A Return To Normality: The Golden Fleece, Nottingham

The day came – 12th April 2021 and a return to hospitality opening – albeit al fresco. It was eagerly awaited. After two nights out I’m now in need of another lockdown!

A few observations about getting out again for those with the interest and patience to read.

Monday evening was on a large outdoor covered and heated terrace. There were around 100-120 drinkers (no food) on tables of six. Waiter service, pay electronically. There was music from a DJ and deck which rang through the surrounding streets.

Image: The Golden Fleece, Nottingham, Facebook. (Pic taken October 2020)

Customers were probably about 95%+ students from the nearby university which made it something of an outlier where considering general behaviours are concerned. One young lad on the next table who was having a famous time on his coincidental birthday, we considered was the spitting image of 1970s Notts County stalwart right-back, Bill Brindley. (Bill knew his way around a pint too). At one point Billy 2021 version threw up twice into a bucket and amost tipped most of the drinks off the table while doing it.

It was loud, raucous with several celebrations going on, characterised by hugging, handshaking kissing, whilst moving between tables. Non of this bothered my crew who like me, were grateful to get out and see each other and socialise again. I’m commenting here, not criticising. We were all young once and i’m pretty sure I’d have been acting similarly at that age.

To summarise, well, I’m somewhat relieved that I had the relative protection of a Pfizer jag. I can’t make a case for any of this stuff being ‘safe’. This wasn’t the business’s fault who had done a sterling job of laying on a good, safe situation if it was used as such. The problem is alcohol and the effects of it isn’t it, and that was starkly shown all through the protracted time I was there. To say that it promotes some risk-taking behaviour is not a revolutionary statement.

Probably more interesting (to me at least) was the really nice chat I had with a group of lovely, friendlyfourth year design students during the latter part of the evening. Excusing themselves, they said they had wondered what kind of job I do and I guess were betting between themselves on the outcome. The reply ‘I’m a Psychologist’ brought about a stunned silence (believe me, some people incorrectly imagine you’re immediately about to carry out a psychoanalysis on them when you say that). When their mouths eventually closed we had a great chat and a main theme, sadly, was how they felt shunned by the local community, that nobody wanted anything to do with them since adverse reports about some students over the past year. They were actually really grateful to be acknowledged and engaged and thanked me over and over for this. What on earth have we come to?

The group said they all loved living in Nottingham and mentioned the true minority percentage of people misbehaving in the local parks, that press photographers were following people around, taking shots from various angles to enhance what appeared to be a complete lack of social distancing and prevalence of drinking alcohol which is forbidden in Nottingham’s open spaces.

I’m left a little sad about all this. I have worked in both Nottingham universities,studied at one of them and my ex remains a lecturer at one of them. I’ve friends in them and even work adjacent one of them. It’s easy and natural for me to feel connected to them, unlike some others, who fill the local ****-stirring rag with hateful, anti-student comments. I wonder where we are all going with this.

As for the two nights in general, there was generally a much more celebratory and gung-ho attitude noticable among people on both nights out including a second one which was much more staid by comparison. I can only think it is the psychological effect of being partly immunised for many. I have no idea if all this described will rebound on us and I’ve just decided to have gratitude for it while I can.

A genuine ‘thank you’, The Golden Fleece, Nottingham.

The Peregrine Falcons of Nottingham

Life and nature goes on, although for some it must feel as though it has ground to a halt. The peregrine falcons are back nesting in Nottingham city centre, perched many storeys up on a ledge of Nottingham Trent University’s Newton Building, as they do each Spring. A welcome sight for all and this year, a small reminder that the world keeps spinning and the seasons continue to evolve.

A Peregrine Falcon in its characteristic missile-like dive

Peregrines are possibly my favourite creatures with their staggering speed in a dive for prey. Some claim this to be recorded at 160mph, other claims even reach to 200mph. Whatever the truth, they are truly magnificent. I hope they are enjoying the relative peace of the city centre in the year of 2020.

Watch them live.

https://www.nottinghamshirewildlife.org/peregrine-cam

A Peregrine Falcon in its characteristic missile-like dive

Nottingham Diary: September 2019

It’s been a turbulent week on Nottingham’s roads with simply just traversing the city a little problematic to say the least. However, sadly, lives have been lost.

