Municipal Library: The Joy of Panthers

The Merrion Centre - Exit to the Future

The Merrion Centre in Leeds opened in 1964 and has long been a place of hauntological interest to me. It contains the sine qua non for hauntological retail areas, the abandoned cinema. The first floor doors opposite Morrisons are still there and some kind soul has cleared a space in the whitewash so you can see in. All the seats and equipment have been removed but the paintwork and fittings still remain. There are some pictures of the Odeon in its current state here but what is so intriguing about an old cinema in a shopping centre? There's the faded glamour - childhood memories of Saturday matinees now locked up behind plywood walls and cashpoints, and also the very feeling of decline that pervades the Merrion. I worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau in Merrion House for a while and it was one of the oddest locations for an office ever. A trip down the lift would deposit you in the upper shopping area, clad with mirrors, white tiles and reflective metal. This was in the pre-smoking ban days so people would wander up the stairs and sit near the empty shop fronts and smoke vacantly whilst security guards patrolled the walkways sniffing for cannabis. The guards are a little more proactive now. After taking this picture:



a guard requested that I curtail my amateur photography, as it wasn't allowed. There isn't really anything there anymore - perhaps they thought I was peddling illicit and unofficial advice to distressed citizens. I withdrew down the stairs to where the supermarket was. The area near the Morrisons supermarket was great, with some of Bruce Lacey's very 60s automatons in a big display case and lots of red and yellow glass above the shop front. This kind person recorded it one Christmas here. Sadly this exuberant decoration has gone, replaced by the standard industrial-looking facade. Why bother? It was old and weird and cheerful - the whole centres aging design makes it stand out from the Saint John's Centre and The Light. This constant updating, upgrading and blanding out is making our shopping streets dull and identical. I'm not saying that we should put up with broken windows and rust weeping from concrete walls. But we do need variety, and a few reminders of our recent past as an everyday marker, otherwise we will just continue to erase all the charm and distinct detail from our environment. I guess that's where the hauntological references come in - the Merrion Centre is a faint reminder of our everyday past, which is slowly but surely disappearing.

On a less anguished note, I found the following video on youtube, and aside from the music it really nails the feeling of oddness and timewarping that you got from the old Merrion, and also shows early 60s planners' fondness for rats nest stairways and sunken outside areas.



What else? There were the two outdoor escalators at the rear of the centre that began to slowly decay in a carpet of dead leaves and plastic bags. There's the sloped entrance on Merrion Street which is as treacherous as the North face of the Eiger when so much as a teardrop falls on it. There was the Georgian Arcade, which resembled the temporary bierkeller at a city-centre German Christmas market. And the cinema. Still intact, with its velour drapery and memories of Lyons maid and usherette trays, it can't be long before the space is gutted and transformed into something less magical, less abandoned. Take the chance to have a look and when you're withdrawing money from the cashpoints inside the centre, just remember that behind them is a set of glass doors and a dark, abandoned ticket office; other people's happy memories just lurking at the periphery of the present.

The Exhaustive Guide to the BBC Handbook #3

I say exhaustive - maybe 'quick scan' is more apt. What about 1965 then?



A little Telstar-like polygon comes hurtling through space towards us out of the darkness, twinkling little points of writing as it flies. There we go - education (still important), drama, current affairs, sport, religion, news, entertainment and music. Everything billed equally in the same sized font. There's no massive picture of 'Christmas Night With The Stars' here. No credit though. Six out of ten.



Now here we have a lovely set of vintage screen-shaped panels with a child of the sixties peeping through. The geometric arrangement is very good so I'll bet a professional did that. And they did - Alex Kroll, art director and editor who worked with Lee Miller at Vogue. Best one yet for me, really representative of its era so a big eight out of ten.



A bit of a retrograde step design-wise, but we do get an explanation:

'The colours of the strips on the cover represent the primaries used in colour television and their complementaries.' Five out of ten. Will things get any better?



This wandering psychedelic minstrel will tell you his ten tales and then go on his way, and the presence of his monochromatic brother will additionally tell you that colour TV has been inaugrated by the BBC. Sadly, no designer attributed. I think it looks like one of the 'King Midas In Reverse'-era Hollies and while the hipsters down at UFO might have sneered at the clothes, it at least shows the BBC tuning into popular culture for the cover of their handbooks. A mighty seven out of ten. As psychedelia turns to hard rock, what will we have on the cover of the 1969 handbook? John Bonham setting up his Ludwigs with a brown ale in his hand?



