Blot on the Landscape - Theatre Severn

Look at it, I mean just look at it. This is the Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury. It has to be one of the most unattractive modern buildings you’ve ever seen.

Architectural Mediocrity by the River

Every time I go there (and I go there quite a bit) I drive out of the car park mentally scribbling away at a piece for my blog, ranting about just how boring and ugly the place is. I must have written the piece in my head about a dozen times over the last year, but finally, I’m sitting down to put “pen to paper”, so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s just the outside that upsets me. What goes on inside is really good. I am a great fan of live theatre. If ever the marketeers who look at these things tried to home in on the typical potential customer for such a venture then, Yep, I’m Yer Man. Over the couple of years since the new theatre has been open, the shows they have put on have given me a serious amount of pleasure. Alan Ayckbourn plays, concerts, several Ballets, a couple of brilliant Pantomimes, singers like Elkie Brooks – even Giles Brandreth rabbiting on for an evening – all have entertained me extremely. 

But that’s on the inside. It’s when you get outside it that your (or at least my) head drops. Who on earth designed the thing? Shrewsbury is a really attractive town which sits on Britain’s longest river, the Severn, as it flows around the Town Walls in a beautiful sweep. So you’ve got a Heaven-sent, once in a lifetime site for it all, sitting alongside a lovely stretch of the Severn that most towns would give at least their eye teeth for. As a backdrop to the theatre, there is a lovely graceful bridge which elegantly arcs over the river. So what then do “they” do? They erect a showpiece building, using MY money I might point out, which looks for all the world as if their design inspiration was a dilapidated and unloved 1960s Secondary School.

Yes, Yes I know Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder and all that, but apart from the Architect’s mother (and, having thought about it, I wouldn’t even put a huge bet on that actually) and possibly the wretched individual on the Council who had responsibility for its final approval, I refuse to believe that there is a single person in the town who can look on it with anything other than varying degrees of loathing.

Go on then, find one. And when you’ve got past the sheer uninspired blandness, unconnectedness and nothingness of its shape, then look at the detailing on it. It seems to have been constructed from nasty beige Breeze Blocks, old lavatory bricks and some reclaimed bits of fencing nicked from one of the local Council’s allotments. Even the naming on it, which should proudly proclaim such an important undertaking seems to have been a total afterthought, designed to be unreadable and invisible from anywhere it might be viewed.

This is what it looks like after about 2 years - very, very depressing

This is the entrance - a structure for which the word
"unprepossessing" was coined 

Now I am absolutely and utterly NOT a “Prince Charles” Luddite as far as modern architecture is concerned. Some of it is fabulous, and, done properly, can change for ever the way a town or city is perceived.

As an example, go to Birmingham and marvel at the Selfridges building. It’s only a department store, but what a terrific looking building.

Wander around the City of London, and you will still be astonished at Richard Rogers’ incredible Lloyds Building, so fresh after 20 years.

Further afield, think how Geary’s fabulous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has completely transformed that city into a major visitor attraction.

Look with unprejudiced eyes at London’s Millenium Dome. See it at sunset from across the river, and it’s a remarkable sight.

Think about how a building like Utzon’s Opera House in Sydney, once derided for looking more like a Nun’s Scrum, became an icon for new Australia. 

Be amazed at the daring of the Pyramid outside the Louvre.

The common factor in all these buildings is Bravery. Having the vision, and the balls to do something out of the ordinary. Not taking the safe option. Yes, occasionally it goes wrong, but so often, over the years, the leap into the unknown turns into something great.

Yes, I know that Shrewsbury is not Paris or London or Birmingham, and it has far less resources at its disposal than these other large cities. But the fact is that the new Theatre Severn cost around £28 million, and, however you look at it, that’s a lot of money. Enough, you’d think, to buy you a design you can be proud of – if that’s what you want and set out to achieve. This building is going to be around for many decades, and there are enough examples around where inspirational design does not cost the earth. All you need is the person with the inspiration.