(Image: Invest in Nottingham)

Last Saturday evening, a man was stabbed to death in the centre of the city. A friend passing mentioned that he had witnessed the victim being unsuccessfully resuscitated. Another pointless waste of life. The fact that part of the city’s roads were closed for forensics that evening and through most of the next day is of no consequence by comparison.

Wednesday brought another fatality, this time on the main thoroughfare, Upper Parliament Street in the heart of the city. A local man, just 34 years-old, was hit by a single-decker bus and was was reported dead the next day. Passing the scene later in the day was a hard view, with the unfortunate victim’s rucksack still lying in the road behind the bus and hard to not see.

Friday came and saw city centre gridlocks due to different reasons. The earlier part of the day saw demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion by way of a massed cycle ride and later, a gathering in Old Market Square. No question that there are difficult issues to be faced here. The movement’s methods will continue to be debated by the public.

It’s still Friday and it’s that day and weekend where Nottingham’s thousands of students descend back on the city. A lighter note at least to see the pavements near my office teeming with students and their parents, arms full of bedding, clothing and foodstuffs for the young incomers. Perhaps the most amusing sight being two young lads each absolutely laden with two-litre bottles of mineral water, maybe concerned about the availability of running water in their new homes. A visit to the supermarket on leaving work saw a scene resembling a plague of locusts having swarmed its formerly heavily laden shelves.

Some people find the preponderance of students around the city from late September onwards an irritation but not me personally, notwithstanding that they’re not vomiting, staggering and crying in the street in the early hours  in the suburb where I live. I do like though, to see that youthful ebullience tinged with trepidation as they leave home for the first time and sort themselves into their new friendship groups in a strange environment. And let’s face it, there’s nowhere stranger than Nottingham at times.

Finally, and like most Saturdays from September to May in Nottingham one of the city’s two professional football teams are playing at home, this week, Nottingham Forest. Approaching the ground is Trent Bridge where a ‘police incident’ has been reported. This, sadly, is modern day code for a possible suicide attempt, in this case a possible jumper from the Trent Bridge into the River Trent’s dangerous currents far below. An increasing trend in these troubled times. I do hope this person is safe and goes on to continue forwards into a content and meaningful life.

View From A College Window

A part of my regular morning walk through the city of Nottingham becomes quite suddenly a striking view on a sunny April morning as the bright and and showy narcissi appear, heralding another Springtime.

Arkwright Building, Shakespeare Street, Nottingham

Nottingham Trent University’s Arkwright Building is placed in stately fashion along the city’s Shakespeare Street and is a building of much familiarity to me over a period of many years. It was in this building in a former apparition as a technical college that I studied to be a compositor in the 1970s. Often distracted by looking out on those same pretty lawns, the green swards through the window seeming an attractive proposition as opposed to following instructions from an old blackboard.

Many years later, I studied again within the same institution when it was by now a university, also spending a period of time working within the university supporting disabled students.

Perhaps one of the college’s most famous alumni is the writer, D H Lawrence who graduated in 1908. A few years later in 1916 he wrote ‘View From A College Window’ of his own times studying in the Arkwright Building, his words very evocative of my own later experiences and feelings there a few generations on.

From a College Window (D H Lawrence)

From New Poems (1916).

The glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping,
Goes trembling past me up the College wall.
Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping,
The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall.

Beyond the leaves that overhang the street,
Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white,
Passes the world with shadows at their feet
Going left and right.

Remote, although I hear the beggar’s cough,
See the woman’s twinkling fingers tend him a coin,
I sit absolved, assured I am better off
Beyond a world I never want to join.

D H Lawrence

The building’s somewhat intricate Gothic design has an individual slant as it brings together three great aspects of Victorian education: the university college itself, a public library and a museum of natural history, complete with stuffed animals.

D H Lawrence called it the ‘finest pile of public buildings in Nottinghamshire’, although qualifying this by opining Nottingham of the day as a ‘dismal town’. Lawrence, a brilliant writer could be described as a difficult man who upset many people of his own locality, particularly in his home town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire.

The Western end of the the Arkwright building sustained a serious direct hit from the German Luftwaffe in 1941. Not to be deterred however, the shattered end of the building was rebuilt in its former glory.

