(no subject)

[bunn]

Just watched this, and my reaction was IT’S  SIT DOWN BY JAMES!!!!  I feel I’ve somehow obscurely misused my nerd credit.   Flashback to listening to the radio in Oxford in... 1990? 1991? Something like that.

  And then a few years later driving endlessly from Chester to Birchwood in my awful, awful red Metro, and getting stuck endlessly on the Thelwall viaduct and singing along to James in the car because the Metro had the world's most ancient radio and it didn't get FM, and it didn't even have a tape player, and the one station you could get when stuck in the endless massive roadworks on the Thelwall Viaduct was always playing either James, Pulp or Oasis.  And occasionally fantasising about simply getting out of the car, when it hadn't moved for literally 30 minutes, or on one occasion TWO BLOODY HOURS, and just leaping over the edge of the bridge and swimming out to sea, never, ever, ever to return to a dull industrial estate on the outskirts of Warrington.

Which fantasy was probably enhanced by the fact that in those days it was still normal to go out to the pub* for lunch and return to work for the afternoon in a beer-induced haze that probably hadn't entirely worn off by the time the clock finally ticked with agonising slowness around to 5pm.   Still, I never killed anyone and on the Thelwall Viaduct you couldn't move fast enough to cause a disaster even if you were actually drunk.

I'm fairly sure this wasn't the intended set of associations.  WHO KNEW IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO HAVE THELWALL VIADUCT NOSTALGIA????

*which was a terrifying place which I'm sure later appeared in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, and which I would probably never have dared to venture into if I hadn't been hauled along by a gang of heavy-smoking Warrington Ladies who swore liberally and knew no fear.  God, they were an education.  

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It's all connected! The Thelwall Viaduct is obviously the last remnant of The Wall, the only bit of that once mighty barrier that survived after the Horn of Joramun was blown and the Others and their wights swept through and ravaged the whole southern part of the country. History has forgotten this tragedy, and now the whole thing has become myth - fiction, even. The true story is preserved only in the place name, although even then, The Wall has become Thelwall, the true etymology forgotten by all but the most ancient of locals. But the land remembers. The haunting music that stays in the mind of those who dare try to cross the Thelwall Viaduct and the music that comes to the mind of TV producers who are making stories of Westeros is ONE AND THE SAME!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Yes. That horn. :-D

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I know Thelwall viaduct.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It is, or was, a place of fearful horror and lament, where the unfortunate become trapped and fear that they may never escape.

But they must, surely, have finished repairing it by now!

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. Metros.

Whenever people say "Everything was better in the past!", I think "Cars weren't".

[bunn.livejournal.com]

They so were not. And even by the standards of the day, a bottom-of-the-range D-reg Metro was pretty appalling. I loved it anyway because it was my first car, but it was really awful. I remember particularly that it was a shade of red that looked as if someone had looked at red and thought 'how can we make this more unpleasant so look at?'

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

And yet Metros were by no means the worst. My sister had - whisper it - an Allegro...