Architecture is the only art form I know where the general public are exposed to it, whether they like it or not. If you don’t want to go to a concert, or a play or visit a museum, then the answer’s simple – Don’t Go. Which fact, on its own, is a good enough reason for those responsible to try harder when they are building something new and important with public money. I don’t know whose fault it all is. Architect or Client? Or conceivably “person or persons unknown” as the police like to call it, but I can’t for the life of me think who they might be.

So on the one hand, there’s the Client, who I suppose is, or was the Shrewsbury and Atcham Council, and on the other there’s the Architect – Austin-Smith:Lord. To my simple mind, if the fault in it is the design brief from the Council, then any self-respecting architect should be prepared to decline the work, or make such a fuss that the client realises the error of his ways, and gets them to pull their socks up and improve the brief. You'd like to think of them as the conscience of the observer.

If it’s the Architect who isn’t coming up to scratch, then the Council should tap them firmly on the shoulder and get them to put someone on the job who can fulfil their (and our) expectations. No doubt, if you ever tried to get to the bottom of it, all you’d get is a gaggle of mutually pointing fingers. ‘Twas ever thus. My only wish is that someone had asked my opinion before signing it off! That would have been one fence on which I would not have sat.

If you look around it all now, it’s all a bit sad. The Architects Austin-Smith:Lord are in the process of filing for Insolvency and the Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council disappeared in 2009 as one of the consequences of this country’s permanent process of local government rearrangements, so any thought of actually finding anyone to shout at has probably disappeared as a result. The outside of the building looks in desperate need of a bit of TLC, with the recycled allotment fencing crying out for a lick of something to stop it rotting in front of us, making an unattractive building even worse.

So I will continue to be disappointed and a bit depressed whenever I look at it on my visits there. The only good thing resulting from the current financial squeeze is that the Council don’t seem to want to spend any money on lighting it at night, so for the most part, it’s shrouded in darkness whenever I go.

It’s an Ill Wind …….

Tabs:

shrewsbury, theatre severn, austin-smith:lord

JACQUES LOUSSIER - 73 YEARS YOUNG

One of life’s great pleasures tonight.

I’m a great fan of jazz/classical pianist Jacques Loussier. He has been playing his own interpretation of Bach for something over 40 years now, and in the last couple of decades he has added additional music from such composers as Ravel, Satie, Vivaldi and a raft of other Baroque composers.

In a world of look-alikes and wannabees, he is simply unique – a technically extremely competent classical pianist and composer, with a jazz overlay to his playing that puts Bach, especially, into a different perspective for me. I first saw him with his trio in London at the Royal Albert Hall in around 1965, some 40 odd years ago, listening for about 3 shillings and sixpence (Sixteen pence, or 25 cents if you think in US Dollars) up in The Gods, right on the top tier of the hall. That was before they fitted the sound absorbing "Flying Saucers" in the roof to sort the acoustics out, and I had the privilege of hearing the concert twice for my money - the second performance following about a third of a second after the first!

He blew me away then, and I’ve listened to his playing ever since. Whenever he plays at a venue anywhere near me, I pile in for my 5 yearly fix. I must have seen him almost 10 times since that time, and tonight he turned up in Shrewsbury with his trio, and off I went to hear him.

THE MAN HIMSELF

He’s 73 now, and the lithe energetic man with a sharply trimmed beard I saw 40 odd years ago is now a greying, more circumspect character. He talks very quietly to the audience and when he plays at the keyboard, his body hardly moves, although his eyes twinkle and his hands are still a blur on the keys. A number of the music snobs think he dumbs down the music, but in reality he brings a unique freshness and a buzz to everything he plays.

He is supported by a couple of absolutely top class musicians. His drummer, Andre Arpino, has a delicate and stunning touch which is unerring, rock solid, very inventive and a joy to watch and listen to. Anyone who thinks drumming is a Four in the Bar accompaniment, should listen to Arpino. He has an amazing sense of light and shade, offering a perfect support to Loussier’s piano lines, as well as showing a prodigious skill when he takes off on his own.