New Term – Hopes, Dreams and Lifetimes

THE END OF SEPTEMBER 2015 is nigh and this means that the streets of Nottingham around the Nottingham Trent University city campus are once again thronging with ‘Freshers’. The areas including Shakespeare Street and Goldsmith Street adjacent to the Arkwright and Newton buildings being particularly awash with new students, locating their accommodation and general whereabouts for the coming academic year.

Nottingham Trent University

With my own place of work being quite close, a saunter through the area on Thursday brought the sight of a teeming group of young intakes to the streets, identically dressed in a uniform of bright orange t-shirts proclaiming the legend ‘FRESHERS CREW across the chest and personalised names on the back, football jersey style. The faces were those of young people principally just having left home for the first time, expressions of excited expectancy, underlined in some cases with a slight etching of self-doubt and apprehension as they settle in to making new friends and locating their place in various groups and pecking orders.

Next week will probably see the beginning of the processions of large groups of students in fancy dress, heading along Mansfield Road and other main thoroughfares, congregating in the city centre and its clubs, pubs and inevitable ‘student nights’. It’s a familiar sight each year and brings a knowing smile to my face

Nottingham, being a city that boosts the two places of learning, Nottingham Trent University and the older, illustrious University of Nottingham, is very much a university town these days. Sometimes, there have been reports of the city’s students bring problems to inner-city residential areas where they have tended to colonise and indulge in boisterous, noisy and non-neighbourly behaviour as young people often inevitably do. It should be said though that, for me at least, the city is breathed new life when they return each September. Apart from economic factors alone, I feel they bring something to the modern culture of Nottingham and of course, I have walked a mile in those shoes years ago and therefore don’t feel so far removed from them and what they are experiencing, although my own home was in Nottinghamshire.

Nottingham Trent University, Arkwright Building, Shakespeare Street

A happy thought is that many of these young people will be making friends for many years or even a lifetime. They’ll form new allegiances with the city’s sports teams, visit places with friends that they’ll recall fondly as long as  they are able to remember.  Some will meet their life partners and some may even settle that well they never leave the city again and call it ‘home’.

Autumn term beckons, good luck to the returning and new students of the Queen of The Midlands.

Work hard and play hard.

Early Term

It’s mid-October and the golden leaves are now falling steadily, swirling around and sweeping the streets. It’s a time when energy levels can be depressed but often need to

be heightened, as in the case of the many people within my working environment at a local University. For October is a time of enormous activity in any such organisation.

The city centre campus is inevitably teeming with bodies and droves of hopeful and excitable young students, many on their first sojourn from home, pouring along Shakespeare Street and Goldsmith Street. Books and satchels in hand, hopes and fears for the future in heart.

Today as I write it is very sleepy in student land. An 8.15am stroll from the Victoria Centre bus depot sees surprisingly few people or traffic, an unusual scene for the middle of a sizeable city such as Nottingham. It’s a Thursday morning and every Wednesday night is a discount student night in some nightclubs in the city which might offer an explanation for the sluggish and rheumy eyed beginning to the day. By the time I emerge from a lecture mid-morning it will be a different academic world.

The University has seen many recent changes and as I walk around the lower levels of the city-dominating tower of the Newton building it strikes me that I’m standing on the very spot that I did more than thirty years ago. In those days it was in my first incarnation as a student studying Letter Assembly for my job as an apprentice compositor in the print trade. The plush surroundings I’m observing now where once a car park stood  which I would kick a ball through with my friends for morning coffee in the refectory.

There really is little comparison with the environs of the Trent Polytechnic of the 1970s and the modern Nottingham Trent University of today with it’s freshly appointed ambiance borne of huge investmen and very few similarities apart from geography. The Newton building has been gutted and refurbished and so has the historic but slightly run down Arkwright building of my teens. Sadly, the building where I was based in the composing room is no longer and has been razed to the ground in aid of progress and a seemingly little-used courtyard.

In those days Trent Polytechnic was largely inhabited by local students who were industrially-based in regular jobs, there appeared to be very few lofty academics in evidence and even people wearing white laboratory coats appeared to consider themselves a superior breed to us printing apprentices in those days. As I look around today there are many overseas students from China, Thailand, Korea and many other far-flung countries surrounding me. It is an interesting and vibrant panorama and this is perhaps just as things should be in the Autumn of 2010. It is however still an interesting comparison with those long days passed of enrolling in 1975 and stepping out of ‘Trent Poly’ in 1980 to face a new decade and the full-time world of work.