One Christmas Eve, I remember waking to hear Father Christmas banging around downstairs in the darkness. I sleepily thought that I mustn't disturb him, or he wouldn't leave us any presents. One holiday on a south-coast beach, I remember being knocked over by a boy-height wave and taking a in deep breath whilst swirling underwater. Both I suppose are some nexus of wishful thinking and sensory confusion. And yet, I can remember them. They are empirically real, even if factually imagined.
More frustratingly, I have an elusive memory of the stalls of a market, a typical veg-and-tat market, in the gloom. I have it in my mind that the market was underneath a multistorey carpark. A massive concrete carpark. And I can quite clearly recall being bought a hotdog from a stall at this market. The hotdog had fried onions. I didn't want onion on my hotdog. Perhaps that's why the memory is so clear. Or perhaps this is the instant I discovered I don't like fried onions.
Most frustratingly, despite this wealth of sensory recollection, this memory has spent years floating without any place or date to pin it to. Rough calculations suggest it must've come from somewhere east of Saltash and someplace south of Birmingham, and sometime between 1983 and 1988. But that is hundreds of square miles, and a billion instants.
I do not understand why this particular memory has stayed with me, and why the lack of place has so itched within my mind.
My mother thought it might be Basildon. And so I went to check. It is not. Non-one else could think of where this market underneath a multistorey carpark might be. Perhaps I was misremembering. And who would put a market there, rather than more cars? Perhaps it never happened.
And yesterday, I don't know why, I remembered. As mental image of the market again floated across my mind, some part of my memory, silent for years, answered. Plymouth? No...Portsmouth.
After 15 seconds of Googling, I had my answer. It was the Tricorn Centre.
This picture, grainy and hard to make out, is quite eerily close to my memory.
Parental enquiries about Portsmouth lead to a mid-80s trip to the maritime museum there. I recall nothing of the submarine we apparently went in, but some echo of disappointment with the lack of beach at this particular seaside. And, it would appear, we went to the Tricorn centre.
Not that I can now go back. It was demolished in 2004. It was knocked down to make way for a new shopping development. Although, nine years later, the site is still a pay and display car park.
I shall not claim for an instant that this childhood trip instilled a lifelong love of Brutalism. Indeed, although I can appreciate the South Bank complex, and can even be amused by its harsh crystalline jaggedness, I can not quite bring myself to like it.
I shall not claim that in its later years the Tricorn centre was a pleasant place to be. I do not know; I doubt it.
But I shall never see the Firestone Building. I shall never see the Euston Arch. I shall never see the Tricorn Centre with adult eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment