Official Winter Starts Here [the Christmas lights have been switched on]

Dog walking this morning to dark sky over the castle, a weird reindeer wire-thing in front of the Darwin Shopping Centre and rain.  Dog walking this evening to an accompaniment of crowds on Pride Hill, balloons for sale, light sabres for sale, Father Christmas in the Square, crowds in the Square, Hilary from Jazz Club [meets monthly at the Hive on Belmont Bank] in the Square, along with her friend Jade, and programmes being handed out for an evening of entertainments to celebrate the switching on of the town's Christmas lights.

On the High Street I find Martin Wood, our Town Cryer.  I also find a Boy Scout drum band and a lantern procession backing up Fish Street. Darting about in a hat with flashing lights is Shrewsbury's chief lantern-workshop person, Maggie Love. The lanterns process along High Street to the Square, following the band. More and more people are packing in all the time. It's hard to imagine how the Square is going to fit them all in, let alone how it will manage this time next year, when the infamous Princess House stopping-up of vital pavement space is complete. 

I pick up my dog. He's had enough of being almost but not quite trampled underfoot. The Mayor is on the podium, presiding over the count down to switching on. '10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1,' we yell, but nothing happens.  Apparently we're not loud enough. We try again.  It works this time. Bingo. Where's the year gone? The Christmas lights are on again. 

Official winter starts here.   

Am I imagining it or does this look like Eric Smith?

Hilary and Jade

Our lovely new about-to-be Museum & Art Gallery

Crowd gathering in the Square

Town cryer with boy scout drummers

Maggie Love in tinsel and flashing hat

The Lantern Procession begins...

...Led by boy drummers

Hand-made lanterns following along behind

---to light up the Square

Crowd packed three-deep in the Princess House overhang

Lights off

Lights on

Butcher Row

Weird reindeer wire thing comes alive

What's Cricket In India Got To Do With Shrewsbury Today?

Photograph: Babu/Reuters

My Tonight From Shrewsbury is slightly thin on the ground when it comes to sport. It's covered the first ever Shrewsbury marathon [in fact covered it three times], and it's tried to make contact with the town's boxing club, but with no success.  Why then, you might ask yourselves, am I writing a post on cricket - and in India too - when not a single post has been written about cricket, football, swimming, athletics, judo or any number of other sports that happen here in Shrewsbury on a daily basis?

The answer lies in this photograph which I turned up this morning whilst reading the Guardian.  All these people, all these banners, and raised faces, and upturned hands and smiles - they're for one man, Sachin Tendulkar, who started playing cricket for his country back when the Berlin Wall was coming down, and yesterday stepped out for his 664th and final international appearance. 

Sport doesn't do a lot for me, but heroism does, and so does the  striving of the human spirit to leave its mark.  I love human interest stories and, over my Shrewsbury breakfast this morning, I certainly stumbled across a good one.  

Tendulkar's final match is taking place in India, against the West Indies. It started yesterday. As the Indian side, including the great man himself, prepared to enter the Wankhede Stadium, umpires and opponents alike formed into a two-line guard of honour for the forty year-old cricketer and his fellow team-mates.  'After breaking nearly every record in international cricket, scoring more runs and more centuries than any other player, Tendulkar seemed the calmest person in the stadium,' wrote Guardian journalist, Dileep Premachandran, in his news item, 'Adoring fans serenade the Little Master's parting shots'.  

Certainly, at the sight of Tendulkar, the 32,000 capacity stadium went wild.  Banners waved, fans roared and screamed and feet stamped. The West Indies went in to bat first, but it can't have been easy. The stadium roof was ringed by blown-up pictures, one for each of Tendulkar's fifty-one Test centuries.  Every time the great man moved to catch a ball, the sorts of roars broke out that you'd expect from a Cup Final's winning goal. 'We want Sachin' roared the crowd, along with ululations, chants and the boom of fans banging the hoardings in front of them.

Above the proceedings, a giant electronic screen showed messages from around the world. A tweet came up from England cricketer, Joe Root: 'Sachin made his debut before I was born. Then played in my test debut. Thank you Sachin.'

Why am I telling you all this, here on a blog which is all about Shrewsbury? In fact, why am I telling you anyway, when I seem to show so little interest in sport?  It's because reading the article and seeing the photograph with all those upturned faces made me cry.  Even before I read that Sachin Tendulkar's mother received a standing ovation from the crowd on this, the first match of her son's that she'd ever attended,  I had tears in my eyes.

Partly it was the unshowiness of Tendulkar that got to me.  Whilst the whole stadium was in ferment, the man himself remained extraordinarily calm. Partly, too, it was the longing for heroes that we all seem to have deep down inside, be they Nelson Mandela, JFK,  Mother Theresa or, indeed, Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.  

