Mark Steel's In Town

by Mark Steel

  Then one man, with the exasperated look of a mechanic who’s had to break off from his work to explain to his apprentice which bit’s the engine, told me the ‘canal’ was built to divert the existing river, and enables the harbour to float, apparently.

  As comments to ruin a joke go, this was fairly effective, but like an idiot I carried on, to be interrupted a few seconds later by several people calling out that the Irish didn’t build the canal that isn’t a canal. As I should have known, it was built by French prisoners during the war with Napoleon. I couldn’t help wondering if too much education is a bad thing.

  There was something else about Bristol that suggested a unique attention to detail. Two weeks before the show, which in part was a tirade against the strangling of towns by the chain companies, most obviously Tesco, there was a riot against a new Tesco store in Bristol that became national news when protesters set fire to the place. Sometimes in a pompous moment, as a performer you get the idea that you have some minuscule influence, that a couple of people in the town might be affected in some small area of their life, if only to think, ‘He’s right, you know. Bono is a wanker.’ But for a moment I wondered if I had undiscovered powers, if all I had to do was announce I was coming somewhere to rant about chain stores, and two weeks before I arrived the locals would burn down the Tesco.

  In the Stokes Croft area of the city, Tesco had been granted permission to build its thirty-second store in Bristol. Several hundred local people objected, one of them by painting a mural on a wall, and in a poll of the area 90 per cent opposed it. A demonstration was called, which seems to have involved neighbours playing guitars on bus shelters, and a generally convivial and orderly display of Tesco-hatred. But the situation was complicated by a nearby complex of squats, which the police viewed as a problem area, so riot vans were sent in, just around pub closing time, which probably wasn’t a strategy the finest military minds would have opted for. While the details are disputed, one way or another the result was Britain’s first anti-Tesco riot.

  My own influence was probably limited, because the next time I was in Bristol the Stokes Croft Tesco opened, with what the newspapers called ‘a heavy police presence’. Even so, it’s not the company’s ideal scenario, to extend the franchise by setting up militarised Tesco Express stores.

  Or maybe it’s planning a private army for the next stage of its quest for greater domination, with soldiers stood at the checkout with their guns loaded, yelling, ‘Goods in the bag NOW! Come on, MOVE IT! No, DON’T put cold meats in the same bag as raw onions, do you WANT TO GET SHOT?’

  As with all protests that become riotous, the reasons for the tension were more than the immediate demands. But there is a pattern of opposition to Tesco, and nearly every application it now makes for a new store provokes controversy and some sort of campaign to stop it.

  In almost every town I’ve visited in the last three years, I’ve been told that one of the major local issues concerns the building of a Tesco. It’s as if it’s even managed to make protest movements the same in every town.

  It’s often suggested that there’s a class divide in the attitude towards a new Tesco – that the working class are grateful for a cheap, convenient superstore, but the middle class think everyone should shop at the quaint little deli and live off slices of Roquefort cheese. But in almost every case, hundreds or thousands of people sign petitions objecting to the store, and only a few of the proposed sites are in places where the complaint is that a Tesco might lower the tone of the area.

  For example, near to where I live, in a fairly poor area of Croydon, a new Tesco was successfully stopped by a campaign that included a petition signed by four hundred people from the few streets around the proposed site.

  The idea that opponents of Tesco are the worried posh is a new version of the myth that all protest is the work of ‘outsiders’, or is at least propelled by them. There must be another reason why a shop should provoke such a reaction, when it isn’t selling heroin or Semtex or taser guns tested on badgers.

  There are many accounts of the practices of Tesco, the impoverishing of farmers, the low wages, the aggressive marketing that forces local competition out of business, but those things are probably only in the background of most people’s minds when they sign one of the petitions. It’s more likely that the issue most concerning them is the indefinable but steady way in which every Tesco that emerges robs an area of a bit of its soul.

  Because the thing is plonked there by people from afar, not just in distance but in spirit. They’ll have looked at a map on Google Earth in their regional head office and seen a mile and a half between two other stores, with the potential for selling 54 per cent of the milk and all the Sellotape necessary for the area, especially if the existing shops are put out of business. And then there will be a building identical to all the others, with its staff in stripy uniforms with badges telling you not to ask for beer unless you’re eighteen, and unworkable self-service machines and the woman on the Tannoy saying, ‘Why not try a spicy Friday with a Mexican ready-cooked meal, hmmmm, the ideal way to get your weekend off to a frying start,’ in a voice that sounds as if she’s a manic depressive at the apex of her ‘up’ phase, and any minute she’ll crash and mutter a barely audible, ‘Or there’s lasagne. Fucking lasagne. But what’s the point of pasta, what’s the point of anything?’

  Then on the way up again she could have been in the Stokes Croft branch when the riot was on, and she’d still have been gasping, ‘Why not take advantage of ready-sizzled flaming packets of Jaffa Cakes, a scrumptious treat and a whopping ten pence off for all packets that have been melted by a petrol bomb.’

  The staff seem generally cheery, and it’s handy if you run out of mushrooms at half past eight in the evening, but a Tesco Express still feels like a whirlwind of gloom, like an occupying force that’s implanted itself in your manor, and somehow this vague eeriness is enough to instil active and increasingly successful opposition from wherever they seek to land next.

  There’s also a widespread sense that Tesco is heading towards world domination, to the point that soon when we see some roadworks and assume it’s something to do with gas or water, when the hole’s filled in there’ll be a Tesco Express there, in the middle of the road. If they’re not stopped, you’ll wander behind the bins at the back of a council estate and hear a chirpy voice beaming, ‘Or how about giving yourself a well-earned treat after a hard day’s work, with our hand-picked ready-rolled spliffs of skunk, three for the price of two, come on, you deserve it.’

  I used to think that unless it was stopped Tesco would apply to the United Nations to become a country, and within five years it would have the world’s third largest army, and be turning countries like Spain into giant stores, with Gibraltar set aside as the ‘eight items or less’ aisle. But now I fear its plans may be grander than that, and that it will try to become a religion, with paradise assured only for followers who earn over 20,000 loyalty points.

  They’ll stand in high streets on Saturdays singing ‘Every little helps’ while clapping in a shopping trolley, and claim that the first ever Tesco was a miracle, built by followers who had only sand and polystyrene but who did it in two days because they had faith.

  But the most powerful and seemingly invincible dynasties can crash at great speed if there’s enough underlying resentment against them. From the Medicis to the Murdochs, the powerful have assumed everlasting dominance right up to their demise. Maybe one day Tesco stores will be turned into music venues and cinemas, old people’s homes and adventure playgrounds for kids, who will shriek and giggle as they chase each other past the toiletries and hide behind the cat litter.

  And then Bristol will be remembered for its vital role in history, as the town that made up for its earlier faux pas, by starting the battle against the greatest threat the human race has ever faced.

  CONCLUSION

  Karl Marx predicted the Wetherspoon’s pub. While the industrial society was in its infancy, he wrote that
in time the bigger companies would swallow the smaller ones, until the world was dominated by vast global outfits, so eventually the individual and local companies would be overwhelmed by these multinationals. And somewhere, I think, he proved this by illustrating how mv>x results in chain pubs that open at 9 a.m. so customers can take the edge off by sipping cheap bitter while staring out of the window with the blank expression of a serial killer.

  And this process is gradually becoming international. Most major airports are indistinguishable from each other, as if the virus of uniformity spills off the planes and seeps out from there. So travellers go from London to Melbourne and have a night out in Nando’s, or arrive in Buenos Aires and exclaim, ‘Oh, that’s handy, they’ve got a Gap Kids.’

  This isn’t the fault of ‘people’, as we can’t help the attraction of familiarity. But the rewarding experiences are when we’re jostled out of this comfort into the unknown, into a world of difference. Even Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction finds the most fascinating aspect of his trip to France is that in McDonald’s the Quarter Pounder with cheese is called a Royale with cheese.

  A town is a public space. It should be shaped by those who inhabit it, either permanently or for just that day, or who have inhabited it in the past. The hopes, fears and loves of all the people who’ve passed through it should be embodied in its customs, its streets, its bars, its smell. Then it becomes fascinating. Remove the bustle of the crowds and replace the markets with units imported from an executive office, then turn the centre into a series of logos, and you’re left with a sterile vacuum, of no interest because there’s no difference.

  The modern British town is still a long way from this extreme, because despite the efforts of the multinationals to remove the uncertainty of humanity from their domain, humanity insists on staying put. In every area, no matter how grubby it may appear, an affection for what makes it distinct will break through.

  There’s often an assumption that fighting to retain local, individual quirks is to stand against an inevitable tide, as hopeless as buying vinyl records or keeping a donkey in the house. But it’s the young who make the most strident efforts to retain individuality. For example, hip-hop is almost designed to comment on a local area, and almost every town has rappers on YouTube, ranting about the precise places and people that piss them off there. Almost every town has a Facebook page set up by the youth of the area, combining utter frustration with a veiled affection.

  It’s the young who work tirelessly to create a local dialect, somewhere between their traditional accent in Gloucestershire and one they’ve borrowed from the Bronx, and it’s the young who cherish the endearing awfulness of the club in their town that everyone goes to, such as Boston’s Eclipse. And it’s the memories of youth that make it hard to abandon a place entirely, as you recall the parks where you played and fought, the pubs where you could drink under age, and the days when it seemed to you to be the centre of the universe, though later, in adult life, you find yourself describing it while someone looks at you blankly and says, ‘I think I may have gone past it once.’

  The sports teams, music venues, film nights and tales of local history are almost, without necessarily realising it, a scream of defiance against a world that reduces everything to a franchise. Most towns have a museum and a theatre run by delightfully pedantic volunteers. I have yet to find a town in Britain, no matter how nondescript it may seem, in which there isn’t a collection of people who will fall over themselves with enthusiasm as they convey the stories of their manor. Often this applies to the entire population. Everyone in Gateshead knows of the nineteenth-century rowing champion Harry Clasper, and everyone in Walsall knows the radical Victorian nurse Sister Dora.

