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Onwards down to Walsall and the Forest Arts venue. What beautiful woodland setting would this be situated in? It turned out the trees were imaginary and this was a big aircraft hanger-like venue in the concrete forest that is Walsall. A place that makes Wolverhampton look beautiful.
I am joking Walsall. Nothing could make Wolverhampton look beautiful. And the Forest Arts was a really cool venue.
I had been moved over to the smaller room, but was pleased to have 120+ in in a town that I’d never played before (as far as I recall). This show seems pretty bullet-proof and is going down well everywhere. I think I might finally be getting quite good at this job. But I think that every six months and then am proven wrong.
It had been a pleasant trip down from Carlisle, through the Lake District, with another lunch at Tebay. As we’d driven through the countryside I’d seen the ruin of an old house standing in the middle of nowhere and it reminded me of one of the happiest days of my childhood.
My friends and I had been knocking around in Shipham Woods when we’d come across a tiny, falling down, roofless dwelling in the trees. It may once have been a store or maybe a tiny cottage for some worker. Whatever it was it hadn’t been used for years and was falling down. But not quickly enough for our liking. With no adults around and in the secrecy of the woods, like some wild children from a William Golding book, we decided to throw stones at the structure. I don’t know whose idea it was, but we all gleefully went about our demolition work, even me (and I was usually too much of a scaredy-cat goody-goody to get involved in anything even vaguely criminal or risky).
The joy of destruction is a peculiar one, but it was thrilling to see a well aimed rock causing bits of the house to tumble. We must have been throwing pretty big chunks of stone and we must have had to go in close, risking walls falling on us, or being hit by the errant throw of one of the group. But no harm was done (to us at least) and we were caught up in the anarchy and it was exhilarating. I think we might have tried to do it again another day, but it didn’t feel as exciting.
In many ways this was a horrible thing to do - I don’t know quite how old the building was, but it was probably eighteenth or nineteenth century, so we were smashing a piece of history (though one that no one cared anything about any more)- but boy, it was fun. And at least we didn’t vandalise anything that anyone was still using.
Anyway an odd moment of feral madness to recall whilst driving through a pastoral idyll. Maybe we should have stopped and smashed the shit out of that tumbledown cottage in the Lake District too.
