George Orwell went to Eton. Rory Stewart, who writes brilliantly about his journey on foot across Afghanistan in The Places in Between, also went to Eton. Chatwin went to Marlborough, F. Spencer Chapman went to Sedburgh, Robert Macfarlane went somewhere.
Tramping of a literary sort therefore seems to be contingent on you having been to school Somewhere. You will possess a certain confidence which initially puts you on your feet, expectant and curious amongst the natives. You are confused and searching, probably for yourself or for your father, and you clock up the miles, writing easily as you go.
I didn’t make it to Eton. Today has neither been so macho or so significant. At times we’ve felt like we’re going round in circles.
An initial climb up to the top of Rowley afforded us an intimate look into the estates of Blackheath and Whiteheath in low-slanting winter sunshine: someone cries out for rag and bone from the estates. In the distance West Bromwich Albion football club is just about visible in all its glory.
Some of the arterial roads here are not pretty places. It’s a relief to get to Blackheath, to the familiar ash-tint of the privet and the darkly peeling invalid rails. I’ve still got family who live round here and I’m inclined to be harsh on the place from memory.
Blackheath however is friendly. It’s not just that the shape of the pensioners’ heads which is familiar, the stoop and the haircuts and the ghosts of the roundabout and the market hall. Blackheath is a well-preserved 80s high street, the sort we all bemoan the death of in the new age of Starbucks and Americanised ubiquity. There isn’t even a Boots here, a W H Smith, a Walter Smith, all the energy of modernisation having been drawn by the ultra-mall at Merry Hill up the way. Come here if you miss the 80s aesthetic and 80s shopping principles. This is the late-twentieth century version of the Black Country museum.
On the way to Merry Hill we fringe Cradley Heath, past ‘Best Street’ with the ‘Best’ part spray-canned out. There’s an incident at a ‘Police Community Speed Check’ where three coppers, one with a speed gun, are clumsily searching a youth in a tracksuit. Maybe this guy ran by too fast. He is having his trousers pulled down as we pass - someone is examining a sock. A civilian watching this theatre from a couple of yards. ‘Auto Amusements’ (J.G.Ballard; Michael Hutchence) has a load of old jukeboxes in the window.
A trail of LIDL and ALDI lead to Merry Hill itself. This is where the Black Country comes to express itself.
Ted is, with impressive speed, prohibited from taking photographs and goes off to seek permission in the bowels of the centre. From where I sit some take easily to the centre’s commercial imperatives, to the swimming bath acoustics and extraordinary wipe-clean surfaces. The uniform seems to be bovver boots and skunk haircuts on the women who are hunting in gangs, but it’s actually hard to tell what is fashionable and what’s not (apart from ourselves). Children climb over free-standing cash machines while their parents suck on Diet Cokes. Nobody seems to be particularly happy or sad; nobody has bought much. Consumption is so half-arsed at this time of year that the place is inoffensive, new and slippery and so safe you need never fear anyone will ever record you having been here.
The canal which runs away from the centre is a readymade antidote to the above, a shabby piece of waterway with an on-running border garden of bin-lids and plastic bottles. DUDLEY AND LYE WASTE BRIDGE – like looking into a favourite crack head’s front room.
This might serve as a moniker for Dudley generally. I haven’t been to the town for twenty-five years; neither has anybody else. We’ve been warned that Merry Hill has killed off Dudley town centre but nobody told us it still lived on in some strange zombie form. They charge us £6.50 in GREGGS to hide from what's happening, a very impressive price. Ted says he can’t photograph what’s happening outside, the very fat women and the very thin men, the disproportionate number of outpatients. Whatever romance Blackheath brought to the reconstituted 80s Dudley has destroyed in an instant. I thought Lennie Henry was from this town?
Ted complains that he hasn’t got any portraits and we go into an arcade, a cruelly lit and stunted indoor market area of stalls and cafes, birthday cards and tools. We meet Rachel and Heidi who stalk the aisles of this small arcade and who nearly redeem the whole town, are so friendly and quick around their little manor and insistent that we take their pictures. Apparently I look like I’m investigating something; apparently Rachel runs the furniture stall here.
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