Sunday 31 October 2010

Nostalgia Corner (1)

I grew up in the industrial north. Collieries, iron and steel works, steam engines, stagnant canals and trams. All now swept away. Landscapes have changed beyond recognition. Collieries buildings have been demolished and spoil heaps flattened. Blast furnaces have been toppled and slag heaps removed. Steam engines have disappeared along with miles of railway track. Stagnant canals have been repaired and are part of the leisure industry. Trams and trolley buses have gone the way of all flesh.

The change has been remarkable and mostly for the better. I am not one to hark back and yearn for a 'golden age'. However good things have been destroyed in this change, inevitably so as they were part and parcel of what has been lost and not something distinct from it. What I mean by this will become clear as you read later posts.

One of my abiding memories is travelling through Kirkby-in-Ashfield early on Monday mornings. The road into Kirkby ran by the side of the Mansfield to Nottingham railway line and a set of sidings used by coal trains. Approaching Kirby there was an engine shed. Locomotives were raising steam and dense smoke rising from numerous chimneys drifted across the road and towards rows of terraced houses. On days with little wind the smoke hung over Kirkby. It was most unpleasant, but people lived with it, after all the collieries and railway were major employers.

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