Mit Liebe zu Jack Straw

I was tidying up the bookcase at the weekend, removing the rubbish that just gets stuffed into the gaps over the books so it left just … er … books – well nearly anyway. In an envelope that must have been behind a pile of things for sometime I found some of my old reports from primary school which my dad had given to me the last time we visited. I don’t think us kids actually got to see these, unlike at secondary school where the teachers accepted that we would steam the envelopes open if they were given to us sealed. So these were a surprise. I was slightly annoyed at being called “prosaic”. I would hope that it means factual rather than dull. No – they were probably right.

Every day I drive to here on the North-bound M6. Deciding not to turn off would mean I could carry on and not hit single carriageway roads until after Glasgow – somewhere near Loch Lomond. This is always tempting in a sort of Reggie-Perrin way. To be honest, with the way work is structured, it might actually take a day or two for anyone to notice but that doesn’t mean I am going to try it anytime soon. Before I was married, I once just got in the car and drove all the way to The Kyle of Localsh having seen Michael Palin go there on his first Great Railway Journey. I suppose I should have got the train but there you go. I rained a lot and I never mind that. It looks like rain today which always makes me feel better. I don’t like the migraine-inducing bright light much though sometime a sunny Sunday afternoon in Liverpool with not many people about can be quite atmospheric. Not that Liverpool is ever going to be the same again. Having moved to work up here, we rarely go into Liverpool and when we do it is quite disturbing to see how much changes between visits. The Capital of Culture (Culture of Capital according to some anarchist slogans there are around) has meant that great swathes of the city have been levelled leaving great gaps in the familiar collection of buildings. Liverpool’s great architectural strength was its skyline, one of the most familiar and striking ones in the country. But now, catching up with London and the other big cities, Liverpool us gradually turning in a clone city, same towers, same architecture, all sacrificed for the great bandwagon. I know where the decision to award COC to Liverpool was announced I defended it against the standard anti-scouse abuse that surfaced, thinking that it would mean an extension of some of the great arts festivals that we have had, going back to the days of ten years ago. I realise that some of this rosy view is down to the fact that I don’t get out as much as I used to but capital of culture now seems to mean a year-long version of the Olympic opening ceremony rather than any grass-roots involvement of the people. My pink petticoats are showing aren’t they?

I was quite happy when Will Allsop’s terrible design for the Fourth Grace was thrown out or faded or however it failed to materialise, but the new plans sound just as out-of-keeping with the existing buildings. Of course it takes real effort to make something fit in but it seems that this is effort that architects cannot be bothered to put in these days or more likely they cannot afford it.

All this rant may sound strange in the face of the following enthusiasm for Dan Cruickshank’s programme on Modernism. I love modernism; I love those cubical buildings when they are done well. So much bad architecture from the 60s and 70s was build on the back of modernism but it was done with no thought to the social implications and of course it was done on the cheap. So much which looked good from a distance, became dull and cheap-looking up close because of the failure to finish the things properly which is why something which could have been so useful to creating a good society became the focus of so many of our current ills. I am afraid that lack of effort and finish in everything gives a less-than-successful result every time. All around us we have cheap, plastic versions of the real thing. This why people hark back to real buildings with pitched roofs and gables, all the stuff of traditional design. So while the Nazis turfed out modernism because it was new and fresh and threatened what they saw as traditional values, we reject it out because it is not implemented properly; it is forced in our faces in places where it does not fit and with a lack of rigour that leaves it feeling cheap and nasty, like a Soviet new town.