The Great Divide

A family, and in ascending size order, usually, neighbours, the street, town, city, county, region, nation, continent, hemisphere and world can be divided on, in descending order, resources, wealth, culture, politics, language, education, sport, housing, parking, hedging and choice of takeaway.

In their own way and sphere of influence even the smallest point of contention can cause major rifts, fractures and tears in the fabric of life.

In our city of Hull the main divide is east to west across the urban sprawl. The physical feature forming the front line is the tidal River Hull which flows in and out of the Humber. It is bridged in many places but being navigable the crossing points have to be of a mechanical lifting or swinging type. Sensible in itself but smacking of a possibility of perpetuating the segregation of the city by whosoever has control over their operation.

Because of this feeling of insecurity the constituent parts of the city have polarised into tribal colours of their Rugby League teams, the red and white of Hull Kingston Rovers from the east and the black and white of Hull FC from the west. The fortunes of the teams, like the demilitarised zone represented by the river, have ebbed and flowed, stagnated, become muddied and mired and on increasingly rare occasions been in full unstoppable flood and so, in following have the loyal, respective supporters in their sense of status, achievement and pride.

The display of team colours is everywhere. Weekend and work apparel is strongly influenced by the latest release of replica , authentic sponsored jerseys to such a extent that the shopping streets of Hull can resemble a solid block of red/white and black/white moving effortlessly and seamlessly about their business.

Commercialism is a fact of life for the sport with frequent changes of the naming of the League and in recent years the introduction of teams from the south of England, having been a predominantly northern working class game and France.

Embroidery and iron on transfer business must be booming on the basis of the proportion of the high tech sports fabric under some form of logo. Not just a chest emblazoned main sponsor anymore but sleeves, cuffs, epaulettes, collars, shoulder yoke and shirt tail as well as any spare gaps in between which have potential for overprinting with your own name, nickname or dedication. The wardrobes of loyal supporters must be expansive to accommodate year on year changes to the strip and also variations within each season for home games, away games, Sunday and Friday matches and for one-off competitions such as Finals. This latter event has been regrettably absent from the honours roll of both our city teams for many years.

Merchandise is also extensive and inventive. New born babies will be first swaddled in team colours and returned home triumphantly branded in what will be a life-long, periodically euphoric but mainly stressful and disappointing obsession. Casual wear for the ladies includes boob tubes, halter tops, vests and a full soft sheen leisure or jogging suit in rich velour.

There are many individual and customised attestations to the team you support. House frontages afford a great opportunity for a display of colours on woodwork and rainwater fittings, door and window frames, where not in bright white UPVC, and with flags and banners acting as curtains and blinds. The small oval glazed pane of a plastic front door can sustain a stained glass and leaded caricature of a league player in full flight with ball in play.

My late father in law, having installed a neutral and functionally white kitchen in a house he was working on returned the following day to fit the handles only to find it had been re-painted in the gawdy post box red of Hull Kingston Rovers. The tribal basis does not however prohibit or stifle mobility amongst the population of the city. It may be necessary to cross the divide for employment or even a mixed marriage. My wife, from the east side of the city and a HKR fan has had to endure many years of residence on the western side and on a daily basis expresses a desire to return to the homeland.

I am of course not a native of these parts and feel able, therefore , to stand back and review the situation but in no way can I appreciate the true depth of emotions that are involved in supporting not just a team but a heritage and ethos across what really is an unbridgeable divide.

Swede with everything

I firmly believe that, on the balance of probabilities and given the hard facts, I am a Viking.

Consider the physical facts, oh ,and my surname Thomson is a bit Scandinavian.

I have green eyes. Not too rare but more commonly found accompanied by red hair. My Father was a ginger and it is thought that the colouration skips a generation. My eldest daughter has pledged to have any red headed offspring adopted if she has the misfortune of having one.

The ginger lobbyists have done well to spread the myth that they are artistic and creative and that they are the new blonde. Very clever. Adversity as we all know does breed considerable ingenuity and guile. If I let myself go a bit of a weekend there can be seen a slight ginger tinge in my stubble and certainly in any unruly eyebrow or nasal hair that escapes scrutiny.

I also love all things Scandinavian.

I was only really at ease driving a Volvo.

I found Ikea initially fascinating and stylish but now rather bland and a bit yesterday. This is likely to be due to some dilution of the ethos of Ikea to meet the market demands of the rest of Europe and not because of a lack of flair from the very talented designers, I think one of them is called Billy Bookcase-coincidence or what?