  Like a soldier who writes a poem, a factory worker who slips to the toilet to read a novel, or a prisoner who learns to paint, these are expressions of staying human in the face of imposed uniformity. So activities and an outlook that is localised and spontaneous grate against the sponsored corporate world. Any event, such as the Lewes bonfire night, that attracts a community without sponsorship, is a missile aimed at the assumption that society can only function if it pleases big business for it to do so. Like a butcher who stays open despite the efforts of Tesco to close him down, they’ve broken the rules and made the gods angry.

  Even if Tesco were to establish a giant store that covered the whole planet, and to convince us that anyone venturing beyond the shopping trolleys would suffocate, there would be muttering and little acts of rebellion, secret festivals in the corner behind the children’s clothes, and guerrilla fighters jamming the absurdly jolly Tannoy announcements to make revolutionary statements.

  In the nineteenth century a series of movements reacted against the functional culture of the mills and factories by cherishing the imagination, and promoting the individual. Poets and musicians were classified as Romantics, and later in the century people such as the Pre-Raphaelite painters and William Morris defied the smoke and the obsession with production to promote what was simply beautiful.

  Now we need an army of Romantics for a new century, not just to cherish the village church and dry-stone walls, but to preserve the flair and passion, the imagination and history, the anecdotes and eccentricity, the madness, the wit, the grime, the rebellion, the music, the poetry, the boundless fascination of human existence, that under the ring roads and the retail parks are the heartbeat of a town.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  I’ve now read so many books about one town or another, with titles such as The Pavements of Burnley or The Week the Lamp Posts Didn’t Work in Southampton, that I recommend you read a novel, or a biography of a film star, or anything other than a book about a specific town. But if you really want some, drop me a note and I’ll pop half a dozen in the post.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly I’d like to thank the BBC for allowing me to make the programme that led to this book. Obviously that doesn’t mean everyone at the BBC. Huw Edwards can take little credit, and Sue Barker didn’t lift a finger. But Jane Berthoud, Julia McKenzie and the comedy section of Radio 4 made the show possible. Otherwise I’d have had to record it in my bedroom like Rupert Pupkin.

  Natasha has been marvellous in many ways, script-editing, suggesting jokes and spending every weekend for years coming with me to places like Dorking and Dungeness, and never once yelling, ‘Why couldn’t you write a book called Mark Steel’s in Brazil or Mark Steel Stays at Home and Does Something Slightly Fucking Useful?’

  Equally tolerant have been Elliot, Eloise, Maddie and Bridget, for putting up with demands such as, ‘No, you can’t stay in watching The Mighty Boosh, we’re going to walk round Wigan.’

  Pete Sinclair has been invaluable as ever, and without him this book would be called A Random Load of Thoughts and be written in biro.

  Nick Pearson and Louise Haines at Fourth Estate turned the idea into a book. Nick’s method was impeccable, as he spent the entire meeting in which we were supposed to discuss the idea talking about sport, and I knew straight away we’d get along.

  Robert Lacey’s notes have been captivating, as in between corrections of grammar he’s written miniature essays putting me right on the history of rugby league and other issues.

  And in every town I’ve mentioned, and several I haven’t, there have been people who’ve gone to vast lengths to show me round, lend me books, enthuse about the history, the architecture, the geology and layout of the town. So I’d like to thank them for their wonderful enthusiasm, and even more I’d like to thank the people in the towns who were rude and unhelpful, as it’s much easier to be funny about them than the kind ones.

  Thanks to so many of the nation’s cafés, in which much of this book has been written.

  Lastly, I’d like to thank the people who’ve put the book together for getting my name right, which isn’t as easy as it might seem. Once before, with a previous book, the publishers sent me their blurb for the back cover. I read it through, until I got to the last line: ‘All in all, this
is Mark Thomas’s funniest book so far.’

  I put my head in my hands, and my daughter, who was very young, said, ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’

  I said, ‘Read that and see if you can spot a mistake.’

  She read it, and said, ‘But Dad, Mark Thomas might buy this book, and he’ll be reading it and he’ll say, “It’s funny, I don’t remember writing this.”’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARK STEEL is a comedian and writer. His TV and radio series include The Mark Steel Solution and The Mark Steel Lectures. He writes a weekly column for the Independent and has appeared several times on Have I Got News for You, on Grumpy Old Men and Room 101. His In Town series on BBC Radio 4 won the Silver Award for Best Comedy at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2010, and the Writers’ Guild Award for Radio. His other books include It’s Not a Runner Bean, Reasons to be Cheerful, Vive la Revolution and What’s Going On?. He’d have written several more if he hadn’t wasted his time wandering around record shops and trying to play cricket. He lives in Crystal Palace with an assortment of people he’s related to.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  It’s Not a Runner Bean

  Reasons to be Cheerful

  Vive la Revolution

  What’s Going On?

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

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  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

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  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited