As much as I like to monitor
the amount of Christmas decorations on display until January 6th, I
find it a bit grim when you spot traces of the festive season once Christmas is
over and done with. The occasional little trace is perhaps acceptable, as you
can give the benefit of the doubt and assume it to be an oversight. However,
the above picture displays more than a little trace, more of a crashing
blunder.
Bulwell on Sunday is almost
like how Sundays used to be, apart from the fact that most of the shops are
open. To give a younger person a history lesson on how a town centre used to
look on a Sunday, you could take them to see what Bulwell looks like. The
weather didn’t really help the grim emptiness of the place this afternoon, (I
assume that a large part of the town were at home listening to their proudest
boast – that their town is the home of Nottingham’s only independent local
radio station – and enjoying an eclectic blend of music (music you don’t hear
on the radio, on the radio) and of course an excellent live session from City
Of Kites) but it really was a ghost town today. That is aside from the people
who appeared out of nowhere every time I attempted to take a picture of the
Christmas tree, (I was aware that people might think me strange for wanting to
do such a thing on the 19th of January, and if Bulwell thinks you’re
strange you have got problems). To be walking along that precinct on a wet
Sunday afternoon with the wind whistling its way towards you is bad enough, but
the addition of an out of date Christmas tree gives the town a look of desperation
and decay.
As I took the tram to my dad’s
house for Sunday lunch, I started throwing around my head the basis for a song
titled ‘Christmas in Bulwell’. Unlike the usual Christmas song though, it is
set in the middle of January when things have returned to normal; you know what
day it is, you get your bills in, you are in the midst of a ‘five week month’
because you get paid early before breaking up for the Christmas holiday, you
have been back at work long enough so that Christmas seems a distant memory,
and you are generally feeling fucked off with life. Tomorrow is apparently the
most depressing day of the year; Blue Monday, good idea for a song title!
===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle
for 99p a month (link)
Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be
put to good creative use, find out more here.