TV dramas and especially crime thrillers grounded in Copenhagen, Malmo or Trondheim are of great interest to me and I revel in hearing the tone and flow of the native language whilst concentrating hard on the subtitles. The Bridge, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Wallender have kept me enthralled and squinting simultaneously for hours.

I am drawn to women of Scandinavian bone structure and my wife is a clear illustration of this strong genetic trait. She is four generation Swedish.

I like swedes, the root grown version. They are amongst my favourite vegetables, boiled and mashed with butter and pepper.

After they knocked England out of the European Championships I supported Denmark out of a strange feeling of brotherhood.

I currently have the same make of leg brace as Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He must be slumming it on that basis.

I like being on the water, especially stood at the prow of a boat. This could of course be confused with admiring the acting talents of that Di Caprio guy rather than Eric the Viking or Noggin the Nog.

Pillaging, or as they have restyled-it, car booting is a particularly favourite activity.

One of my favourite movies is The Vikings with Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas from 1958 although I was shocked by how rubbish it was when recently shown on TV. I had of course built it up to epic and classic status in my mind and was quite embarrassed after watching it with my son. Lame or what?

So, the evidence is very strong to suggest that I am of Viking descent. This does explain certain events and emotions during my formative years such as liking pickled fish, snow, smokey atmospheres, trolls, Daim Bars and wearing sandals in winter. My newly grown beard is very Scandi-Hipster or is it Wild Man of the Arctic.

I am reluctant to go for the test to determine within reasonable probability my genetic composition because I could not stand the disappointment that my name is not, according to one of those find your Viking name sites, Petr Sheeptipper

Garibaldi had time on his hands

Beards are everywhere. 

Obviously, I exclude amongst the fairer sex but in just about every avenue of life the beard is prominent. It may just be the case that facial hair is in the mainstream but whether it is to be a strong trend or just a brief fashion statement is yet to be seen.

The resurgence in beards and moustaches, in my perception, stems from recent charitable campaigns, the best known being "Movember" which certainly drew attention to the subjects of prostate cancer, testicular cancer and male suicide.

The actual circumstances to grow a beard are quite limited beyond doing it to raise funds for worthy causes. It takes a good couple of weeks to establish facial hair of any credibility ie beyond a joke which narrows down the opportunities to dedicate such time, in my opinion, to one or more of the following:

A) You are on holiday and if used to shaving daily for the rest of the working year then why not take a break?
B) Your life has been disrupted by a major personal or other crisis which means you cannot face the world
C) There is an urgent need to develop a disguise
D) You are doing it for a bet or out of stubbornness
E) Someone has cast aspersions on your maturity and a beard is a perfect response to this
F) On a similar theme to E) you are fed up of being challenged for proof of age at the Off Licence.
G) A particular sporting or role model figure looks really good in a beard so you feel you should follow suit
H) An individual of the opposite sex that you fancy made you think that you would look really good with facial hair beyond a designer stubble
I) Everyone else has one.

All of the above will ring familiar with those toying with the idea of a beard.

In my case, I am into week five of my own face fungus and the reason?

Well, as many of you know I fell down a hole and required leg surgery which finds me in the post-operative stage in a fixed leg brace and a strict no weight bearing recovery.  Although I might be able to do so I have convinced myself that I cannot attempt to shave without the strong possibility of falling out or over my walking frame in the bathroom.

That will sound feeble but as I am determined not to do anything to prolong my recuperation it is, above all, sensible.

So, I have embarked on the adventure that is the growing of full facial hair.

It takes some courage in the first few days and not a few glances from loved ones which suggest concerns over state of mind, potential depression and a complete withdrawal of any measure of personal hygiene.

I am being honest in stating that prior to my current commitment my longest interval between clean shaving was from a Friday to a Monday morning. I actually enjoy the discipline and results of a shave and this has for most of my life been an essential part of my daily routine whether on a working day or in my free time.

Furthermore I am reasonably active for a 50 plus male and can think of nothing worse than sweating through fuzz or trying to fasten a cycling helmet over stubble.

I have on my adventure passed through that difficult intitial straggly stage of growth.

I was fearful at first that there would be a predominant ginger hue as the Viking genes from my paternal side are never far below the surface where bodily hair is concerned. This Celtic colouration did not transpire but on either side of my chin I have developed white streaks very reminiscent of Cruella daVille or someone who has not been informed that after eating rice pudding most of it still resides in the hair.

There is a period over a few days, about two weeks in, where beard observers hesitate and cross over the road in an attempt to avoid what they expect as a forthcoming request for change for a cup of tea or directions to the nearest hostel.

At a hospital appointment about three weeks on I felt stares of pity and a searching gaze around me for someone who looked like a Carer. A few young children, in obvious pain with a broken limb to be re-set and encased in plaster, were hustled away from me by parents or guardians to another part of the waiting room. Perhaps if I had mastered a bad tempered growl or under-breath muttering I could have speeded up my progress by causing other queueing patients to excuse themselves from the line.

By week four I was actually looking at options to style my facial growth. One reference was to a chart of 33 different styles in natural order from fresh faced to something called a Bandholz (full scary criminalised) and with many variations in between.

Against my curiosity and speculation however has been the reception for my effort of a beard from friends, family members and colleagues. In the latter my forwarding of a mugshot type photo to the office e mail resulted in a group action for its swift removal. That sort of reaction cannot be ignored.
At the time of writing only my wife and daughters seem to like the thing.

As for my own feelings about it, well, they are mixed.

Being accustomed to a clean shaven reflection in the mirror my shaggy, fugitive appearance is difficult to process.

There is a strange sensation when washing my face in that no water seems to be able to percolate through to cause a sensation on the surface of my skin. Above all, maintaining a beard takes a lot of work from trimming and styling and although my current predicament of poor mobility allows for diarising a bit of grooming I do not think that this could be sustained when I return to full time work.

I am therefore planning to shave it off…….all of it....sometime soon….when I can balance on one leg at the sink……but definitely before the hot seasonal weather as if it was left until the autumn I expect that I will have a really odd combination of suntanned skin around the pale, sickly outline of a face newly exposed to the atmosphere.

Grounds for Improvement

Unprecedented. Three consecutive football related pieces grace the pages of my blog. 

I can explain why. 

Most influential in my train of thought is that we are into the closing stages of the 2016/2017 season as far as my home town team, Hull City are concerned. They find themselves in the last undecided relegation place and with a seemingly hopeless task of securing two wins from their last pair of games against fellow strugglers Crystal Palace and the again thwarted title contenders, Tottenham. 

Mention of the north London team brings in the fact that today is their last match at their famous White Hart Lane ground in readiness for a temporary camping out at Wembley Stadium until their new super-stadium is completed to give them the uplift in attendances and gate receipts that would enable them to compete with the rest of the top six Premier League teams who can rely on home crowds in excess of 50,000 and all of the commercial aspects that this generates. 

In full circle is the poignant and very sad anniversary on 11^th May of the tragic Bradford City fire, an unwelcome culmination of many issues that used to be part of attending a football match yet exposing individuals to risks and threats that would not be tolerated in any other sporting or public activity. 

Many said that a disaster on the scale of the Bradford fire was just waiting to happen in a good number of English football grounds.Sadly it was an inevitability but it took the loss of 56 lives and the prolonged suffering of many more casualties to be the catalyst for a change for the better in how fans attended. 

Of course, as an 11 year old in the early 1970’s being taken to see my local team at that time, Scunthorpe United in the old Fourth Division I paid little or no regard to the potential hazards that lurked in plain sight at The Old Showground. 

It was a typical lower division ground slap bang in the middle of the town onto the main Doncaster Road amongst tightly packed shops and houses. However, for all of this down to earth stuff it was a place of wondrous magic and I can still vividly recall the sheer thrill and anticipation of emerging through the steel, concrete and corrugated sheeting skeleton of one of the grandstands to see the bright greensward of the pitch. 

Hang on a minute, perhaps my waxing lyrical on a bowling green calibre playing surface is a bit of fanciful and selective memory. In reality it is more likely that the pitch was of the calibre of a ploughed field, muddy, waterlogged, potholed and threadbare of any blades of grass. 

My complete immersion in everything football at that age served as effectively as a mental screening out of the uglier aspects of a traditional English football ground. 

The entrance to the terraces was not a gateway to a theatre of dreams but a gaping hole flanked by huge heavy gates and a liberal trailing of barbed or razor wire. Fans milled around a small kiosk selling matchday programmes, little more than a pamphlet run off on a Gestetner or similar machine in the Club Office, and a host of other ephemera from club pennants to posters, enamelled pin badges and other endorsed products. 

Equally popular was the food outlet, again a mobile wagon as I seem to remember trading in cups of tea and the trademark matchday pies. 

The surroundings were drab in the extreme giving the impression of being in the bleakest of Cold War Communist settlements. 

That period in English football was one of hooliganism and violence and so any splash of team allegiance in scarves, bobble hats or rosettes was avoided in favour of anonymous clothing. 

The sights and sounds I still found enthralling, less so the overriding stench of urine from the low blockhouse that was the toilets. If the queues were too long to use them and kick off was fast approaching it was a case of having to tiptoe over the streams of steaming piss from those who had decided to just go there and then. Public disorder was overruled in such a scenario. 

The terraces are remembered for camaraderie, a solidarity amongst supporters, humour and wit, the uniform voice of encouragement or disdain for your team. Even in the super stadia of today many fans elect to stand for the duration in homage to those long past days. They were all of those things but also frightening, foreboding and hazardous, in particular to the very young and more senior amongst the crowd. 

The first advice given by my father with whom I regularly went to The Old Showground was to make sure that I found a standing place in front of one of the steel barriers that punctuated the concrete terracing. If there was a surge in the crowd in response to action on the pitch or a disturbance off then I was to duck under the barrier so as not to be crushed against it. I had to take this evasive action a few times and it became quite a reflex. It was more difficult for the old men, the  stalwarts of the club support to act with the required agility and flexibility to avoid potential for injury. 

Anything was possible in a heaving and fractious crowd. I could often hear the sound of a glass bottle hitting the concrete and early winter evening games were punctuated by fireworks being let off or thrown indiscriminately. l should state that all of these incidents came from within the partisan home supporters. The presence of any committed body of away team supporters added a whole new dimension of activities.

For all of these hazards, actual or perceived, I was an enthusiastic match-goer with my father. It was grass-roots football, warts and all. 

Scroll forward to the new millennium, post lessons learned at Bradford and Hillsborough, and I find myself in Hull City’s modern stadium in the pre-match moments. 

I have been welcomed into the expansive foyer of the Executive Club by a suit-clad host, the doors are held open for me into a warm and well furnished lounge with complimentary programme and a choice of meals at an impressive buffet table attended by white hat-clad chefs. 

There is a myriad of wall mounted screens showing highlights of games already in progress or classic highlights from past matches and on a low stage a former player is giving an eloquent talk on his expectations for the team performance. 

If desired, bets can be placed in civilised comfort but I make my way over plush carpets to the stairwell that leads to a subtly upholstered seat and a glorious view over an impeccably manicured playing surface. 

In retrospect, The Old Showground seems like a bad dream. I have not gone soft. It is just nice to go to a football match with a better than average chance of making it home safely afterwards

Billy and Kev do handbags

A natural follow on from yesterday's piece about Kevin Keegan, This is a particular favourite ans even now I can still clearly recall the event as it unfolded in 1974. Imagine it is a hot august day.....

The English football season is starting to re-emerge from its summer break, even allowing this year for the World Cup and the seemingly endless early rounds of pre-competition games for the seemingly pointless lower echelon of European tournaments. The press agencies are spinning stories which have had difficulty in getting column inches and airtime in the close-season. The hype has begun again.

The realisation that a new season is upon us comes with the Charity Shield Match. It is taking place today. This was always a bit of a non-event. From memory during my childhood it was rarely televised and also poorly reported. Apart from the participation of the winners of the League and FA Cup from the previous season I am not sure what role, function or purpose it served. Even the Charitable aspect was never really explained at any time.

I was, in my 11th year, absolutely obsessed with football. It had really started as an all engrossing thing in 1970 with the World Cup and my quest to fill up the book of collectors cards for all of the main squad members. It was the Brazil team of that time that caught my imagination and fascination. An exotic mix of skillful, athletic and charismatic players which was so much in contrast to the dour, drab, characterless and, frankly, old looking contemporaries of the English teams. I lived, breathed, talked and dreamed football.

I did follow Chelsea at that time but I think my main motivation was the playing kit, especially the white stripe flash on the side of the team issue shorts, again a burst of colour in a black and white world. My first ever kit was however Liverpool and I recall the oval profile cardboard container which my parents bought from the town sports shop containing the bright red Umbro made kit. It was very, very red with only the thinnest dog collar in white, a bit  like our vicar's. I lived in that strip for weeks and months. I could soon reel off the full Liverpool team from Clemence, Lawler, Lindsay, etc through to Smith, Lloyd, Heighway, Hall, Toshack and of course Kevin Keegan.

