refinery 2 by Simon Aulman
Yesterday I walked from my front door to Gosport, the first time I've ever done such a thing - across the Itchen bridge, down to Weston Shore, along the water a bit, then up to Bursledon and over the water and down the other side to the sea and then along close to the shore all the way to beyond the military range thingy near Gosport and then inland to find that Gosport bus station is a bit weird right now and it was better to get the ferry over to Portsmouth and then the train back home blah blah.
For someone who has lived in this area all my life I am still proud and not remotely embarrassed to admit that this is probably about the fourth time in my life that I've been on the wrong side of the water (Itchen) (and/or Southampton Water) and at least half of yesterday's 7-ish-hour walk was through areas I had never been to before and had no idea about. I'd never been to Stubbington before - had no idea where it was - would've guessed it was somewhere over on the other side of Winchester .... but no, it is apparently right on the seashore, and yesterday I walked alongside it. I'm certain I've only ever been to Lee On Solent once before in my life - to have a meal with friends of friends - and the only reason I knew (learnt) (then) that it was by the sea (apart from its name) is that we got lost and we saw the sea and saw our mistake as the road came to an end.
But the biggest surprise for me yesterday was to see how much more the refinery at Fawley dominates the landscape over on that side of Southampton Water than it does from "my own" side, the side it is actually on. Over on this side you can easily forget it's there, you sometimes get glimpses of bits of it from the Forest, but it's never anything special - and certainly never as fantastic as it was decades ago when it had far more chimneys and workers and flares were burning constantly.
The "cover photo" was taken yesterday and if you click on it to bring it out to its full rectangular glory (at least, that's how it works on this steam-driven computeroso) ..... dear oh dear, how it all comes back. Alas, many of my millions of adoring fans will be aghast to hear this admission that I am not the young teenage wunderkind that they thought I was/am - close to the left-hand edge of the pic, on the horizon, is a brick building, and in there more than half a century ago my mum used to work for a while - years - and sometimes I'd go in, or wait outside for her in the car with dad. Later mum worked in a less imposing building out of sight towards the right of the pic. Mum worked for Esso Chemicals. Dad worked for Esso Petroleum and he was mainly based in another invisible building about a third of the way along the horizon from the left, where the chimneys and gubbins are at their densest.
My brother also worked for Esso for a while. My uncle Michael worked, like my parents, all his life for Esso. Both my grandfathers worked for Esso. Most of the fathers of the people in my comprehensive school worked at Esso - and most of those who didn't worked in the oil-fired power-station next door. Mum and dad both left school at 14. Neither was stupid - well my mum certainly wasn't. Dad was too damaged to ever open up about anything or anything, but he was brilliantly "practical" in the way that all men were of that generation - thinking nothing of putting central heating into the house or rewiring it or maintaining our cars so they never needed to be repaired at garages.
Were my parents happy ? - not sure, but I doubt it - mum didn't need to work, at least half the families in the roads and estates around us were one-breadwinner families and they could afford all the usual shit and pay mortgages and any other kind of "debt" was a taboo word so either no one ever went into it or no one ever admitted to it. Mum just wanted more stuff than average, plus she realised she didn't like children, should never really have got married, was bored out her mind if she just hung around at home baking scones for the happy evening homecoming of my dad - and I think that towards the end of her working life she was earning more than dad because she was the secretary to(?) the head of Esso Chemicals at Fawley - her proudest achievement - and when you compare that to, say, the proudest achievement of her eldest son (being the least successful "musician" in Bandcamp's entire history) then it does look like society has taken a turning and we are now in a time where successive generations will be poorer and less "successful" than the previous generations and society is well and truly nosediving to total fuckery.
recorded this evening, photo yesterday
