Simonside

'A river man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life in These States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada.'

In the scheme of things cycle around inquisitive. Because once say realizing there may be a God at work somewhat like a shepherd. It's nice to guess if there is a Creator. Especially on a Sunday!

In the case of England, although its wrong to anthropomorphism The Creator, a lesser being might think, that in some English cities goodness and kindness were no longer at work only repletion and habituation.

There is an inescapable gold braid with the Mayflower leaving Boston harbour Lincolnshire, Walt Whitman, Ralph Emerson, Henry Ford and Sylvia Plath in Primrose Hill. There is a theory that Spirits speak through the mouth of Chosen People and the exactness of genius in William Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath point to this axiom being true. Sylvia Plath, almost reluctantly as a rational atheist began to think about the existence of God.

That Chicago was the nadir of earthly godliness in people, a slaughterhouse, and that pastoral vegetarian Michigan was the zenith of a world left by The Shepherd God for his Flock People to walk among.

A parallel emerges in England. Nottingham is the Naddirsville of England, a modern Coventry where no one speaks to strangers, oddly at the very geographical centre of the country through which drains it's main and voluminous river. The Trent drains Middle England.

William Booth founder of the Salvation Army was born in Sneinton, Nottingham an inner sururb and whirlpool of drowning humanity. A plaque heralds his name but the Queen Anne Georgian house is engulfed by 1960s blocks in an overgrown garden. The residents and staff are locked in dying safe from the dying streets unchanged in modernity.

Standing there knowing how the people of Nottingham live in suspended animation, fearing to speak out, habitually hanging on to their positions, a city where words are not spoken among the crowds, that all human afflictions are gathered below in the Beast Market and High Pavement the Mayflower is visualized leaving England that only leaving Europe and setting up in America would do.

It is almost plausible that a New World was laid on for the Pilgrim Fathers.

Almost like a mythical Rebirth enabled. As if Resurrection was a universal wish.

The Mayflower stopped off in Zealand and Plymouth and took 12 years to reach New England.

Walt Wittman's poetry are of godliness and salvation to be found by walking out of the city into landscape.

Nottingham like Rome built on steep hills like Valley Top away from the mills and factories on a small tributary of the river Trent. Raleigh Cycles and Wills Cigarettes factories once here on dark streets of heavy trees. The workers heritage is to shout above the machines though the machines have gone abroad to Taiwan and Vietnam, to shout along coal mines even though they are above ground now and to live in far out suburbs where many are driven mad by poverty.

The remote infamous suburbs of Daybrook, Arnold, Bullwell, Nuthall, New Basford, Bramcott and Stapleford are like so many Sargasso Seas. Like seas without shores.

The residents are alien looking as if they know a stranger is so. They dart up and scrutinise but never speak.

There is little homogeneity in the people. Each one seems to be odd and beauty resides in the children in wealthier suburbs and the off world colony of West Bridgford once guarded on the footbridge to floodplain The Meadows stopping unsavoury characters crossing in to the planned town.

Nottingham from the air is a mess, odd for a classic castle to cathedral fortress. The Lace Market district is inert and dead.

Camden Town London is the zenith to Nottingham's naddir. Classic Regency, Crimea or Edwardian houses. A vortex of international young people. Young people here manage to make their 500 character traits interesting. Creative, young and chattering, and the opposite to Nottingham in most respects.

There is no Geordie or Machem Slang in this article nor mention of Fatmansqueeze, Whitelees Jetty, Pier or Landing, Saint Bede, Seeker Dan, Don Owar, The Jarrow Lad, Geordie Fawshaw, Paul Rowan, Gerard Dixon, Peter Dawson, Peter Coyne, Peter Lagan or Vince Rea. There is no mention of Jarrow Slake or The Jarrow March either. References to The New Tyne Tunnel, The A19 or Primrose Dene are absent as are those to Farmer Dodds,Farmer Larsen and Stan Mallam.