... Now when all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust
And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust
When the game has been decided and we're burning down the clock
And all our little victories and glories have turned into parking lots
When your best hopes and desires are scattered through the wind...
From Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball
In last week's meander, I mentioned we, in northeast England, were celebrating 'Stottie Cake Week'.
One of the activities I engaged in as part of that celebration was to follow the 'Stottie Cake Trail', which at one point took me to an area to the east of Newcastle that I had not ventured to in many a decade.
In the early 1990s, I was Operations Director for an Aerospace and Defence Systems Integration company. We had many offices in the UK and overseas. Still, one of the challenges we faced in the UK was recruiting people with the requisite skills and attributes. We employed many new graduates each year, but experienced people were more difficult to find. One area of the country we realised offered considerable potential was the northeast of England, so we decided to open an office in Newcastle. It was a good decision, and we quickly set up a systems development centre with a very competent body of people from the area. People who could cut code and build solutions with the same application and efficiency as many of their grandfathers had once cut coal and built ships.
Although the SI company was a relatively large fish with a turnover of £1.2bn, bigger fish are always hungry to buy successful fish of any size. That was the fate of the company with whom I was employed. I had no desire to work for the larger fish. I knew something about their company culture and approach to business, and it wasn't for me. So, after the acquisition in early 2000, I left with a 'package' and, as the well-worn phrase goes, 'by mutual agreement' in search of new employment. As happens when one moves around in business (and in life), I gradually lost contact with the people who remained and the company's fortunes as that bigger fish digested it.
However, it was still a surprise to find on my stroll around that part of Newcastle that the office building was no more. Nor were any of the offices that once stood beside it. The area is clearly undergoing a significant development. What that new development will be wasn't clear.
However, as I gazed upon the people busily engaged in creating the new, my mind pondered that this wasn't the first building I'd spent years of my life within that no longer stands.
Both of my schools, for instance. My infant and junior school, where I spent much time learning between the ages of four and eleven, is gone. Opened in 1908, it didn't see out the century, but at least a library replaced it. My grammar school, where the next six years of my schooling took place, has also gone. Opened in 1928, it, too, didn't survive the century, and its many large buildings and playing fields are now a housing estate. Do those houses echo to the sounds of the many pupils who passed through the school's classrooms? In my case, the echoes of the thwacks I received during my first year there as some master or other brought down a cane, gym shoe or, in the case of the art master, an oak branch on my backside. Such, such were the joys of the English education system of the late 1960s.
While my first place of employment, Cornwall House, just on the south side of Waterloo Bridge, still stands, it's no longer a forensics laboratory, nor does it now bear the name. Still, at least it's a place of learning, being the faculty of nursing and science of Kings College.
Another office that is no more and in which I worked in the early 1980s in Borehamwood, north of London, had a more creative history, being once the MGM British Studios.
'Edward, My Son', starring Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr, was the first film produced there. Other notable films include 'The Man Who Never Was' - that classic British wartime film recently remade as 'Operation Mincemeat'), the genuinely unsettling 'Children of the Damned', 'The Dirty Dozen' and its all-star American ensemble cast, and the similar 'Where Eagles Dare' with a few British stars thrown in. But the one most people will recognise and one of the last films shot in the studios was Kubrick's ‘2001: A Space Odyssey'. Despite being a ground-breaking and masterful film, some say it's the main reason behind the studio's closure in 1970. Kubrick's production used all seven stages and all the studio space for almost two years. Before its closure, the studios also saw the production of several TV series. The most well-known in the UK are 'Danger Man' and then the cult 'The Prisoner', both starring Patrick McGoohan.
With the closure of the MGM studio, film productions moved to the EMI studio just down the road in Elstree. Before the advent of CGI, that studio became pre-eminent in producing 'special effect' films, including the Agatha Christie mystery 'Murder on the Orient Express'; Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining', and most significantly, George Lucas' Star Wars and sequels and the Indiana Jones franchise. While not forgetting Jim Henson's Muppets shows! I was fortunate to dine in the studio's restaurant on a few occasions. I was always a little starstruck, although the most striking image I recall was the Grail Knight eating lunch in full costume and makeup. The Italian restaurant across the street from the studios was also popular with the film stars. Whenever I invited clients to lunch, they always wished to go there in the hope of catching a glimpse of a celluloid celebrity. Ironically, what stays in my mind is the beautiful fresh asparagus in butter the restaurant served as a starter rather than famous faces. All fame is fleeting and all that…
Despite its illustrious past, the once MGM studio was simply an office building to me, and after my then-team and I vacated it in the mid-1980s, the owner demolished it and sold the land for new development. It’s now a distribution centre for a large, refrigerated transport company.