THE JACQUES LOUSSIER TRIO

The bass player rejoices under the glorious name of Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac which sounds like a very expensive Premier Cru Claret. A long, lanky guy with closed cropped hair and enormously long fingers, he hangs on and around his instrument, as if it’s part of him. If the idea of listening to a lengthy, meandering Double Bass solo does not turn you on, you should listen to this guy. He struck off into a solo which lasted for ever and the several hundred people crammed into the Shrewsbury Music Hall, to a man, were totally riveted and struck quite dumb by it all – not a single cough or noise – for its 6-7 minute duration.

He stroked it, caressed it, hit it, played huge booming, ringing bass notes, followed by almost guitar like soprano sounds with him hunched over the body of the instrument with his head bent over almost touching the sound board. He slid sinuously up and down the strings making it sound on occasions like a dark slide guitar, and then rebuilt the melody in a sequence of deep triple chords which made you wonder how his fingers ever reached all the notes simultaneously. It was an absolute tour-de-force. I thought it was breathtaking.

LOUSSIER AND DRUMMER ARPINO SIGNING CDs AND DVDs AFTERWARDS

He last visited the Music Hall in Shrewsbury 3½years ago, on his 70th Birthday, when the town presented him with a large Birthday cake. By then, he'd played something over 3,000 concerts, and he still made it all sound as fresh as a daisy. You hope he goes on for ever so I’m mentally slotting myself in to see him again in early 2012 when he’s 77.

À bientôt.

Tags:

jacques loussier,
shrewsbury,jazz,
bach

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 25

For the record, this was taken on June 18th.

Tags:

shrewsbury,humour

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - THE SEVERN IN FLOOD

This Flooding is a really big issue, and not just in Shropshire, where the River Severn already causes problems at least on an annual basis. Solving the issue, at least to start with, does not seem to be a priority to our leaders in Westminster, presumably because they can’t hear the wails and complaints from 130 miles away. But this time, it seems to have become a much wider spread and more serious issue throughout the country.

For ages now, we have had what seems like a farcical situation in Shrewsbury, where the Severn passes through in a large Ox Bow like sweep, dominating the town. When the river level rises dramatically, which it does with horrible consistency, many streets and buildings flood, and parts of the town look like a downmarket version of Venice for a week or so.

Our local council, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the offices they previously occupied had become unworkable, and that a new palatial edifice was needed to accommodate them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed. They sited it right next to the River in the centre of the town, at a level which guaranteed that all too often, the height of the river water matched the tops of the ground floor desks in the new building. So they built a flood defence system around it, a bit like the bunding system on a domestic oil tank. The only problem this seems to cause is that while, up till now, the protection system for the new building has worked, no-one seems to have given the same amount of thought to the car parks created for the Civil Servants who work there.

So, come the deluge, as it did last week, guess what happens. The car parks sit under feet of water, no-one can park there, and hundreds of employees have to park in the centre of town, wiping out a good percentage of the available parking places used by us mere mortals.

This rather zany Planning logic is all very well, but we now seem to have a major cost stretching out into the infinite future, for something which doesn’t seem to work, and which also causes an ineradicable and inexorable increase in our Council Tax.

Don’t you just love them.

Anyway, on a more pleasant thread, I was out this morning during what a friend refers to as “Burglars Hours”, ie before 6am, taking pictures of the River Severn, which has burst its banks in a most spectacular way. The river is normally about 50 yards wide, but today is was more like half a mile. These images were taken in a local village, where the Wrekin (1300 feet high) sits quite beautifully as a backdrop. For once, the sun was out and the quality of light was gorgeous.

There's something slightly discordant about pictures which contrast an attractive pictorial view with a subject which is causing people pain, but that's what we have here.

There has to be some compensation for the misery that the water has caused so far.

THE PILL BOX NORMALLY SITS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD

A WIDE VIEW OF THE FLOODS

CRESSAGE BRIDGE

CLOSE UP SHOT OF THE BRIDGE

THE WREKIN WITH FLOODS IN THE FOREGROUND

THE WREKIN WITH CLOUDS AT THE SUMMIT

Tags:

floods,
shrewsbury,
shropshire,
severn,
photography

FLOODS OF TEARS - SHREWSBURY

Today’s theme, rather unsurprisingly, and rather more depressingly, is Water.

