Love Luton

Gosh, well hats off to you, Luton, we've had an uncharacteristically pleasant two days together, haven't we?

Let me preface today's blog with the explanation that I don't really like Luton. I am a snob. I am made for greater things. I should have been born in Harpenden or St Albans or Hitchin.  I like Radio 4 and speaking French and I play the bassoon and like long walks in the country. I have always held this town in haughty disregard: it is my hometown and gave me many things for which I am truly grateful and I should be proud of it, but I can't help but sigh and ask, in a nagging voice, why it doesn't want more for itself?  Urgh!  Luton!  

My feelings towards living at home for two months during The Great Transition (destination Wimbledon, where my gilet and Franglo marriage will be understood!) can be described as 'turgid' at best.  I thus woke up this morning after spending 48 hours in Luton without my private healthcare prescribed jaunt to London/Wales/The Cotswolds/The Midlands and I could feel The Dark Times of purposelessness and apathy, akin to those few weeks I spent as a housewife in Singapore, approaching.  I am just not made for inactivity, doctor!

I therefore decided to take the bull by the horns and Create Happy Memories of Luton in the three days I have left in its sagging and grubby bosom. The Li Hi element of this blog is the mental strength required to entertain such a notion and ignore my therapists advice (I don't really have a therapist - most of what I write in this blog is made up) and walk through Luton town centre. I even looked in some of the shops in the Arndale Centre and posted a package in the post office. Yes. The stuff of reoccurring nightmares, but I made it.

I then walked up Farley Hill and was saddened by the tired beauty of the streets. Really, Luton, you have such potential, if only you would apply yourself and be less gross!

Isn't the lack of vision tragic?  Doesn't it give you a desperate urge to renovate and realise character?

Stop perfecting your state of the art dereliction, Luton, and do make an effort!

Oh, Luton, with your hideously brutal architecture, pervading waft of street urine and miserable grey skies!

And let's not even talk about your understanding of culture...

Or your offensive grammar...

Thank goodness for Instagram, which at least makes grim suburbia look gritty and interesting.

Anyway, I walked all the way up to the Discovery Centre in Stockwood Park with a hopeful and slightly manic air, half preparing myself for the inevitable disappointment of realising that 'Discovery' was actually code word for 'shit'. 

I'll tell you what, though: I was delightfully surprised. I took myself on a very pretty walk through the Victorian walled gardens and was reminded of how few things stir the loins of patriotism like faded brickwork.

Yes. I have a fetish for allotments. There's something so wholesome and useful about them, especially when some artistic veggie grower has opted for this beautiful purple kale type plant. Well done gardener!

It really was like something out of 'The Secret Garden', especially this daaaarling little gate!

You see how well you can do, Luton, when you try?

I also had one of those obligatory primary school lessons on local history but without the brass rubbings or dressing up as a Roman and looked at a lot of carriages. In fact, the biggest private collection of carriages in Europe. Gosh. I have to say, all very well done and the staff were very friendly!




Just look at all thos vehicles!

Now.  One of the fascinating things I learnt in the 'medieval' section of the museum, which was in fact the old stables converted into a lifesize reconstruction of local history from y'know, the stone age or something (paleolithic?) to the 1940s when the house was sold off and transformed into a hospital for children with spinal injuries and diseases (polio and stuff), was that there were yet more interesting and exciting adventures to be had at a place called Someries Castle.  Oooh.  Sounds like the stuff of fairytales and Robin Hood adventures, doesn't it?  I stared, confused, for a little while at the plaque informing me that the ruins of said castle (not actually a castle, rather a fortified manor so that Sir John Wenlock could show off to his other 15th century friends) were less than 2 1/2 miles away from where I was currently standing because I'll have you know that I lived in Luton for 18 straight years of my life and have been an annual visitor for a further 9 and never have I heard of a castle anywhere nearby, and I think I would know.  Wouldn't I?

So I came home, curiosity stirred and sense of adventure rekindled because of the unexpected kitchness of browsing 50 examples of real and replica carriages, and Googled this so-called Someries Castle and after much perplexion over Google Maps, an OS Map and in conference with my parents, I figured out that this apparent castle was in fact right next to the airport.  Hmph.  It was quite difficult to find anything helpful about it on the intermaweb so I began to get really excited about the potential for a real life adventure akin to riding out to rubber plantations and falling off a motorbike in front of farmers in order to re-enact my Catherine Deneuve fantasies.

I didn't really have a fantasy attached to this trip, rather a gnawing hunger to avoid stagnating at home and a growing need to figure out whether this Someries Castle was for real.Now, I won't lie: the first part of the walk was rather ugly and surrounded by train tracks and roads and train stations and outlets and underpasses that smelt of piss until I reached this point, which Google Maps was calling 'Someries Arch', which was a good clue.

But this presented an imporant challenge: to tresspass, or not to tresspass?  In Vietnam, you see, I wouldn't have thought twice, but in the UK farmers shoot people and set dogs on them (or so I've heard) and this made me a little nervous.  Also, a very British voice in my head played out the awfully embarrassing scene of being caught out:

Farmer: 'ere, what're you doin', tresspassin' on my land?
Me: oh, I - um, well... gosh... I - I was only...
Farmer: you know this is private property and the punishment for tresspassin' is DEATH?
Me: oh!  I see!  Of course.  Um... well, you see I - I was only looking - it's just... could you give me directions to the castle?

Very awful, I'm sure you will agree.  However, keen to keep the expat Li Hi spirit alive, I struggled with the quite stiff gate (confirmed my suspicions of trespassing being committed) and trampled through some rather muddy fields, growing ever more excited as the little blue dot on my phone told me that I was getting closer and closer to the browny-orange outline on Google Earth that looked very much like a castle to me.  Thank goodness for muddy fields, though, as otherwise I would have felt very silly walking through the town centre and hanging out at the post office in these bad boys who have seen me through many a Li Hi time in the Indian Himalayas:

Eventually, after I had realised that there were pheasants everywhere and there was no need to tiptoe or freeze, feeling thrilled at being in such close quarters with nature, every time one rustled in the bushes and accepting that they would always be too far away to get a good photo of, and after taking some wonderfully Downton-esque snaps of our local Hoo, I made it to the ruins and really felt rather pleased with myself.

I mean, look!  Look how cool they are!  They're like those slightly more exotic Jesuit ruins in Paraguay!

What's more, there was absolutely no-one there with me at all, just the roaring of the Easyjet and Wizzair planes taking off from the runway less than 400m away.  Weird.

Even more exciting was this amazing bit of information:

 No, not the remains of the formal gardens, the bit about Joseph Conrad, and after some more Googling, I can assure you that this is true!  Joseph Conrad, of 'Heart of Darkness', 'The Secret Agent' and 'Lord Jim' fame lived in scummy old Luton!  It says so in a Google book called 'The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad' on pages 158-160 onwards!  This is very, very cool and whilst I am unsure exactly which 'farmhouse to the north' the plaque refers to, I took a picture of this one and have decided, as an amateur historian, that this is where Conrad lived with his apparently simple English wife and intellectually unimpressive sons.

Well!  Quite exhausting, I'm sure you'll agree, especially as it was a 10k round trip that produced a very long blog!  So, I'll leave you to soothe yourself as I did, with lots of calming, exposed and faded brickwork and a cup of tea.  Oooh.  Look at that lovely texture.  Nothing quite like it.