icknield by sonja berlin-jones

noise

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Yesterday I left home at 5am and drove to some random spot in Hertfordshire. It's no good pointing to a map at home and saying "I'm going to park there" - all those kind of plans are impossible. Instead, you just drive around unknown villages till somewhere feels comfortable. I asked a passer-by where I was and he told me the name of the village, I found it on the map. So everything was now in place.

I suppose nowadays it's rare to ask passers-by "where am I" and "which way to..." and "what's the time" etc - everyone is meant to have all the electronic gadgetry that renders any conversation with strangers unnecessary. But not having a watch or smartphone etc I'm a throwback and I can report that even in 2022 it's still possible to get polite replies to such archaic questions.

It was daylight now and I walked miles along the Icknield Way. It didn't feel very special. But nor was it awful. Approaching Baldock there was a car boot sale on the other side of an impenetrable hedge. Except, right at the end, my last chance, it wasn't impenetrable after all, there was a hole in the hedge, and thru I went - the first car boot sale I've been to in probably about 5+ years. It was hearteningly awful. Just the most depressing crap.

And everyone was really miserable. A footbridge over the main road and into Baldock itself. It's like a deserted depressed Wickham. Another footbridge, this one over the motorway, and into Letchworth. For miles Letchworth seems to be nothing but one huge new industrial estate, with small pockets of new housing estates where the houses seem to be less mindlessly ugly than is normal for Britain - for moments at a time it was like being in Poundbury.

The centre of Letchworth looks okay. For a relatively small place it has a disproportionately large number of shops, plus more than its fair share of cafes etc. The charity shops are scattered totally randomly. In spite of my No Spend Pledge I visited them all. I'm still totally fixed about not buying any more books. I wobble a tiny bit re CDs. And I'm fairly relaxed about DVDs - after all a £1 DVD in a charity shop is cheaper than an £8 visit to the cinema.

I found Letchworth quite an unfriendly place - I'd actually say it's even less friendly than Southampton - which surely makes it one of the most miserable places in the country. Still - obviously - it can't compete with the misery of Hull. I'd say that overall Letchworth is like a gloomy version of Chichester.

I was there to see my favourite musician, Rachael Dadd, perform one of those in-store thingies at 1pm in Dave's Music/Book Store. It's a good shop and no-bullshit I heard many people in the shop saying that it's their favourite shop in the whole wide world. It's like a very large Oxfam Books, but with areas of new books and CDs/LPs in among the old, plus a cafe.

Because there were so many things in there that I could've happily bought, I ended up buying nothing - when you're overwhelmed by choice it's so much easier to come out empty-handed. The reason I loved the ""gig"" was that Rachael started singing at the exact advertised time, there were only a dozen or so us watching her, she sang beautifully and movingly, and even her between-songs chats weren't excrutiating - despite the fact that they were the usual modern-hippy stuff about, well, you know. She is brilliant and I forgive her everything.

She sang about 8 songs, just her and her guitar. What I loved was that the door was always open, no one felt obliged to stay to the end or anything like that - the fact that I could so easily have slid out is what kept me in till the end. I think I was the only person who didn't join the huddle at the end to buy her stuff and get it signed and chat to her - musicians in person are just so incredibly boring, and I don't want STUFF - except charity shop DVDs and the odd chamber music CD of course.

I walked back down the Icknield Way and then drove home, passing one of those terrible accidents on the M3 near Winchester services which reminds you that any moment could be your last and so let's pack as much joy as possible into every day - and even quiet joy counts, yes even quiet homey days like today, when I shall just read.

However, yesterday evening I then nipped over to Harbour Lights to watch Decision To Leave. Everyone loves Oldboy. Quite a few people pretend to love the Handmaiden - tho not me. And I'm afraid I found Decision To Leave even more boring than the Handmaiden. I fell asleep briefly about three times. Being so much slimmer than I used to be, I no longer snore, so I didn't add my usual noisy critical opinion to the film while it played. Another day where nothing exists to prove that it happened, and I want all future days to be like that.

(photo - Icknield Way a few miles to the east of Baldock yesterday morning)

nothing is distorted, nothing is wrong