But, most of all,  it was the quiet doggedness that made me cry.  I felt it the other day when I read about the jockey A.P.McCoy and his 4,000th win. There are people out there who don't just win the short, sharp sprint. They hunker down for the marathon.  They don't shout about what they're achieving either, or seek adulation. They just get on with it.  

In fact, for most of us that's our lives.  They're challenging and hard, full of ups and downs. Some matches we lose and occasionally there are some we win. But, win or lose, we go on doing what we have to.  

I'd like to think there's a bit of Sachin Tendulkar in all of us, even here in Shrewsbury.  A bit of A.P. McCoy too.   Races aren't just won somewhere else. Successes aren't just notched up by cricketing legends. Quietly and unheralded, Shrewsbury people notch up triumphs every day. Maybe no one sees them happening and no crowds come to cheer. But that's not what doing it is all about. Even in this media age with its hunger for heroes, a job seen through to the end can bring its own rewards. 

All Around the Globe - Yes, I Mean You

A couple of weekends ago, unnoticed by me, the figures for views of My Tonight From Shrewsbury passed the 20,000 mark.  Then in the course of just a couple more days, they hit the 20,500 mark and since then they have been steadily rising.  Last time I looked they stand at 21,815.

I am truly gobsmacked by these figures. By the time you read this, who knows where they’ll be. That’s upwards of twenty thousand page views for sixty-one blog posts - and it’s not just the hits I’m amazed by here.  It’s the sixty-one blog posts too.  That’s a lot of writing about Shrewsbury, believe me.  And yet there’s still so much more to be written about.

When I started My Tonight From Shrewsbury back on January 1^st, I had no idea that I’d find so many subjects to include in this blog, nor that it would garner such a following.  The original high figures I put down to curiosity, and I waited for the numbers to drop.  Instead of that they’ve grown. Particularly thrilling is that when I check my stats I find that a staggering number of readers are coming from across the globe. 

Since January 1^st, 2,663 Americans have read My Tonight From Shrewsbury, 485 Germans and 331 French.  It’s being read right across Europe from the Netherlands to Russia, across the Middle East, including Iraq, in Asia, including India, China, Thailand and the Philippines and across the Americas, from Canada down to Brazil.  Just today, it’s been read by ninety-nine people in the UK, thirty in the US, and in France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Canada, Brazil, Lebanon, the Philippines, Poland, Spain, Slovenia, Indonesia and India.   And the day's hardly got going yet.  I'm writing this at 11.00am.   

Isn’t that fantastic?  My Tonight From Shrewsbury has had nothing to promote itself except for Facebook and Twitter. There are no promoters or sponsors. It has no agenda except to present a picture of a contemporary English country town during one year of its life.  This is most definitely a one-woman show.  Sometimes, as the one woman in question, I feel fairly run ragged keeping up with what I’ve set out to achieve, but I’m just loving what I’m doing - and I’m loving having you along. 

If you’re one of those people in one of those countries that I’ve just listed [or indeed if yours is one of the many countries that I haven’t listed], thanks for being here and reading this. Do keep coming back. And leave a few words in the comment section to tell me who you are [though no advertising please – My Tonight From Shrewsbury is an advertisement free site].  Numbers are exciting, but behind every number is a person - and that’s more exciting still. It would be great to hear from you.

If you’re from Shrewsbury, or surrounding Shropshire, it would be great to hear from you too. What are the things that matter in our county town?  What else should I be writing about?  I can’t promise to get round to everything in my year. I’ve nearly reached the half way mark, and have some great things still lined up and am beginning to panic about how I’ll fit them all in. But I’ll do what I can.   

Coffee And Cardinals [With A Bit Of Batman Thrown In]

Suddenly, in the midst of what looks like a very busy week, I find myself with free time.  What better, I think, than go out for a coffee. In fact, while I’m about it, why not go out for several coffees, and see what the town’s baristas have to say for themselves?  

I head down Pride Hill and across the Square to Starbucks. Usually it’s packed, but today I’m pleased to see there are a few empty seats. The girl on the till takes my name, and the girl on the coffee machine shouts it out when my black Americano is ready. I sit next to the window opposite a mother with a toddler and a colouring book. Leonard Cohen's heading down to the river with Suzanne - not that most of the people around me will have noticed, too plugged into their earphones to notice anything else. 

I love the way that Starbucks can be sculpted to the needs of its customers.  Like now, a huge island Sixth Formers has formed amid the dull grey sea of the rest of us by the pulling together of tables and chairs. There are laptops all over the tables, and girls and boys sitting two-deep on the chairs, jangling their earrings, talking into their phones, tossing back their hair.  

I love the big windows here too, where I can sit looking out on High Street or the Square, watching the world going by without it watching me back. It’s amazing how often I can sit here and see people I know going past without them seeing me. From outside, you'd almost think these windows were a brick wall.