Watching the Open Golf Championship at Carnoustie in North East Scotland and the Test Cricket at Lords, I was seduced by the TV images of people not carrying umbrellas, and not wearing waterproofs, sitting in shirtsleeves, drinking a glass of lager and enjoying the sport.

Here in Shropshire, I am seriously wondering what we’ve done to deserve this weather. I have this worrying thought that it’s actually our family’s fault. We bought a new Gazebo a few weeks ago, and ever since its erection, the rain has not stopped. I am seriously thinking of taking it down to see if it is the cause of the problems.

Yesterday, the heavens opened again and stayed open all day. It didn’t just rain, it poured. Our garden was awash and this morning we awoke to find there was no way out of our village. All the roads were closed, and the local brook had changed from a gentle stream into a seriously raging torrent. People whose gardens previously led beautifully and elegantly down to a babbling brook, found their houses and gardens under a couple of feet of dank, muddy water.

DIFFICULT TO READ UNTIL YOU'RE ON TOP OF THIS ONE!

Without seeing it in person, you don’t realise the damage that such an event can have. The water is relentless – it pushes walls over, knocks down fences, turns greenhouses and sheds over, and makes a ghastly mess of what has taken people years to build up.

Very, very sad.

I managed to find a way through the water into Shrewsbury this afternoon, and the river was pushing against the flood defence walls, with the riverside walks being more suited to ducks than humans. I took a few pictures of the mess, and here they are.

THE ENTRANCE TO A NEIGHBOUR'S HOUSE THIS AFTERNOON

THE ENTRANCE TO A SELECT DEVELOPMENT NEAR OUR VILLAGE!

THE ENTRANCE ROAD TO THE NEW HOUSES - THE SHOW HOUSE WAS RUMOURED TO HAVE BEEN SOLD LAST FRIDAY!

A LOCAL GREENHOUSE

THE POOR OWNER'S SHED ADOPTS A NEW ATTITUDE!

SHREWSBURY CYCLEWAY NEAR THE RIVER SEVERN

RIVERSIDE WALKWAY

BENCH FOR TWO

Tags:

floods,shrewsbury,shropshire,photography

SHREWSBURY - SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Yesterday afternoon, I wandered around the centre of Shrewsbury, the nearest town to where I live in Shropshire, taking a few photographs. It was a beautiful afternoon, with the sun lighting up the alleyways, streets and buildings of the town, making it look its best. The town football team was playing its last game at the ground it had occupied for many years. Although the team is probably not one which even its most fervent supporters would suggest is likely to win the FA Cup in the near future, the supporters were out in force.

The place was throbbing with life – shoppers of all ages everywhere, good natured (apart from a very small, drink affected minority) football supporters, street entertainers and one lonesome guy inviting us very volubly to seek repentance for our sins – all making the centre of the town simply a nice, enjoyable and relaxing place to be.

I went home and put some footbally atmospheric pictures of Gay Meadow on my blog, including one of the local Police officers, waiting patiently outside the ground near the river, looking to help all the visiting Grimsby supporters after the match back to their trains home.

And then, today, we wake up to find death and murder on the streets of the town. And you don’t quite know what to say. It wasn’t like that yesterday, and I have to say, ambling around the town this morning, with it in a much quieter but very amiable mood, it didn’t seem to be much different.

But for some poor souls, it was, and their lives have changed forever.

Perhaps it doesn’t seem quite right, but just for a sense of balance, here are a few of the pictures I took.

BALLOON MAN

GUITAR MAN

SHOP FRONT REFLECTIONS

ENTRANCE TO GROPE LANE

BY THE RIVER BANK

Tags:

shrewsbury,
shropshire,
murder

SHREWSBURY TOWN - ON THE MOVE TODAY

Shrewsbury Town, the local Football team, is on the move. The current ground is right by the river in the centre of town, and some rather astute person has realised that there's money to be made somewhere by moving to a brand new site out of town, and selling the current acreage off to a Property Developer - which is what they've done.