It's not. It's an unattributed snap of an early colour camera (type, anyone?) filming something in the studio. And it looks exciting - that little atomium badge and the odd planes and panelling. Could it be a lost snap from the set of 'Year of the Sex Olympics'?. Maybe not, but just as the filigree of psychedelia hardened into rock and roll, so the paisley-wearing troubador has been replaced by a 'behind the scenes' cover picture. I really would like to know what set that is, though (although it'll probably be something by Charlie Drake). Marks out of ten? Seven! That's it for the sixties, I'll bet the seventies has something amazing waiting for us...

Images - too cool for school

These images are taken from the Gladys Buxton School magazine, erm, 'Images', produced yearly throughout the 1970s. The primitive montages and typewriter font look brilliant - stark with plastered-down hair and that terminal scruffiness of the early seventies schoolkid. They radiate a 'Come and Praise' / Ghost Box feel and you can't help but feel a little sad that these budding young graphic designers put their best work out there for an audience of precisely 100 proud Mums and Dads. Gladys Buxton School (now a college) is in Dronfield, South Yorks.

Map of Industrial White Heat circa 1969

Linwood ... Leyland ... St. Helens ...

Municipal Library Top Shelf - He and She

Incorrectly placed on the top shelf and given a proto-Ghost Box cover, He and She was written by Kenneth C Barnes, the Head of Wennington School. Wennington was a co-ed boarding school with parents paying what they could. As a result, pupils came from a wide variety of backgrounds. A progressive school that encouraged pupils to call staff by their christian names, older pupils organised the chores that underpinned the running of the establishment and even assisted with construction projects such as concrete tennis courts and a sewage treatment plant in the grounds.



These two beatniks are enjoying the benefits of the staff's more enlightened approach to teenage downtime. For more information look at this gentleman's site.

Wennington was a succesful attempt to create a progressive school for children of all social classes, and what's more it was near Wetherby in Yorkshire. Like all good things it came to an end, in 1975.

The Brian Wilde Season on Sheffield Cablevision #2

Poor old Hancock. Between Channels' dad saw him do a week at Batley Variety Club in the sixties, just after he had left the BBC (and before he would go on to film his series for ATV - see below). Apparently he was plastered for the first few nights, shambling around the stage doing impressions of Long John Silver, whilst the audience slow-handclapped before drifting off to the bar. So the management enforced a dry dressing room policy, and lo and behold, the next night he was brilliant - so good that my source tells me he was the second funniest turn he ever saw at that hallowed palace of entertainment (the funniest was Sir Bob Monkhouse).



This is 'The Craftsman' written by Richard Harris and Dennis Spooner, and it isn't particularly funny. Hancock doesn't have much to do in this opening segment, and the scenario he gets himself into - bluffing his way into Brian Wilde's home to do some DIY - is amusing as the description I have just written. If anything, Brian steals the opening scene from him, coming over a little E.L. Wisty as he describes his plight.



All DIY shop sketches suffer from a bad case of 'Fork Handles', even if this one was filmed years before. Anyway. On the next night of the performance, Between Channels' dad was at the bar (working) and expecting another brilliant performance by his hero when Hancock staggers on, drunker than ever. With his young bride to be in tow, they go to the dressing room afterwards, and speak to Hancock. "We're very big admirers of yours." Now you might expect Hancock to have told them to piss off or some such, but instead he was apparently very touched someone had come to meet him and they talked for a little while. He had got someone to smuggle vodka into his dressing room by filling his hot water bottle up with it.



All the subtlety seems to have gone - where Brian Wilde is fluttering and birdlike as he tries to minimise the damage Hancock is doing, the lad himself just seems off. The self-delusion - which is at the heart of what makes Hancock funny - has degenerated into bluster and bullying, and it becomes uncomfortable when he punches and kicks holes in the table. You can imagine him doing more of the same, worse for wear, after recording; hating that his standards have fallen, that it isn't as funny or well-observed as it used to be. Hancock never came to Batley Variety Club again, and we all know the story after that. This programme, with the future Mr. Barraclough, illustrates the start of the decline.