A woman with a small brown dog on a too-long lead goes by, creating havoc amongst skate-boarders and pedestrians alike.  Then a lady with a walking-stick goes by, her expression tired, her long tweed coat almost touching the floor. I wonder if she knows how elegant she looks.  In the middle of the square, trestle tables are being packed up. When Batman comes into the Square nobody even looks up. But then not even I’m surprised, having come across him earlier on Pride Hill, where I made a donation to charity in exchange for a cake or being photographed in his arms. [And if you think you know which one I chose, then you’re wrong - because I forgot to claim either, would you believe].  

A newspaper – the i – has been left on the seat next to me, so I pick it up. On the front page is a big red cardinal looking grim, a lordly Liberal Democrat peering through his specs, and a Chancellor of the Exchequer looking Defiant Over Cuts Despite Downgrade.  It’s Tuesday 16^th February and that’s today’s news.

After Starbucks, I head along the High Street to Eat Up where Radio Something-or-Other is playing, complete with advertising breaks. I order my second black Americano of the day. It’s wonderful [unlike the Starbucks version, of which the best I can say is that it was hot, tasted like coffee and was drinkable] just the way I like it, strong and with a thin layer of froth on top, and there are no stupid tear-open sugar sachets, but proper cubes in Tate & Lyle black treacle tins [not that I take sugar in my coffee, but it’s a nice touch].  

I can’t tell you what the customers are like because there are only two of them and they have their back to me.  I’ve been in here before when the place has been full. This time, however, all the tables are wiped and empty and there’s nothing to look at but the view through the windows - or the Daily Mail.

I take it off the rack and open it up.  Here, instead of being a sinister front-page figure garbed in red, Cardinal Keith O’Brien is a charasmatic figure whose greatest failing is his love of publicity.  Here too I discover that the BBC is going easy on the Lib Dems. I also find a great description - courtesy of Quentin Letts - of George Osborne turning up in the House of Commons ‘like one of the Monty Python  people playing a horseless knight.’ And, further on in the Mail, I read that Britian has lost its Triple A credit rating because the Government hasn’t cut back deeply enough.

After reading this, it feels like time to move on. It’s ten to three and still no one has come in.  You get a day like this once in every few weeks, says the man at the till.

He must be right because down at McDonalds it’s quiet as well.  I buy a burger, fries and coffee, and have change from three pounds. They’ve never heard of an Americano so I talk them through it and take the results downstairs.  

A couple of people are leaving as I arrive but, apart from that, the entire hundred-seater dining area is empty, its lowest level cordoned off, a worker in an apron putting chairs on tables and sweeping the floor.  Behind him rises the great sweep of Shrewsbury’s medieval town wall.  This is not what you expect to find in your local McDonalds. There’s even a woven tapestry hanging on the wall, thought the suit of armour that used to be down here has gone and the children’s turret is looking slightly shabby.    

Even tucked away in McDonalds, it’s great to know that our town wall is   on show. These stones aren't polystyrene. They're real. They're part of Shrewsbury's history. We're not in Disneyworld. And yet I could have walked past all this and never known it was here - especially nowadays when, painted green instead of red, McDonalds on Pride Hill is easier than it used to be to miss.   

What shall I read this time? Looking around, I find a discarded Times. Here the big question is Daniel Day-Lewis.  Is he the best actor ever? I shake out the pages for the Oscars Special which is meant to be inside with all ‘the parties, the frocks and the gossip’, but it’s not there so I’m stuck with Catholic cardinals instead, with Lord Rennard of the Lib Dems and a statement from George Osborn that the country’s current triple A downgrade ‘shows how I was right all along’ [how can this be?].  

The coffee in my polystyrene cup is terrible – an insult to black Americanos.  I fail to taste half of it and leave the rest.  Out on Pride Hill, a man is playing a guitar.  It’s an ordinary day, one of those occasions that’s not cold enough to complain about but not mild enough to enjoy. There’s nothing ordinary, however, about this music. I ask what it is.  Without missing a beat, the guitarist tells me it’s a fandango.

Finally I reach home.  Shrewsbury’s main streets have plenty more coffee establishments, and it would have been nice to visit more of them, but I’m caffeined-out and feeling slightly sick. If you want it cheap [but in medieval surroundings] go to McDonalds.  If you want to watch the youth of Shrewsbury catching up on their coursework and/or falling in love, go to Starbucks.  If you want a really good cup of coffee, go to Eat Up [but you may well have to put up with commercial radio].  And if you’d like to listen to the fandango, HERE’S the link:

One Book, One Garden, Three Market Halls

At the moment, I’m reading ‘The Gift’ by Lewis Hyde. It’s a book that’s been published in the UK thanks to the intervention of Margaret Atwood, who describes it as ‘a masterpiece’.  Even a couple of chapters in, I can see why. Hyde explores the concept of giving, going back to the earliest of times and including, in some small part, the idea of giving back to one's homeland some of what it's given you.  ‘Do not exploit the essence,’ he warns in a side-swipe at excessive commercialism. ‘The returned gift is the fertilizer that assures the fertility of the source.’

