little: if plymouth's main drag is a little like a shabby welwyn (where my mum's parents lived in the early 60s) then other bits of it are like an less shabby tywyn, the little pebbledash fishing village we'd go to on non-beach days, to eat fish and chips in the car on the promenade as we looked out through the water-streaked windows at the blustery sea

tywyn had a cinema which in summer showed a different film every day: we ended up seeing a documentary about sharks (called BLUE WATER WHITE DEATH) about six times, and mum always shouted with fear at the point where the shark bumped the camera, which everyone in the picture-house enjoyed

rain tastes of salt :)

here is tywyn cinema from googlemaps looking very unshabby indeed and in fact a bit amazing :)

https://i.imgur.com/9z13hFO.png

Amazing!

Yes, Blue Water White Death was an excellent family snuff film---still is, I reckon, but dunno if it's still shown. Did yall ever see Endless Summer, mark? Surfing doc mostly made by roving surfers themselves, I think.

no i've never seen it -- it's a few years earlier than BWWD so was probably off the circuit by then

we also saw the CHARIOTS OF THE GODS documentary in that cinema :)

i think it was always a double bill, with a shorter documentary first then a feature, and in between a psychedlic oil-lighting projection on the ceiling of the cinema, bcz you had a whole afternoon to kill as it was raining by the sea-side

all the talk abt fish and chips on the promenade in the car made me want fish and chips for supper so i ordered a takeaway and gave the poor sodden delivery guy a big tip even tho he only had to ride like 600 metres

so i was half-watching a terrible old ep of morse last night and vaguely and distractedly began wondering what the fireworks outside were. random fireworks are not unusual in east london at all times of year (and night lol) -- so they had not immiediately impinged except as routine night noise. it took a while to remember i no longer live in hackney!

anyway it turns out that the BRITISH FIREWORK CHAMPIONSHIPS are being held in plymouth on 16-17 aug (ie last night and tonight) and that my kitchen window is an excellent viewpoint for them: https://www.britishfireworks.co.uk/index.php/news-features/38-2023-british-firework-championships !!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUW2IFD7xn4

i would take vids but i suspect they would suck and be a waste of time -- i shall live in the moment and just watch and say ooh and ah

I like this news.

i had breakfast in !cafe momus! (new and nearby) w/a passing dr vick (born and raised in plymouth, here visiting her aged mother)

https://i.imgur.com/ik8riuo.jpg

it is combination coffee shop and gallery and the art was pictures of like siouxsie sioux done in the style of modigliani (ie ok to drink coffee next to, tho we sat outside and looked at the torrential rain) -- and the chatty friendliness of strangers continues :)

Excellent.

Please report in future on local cafés named after other former ILX posters.

Happy Hour at DJ Martian Bar.

flu jab day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/opinion/british-countryside-working-class.html

flu (or general vaccine) jab day outfits: sweater (aka jumper) twinset with sleeveless top; sweater with stretchy neckline (not sure if there are masculine alternatives -- the runner's singlet, jacket with detachable sleeves (they must exist)?)

the british countryside *is* a place of profound inequality (this is all the paywall allowed me to grasp of that piece): however plymouth is literally a city and by no means the countryside

as a city (apparently the 32nd largest in the uk) it is also a place of profound inequality

I thought you'd gone to live someplace like in the Seven Steeples by Sara Baume. I see from maps and images that Plymouth is different. The opinion piece is about older forms of loyalty and obligation, and ownership and other ties to the land.

