Sunshine in Scunthorpe
Where would you be, you broad East Anglian sky
Without church spires to recognise you by?
So asked John Betjeman, a poet so far out of favour now that I can't find the rest of the poem on the internet, so you're only getting the bit that I remember, I'm afraid.
Betjeman was writing of further south - but he might as well have been in Lincolnshire, where I was this afternoon.
Once you start to travel east towards Hull two things happen:
1) the amount of traffic diminishes mightily
2) the land becomes very, very flat.
I'm not used to all these great wide prairies. In West Yorkshire, or the Yorkshire Dales, or the Lake District, there are hills everywhere, and you never see all of anything. You see part of a house, or part of a tree, or part of a farm - but the rest is blocked by hills, or buildings or trees on hills.
Travelling across the flat lands of Lincolnshire, everything is presented to you whole and complete, like a painting in a child's picture book.
HOUSE, your brain says, and there it is, all the windows and doors and the fence around it and the toys in the garden.
TREE - and there we have it, trunk, branches, everything, like a lesson on How to Draw a Tree in Proportion
SKY - all blue and uninterrupted except for a few white wispy clouds.
TRAIN - - the engine and all the carriages, like a model train pictured on its box.
After marvelling at all this - and it did look very appealing across the fields in today's glorious Spring sunshine - I arrived in Scunthorpe, which in spite of its intitgrimupNorth comedy name, seemed a pleasant place - though very flat, oh yes - with a strong sense of identity.
Then I arrived at Scunthorpe United Football Ground, where Kevin Keegan once played. Nothing to do with football: I was doing some medical roleplay there. Never before have I done such work with this view from the window:
Without church spires to recognise you by?
So asked John Betjeman, a poet so far out of favour now that I can't find the rest of the poem on the internet, so you're only getting the bit that I remember, I'm afraid.
Betjeman was writing of further south - but he might as well have been in Lincolnshire, where I was this afternoon.
Once you start to travel east towards Hull two things happen:
1) the amount of traffic diminishes mightily
2) the land becomes very, very flat.
I'm not used to all these great wide prairies. In West Yorkshire, or the Yorkshire Dales, or the Lake District, there are hills everywhere, and you never see all of anything. You see part of a house, or part of a tree, or part of a farm - but the rest is blocked by hills, or buildings or trees on hills.
Travelling across the flat lands of Lincolnshire, everything is presented to you whole and complete, like a painting in a child's picture book.
HOUSE, your brain says, and there it is, all the windows and doors and the fence around it and the toys in the garden.
TREE - and there we have it, trunk, branches, everything, like a lesson on How to Draw a Tree in Proportion
SKY - all blue and uninterrupted except for a few white wispy clouds.
TRAIN - - the engine and all the carriages, like a model train pictured on its box.
After marvelling at all this - and it did look very appealing across the fields in today's glorious Spring sunshine - I arrived in Scunthorpe, which in spite of its intitgrimupNorth comedy name, seemed a pleasant place - though very flat, oh yes - with a strong sense of identity.
Then I arrived at Scunthorpe United Football Ground, where Kevin Keegan once played. Nothing to do with football: I was doing some medical roleplay there. Never before have I done such work with this view from the window:
The people I was working with were excellent and it all seemed to go very well. It always cheers me when I come across doctors, or trainee doctors, with superb communication skills and people teaching them who really know what they're doing.
I can't tell you more detail about the roleplay work I was doing, because it was part of an assessment. But on a day like today when it all went well and the sun shone too, doing this work felt like a privilege.
As the lady serving in the garage said, "You want to buy a lottery ticket while you're in Scunthorpe, sweetheart, it's the luckiest place in England."
posted by Daphne at 8:27 pm
3 Comments:
You should try New Zealand, where the landscape really is like a child's painting in primary colours: a green field with white house that has a red roof under a blue sky and white puffy clouds. Not flat like Lincs, though.
Landscape
I've been enjoying your photos, Michael - I have a feeling that, sadly, the Bronte Sea Pool isn't very near Haworth, is it?
No - it's a nice walk along the wuthering heights from Bondi. It is quite like Haworth in that it has a [miniature] steam railway but no Bronte gift shops as yet.
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