Of course, it may have nothing at all to with that - it may just be that they are totally fed up with the "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink" jokes that go on about the name of the ground.

IT SOUNDED ALRIGHT 50 YEARS AGO!

Anyway, today, on a lovely afternoon, the small ground was filled to its 8,000 capacity for the last ever game there. Your intrepid reporter was walking past/around, and took a couple of pictures which celebrates this momentous day.

SUPPORTER'S CAR DECKED OUT WITH FLAGS

THE LOCAL CONSTABULARY, WHO, BY A GIGANTIC STROKE OF CONVENIENCE MET UP JUST OUTSIDE THE GROUND TO CHEER THE SUPPORTERS

NEWSPAPER SELLER WITH "FULL-TIME" BANNER HEADLINE

Tags:

shrewsbury,
shrewsbury town,
football,gay meadow

IRAN, CRICKET AND THE SHROPSHIRE MUSEUM

It’s odd the way things that, to start with, seem completely unconnected suddenly coalesce in your mind, and from randomness, a pattern emerges. Three things have drifted across my mind recently which have come together, rather oddly, into focus.

Firstly, I watched with dreadful fascination the antics, and there seems no other word for it, of the guys who were taken hostage in Iran. Firstly we now have the i-Pod as an essential piece of kit for the British soldier, then we have a ship which doesn’t seem to know where it is, and an operational chain of command on the vessel which, to try and be fair without knowing all the facts, seems to have acted with less skill than the Navy has displayed in the past.

Then we have a strange display of responses from the 15 people captured, whilst in custody. You can’t put yourself in their place, and I’m sure their captors scared them witless, but, am I being unreasonable in thinking that they are supposed to be soldiers, one of whose job is to fight.

Then, the tawdry “story selling” episode.

Then we have people increasingly high up the MoD pecking order, who somehow seemed to come to a conclusion that making the stories available was acceptable.

Then, we get to Mr Browne, our Defence Minister, who apparently took a fleeting look at the issue over his Weekend Croissants, missed totally the political implications of this particular grenade, and promptly pulled out the pin.

And then to cap it, when the man goes before Parliament to explain himself, we have an opposition who cannot nail him to the mast (actually Lord Carrington might have done well for the Tories here), and an exquisitely constructed quasi apology which, if he had sat up as long thinking about the original issue as he did in formulating his weasel reply, would probably have prevented much of the political fall out he was trying to escape.

One of his arguments is that “No-one got hurt.” But that’s far, far too naïve a view. Foreign policy is subtle stuff, and the way nations “see” each other is a critically important part of one country’s standing in another’s eyes. This “perception” of one country by another is a vital component in the way international politics moves. And what we have done here, in spades, is to give Iran, a country where the political issues are most definitely going to get worse before they get better, the distinct feeling that Britain is a soft touch – so push a bit harder next time.

It’s not as if this is all new stuff. Just look at a couple of snippets of history.

Duke of Wellington (1810) - talking about how the enemy was looking at his troops – “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”. He won.

Look at Kennedy and Khruschev in the Cuban Crisis. I recall as a simple 17 year old thinking for about 10 days that all the revision I had just put into my Latin Vocab was about to be vaporised into a ball of chalk (not sure about the chemistry there, but you know what I mean). Russia had to believe that Kennedy wasn’t going to blink, otherwise the balance of (Nuclear) power in the world was about to change quite abruptly. He didn’t blink, and who knows what effect that had on the way the world went on its way over the following couple of decades.

On a slightly lesser scale, look at the All Blacks Rugby team and the “Haka” they perform before each match. Why do you think they do that? It’s not because they’re trying to become a competitor for the Welsh male Voice choirs. Just look at the opposition when this noise is rending the atmosphere. That answers the question.

It’s all about perception, and what’s just happened in Iran has, from the small i-Pod, to Des Browne still remaining in the office of Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence, has reduced our standing in the world, when, right now, we need exactly the opposite.

