I’m not sure how much traction this has but I’ve been reading the Dave Davies biography. As some of you know I have a link to Muswell Hill and when he mentions places there I can picture them. The John Baird pub (now called the Village Green ,wonder where they got the idea for the name from) The Clissold Arms, Les Aldrich music shop (don’t look for it, it closed after 78 years) and others. The girlfriend he got pregnant went to Henrietta Barnet school for girls, one of my first girlfriends went there despite me living in Yorkshire. His girlfriend lived on Dukes Avenue which is where my wife lived.
What I’m wondering is when reading a book if you don’t know a place do you picture a place you know? When you imagine say the Les Aldrich shop could be it be in your mind the guitar shop you bought your first guitar or albums from?
Reading the Norfolk thread I don’t know a lot of the places but I know what a pier looks like it may not be the correct pier for Cromer but I can make a guess as to what it looks like. I know I could look it up but it’s those images we retain in our mind that helps us make sense of texts.
Anyhoo just a few thoughts to ponder.
Cromer Pier is the pier all piers aspire to be. It’s the pier without peer.
Isn’t that where Alan Partridge shot himself
If as a child he’d seen a man shoot himself, it’d be less the pier and more la jetee.
@Boneshaker no pier pressure please.
Arf!
@fitterstoke
Peerless riposte there, @fitterstoke
Jetty, son, all hope of sensible responses.
Last time I was there, I saw a load of Morris dancers doing their thing on the circle.
Oh my!
So although I now know what its outer looks like, and only from that angle I have no knowledge of its stalls inside. Once I step through those doors of Cromer pier I can only ‘see’ Southwold pier (probably the last pier I was on) and its collection of automata.
Ice cream and chips on the left, tat shop and stinking bogs on the right. Bar and theatre at the end. Lifeboat beyond that. I once watched as the lifeboat launch, which was exciting (and scary, knowing someone was out there is distress).
Nothing as whacky as Southwold pier.
I’m assuming you know that a whole folk festival takes place on that pier? I’ve only been once because the timing is not good for me, but it’s very jolly.
“Les Aldrich music shop” – I’m picturing the shop where Jim MacLaine buys the guitar at the end of That’ll Be The Day. Drums, accordions, some woodwind, some guitars (Hofner Verithins, Watkins Rapiers) – retailer wearing a tie and jacket.
You might be right about the retailer, otherwise not quite. I knew the Les Aldrich music shop very well – it was where we bought the kids’ recorders, ukuleles, violins, music books, music stands, all that school stuff. There were other instruments too of course, including guitars, but they tended to be at the Squier Strat/little amp kit for £100 end of the spectrum. It was also where I first discovered Naxos CDs at the end of the 80s.
It may have been groovier back in the 60s of course – Ray and Dave Davies are waxing lyrical about Les Aldrich in the latest UnMojo.
Actually, your description makes me think I was closer than you seem to suggest, bearing in mind that I have no knowledge of the actual shop and it’s all in my head!
Anyway, Squier strats and the Naxos label didn’t exist in the 1960s, so we may be at cross purposes here…and any shop selling nice red guitars was groovy in the 60s.
Yes, you’re probably right – I was thinking 80s/90s. The shop tended to be full of parents and kids rather than Jim Maclaines.
You are right, of course, familiarity immediately begs attention. I am drawn to bands, authors, film makers, the lot, often based on no more than a shared geography. What is weirder, is how genetic memory (sic) of places never seen, but consequential to forbears kick in. Viz myself, born in Hove, educated in Eastbourne and trained in London. I have lived in the Midlands since 1980, but consider myself a Gael, triggered by any reference to the Hebrides and West Coast.
I often find myself transferring images from other works as a shortcut to save me from imagining things myself. For example, I’ve just finished the Maigret novels and the image of Maigret I had while reading them is basically Eddie Campbell’s depiction of Frederick Abberline from the From Hell graphic novel he worked on with Alan Moore. This is quite close to how Maigret is described in the books and I found it a convenient shortcut.
All of them? There are about 85 aren’t there? Deep respect.
75 novels, but they’re very short. Each one about 160 pages with big type. Still, took a few years.