the place i grew up in (small-village shropshire) is still very like that: mostly rural, the larger part of the employed populace working for landowners smaller and greater (farms or landed estates), quasi-feudal ties between the poor in the estate cottages and the wealthy in the landed big house, loyalties sometimes intense, sometimes exasperated, sometimes truculent and strained, sometimes all-but-totally absent -- all more and more diluted every day by commuters to nearby towns and not-so-nearby cities who have little grasp of all these undercurrents and little interest

when i moved out of london i very much chose not to move back to that: i have no family there now and very few acquaintances

i wondered if i'd get trick-or-treaters!!?
(a) bcz i now live on the kind of large secluded estate that might see some adult-shepherded little spooky troops moving gingerly round it and
(b) bcz for the first time in more than 40 years i have a front door that faces the outside world with no shared corridors or staircase first

but it was raining quite hard and my door is at the top of some outside metal stairs at the back of the building, and also very much in the dark until you get close enough to trip the safety light outside it

so now i have a big bowl of CELEBRATIONS to eat all by myself 👻

well they missed out on a spooky scene but this sounds win-win ultimately

horrifyingly this is the first time i've noticed this thread! SUBSCRIBED.

Very nice

i got out of town today just as storm ciarán landed! ie i was already snug in the train when all the water i've ever seen fell out of the sky lol

i remain dry! i will never log off or use an umbrella!

stuff like this is literally one of the main reasons i decided to move here (i was in plymouth the day the railway line at dawlish fell into the sea)

https://i.imgur.com/n5UNBBz.png

but i missed it by being in london having a tiresome attack of vertigo

🎵 doesn't matter much to me / long as yr safe kimberley 🎶

now The Very Wet Wok

good piece by the municipal dreams guy on plymouth's highly and carefully planned modernist regeneration after being the worst-bombed city in the UK during WW2:
https://municipaldreams.substack.com/p/a-plan-for-plymouth-our-first-great

https://i.imgur.com/qjmyJv3.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/EmBibCl.png

union street in mid-1941
https://i.imgur.com/ukQdY5A.jpg

i live three and a bit streets to the right, up a little hill -- the building in the centre is a handsome art deco theatre (currently unused and sadly derelict) that's also the central building in view if i sahd up and look out my window right this minute

stand not sahd 🥴

ok lol i just spent many minutes on googlemaps and squinting out my window and at that blurry b/w photo and in fact i don't think it *is* the new palace theatre but anyway

i will keep an eye out for where it might be (if not demolished)

Kudos to this guy for half-answering my "who was bombed worse than Hull, the soi-disant third worked bombed city" questions

tbf i have not fact-checked these rankings

From Wiki:

Below is a table by city of the number of major raids (where at least 100 tons of bombs were dropped) and tonnage of bombs dropped during these major raids. Smaller raids are not included in the tonnages.

Big raids and combined bomb tonnage[199]
City Tons Raids
London 18,291 71
Liverpool/
Merseyside 1,957 8
Birmingham 1,852 8
Glasgow/
Clydeside 1,329 5
Plymouth 1,228 8
Bristol 919 6
Exeter 75 19
Coventry 818 2
Portsmouth 687 3
Southampton 647 4
Hull 593 3
Manchester 578 3
Belfast 440 2
Swansea 89 3
Sheffield 355 2
Sunderland 155 1
Nottingham 137 1
Cardiff 115 1

Not sure why there were 19 bombing raids on Exeter!

... or what they were using for bombs giving the relatively piddling tonnage involved.

I didn't know either but it turns out they were retaliatory raids:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Blitz

Exeter was one of those targeted in the Baedeker Raids. No strategic importance as far as I know but big cultural and historical impact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baedeker_Blitz

Or what Neil S said

The legend I've heard is that coastal towns also took an undue brunt becos bombers would empty their payload on the way home

Bombing might not be over yet...

they're taking it safely out to sea via torpoint ferry, nothing can possibly go wrong!