I’m on a roll now, and just in the mood to write something down about our Cricket team. So secondly, having just watched Sri-Lanka play New Zealand, and seen what cricket can produce, you have to sit and have a private weep at the England efforts over the past few weeks. It’s not just that we lost, because we simply were not good enough. But it’s the way we lost which gets at me – some of the team didn’t seem to want to win. Out of the whole squad, Collingwood and Pieterson stood out as good batsmen, Panesar was solid (but not much better), and, to me, Bhopara was the find of the series for England. But thank God for Paul Nixon. If you were up to your neck in muck and bullets, isn’t he just the man who you’d want alongside you? Excellent.

But that’s it. The rest were, to say the very least, disappointing, and when they needed to stand up and be counted, were out falling off pedalos instead.

So there’s two examples of where you, or at least I, have to wonder what’s going on. Now, it’s easy to sit hear and gradually morph oneself into one of the two guys who sit in the balcony of “The Muppet Show”. Actually, I think I’m actually becoming the one on the left, you know, the rugged (in a non Brokeback Mountain kind of way) looking one with the moustache. Sorry, I digress.

But there’s a serious point here – the third thread, which contrasts very starkly with the first two, and really gets me thinking.

I took my 8 year old Grandson into town last week, and we visited Shrewsbury Castle. This is home to the Shropshire Regimental Museum, where the history of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry is laid out. It’s not a large display, but there is a significant collection of letters, artefacts, snippets of the KSLI (and its predecessors) history, much of it on a personal level. Even the KSLI is not a regiment you would think of first when looking back at this country’s military history.

But the impact this had on me, compared to the two other thought trains of the Iran affair, and the English cricket team, was considerable. The quiet, dignified, understated but mentally strong approach which the Shrewsbury Museum gave out about the way one should conduct oneself in difficult times was in depressing contrast to the feelings I was left with after watching the other two. In this area, we have not progressed.

It was a rather moving and humbling experience.

Tags:

iran,ksli,cricket,england,
des browne,shrewsbury,shropshire

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME - No.8

The Marketing edge - Shropshire style!

Tags:
shrewsbury,
shropshire,
humour

SHREWSBURY - STREET NAMES THAT TELL A STORY

Why do we only seem to explore our local surroundings when visitors come to stay, and the need to do the tourist thing around the area cannot be put off. So it was a few days ago, when out grandchildren came to stay, and we felt that a bit of sight-seeing would be in order.

Without trying to sound like the local Tourist Board, Shrewsbury is a particularly attractive town – not in the self conscious style of places like Chester and Stratford (-upon-Avon, not E15), but in a quiet, rather unassuming but very satisfying and comfortable way.

JUST ONE OF THE MANY INTRIGUING BUILDINGS IN THE TOWN CENTRE

It has a real business life of its own, and benefits from being a good distance from any other similar sized town. In fact, you could say much the same of the rest of the string of towns which sit along the Welsh Marches – Whitchurch, Church Stretton, Ludlow, Leominster, Hereford, Gloucester, Monmouth, Hay-on Wye, and more. This separation gives them all a real purpose, and has allowed them to retain a distinctiveness and an individuality, which has not been swamped by the onwards march of standardisation which is such a curse in towns in Britain today.

Wandering round Shrewsbury on foot, for that is the only real way of appreciating it, you are struck by the 600 or so listed buildings, many of them black and white, timber framed constructions, as well as the narrow streets and alleyways, which criss-cross the town centre.

As just a taster to the town, the pictures below show not the buildings, but a selection of road names around the centre of the town. As a pointer and a shorthand guide to what has gone before, they are telling signs. Just imagine why these names are what they are, and imagine anyone today even thinking of naming a street anything like these.

Don’t even ask where the “Grope Lane” comes from. If you really want to know, just Google “shrewsbury street names”, and follow the money. If your mind is starting to think “It couldn’t possibly be anything as rude as that ….”, then you’re probably on the right trail! Sexual openness and permissiveness did not start with Christine Keeler, the Beatles, the Pill, Woodstock and the other trappings of the 60’s – it was there, in spades, many centuries ago.

The imprint of history is here, and long may it stay.

Tags:

street names,
shrewsbury,
shropshire