As a tenuous link with Kev we had moved, as a family to a town close to the Steel Manufacturing town of Scunthorpe. Kevin Keegan had been discovered as a talent on the playing field by Scunthorpe United and spared a working life down the coal mines of South Yorkshire around Doncaster.

Keegan was a mini-powerhouse. A bustling, frizzy permed haired striker of a style not really seen in British football. It was not surprising that a good part of his career was spent in the German Bundesliga where he fitted in well in all aspects of a fast paced game and fashions of the period. He was a prolific talent, play-maker and goalscorer.

Imagine my shock and horror when Keegan my hero was sent off for fighting in, of all things, the 1974 Charity Shield match.

The match was being broadcast on the radio as our family were driving down to Somerset for our summer holiday. It was a hot, sultry day. The whole family sweltered in the VW Estate Car.

Liverpool against Leeds United was always going to be a niggly, competitive game. It must have been difficult for the 22 players to get motivated for a Wembley game after a long, lazy summer break and the match was labouring on throught the first half.

I could not believe my ears when the commentator described the boxing match, scuffle or handbagging between Keegan and the equally diminuitive Billy Bremner. Both of them were respected figures in the game but all was forgotten in the melee. The two players did not stop at the fisticuffs. They both took off their shirts and threw them down on the pitch. The double sending off was headline news at a quiet time in the sporting calendar but had significant after-tremors in football and through the media and public. An 11 match ban and a fine was imposed on the miscreants.

It was a very ugly incident. Over the next decade there followed equally disgraceful behaviour by so called fans and followers in the English game as though the foundations holding up the beautiful game had been blown apart on that sunny afternoon in august.

The soul of Kevin Keegan

I like to see demonstrations of lateral thinking. 

I suppose it is because it is not anything that I am good at. The skill, which it is, makes for a good twist in a movie or in the pages of a thriller or mystery novel. Others find it a natural thought process to enrich and ease their everyday lives. In stark contrast I just wallow about with no practical ideas. I think the kind word for my inability to think laterally is a plodder. 

So when I see or hear of a particularly adept example of this trait I have every admiration and fascination. 

Just imagine then the thrill of coming across the following classic piece of lateral thinking from the 1970’s that combined so many things that I was enthused about in my childhood at that time, those being Kevin Keegan and Liverpool Football Club. 

There was quite a tenuous association between me as a footie mad eight year old and the pocket dynamo that was Keegan. As a family we had just moved to North Lincolnshire from the depths of Suffolk. I had scoured my football magazines, mainly the Shoot New Season Edition to see if there was a League Team in the new area for me to support having been somewhat spoiled for choice in East Anglia with Ipswich and Norwich. 

To the east was Grimsby but closest at about 8 miles from our new home town was Scunthorpe who at that time had a team languishing in, I seem to recall, the lowest tier of English football, the old Fourth Division. 

My father took me to my first ever proper football match in the 1971 to 1972 season , Scunthorpe United v some other lowly team. 

Kevin Keegan played for United, their nickname being The Iron because of the huge steelworks that dominated the skyline but unfortunately for me both he and Ray Clemence had just, in the pre season, made a big money move to the mighty Liverpool. 

A tenuous link indeed but to me it was very exciting.

So Kevin Keegan was hot property on Merseyside joining  a team that in the 1970’s dominated domestic and European football propelling their quiet and unassuming manager, Bob Paisley to the position of British footballs greatest. 

Paisley showed that amongst his many talents was lateral thinking. 

In 1971 Paisley was the club physio and assistant to the charismatic Bill Shankly .

Kevin Keegan suffered from a serious problem with his feet soon after signing for Liverpool and complained incessantly of discomfort which threatened to affect all aspects of his game from training to match play and recovery. The dour and no-nonsense Shankly had little time for players nursing what he regarded as a minor injury and with Keegan’s strange complaint he showed intense irritation to the extent that he accused the 20 year old to his face of being a malingerer, in that he felt the player was pretending. 

It fell to Bob Paisley to apply his methodical and lateral thinking to the problem and to try to find a solution to keep a key member of the first team fit and firing on all cylinders. 

He quizzed Keegan about his lifestyle and whether any factors could be contributing to his malady. 

The questions included whether he lived in an attic with lots of stairs, did he walk up a lot of hills, did he go horse riding or even skiing. 

By the process of painstaking elimination the most probable cause of the discomfort appeared to be Keegan’s brand new car, a bright green sporty Ford Capri Coupe. This was a car of choice for the discerning young football stars in the game in that era.  