The legend I've heard is that coastal towns also took an undue brunt becos bombers would empty their payload on the way home

― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 21 November 2023 14:46 bookmarkflaglink

have also heard this - Hastings and especially Eastbourne got bombed a fair bit, more than Brighton despite Brighton being a lot bigger than either of them. allegedly Hitler was a big fan of Brighton Pavilion and didn't want it damaged which might explain that

the view on the way back from getting my COVID jab

https://i.imgur.com/IrfH4Xo.jpeg

ancient rivalries never end

https://i.imgur.com/IhFeEaA.jpeg

so a couple of nights ago my sister texted me to say she was staying with my lovely cousin mike in london, who's 84 and used to make documentaries at the bbc -- and they were talking abt me in plymouth lol and mike remembered that JILL CRAIGIE no less* had made a 1946 doc abt rebuilding plymouth after the war (the procedure and the local discussion**; see up thread for photos of a bombed city)

and the doc is on-line for free at the BFI: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-way-we-live-1946-online

unsurpisingly it feels very trapped in time, in sensibility somewhat between the world of powell and pressburger's A CANTERBURY TALE (1946) and the free cinema gang [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Cinema], viz lindsay anderson's O DREAMLAND (1956) and EVERY DAY EXCEPT CHRISTMAS (1957), where film-maker is trying very hard not to be the patrician observing from above, and now and then succeeding a little. there's an open-endedness to it which also seems verry of its time: like, what now? can we come together to make something worthwilhe out of this wreckage?

*probably best known these days as michael foot's wife (they met while she was making the doc: he was MP here at the time) --as her wikipedia entry says (tartly but correctly), "her career as a film-maker has been 'somewhat eclipsed' by her marriage"
**it's very "of its time" -- a mix of locals expressing opinions***; local bigwigs restaged more or less stiltedly repeating speeches they gave in real time (a big council meeting is restaged and it's the most wooden biut of cinema you ever saw lol, feat.ppl who were young when the ark was new); and actors playing a local working class family with varied stances, as well as a narrator just back from the war and making his now as a writer-bureaucrat with a mission to understand and explain
***the street interviews are the only time you encounter non-RP accents, tho there seem to be more scots and americans than devonians (plymouth was of course an active naval port then, and full of old-timey sailors dressed as sailors) -- the working-class family have a close-to-posh accent (they're all actors) and the young writer-bureaucrat has an insanely posh accent, of a kind that has vanished from the earth (his role is to find out what planners and normal ppl think, inc.of one another, and not opine himself, so he's reasonably tolerable and self-effacing: placing him as a character making choices in the movie actually helps tone down the patrician aspect, esp.as he's basically a kind of journalist-clerk rather than a lord)

wait, A CANTERBURY TALE is 1944 not 1946

inevitably it also has a fair amount of the sensiblity that ended up being called NEW ELIZABETHAN after the coronation (1952), since this is very much the city of drake awaiting the armada while playing bowls on the hoe blah blah, interspersed with pleasingly modernist architects designs for ringroads and futurist petrol stations and all the big squat square buildings which now line the street called armada way (wehich were all just rubble then)

I look forward to watching that.

Does it go into the decision to turn the area from a Torbay-style set of conjoined towns to a central business district called Plymouth and some areas / inner burbs? I dimly recall a documentary on the subject from (I guess) the 80s which talked about that, suggesting that the decision was driven by the City Council of the time having a preponderance of Plymothians (even representing other bits eg Devonport). The suggestion seemed to be that there was some resentment from the non-Plymouth bits at being relegated to burb status.

I don’t even know if my recall is accurate, let alone whether the claim is true.

not in detail no -- there is a kind of faked powerpoint* at one moment where a planner explains the current three-towns set-up (cut to map) and the problem of unplanned sprawl as a threat to the lovely lovely devon countryside but the practical solutions aren't really set out, except that there'll be handwave handwave ring roads and new build hurrah

the popular pushback is mainly "this all sounds good but it will surely never happen" -- of course the nothing-must-change faction are very much stuck defending scads of useless rubble

*slide show i believe they called them in the old days (but restaged)

There's an interesting book called Exeter Phoenix from around the same time, talking about rebuilding Exeter (written by a fellow called Sharp who, ar least to some extent, recognised the threat to towns and cities presented by motor cars).

