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THE GREEN SHOOTS OF
RECOVERY
WoS Around Britain: Newport, Wales
WoS's
friends are idiots. By way of example, one acquaintance (who
we won't name here for fear of embarrassing his unfortunate
parents, Mr and Mrs Walker) decided a few weeks ago to
smarten up his scruffy, well-worn passport in preparation
for a trip to America, by putting it through the washing
machine with only the pocket of some trousers for
protection. The predictable results, and the ever-present
threat of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, necessitated
said person (who, to further preserve his anonymity
throughout this feature, we'll refer to only as 'John X')
making not one but two trips - in person - to the Passport
Office on consecutive days, in order that a replacement
could be issued in time for the journey.
Fortunately
said office is located in Newport in Wales, just the other
side of the Severn Bridge and only a short 40-minute hop by
direct train from Bath, where he happens to also live. The
first trip passed with little incident, but as a
demonstration of just how stupid WoS's friends are, on
arriving back in Bath poor John X was carelessly and
immediately struck down by a catastrophic dose of what for
the sake of decorum we'll call ''digestive tract
dysfunction', which it transpired would persist for several
unpleasant days.
In the
interests of public hygiene, then, WoS selflessly offered to
make the return trip to Newport to collect the new passport
in John X's place (something which is oddly permissible
under the otherwise-strict regulations, despite WoS being a
known subversive and potential terror threat), and seized
the opportunity for adventure along the way.
(Viewers!
Should you ever in fact wish to commit a terrorist atrocity
in a British public building or institution*,
WoS advises concealing your weapon or explosives inside a
secret compartment in your shoes. On numerous occasions WoS
has visited such places and been required to pass through a
metal detector, placing all metal objects from its various
pockets onto a tray for inspection. The detector then goes
off anyway, as WoS is normally to be found in sturdy boots
with steel toecaps, as protection against ragamuffins and
vagabonds. On explaining this to the security guards - the
bit about steel toecaps, that is, not the bit about
ragamuffins and vagabonds - WoS has unfailingly been waved
through. But anyway.)
After
enduring a bumpy journey in a tiny and cramped two-carriage
train, enlivened only by beating Gary
Penn's high score at Orbital
just as the train pulled up to the platform, WoS arrived in
Newport. Successfully navigating the desolate landscape
around the railway station and managing to locate the
anonymous grey Passport Office building in a nondescript
street, WoS secured the precious document and set off into
town to find someone to sell it to.
The picture
at the top of this page is an artist's impression of
Newport's central shopping mall, the Kingsway Centre, as it
was advertised
during the planning stages of its £33m renovation
before it opened in September 2008. The picture above this
paragraph is what it actually looks like. (Click all images
in this feature except the first one for larger versions.)
Most of the
outside of the centre is clad in red boards advertising
space available for rent. Indeed, almost ALL the space
inside is available for rent. WoS estimates that 80% or more
of the mall's retail space was boarded up and empty, a year
after the grand reopening. Only two of the dozens of vacant
units appeared as if they might ever have been occupied - a
forlorn ex-Jessops, with posters in the windows noting that
it had moved to Cardiff (16 miles away), and something
encased in a large coffin of plywood panels, outside which
two sinister-looking men in dark suits sat like silent
predators, waiting to relieve people of their unwanted gold
for cash at knockdown prices.
The few
shops on offer to tempt the handful of customers milling
listlessly around mostly comprised bargain outlets, eg a
branch of discount chemist Savers and a two-storey
Wilkinsons outlet, which must have accounted for at least
two thirds of the mall's occupied square footage by itself.
And although WoS traversed the Kingsway at least five times
in various directions during the day, the "Library, Art
Gallery and Museum" proudly boasted on the facade were
either not there at all, or extremely well concealed.
Eventually
a woman evidently employed by the mall to maintain control
of its public image on little-visited videogames-related
websites approached WoS and forbade the taking of any more
pictures, on the grounds that the mall was private property
and official permission was required. So WoS popped into
Wilkinsons for some Fruit-Tellas, then took its leave of the
Kingsway Centre and wandered off to see if the rest of
Newport could offer up any affirming indicators of the
allegedly-imminent ending of the recession.
