The Cracked Ballad of Luton and South Bedfordshire
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Mercury Delirium, Exodus, Wauluds Bank and the Cursed Earth: The Cracked Ballad of Luton and South Bedfordshire The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom And I got up to say good-bye like all the rest Then I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cell ‘Let my guitar playing friend do my request.’ ‘Won’t you sing me back home with a song I used to hear Make my old memories come alive And take me away and turn back the years Sing Me Back Home before I die.’ I recall last Sunday evening when a choir came in from town And got up to sing a few old gospel songs Then I heard him tell the singers ‘There’s a song my mama sang. Would you sing it once before we move along?’ ‘Won’t you sing me back home with a song I used to hear Make my old memories come alive And take me away and turn back the years Sing Me Back Home before I die Won’t you Sing Me Back Home before I die.’ — Merle Haggard / Gram Parsons Sing Me Back Home I hear the sound of an incoming message. My friends NRK Mohammad and SOS Newsrod are in St. Michael’s Avenue, and the whine of outdated country music is faintly audible from a car’s cassette player. They’re asking for my old address in Houghton Regis – a small town situ- ated a few miles outside of Luton just west of the m – or a his name was written under the road bridge.) description of the house where my parents have lived since We decide to go for a drink in the Arndale Centre, at 969. For some reason they want to pay a guerrilla-style Robby’s Tea Bar, which has probably been in the same visit, perhaps have a quick cup of tea, terrorise the locals place since the centre was built. My cohorts seem keen and then hit the road again. I press a button on my mobile to visit this café. The original plans for the Arndale were and they’re gone. made in 966 as an attempt to rationalise Luton’s town Somehow I’ve felt this whole situation’s happened centre. At the time the site was a complex arrangement before, and for a split second it appears like a momentary of small streets that contained a market and a myriad of glimpse from some half remembered past. Twenty years all sorts of other great stuff. Even though the Arndale ago when I was living in South Bedfordshire I used to destroyed the original town centre, as a kid I always have regular dreams that were reversals of the past and the remember being excited about going there – it seemed future, or fleeting visions of events waiting to take place or huge and exciting, like the centre of the universe. be re-staged. They’ve recently started to return with a star- Before we’re even seated nrk and sos describe the rea- tling frequency, the latest sudden flash-like stains coming sons for their journey. There are many contributing fac- in the form of a vision of the future, where the old house is tors, one of which includes a recent poll to find the worst altered irrevocably, where everything and everyone from a town in the country resulting in Luton being given this certain point in my personal history is either gone, or has dubious honour. Yet this and other reasons are perhaps strangely started to reappear. For example, I heard that beside the point now, and have begun to be eclipsed by the Steve, an old school friend who had also long since moved evidence and photographs they’ve already accumulated. away, was recently found by neighbours swaying in an They start to bombard me with digital images and the alarming state outside of my parent’s house, asking of my stories behind them. whereabouts. This happened around the same time as a Our conversation initially gets onto the hat industry. school reunion that I didn’t attend. I’m pretty certain that The origins of the phrase ‘Mad as a Hatter’ comes from this isn’t the sole cause of my recent dreams, but I’d like the millinery industry that was centred on Luton and to find out more so I returnnrk ’s message. We arrange to South Bedfordshire in the nineteenth century. Mercury meet and I’m in Luton town centre within two hours. was widely used in hat manufacturing, while madness and Waiting outside Luton railway station’s barriers, nrk clinical psychosis were linked to the destructive effects of and sos look strangely agitated. nrk’s eyes are glinting this chemical on the nervous system and brain. In reality and sos appears nervous. They tell me they started to see a this might be more characteristic of the felt industry prev- series of signs late the previous evening… something about alent in the Manchester and Stockport area, rather than the stars being in alignment, and a mish-mash of other his- straw-hat production in Luton. Similarly, the Mad Hatter torical and cultural phenomena converging. It’s as if they of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is widely associ- felt they had to get to Bedfordshire quick sharp, so as not ated with the effects of mercury on behaviour. Erratic, to miss some impending event. nrk had seen a star to the flamboyant actions, excessive drooling and mood swings north and they had set off soon afterwards. As they drove, were the most evident indications of the substance’s pres- the stars and signs had aligned, especially where the A ence, while victims also developed uncontrollable muscu- met the m. (Apparently at Junction sos also noticed lar tremors and twitching limbs, called ‘hatter’s shakes’. Other symptoms included distorted vision and confused the situation’s not that dissimilar to the Mad Hatter’s speech, while advanced cases suffered hallucinations and tea party in Carroll’s book. nrk and sos have been up other psychotic symptoms. The fact that there were more all night and their rambling over-excited conversation is asylums around Luton at that time than anywhere else manic to say the least. in the country must have been a real consequence of this The area has also got more of its fair share of eccen- phenomenon. trics, and perhaps even Eric Morecambe, the comedian Now that these institutions have all closed, it’s evident who always played the mad hatter, who was a director of that The Arndale Centre is the new home for Luton’s the football club (themselves often described as a comedy contemporary insane, and, at this particular moment, team) in the 7s, are more than balanced out by sinister Robby’s Tea Bar seems to be a central focal point for this groups like the Madcats. This gang of Hells Angels used community. Strangely enough, present company included, to congregate at The Blockers Arms pub, selling badly cut drugs. Allegedly, one of their members once dropped an enemy from a second floor window with his legs bound so they’d shatter on impact with the pavement. We decide to leave the café, and as we walk through the indoor market – where sos buys a straw hat with ‘c’mon you hatters’ emblazoned on the ribbon – they take me through the rest of their journey. Leaving the m, they’d taken Mohammad’s car – a battered yellow beetle fitted with a 6 engine – straight to the Luton and Dunstable hospital, where all of us were born, and paid homage to the building with a strange ritual, before security had become suspicious and they’d been asked to leave. From there they’d driven straight on to the surrounding area of Leagrave; to Marsh Farm, Stranger’s Way, Hockwell Ring, Lewsey Farm, and finally to Houghton Regis, where I had received their call. Perhaps possessed by some ancient spell, the information they’ve started to collect on the area ranges from their initial photographs of posters and graffiti, to random documents and horrific accounts of local abjec- tion and brutality. (One image – a newspaper cutting that was displayed in a shop – reports on a rogue dog that had been caught shitting at random in neighbour’s gardens. The dog turned out to be owned by the shopkeeper, who’d written ‘that’s my boy’ in felt tip on the picture frame.) Judging by their demented enthusiasm, I realise that I’m not going to avoid being coerced into joining them, so WELCOME we decide to embark on the second part of their visit, which is turning out to be a kind of ‘Fear and Loathing in South Bedfordshire’ designed by sleep deprived gonzo archivists. First off we visit St Mary’s Church, which is situated smack bang in the centre of town. The building’s clock has been stuck at . for as long as anyone can remember. Technically speaking, if we see the time of mid- day (or midnight, as the case may be) as a symbolic centre point, this clock becomes a potent emblem of deficiency, or represents a moment that’s just about to happen, but is never fully reached. Apart from the quote that tells us ‘even a stopped clock tells the time twice a day’ – from the classic yet slightly hackneyed filmWithnail and I – the THE FORMER LUTON TOWN HALL church, which dominates the surrounding area, also pres- ents a pause, which to us seems to usher in an impending sense of disaster.