As I took the escalator into our beloved bus station today I imagined
Billy Bragg playing a gig in there one day. I let myself run with the fantasy;
quickly deciding where the stage would be, what the crowd would look like and
even the songs he would play. I could already hear his familiar reverberated
Essex vocal delivery and the aggressive down-stroke guitar playing, and it
sounded like heaven. Greyfriars is probably the only place in town where you
ever hear people sing, and they’re never singing Billy Bragg songs; they’re
singing generic pop with lyrics that would fail to engage even the most
culturally-stunted among us. I guess that says something about the town. Billy
Bragg could come and help us out.
Greyfriars has a
long history of smelling like urine and resembling the “jaws of hell,” as one
architect put it. Its past has been blighted by stalactites dripping from the
ceiling, of the car park alongside being too dangerous to use and as a building
that is utterly useless to anyone with a wheelchair. "It is an ugly, malevolent building brimming with inner hostility and low aspiration," an ex-Northamptonite so perfectly put it. It certainly does feel hostile, perhaps because the roof covers and engulfs the building in a constant shade of darkness. And the low aspiration? That's just Northampton for you, the go-nowhere town all go-nowhere towns look towards. These are all truths, but Greyfriars is our bus station and I'll be sad to see it go when the new North Gate bus station opens later in the year.
What will go in
its empty space has not yet been decided, but we can trust our Borough Council
to fuck up again so brilliantly that the next building will cut just as many
corners and be just as much of behemoth as Greyfriars currently is. That said,
the place needs to go; it only serves to damn the town now. People have a bad opinion
of it. You rarely see anyone smile in there.
So why Billy
Bragg? Since day one he has supported and celebrated British-ness and so has
become an icon and symbol of this country – he is a jewel. All through his
thirty-plus years of service he has encouraged people to think, to engage and
to share information. No doubt he’s been through Greyfriars at one point or
other when he ran round East Northamptonshire getting Riff-Raff together. The
people passing through Greyfriars on any given afternoon could do with
something to engage with and something to think about; something way above and
beyond whether the number 7 will be late or whether 50p Lil will corner them
into given her a cigarette and dribbling on their shoes.
In an age of
bands playing sessions in any and all manner of strange venues Billy Bragg has
been doing just that for many years; standing on plastic chairs to sing at
miner’s benefits and at punk garden parties. Greyfriars would be perfect. How
about it Bill? Make a decision and come down to play the closing party. Please,
I beg of you, save us from ourselves for a few moments and help us to celebrate
yet another fuck-up by the borough council.
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