The same fate befell another of the offices I worked in at times over the next ten years or so. Opened in 1946, it began as a research laboratory making key contributions to radar development and the emerging field of digital computers and industrial instrumentation, particularly in designing computer technology. It was there in 1947 that the world's first real-time computer with a memory store was built. The company I was to join some thirty years later had by then moved into the design of computers for industry, producing the first working machine developed in the UK outside of a university. The company continued to expand rapidly, and I, leaving behind my early career in Forensic Chemistry, joined the Aviation Division that specialised in Flight Controls, Transport Aviation Controls, Flight Instruments, Engine Instruments, Gyro, Inertial Navigation and Automatic Test Equipment.
As with many other buildings in my past, that multi-storey office and numerous outbuildings went the way of the wrecking ball around fifteen years ago, and yes, the land it sat upon is now a housing estate.
There are two things that I recall about the building.
The first is it was one of a handful in the UK that still had a working paternoster lift, which has no doors and moves continually without stopping at floor level. The name, Latin for Our Father', comes from the lift system's open compartments that move on a continuous 'loop'. One side goes up, and once at the top, the compartments move across and then down on the other side. At the bottom, the compartments move across again to begin their upward journey. Thus, they resemble rosary prayer beads. Getting on and off needed some technique and timing. Clearly, they were not an aid to health and safety and were impossible for those with mobility issues. The last paternoster disappeared in the UK in 2017, but they are still in use in other parts of the world if you want to try one.
The second thing that sticks in my memory (I apologise for the pun) was that a leading sticky tape manufacturer occupied the building beside it. The smell of glue on some days of the week heavily permeated the air. The scent and the building are both now long gone.
While it does seem as if I've left a litany of demolitions behind me (I have also worked in many locations that have survived), I suspect if anyone looks back on their life at my age, there will be a similar picture—the relentless march of time and new development.
But to go back to my stottie cake stroll and in keeping with the spirit that my posts are meanders both geographically and figuratively. After leaving the area where the office I mentioned at the start of this piece once stood, I came across the art installation in my photograph. The pieces of wood were on a fence beside Newcastle's Manors railway station. That station predates Newcastle's main Central Station by a few years and was once significant with nine platforms. But with the shrinking of the UK railway network in the 1960s (three cheers for Dr Beeching), Manors, as with many stations, shrunk in both size and importance, although at least the station is still in use.
Maybe it was my melancholic nostalgia after discovering the disappeared Newcastle office, but the messages of hope and encouragement caught my attention. Inspiration for the art installation comes from the St Vincent de Paul Society, who have 'adopted' the station. This international Christian voluntary network, founded in the UK in 1844, seeks to tackle poverty in all its forms by providing practical help to people in need. Today, the society welcomes people of all faiths and none as it seeks to foster diverse and inclusive connections. In the UK, it organises visits to vulnerable or isolated people, offering them friendship and practical support.
Community groups at St. Vincents Newcastle and Newcastle Deaf Centre created the art installation I photographed. Messages of encouragement to help people progress to the next stage of their life journey.
And as I paused to reflect on my own 'meander' through life, I confess it brightened my day to stumble upon those messages. The wrecking ball of life has not swung my way yet.
I don't believe so Daniel, nor anywhere in Europe as far as I'm aware.
We looove The Prisoner TV series over here in our house, Harry! And of course, I am a ha-uuge fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, having experienced it many times including on the extra wiiide "space" of thee iconic filmic landmark Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California! I also experienced the amazing documentary Woodstock (1970, dir. Wadleigh) there too -- WOW! Hey Harry, Did you get the email I sent you from my proton mail dot com account? It has a pdf on it, so perhaps check ur spam. Hope all is swell! E