Small Town Togetherness

Not another shared experience in a small town I hear you say.

Well, I have no apologies. I may have been a bit disappointed not to have been pressured into divulging the name of the specific place but at the same time it does not need to be named because the stories would apply to just about every small town in the UK. It is not a case of demeaning or patronising the resident population because these are tales of true life and worthy of mention.

So far I have covered murder and sponsored walks, two mainstays of living in a close knit community. I could also delve into collective shoplifting at Woolworths (surprisingly almost attaining the status of a  National Pastime if the search results are to be believed), wife swapping, scrumping from neighbours fruit trees and other similar but largely harmless pursuits.

Our town was in desperate need of a by-pass.

It straddled a busy trunk road in the days before the development of the motorway network through the county and was about equidistant from the Steel Works in the next largest town and a large shipping port on the east coast. In addition our town had three thriving industries in which a high proportion of those of working age were employed.These were a Sugar Beet Factory, a Marmalade Manufacturer and an assembly line for a well known brand of bicycles.

Our careers master gave the same lecture to all of those reaching the age of 15. It was known as 'The Talk'.  It went along the lines that if you leave school now and get a job in the town making sugar from a root crop, preservatives from oranges or lemons or put together racing bikes you could within 2 years have your own car, a house and a beautiful girlfriend but be thick as two short planks. To those of us who were persistently asking for lifts, sharing a room with younger siblings or just plain unsatisfied in love this option appeared most attractive indeed. The other option was to stay on in education, wear a uniform whilst wanting to be a young adult and relying on parents for monies and resources. There would, the master promised, be a reward for keeping him in work for the foreseeable future in that we might get some valuable qualifications and the possibility of going on to a University. In short, we would be skint and humiliated but clever.

It was a time of full local employment and so it was possible to hang up your satchel one day and clock on in a factory the next. The trouble with not having a by-pass was that you could not always be assured of getting to school or to your workplace on time.

The flow and sheer volume of traffic during the day, into the night and the early hours prevented what many take for granted as a given in life, the exercise of crossing the road.

There were long, low and heavy haulage vehicles carrying steel rods, cables and other castings to the docks to be conveyed all around the world. They would be passed in the opposite direction by a mixture of flat bed trucks, tractor units with containers, tankers and car transporters making the journey from the docks to distribution centres which could be anywhere in the North and Midlands. Add to that the commuter traffic, the school run, buses and coaches of public transport, pensioners in beige coloured Austin Allegro's, farm machinery, army lorries and commercial vans and you can appreciate the problem.

Townsfolk were stranded on the side of the pavement on which they lived. Conversations were shouted across the High Street between the gaps in the traffic and a very expressive system of hand signals along the lines of a racecourse bookie was developed to inform friends or relatives, distanced by the road of current health situations, local gossip and opinions on a wide range of subjects from politics to the previous nights broadcast of soap operas or dramas.

Married couples cited the High Street as grounds for irreconcilable differences and non-consummation  of their relationships following enforced separation by a HGV having misread an apparent lull in the traffic to attempt a crossing.

Two cultures slowly arose in the town with a distinct superiority being attached to those who lived on the north side of the road corridor. This was purely down to the better range of shops and services on what became known as the upper side.

Unfortunately and tragically there were regular runnings over of foolhardy residents perhaps lulled into a false sense of bravado by the prospect of a cheaper tin of beans at the Spar Shop. This motivation seemed to make them blind and deaf to the oncoming traffic.

One unfortunate lady, leaning into the hatchback of her Japanese motor car to deposit her shopping, was caught in the downdraft of a passing lorry rig and the tailgate slammed down causing serious injury.

That incident, whilst at first comical, started a vociferous campaign for a by pass.

It took five years to get one.

The wide dual carriageway skirted the town as it carved its way through part of our school cross country course, some ancient woodlands and meadows and a couple of river crossings.

The whole town was invited by the main contractor to walk the route on one summers night, a few days before the official opening.

A reasonable proportion did turn up but frankly the experience was a bit disappointing. I likened it to carrying out a nature walk on the main runway of an airport.

We did not really know the etiquette of walking on an empty, just built motorway. The older folks hugged the hard shoulder and the slow lane being regularly overtaken in the middle lane by the more ambulatory, themselves by kids and younger families in the outer, fast lane.

Five linear miles had been designated for the Open Night. Imagine our shock when we realised that at the cordoned off farthest point we had to turnaround and just walk back through the oncoming human exodus. It was a bit of an anti-climax.

Sadder though was the loss of activity in the town. Whilst most of the traffic had rolled on through on a tight schedule a proportion had stopped off and had made use of the shops and services. The loss of income impacted on the wealth of the town on the very day that the by-pass was declared open by some local dignatory. It turned into a forlorn, backwater type of place soon to be vacated by British Sugar, Spring's Marmalade and with only the bike factory retaining a thinned out workforce to simply affix components to frames imported ready made from the Far East.

On some nights the townsfolk congregated on one of the bridges carrying a minor road over the by-pass if only to become reconnected to the outside world by the thundering of lorries, the sweep of headlights and that sweet aroma of carbon monoxide that had once seeped through the very veins and soul of our town.