The city where I was born was full of alley ways, one was three doors down and it was like a secret route to two other places. It was always a bit mysterious, a place where teenage ne’er do wells hung out in the early evening and who knows what went on after dark. In my late teens I ran a lot and sometimes played a game of running the alleyways – one side of the city to the other. Running down a main road for more than a hundred meters was prohibited. Maps had to be consulted and I found a whole network of unexplored short cuts. I got to see a lot of strange sites – dumped tyres behind the car factory hidden by a few years bramble and nettle growth windows of wilderness unknown to most citizens passing in their droves just a few meters away. Flights of stairs leading to apparently nowhere. Steep paths connecting dead end roads to expansive parks via ill kept mud tracks. A century ago, town planners did not consider mass ownership of motor cars and glue was something used to repair things, not for errant teenagers to pour into bags to sniff.
I didn’t really have a name for what these spaces were part of until I read “Edgelands” by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. Edgelands poetically describes small places that exist between wilderness and urban landscapes and whilst it is part of my consciousness which I rediscovered again today on a rainy cycle ride.
I’d decided to go to a not often visited park with exercise equipment. I can always find some useful exercise to do whether working on a boat, living in the city, at the coast or in the countryside. I have a scrapyard gym, often idle whilst I go through park exercise phases. I decided to have a meander through some back alleyways in the vicinity I had not explored before today on the way. I got instantly distracted by the stark architecture of rough block walls erected to keep out night time marauders, the secret gates, dead ends and endless rubbish strewn stretches. A rabbit darted out, or maybe it was an escaped guinea pig – I didn’t see the front end, it moved differently from the ones I regularly see in the woods. Far from being unexplored the paths were well trod and at one point I followed a procession of parents and pupils making their way to the local school. Some children were excited, a few dragged their heels. One was groaning theatrically and I remember having that very same enthusiasm myself at that age.
The rain got heavier. Daydreaming had affected my internal navigation circuit and after what seemed like a long time, I found myself back on a familiar road albeit in completely the wrong place. I decided that the pilgrimage to the exercise equipment was for another day and rejoined a usual route to a park nearer home. I did my drills alone in the rain, which of course stopped once I got home. I shall get the maps out. There are more Edgelands Micro adventures to be had.
See you down the road.