Having
arrived at the mall plaza via a needlessly circuitous route,
the next stop on WoS's tour itinerary took in an area that's
actually directly between the Kingsway and the passport
office, and adjacent to the bus station. There, things only
got grimmer. Like much of the outer ring encircling the city
centre, many of the buildings appeared to be of quite recent
construction, built from pristine smooth-edged red bricks,
but once again the considerable majority of them (bar an
Iceland and a Poundstretcher) lay
deserted and forlorn.
(The
picture set above, incidentally, was taken between 2pm and
3pm on a sunny and mild Tuesday afternoon in October.) There
were a few points of interest lurking amongst the economic
wreckage - the fish and chip shop, for example, had much of
its boarded-up frontage covered in anti-Welsh (pro-English)
graffiti, as well as some of a
more traditionally racist nature.
And the newsagent, while formidably and forbiddingly
armoured with metal shutters beneath its Mars branding, was
actually open for business, conducted through one of its
windows.
But the
last picture in the set is the most tragic - when a city of
140,000 people can't even support a pound
shop, no amount of proclamations from Westminster can
disguise the truth. WoS found it deeply ironic, then, to
find a murky tunnel leading from the bus-station area to the
Kingsway plaza decorated by a long mosaic mural (which had
apparently won some sort of environmental award
in 1979) depicting a protesting mob demanding salaries for
MPs.
The end of
the mural (which annoyingly doesn't appear to feature a
plaque or any other kind of explanation of which events it's
portraying, although an alert WoS viewer expertly discovered
it to have been the Newport
Rising of 1839) shows the protesters apparently being
massacred by government troops. If their ghosts are watching
now, I hope they feel it was worth it.
Passing
through the Kingsway mall again, WoS emerged on the other
side in what was clearly Old Newport, but there was little
there to lift the spirits either. The retail heart of the
city is large, with a maze of substantial old streets and
numerous little alleys and shopping arcades but it was in
almost uniformly shabby condition, and almost as riddled
with economic cancer, as the surrounding areas. The main
artery, Commercial Street, was relatively bustling compared
to other parts of the centre and had
few boarded-up stores, but you only had to turn into one of
its feeder streets to see the now-familiar signs of decay in
full force.
(Again, the
last shot of this set is the saddest. As the plaque above it
proudly declares, The Carpenters Arms has stood resolutely
in this location for over 600 years, through turmoil,
strife, revolution and war, but has finally been driven to
its death by the Bankers' Recession.)
WoS spent
the next 90 minutes searching the shops for some little
presents to bring back for friends, as WoS likes to do when
having adventures. But the pickings were slim in a place
that seemed to be teetering on the very edge of the Nail
Salon Event Horizon. Apart from the usual women's fashion
chains that clog 60% of the average High Street, there were
few shops that actually sold products rather than services -
every other business was a coffee shop or a tattoo
parlour or a hairdresser or a mobile phone operator or some
kind of agency.
Eventually
in desperation WoS picked up a few trinkets in Poundland and
some interesting snacks in a Polish shop (if anyone knows
anywhere that sells Halls
Vita-C lime sweets online, incidentally, speak up and be
richly rewarded. Heavens, they're delicious), and headed
back towards the train station, which entailed a final grim
traverse of the Kingsway Centre from yet another direction
no more uplifting than the others.
At various
places in the centre, and indeed strewn liberally around the
city, there are big, brightly-coloured billboards from an
advertising campaign with the strapline "Feeling good
about Newport". It's hard to know whether the
presumably-expensive campaign is aimed at visitors or mainly
at cheering up the residents, but
the main hope being held out for the future appears to be
that the city is hosting the Ryder Cup in 2010.
It's
probably going to take a bit more than a three-day golf
tournament to turn things round, for Newport and for the
rest of us. Merry Chris, viewers!
*
Please do not commit a terrorist atrocity.
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