Only in Totnes....

A few Sundays ago I walked along the River Dart from the Dartington Estate towards Totnes. 

The River Dart flows gently by the Dartington Estate

When I reached the Totnes Bridge I climbed the steps up to street level and walked to the nearby Morrisons supermarket to fetch a copy of our Sunday paper The Observer. Before walking home on the steep ascent of Fore Street and the High Street, I called in for refreshment at the Royal Seven Stars Hotel . Once my thirst had been quenched I began to scale the East Face of Totnes. For an ageing and not particularly fit person like myself, it's a stiff climb so when I reached the East Gate I had to stop for a breather before continuing my sojourn. Some minutes later and almost home now, I reached the summit at the Happy Apple store where momentarily I imagined I was experiencing an altitudinal illusion, for there, at the opening of Apple Lane,  a pony and a dog, both tethered to a cart were illegally parked. 

Illegally parked

On spotting their owner, a young man, a carter in his early thirties I would say, I immediately informed him of his misdemeanour and he laughed. Mockingly the two homeless men sitting on the pavement just outside Happy Apple alleyway warned of the terrible fate that would befall me if I were to grass the carter up.  As is said around these parts, "Only in Totnes....."

Rumours of Progress at The Bull Inn Totnes, Creative Camouflage, Seagulls and the Mystery of the Lifeless Lifts

  
   Many in Totnes are becoming excited by the progress of the re-vamping of the Bull Inn on the Rotherfold. Contractors are working feverishly to complete a comprehensive overhaul of the innards of the old building while rumours develop, as they do about everything in Totnes, concerning  the mounting costs of the renovation. Last October the town's rumour mill measured the overall costs at £300,000. By March of this year with work still seeming no nearer completion the choir of gossip put the total cost of restoration as £750,000 and this month it stands at £1,500,000, and with the new lick of paint put on the outer wall in these last few days,  it is expected that when the Bull Inn re-opens circa October, 2019 the overall cost of the project will have reached just short of a billion pounds sterling with every expectation it will go over this mark.

   Everyone is commenting on the colour of the paint now coating the tavern. In hue it is somewhere between a dark pink and a light terracotta. Some like it, some don't. General opinion is that it was chosen because it is similar to the colour of seagull poo and so evidence of the birds' effluent will not be visible. Personally speaking, I quite like it, the paint that is, not the poo. 

Creative Camouflage

By the by, there is also a story doing the rounds that the town council is meeting up with a group of influential seagulls in an attempt to request that the latter (who feed off our poorly wrapped food waste) move their nests to the bottom of the valley where an excellent tidal stretch of river - with fish in it - has been provided for them.

   Getting back to the Bull Inn, the new proprietrix is to be congratulated  on the likelihood of her business being up and running this year, a happy fate that appears an unlikely one for the lifts on the new footbridge at Totnes Railway Station. They were completed at Christmas last year and remain defunct. Rumours and gossip are needed.

Lifeless Lift at Totnes Railway Station

ps The Kingsbridge Inn in Leechwell Street at the top of the town which has been closed for over two years  is to open next April as a Hilton "Boutique" Inn . This new marque is an initiative of Hilton Hotels to create a range of small, high quality, intimate hotels.

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We'll see, soon

     I've always been fascinated that certain phrases and words are uncanny. Two such came to my mind on Sunday morning past as I lay in bed thinking about getting the day started while I watched the first real rain for 60 days pittering and pattering on our bedroom window here in Totnes. 

   The phrase which first stirred me was "We'll see". I remember one day just before my tenth birthday in 1955 - when cowboys loomed large in the play of boys in the Dundee area and beyond - asking my mother if I could have a Lone Star Steve Larrabee six shooter revolver for my birthday. I'd seen it in the toy shop window on Lochee High Street. It was made of metal and looked just like the ones the cowboys used in the western films I frequently watched down at the Rialto Picture House in Lochee. It shows you how our, or maybe just my culture, has changed over the years. I would be shocked and somewhat troubled if anyone I now know was buying his or her child a toy gun, given the horrors brought about by the use of guns throughout the world. Anyway, getting back to my asking my mother if she and Daddy would buy me one of these guns for my birthday. Her answer was "We'll see." Her response was unacceptable. I understood the answer "Yes," and also, even though it was desperately unfair, the answer "No." You could always skulk away and sulk and then forget all about it until another good idea came to mind. I knew that "We'll see,"  really meant "No," but it always tantalised me with its very thin strand of hope.

    As the days before my birthday passed I prayed, (I occasionally did in those days particularly if there was something that I especially wanted for myself), promising the higher power that I would be good for ever and with all the intensity I could muster I willed that there would be a gun waiting for me on a chair in the living room which was where our presents were placed on my sisters' and my birthdays. As I'd guessed, when my birthday came there was no gun for me. I was heartbroken but made the best of showing gratitude for the box containing an electric train set that was given to me. My Daddy got a lot of pleasure from it. He built a table up in the loft and set up the rail track upon it and placed the locomotive and its carriages there. Occasionally he would allow me to play with it for a few minutes.

A Basset- Lowke toy train, "Thanks son!"

     The weeks towards Christmas rolled  by Christmas and I think it became clear to my Mummy that the railway set was really Daddy's toy. At that time, I was, to an extent,  still in the thrall of the Santa Claus fantasy but I was so low about the railway set that I couldn't become enthusiastic about Christmas when everyone was excitedly exclaiming, "It'll be Christmas soon!" And Christmas did soon arrive and lying under the Christmas tree was what looked like a box wrapped in holly berry decorated paper.  This had a label on it which read,

"To Charlie, Happy Christmas from Santa Claus". Inside the box was a Lone Star Steve Larrabee Cowboy's six shooter revolver.

This was the gun, As a kid I thought it was gee whiz but I'm shocked by it  now.

     "Soon" is the other uncanny expression that entered my thoughts as I shook myself into the day in my bedchamber on Sunday morning. As a child when told it would soon be the summer school holidays or it would soon be my birthday, soon could seem such a distance away. I just couldn't bear waiting until the very day I woke up and found the holidays had started or my birthday had arrived and "soon" no longer existed. 

     I've brought this up because here in Totnes at the top of the town where the High Street is called The Narrows there is a shop which has been closed for some time. People seem to be working on it, structuring its interior.  The windows are covered with brown paper and it is not possible to see inside. Placed in the centre of this paper covering is a white paper sign with the word, "SOON" written upon. This SOON sign seems to have been up for months and the shop has not opened and it occurred to me that the sign could be up for all eternity without ever being misleading. Each time I see the sign I am in "the here and now" so it appears  possible that the shop will open soon, though it never is. In this sense "soon" becomes like the word "tomorrow". It is, it seems, a valid notion yet it never comes to be.

We'll see, soon

     As you may have worked out by now Totnes is the Devon Quarter of the City of Dundee, (only kidding, well, maybe not), so visit Totnes, it's a great wee toon and explore the mystery of the Soon Shop.

The Soon Shop Totnes

     In the fullness of time it has opened as Bianca e Massimo and is a popular vegan café.

"A drunk man looks at the rose"* : the Scottish referendum in Totnes, Devon

Afore I tell ye this wee story, I need tae clear up some local business first. I hae twa principal watering holes in Totnes, the toon in Devon whaur ma hame is. They're the Bull Inn and the Bay Horse Inn both of which are hunders o' years auld.  The action in the day’s anecdote took place in the Bay Horse but since I dinna wish tae upset the landlords of either of these twa pubs by seeming to favour  ane  o'er t'other I thocht I’d pit ma neutrality oot in the open. Tae be honest I perhaps use the Bull mair often since it is nearer tae ma hame which with ma ageing limbs gi'es it an advantage. Baith are excellent but very different establishments and each in its ain way serves an important social purpose in the toon.

From the corner of the Rotherfold : The Bull Inn and the Albatross Fish n' Chip Shop

In the last few days I am discovering how much the continuing news of the Scottish referendum  has been meaning tae people in England. Until noo I've thocht they've kept it under wraps or hae thocht it a distant prospect and when the event took place the Scots wid see sense and vote tae bide in the union. Recent dispatches frae the north have begun tae deliver a contrary message. They suggest the campaign for independence is building up steam. 
Consternation doon sooth is rising and could it be that deeply held resentment is surfacing with it ?

From the Old Market : The Bay Horse Inn with white van

The ither day in the Bay Horse a young loon  - I mean a man in his 30s, which is young by my terms  -  on discovering I was Scottish scolded me. "All you Jocks are the same. You spend all the money and we Britishers have to earn it all so you can spend it again."  

I said, " I think constitutionally I am still a Britisher and given that I am domiciled in England and intend to remain here  then I would, should Scotland become independent,  still technically be a Britisher." He was quite upset aboot it a' and didna' tak ma point and I felt I had tried tae be too much o' a smart alec and wished I hadna' been sae pedantic. Like maist pedants I'd got ma facts wrong since I dinna' think the United Kingdom has a constitution.  

Anyway in the end it turned oot he wisna' sae bothered aboot the Scots wanting tae go it alane, or indeed  that we micht be spending his money willy nilly.  What worried him maist wis that if Scotland did become independent then England could be stuck with a Tory government forever !  I thocht it best no' tae say, "And whit aboot Wales and Northern Ireland." We parted pals. It showed tae me that this Scottish referendum lark is exercising people's thochts doon here mair than they let on.

What a time for Scotland and the United Kingdom !



*With humility, my respects to the late, mainly lamented Hugh McDiarmid and his great poem "A drunk man looks at the thistle".