Emily, I am up on the garden festival site, near to the compass where Richard Wilson's lighthouse was.
It is February, but a warm and sunny day. It feels like that moment just before the world wakes up, it has been a time of struggle and hardship, and much has been lost. But there is something in the air, as if it is the moment before a breath.
There are so many tiny birds, some I don't know the names of. I can hear a strange mechanical tapping noise, like a hammer reverberating against a hollow drum. I have to walk right around the clump of trees before seeing a great crested woodpecker. He sees me and stops tapping, before disappearing. I am writing this from the clump of trees, hoping he will reappear.
A man passes me on the bridge, we look and then look away.
Just around the corner I come to the wooden spikes on the hill. There are only 6 left standing now. Again the feeling something is watching me from the brambles, dozens of eyes are trained on me. I am being stalked.
But this is the wrong path and I have to double back.
This staircase compels me up, it leads to a round platform, perfect for viewing - what? Something important was here. This spot sends me back in time. I am wearing a jumper dress, my sister a shell suit, we salute each other, a mixture of girl guides and peace hippies. We were never at the garden festival, so I can only imagine other people like us, in hopeful sunglasses, and floral dresses, with a packed lunch in a coolbox, looking for a day out. It rained a lot in 86, but it was nobody's fault back then.
Something has changed here, one of my landmarks is missing and a new path has opened up. It leads around to some moss covered stones like a mini ampitheatre. Back on the path I head towards the trig point. Suddenly the weight of 26 years is clear. This was a bare hill once, with a lone figure standing next to a column.
The figure was misplaced some time ago, and has become a legend. Now this is an unnatural forest. A wild boar snorts and rampages at the bottom of the hill. I will take another route. Emerging from the trees I hear children yelling, cars, a crossing beeping green, and magpies cackling from every direction.
Standing between two palm trees, a family group comes from behind me, making their way towards what I know is coming; up and over the hill ahead. I linger here in the area which was the labyrinth. I could do with a broom to remove all of the leaves that have fallen on the round wooden feature.
The final remnant on my way out is the paved circle, with flying birds before a red sun. It is overtaken with grass, but seems right. This place belongs to the birds. At least it does today.
Emerging over the hill I am spewed out onto the retail park. Sunday afternoon shoppers milling about in and out of cars into supermarkets electrical shops, fast food outlets. I am back.
A reply from Emily:
I have walked the perimeter looking for an entrance but the
previous triangular hole I’ve always used is gone, replaced by high wooden
boardings and signs covered with the developer’s name and idyllic images of a
development currently halted by the recession.
On my way to the site, I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I
drove past (like every journey) and saw that the carcass of the dragon slide
was still standing. In my dreams as a 5 year-old, this was the centre of an
underwater world in a reoccurring dream, which I glided around, barely needing
to swim. The dragon’s mouth was part of a long series of red tunnels full of
water that left me giddy even after I woke up, only slightly irritated that the
whole of my primary school class had been there to share it with me. Only his
head remains now, but his long neck used to be the best part. The site still
has an oneiric atmosphere; dreamlike because it exists firmly in the past, in
my past, as well as being here, now, in front of me. I feel sure Foucault would
say this was a heterotopia linked to slices in time (past with the present and
its potential for the future), a perfect example of one of these heterochronies1.
Cars stream steadily past, surprised to see a pedestrian
where there are usually no signs of life. It’s a 30 mile an hour limit along
there but I don’t think anyone is sticking to it, I can feel myself bristle on
the narrower part of the pavement as each car displaces the air towards me.
My aunt had a job as a busker on the site during that summer
of 1984, so I felt hugely important, like this connection gave me power and
ownership over the site. My twin sister and I could go in free and spent much
of the summer swanning around, sitting on huge pencil benches in an exotic
glass palm house, eating funny feet and playing in the ball pool. We also
helped Jill out with her songs. Our favourite went like this:
I’ve found a baby bumble bee, won’t my
mummy be proud of me. (hold out hand to show bee with a huge smiling, proud
face)
OUCH! I was stung by a baby bumble bee,
won’t my mummy be sad for me. (react to an imaginary sting and show a very
sad face)
I’m squashing up a baby bumble bee, won’t
my mummy be cross with me. (grind hands together
I’m licking up a baby bumble bee, won’t my
mummy be cross with me. (lick palms as you sing to distort the words)
I’m puking up a baby bumble bee, won’t my
mummy be cross with me (exaggerating vomiting with noises, doubtful face).
The
song appealed to our disgusting sides and we took special delight in licking
our palms with the whole of our tongues, but there were so many bees and so
many flowers, that it seemed made for that particular place and time. Now I can
see long grasses and a few wild flowers, it’s a sparse landscape, raggedy and
kind of torn rather than the plump, neat planting that used to be there.
Walking
around the fencing I feel glad I can’t get in somehow, the distance stops the
other, more colourful place getting eroded by the reality. It’s a liminal
space, neither derelict nor rebuilt, it’s waiting for inhabitants and only half
dressed. Without flowers, the brightest colour is the restored Japanese pagoda
and tori, which still seem incredibly promising, like anything could happen in
that part of the garden. A bit further along I come across the entrance gates
and it feels like I could be anywhere, a theme park of the Giardini in Venice between biennials.
I can just make out the Mersey across the park
and it reminds me how much water there used to be here; fountains, a Blue Peter
ship and the Yellow Submarine of course. I can’t place where they would have
been, nor can I remember any real plan or ways to navigate the site – I was too
young. Now it’s only a memory of excitement and a vague sense of vastness, both
in the landscape but also in what was possible there. I decide I like it
half-complete because it allows that possibility.
Heading
back to my car (parked at the pub at the water) in warm sun – it was always
sunny there wasn’t it? - I imagine the padded green arms of a massive liver
bird hugging me as my face presses into its soft side.
Notes
1. Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.
This
text, entitled "Des Espace Autres," and published by the French
journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité in October, 1984, was the basis of
a lecture given by Michel Foucault in March 1967.
http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html
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