Posted by Peter Ceresole on December 05, 2008 at 21:17:21 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Felixstowe Dock, RIP posted by Jock on December 05, 2008 at 19:25:37:
I share your feelings about such landmarks being swept away: the Bowness boatbuilder's sheds; Felixtowe Dock, various Norfolk boatbuilders and many Norfolk and Suffolk Railways.
I feel those things too and yet... When Ransome described them, they were functioning, often modern industrial features. It's pleasant to be able to capture them, to be taken back into the world of the books, but remember that they in turn were replacements for earlier beloved landmarks. I live in Southwark, near Dog Kennel Hill, which is a fearsome feature up which I have never managed to cycle all the way (my defence is that I was 65 years old when we moved here, and no longer prone to hurl my bike up vertical climbs). At a party in the Temple, I met a fellow who'd been born just off Dog Kennel Hill and remembers four tram tracks climbing it (the picture is from a short way down the line, where Southwark's gone flatter). I'd have loved to have seen them, but we shop in Sainsburys half way up the hill, and modern buses are certainly quieter and more practical. As it is, that chap's home was blown flat in the war and every vestige of the Dog Kennel Hill he knew has just disappeared, holus bolus, as has the building in the background of the more 'modern' tram picture at http://www.londontramways.net/search/tram_picsview.php?pic_id=25153. All gone except for the steepness.
Well, by all accounts, the place is better now than it was then.
All those things live on in the books, and thus in all our imaginations. In the mean time, our world is formed out of constant creation and change. The trick of fun in life is to embrace it.
But you know that, Jock. Your superb cap gives away the eternal student in you...