I went to university in Plymouth. It was at Plymouth University, in Plymouth. I have two enduring memories of Plymouth. The first is of these grates, which are in between the train station and the town centre. They're still there. Something about the grates is burned into my brain. The way that they start off high, and end up low, despite being in a straight line.

And secondly I remember seeing The Australian Pink Floyd twice while I was in Plymouth. People who went to university in London spent the 1990s smashed out of their heads on coke and vodka. I had a Pink Floyd tribute band. The second time they were The Australian Pink Floyd Show, for legal reasons. Apparently the second time was on 10 November 1996, according to this tour programme. But was it a different Pink Floyd tribute band? I can't remember.

What else do I remember of Plymouth. Snails. The town centre only had one good fish and chip shop. Rent for a room was £30 a week. Hills. Lots of buildings that had been new in the 1960s but were no longer new. This was 1995-1996. They chopped down a bunch of trees recently, I remember seeing that in the news. They chopped down a bunch of trees and then regretted it.

the trees that were chopped down were also in armada way, just like those grates

the chop was part of a big ongoing plan to redevelop the whole street, including the 60s buildings you dislike (tho i think they're probably mostly actually 50s buildings, part of the big rebuild after the war discussed above). there had already been protests in favour of keeping the trees, so they were sneaky about cutting them down, doing it over night -- and actually in the end only got rid of a couple of short stretches of them. none were touched in royal parade for example, or in other nearby streets. but there was great local rage at the sneakiness and everyone responsible all got voted out in the council election a few weeks later, so i imagine they do regret it a bit.

i will look out for the snails. it's true that all the good fish and chip shops are down on the waterfront, the town centre is like nearly all town centres to be honest, it's fine if you're look for specsavers or a pound shop. i don't know what it was like in the 90s of course, i only arrived in 2023, but i can ask legend of the borads dr vick, who grew up here. she is fond of it but she also says lots of it was rough when she was a child (as was she i expect)

meanwhile this is a snackbar-table umbrella on cornwall street (which is at right angles to armada way and still full of trees)

the umbrella is down in this pic as the snackbar was closed (it was early evening) so you can see that its rubbery surface is covered in gorgeous patches of lichen

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lmtieqchvpjutjpqaed5tvyi/bafkreicbn3ghxj7ixwb7wjzgws6xxtptmwfsvhpbomegla33a6ubuij7ga@jpeg

wizard cloak! check its pockets for magical gewgaws!

two years yesterday since i got the keys to this flat, two years to the day if "slept in it" is when you first move in

here are the moth orchids (phalaenopsis) that my niece gave on her first visit (june 2023): still flourishing a bit to everyone's surprise, mine most of all

https://i.imgur.com/DdbicSi.jpeg

this was the right move, i'm so much less stressed and getting lots done (writing that shd emerge at some point soon), seagulls the only noise most days

Ahhhh mark this is lovely

tumblr quietly reminding that today is the tenth anniversary of the "rockwrite project" (which ended with my book being published four years later)

so 7-9 march is a strong weekend for me and proof i can sometimes get things done! onwards and upwards!

(in truth i had been working incoherently towards it for years -- rejected proposals back into the 1990s -- but 2015 *was* the year it came into convincing public view so 9 march is as plausible a start date as any)

That's really wonderful to hear that its worked out so well for you (and look forward to hearing on the writing!)

storm bram and the like is kind of why i moved here:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:lmtieqchvpjutjpqaed5tvyi/bafkreic6o2rynbaly57agw7kdb4djhkq7t5qih6shkhju4y6a5aripaiq4@jpeg

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:lmtieqchvpjutjpqaed5tvyi/bafkreihmxy623kn7griujpocivon6lnznfmtobatvqgfku444fkdkgl7we@jpeg

(jesus look what a mess keir fkn starmer has made of my lovely thread)