Paisley ordered the vehicle to be investigated which meant lifting the carpets for any awkward angled aspects of the floorpan or an odd driving stance. Joe Fagan, a former player now on the Liverpool staff sat in the drivers seat and in pressing down on the pedals found that the clutch pedal was stiff and unyielding. 

Keegan stopped driving the car and sure enough the issue with his feet cleared up and in honours and achievements of man and team, the rest is, well, football history. 

(Source; Quiet Genius by Ian Herbert on Bob Paisley- Bloomsbury Sport 2017)

A Little bit of History

Bernat Klein was a Serbian-born textile designer whose exotic mohairs and tweeds put Scottish fashion on the map. 

The clothes he had seen in Scotland in the aftermath of war seemed to be mainly a dingy brown or green: “And that was just the women,” Klein recalled. “At least the men had their kilts, tartan ties and trews.” 

He was determined to make his adopted country a brighter place even though he could do nothing about his first impression which was of dread at the prospect of Scotland being very, very cold. He found that it actually was but this did not deter him from setting up his own business, drawing on his flair for colour to create the exotic tweed and mohair fabrics that would become his signature. 

His philosophy of his design was summed up in an extract from an interview “I think that colours are as important in our lives as words are... All my inspiration has always been derived from nature, what I see when I look out of my windows or walk down to the woods, where there is so much colour, even in winter”. 

It was this necessity to be at one with nature that in the early 1970’s Klein established an office and studio in the Scottish Borders just off the A707 just to the north of Selkirk. 

Although seemingly isolated the distinctive late Modernist structure in concrete, steel, brick and glass actually sits within short walking distance of High Sunderland, a low sprawling flat roofed single storey dwelling by the same Architect, Peter Womersley as Klein’s private residence.

The workspace can clearly be seen from the main road but its apparent abandonment and physical deterioration has led it to be added to the list of buildings in Scotland “at risk”. 

There has, to the credit of the current owners, been no lack of intention to bring the RIBA Award Winning Building into economic use since their acquisition in the year 2000. 

Any form of commercial occupation ended in the last years of the 20^th century when the premises were vacated by Scottish Enterprise Borders. 

Planning permission was granted in 2002 for change of use and conversion to a single dwelling although with many conditions attached to be expected of such an iconic design and the unusual attachment for such an era of building of Listed Status. 

The temptation to re-market and get rid no doubt crossed the mind of the current owners in the subsequent 17 years will have been overridden by the sheer pleasure of ownership of such an important structure. 

There have been setbacks with leaks through the flat roof and a devastating escape of water from pipework with the exposure to the harsh Borders autumn and winter climate. Moisture in its different forms poses the largest threat and in more recent years condensation and mould have taken their toll on the constructional elements. Parts of the external timber detail have also from exposure to weather deteriorated. 

Nevertheless the public interest remains strong and as recently as 2016 many took advantage of an open day to visit and experience the uniqueness. 

A range of photographs illustrates the impressive lines of the former offices and studio but here is a bit of the “at risk” register entry.

Late Modernist styled 2-storey rectangular-plan concrete and glazed studio space set on brick plinth with cantilevered overhanging upper floor, entrance bridge to side and central brick service core through to roof. Deep concrete beams to sides, 4 main columns; large pane anodised aluminium framed glazing to ends, heavy metal framed balcony railings, mitred frameless glazing to corners. The contrasting structural elements of bold horizontal cantilevered striated concrete join with finely framed vertical glazing to illustrate a monumental sensibility executed with sophistication and with great attention to detail.

The horizontality of the main structure is neatly punctuated by the vertical brick service core extending onto the roof space and the bridge at first floor level linked to raised ground to the N anchors the studio to the site. 

The building was designed to connect harmoniously with its setting on the sloping wooded site; the severe profile of the concrete elements succeed in contrasting with the verticals of the trees around it.

The statement expressed by the workspace which was also used by Bernat Klein for weaving ,as a gallery and meeting rooms was the perfect advertisement for his own striking and individual design output as shown by the following product catalogue picture.

The Architect, Peter Womersley, attributed his original decision to go into the profession to the influential work of the great American visionary Frank Lloyd Wright. 

The design of the Bernat Klein Studio does in some respects pay homage to Fallingwater, a house that Lloyd Wright built between 1936 and 1939 over a waterfall in southwest Pennsylvania. It instantly became famous and today is a National Historic Landmark. 

With a bit of luck, as certainly the intention cannot be faulted this building may soon come off the “at risk” category and be given a new energy and vitality.