So why am I quoting this tonight from Shrewsbury?  Well, a couple of days ago, out walking the dog, I got into conversation with the person responsible for maintaining the library garden, which as far as I’m concerned is the most interesting and attractive garden in town.  Here's somebody who’s giving back.  In the early hours of morning, often before the rest of us are up, he’s out there pruning, trimming and, in Lewis Hyde's words, 'assuring the fertility of the source'.  Even in winter, his garden’s shades of green and variety of textures are an asset to the town.  For a moment we shared mutual attitudes on the subject of begonias [more about this later in the year] then, before being dragged off by my plainly disinterested dog, I expressed  thanks for what I always think of as a cool, green haven in the busy heart of the town. 

Then again on Saturday, and again today, in the indoor market, I had cause to feel appreciative.  All these stalls run by quirky-minded, independent, enterprising, imaginative and creative individual traders who weren’t selling the way they do in Sainsbury’s, but doing it their own way - where would Shrewsbury be without them?  What they’re giving back, it seems to me, simply by plying their trades in their own way, is inestimable.

We have three market halls in town [well, three that I can think of, at any rate].  Unless you know what you’re looking for, though, they may be hard to find. The market I dropped in on today is on the first floor of a modern building whose other less welcome gift to Shrewsbury is a clock tower that only the sixties could have produced. Then there’s the Old Market Hall in the town’s main square, which houses possibly the only medieval cinema on stilts to be found in the UK.  Then there’s the Antiques Market, which is underground, round the back of Rackham’s Department Store, behind an innocent-looking glass door that gives little clue to the subterranean delights lying in wait beneath.

Hopefully I’ll write about all these different market places over the coming year.  I’m fascinated by the Shrewsbury that lies behind closed doors.  Even amongst town residents [let alone visitors] how many people have been into the leaning tower on Town Walls?  Or inside Old St Chad’s?  Or into the Unitarian Church on High Street? Or into all those seemingly-hidden rooms in our massive, gothic railway station?  Or into the Ditherington Flaxmill and Maltings?

I could go on, but there are private houses, too, that invite you to find out more.  Shrewsbury’s shutts and passages are dotted with interesting-looking front doors with glimpses of lives lived behind them, and so are the Georgian hills and streets behind the Old Music Hall. Only a couple of days ago I sat in Linda Edward’s kitchen, interviewing her for the first of my Open Studio pieces.  For years I’ve glimpsed baskets hanging from her kitchen ceiling and lace cloths decorating her windows in place of nets, and wondered about her house and what it was like inside.  And finally I knew.

But I’m running ahead of myself here.  The interview with Linda won’t come out until next week.  For now I thought I’d leave you with these photos, all from  Shrewsbury’s indoor market. I hope you like them. Goodnight.  

    

My Tonight from Shrewsbury

 I’ve been writing novels for much of my adult life, and blogging on websites, including my own, for the past couple of years. For the next twelve months, however, I’m going to blog here too, on the subject of my home town.

There's no grand plan about this.  Nightly - or at least whenever I have time or inspiration – I’ll sit here at my desk and share whatever the town has been for me that day. Things that have interested me, that have caught my attention, made me smile, made me angry, joyful, happy or sad; buildings that I love; people who fascinate me; events that have taken place, or extraordinary incidences of natural phenomena – any of these might be included in my attempt to get under the skin of a town that teems with life, and that I happen to love.

So do keep reading.  Come back again, and keep on coming back. And spread the word. If you don’t know Shrewsbury, it’s a place worth finding out about and, if you do, you’ll know it deserves celebrating.  A typical English country town? Yes.  With a history? Yes [you only need to see its half-timbered buildings and medieval walls to know that]. But a town stuck in the past, no, no, no. There may be places where you can turn three-sixty degrees and see nothing older than sixteenth century. But modern shops preside beneath the medieval roofscapes, tarmac replaces cobbles on the Georgian hills and the great red sandstone castle looks down on Castle Gates, one of the busiest, most buzzing and vibrant areas of town.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. And over the next year that picture will grow.  I’d like to think that, one year from now, one of England's finest country towns will have been fleshed out and come alive. A daunting ambition, I know, but there's never any harm in aiming high.

So, let's wait and see. One thing I’ve learnt as an author is the importance of letting things take their course.  Writing a book is a bit like navigating a river – you never know what’s round the next bend.  That’s the beauty of the journey.  And a blog is like a river too. 

[Photographs taken on the night of December 31st 2012, in Shrewsbury, England, 

copyright Pauline Fisk]