Post by Polina on Jun 7, 2008 11:37:52 GMT -1
I wrote this on lj when Roly Keating first qualified for having his head on a spike. Why have I posted it here today? Because one of the last nice houses in our village has been flattened to make way for a beastly block of flats and I'm cross about it. I hope it doesn't sound to sucky-uppy but I stand by every word of it.
So I'm not at all happy with the BBC: apparently they have cancelled Restoration. I am not pleased. No, bear with me, not just because, but in all seriousness.
Why does this put me in such a bad mood? Beacuse when I look out of my window all I can see is the hideous fungoid growth of our neighbouring town advancing across the last remaining field to my house, which is at the outside edge of our village, and advancing on us in the other direction with the demolition of all the unspectacular but architecturally pleasing houses in order to stick up nine horrible unaesthetic boxes per plot on the same site. Apparently this is to meet the huge demand for houses in the area, although the vast majority of them will remain unsold for yonks because nobody wants to live here on account of it being turned into an amorphous, characterless shitehole. Now I am not averse to building houses for people who need them (although I question our local council's commitment to "the right of every person to live within walking distance of their place of work" - OK, squire, I'll have a nice house next door to Battersea Arts Centre. I'd like that.) But the wretched town is filled with nasty badly-designed office blocks with no tenants in - one has been vacant since I drove past it on the way to audition for the job at which I met my husband; surely if this was such a thriving locality they could find the odd tenant in the time it has taken us to strike up a relationship, get married and produce two children. Apparently not. But where is it written that cheap-ish housing has to be so bloody horrible? Nasty houses pretending to be big and spacious parked on plots three inches wider than the walls, and so badly constructed that once the original gloss has worn off they start falling down? GIve me a Victorian terrace with walls that actually stay up any day.
What has this got to do with Restoration? Well, on one level, nothing at all. But if that programme achieved anything it was to make the people who sat down and watched it more conscious of their own surroundings, and become aware that they do have a stake in the environment in which they live. So many people even in my relatively small acquaintance got involved in it, and it seemed to spark off an interest in conserving those few bits of our town that haven't been flattened. I can't think of much more important than encouraging us to take more responsibility for our own living environment and preventing the elements that are valued from being lost in a vague and badly thought out progression to a characterless future.
And to all those snotty specimens on the some of the history messageboards who thought it might have been better had it not been presented by an entertainer (which in itself is a limiting appelation I could quarrel with for some weeks) but should have been fronted by an eminent historian, I do wonder if that would have pulled in quite the variety of audience that Restoration managed. Anyway, I feel that someone who has spent a lot of their time and money when they had enough of both not to need to do anything of the kind on conservation projects - been to the Hackney Empire recently? Well, if you didn't get rained on and nothing fell on your head you know who to thank - gets my vote. And I may be a sucker for a nice smile, but I am a total pushover for anyone who devotes that amount of time to a subject that in my view matters immensely to everyone who plans not to live in a tree for the rest of the century. So shoot me.
So I'm not at all happy with the BBC: apparently they have cancelled Restoration. I am not pleased. No, bear with me, not just because, but in all seriousness.
Why does this put me in such a bad mood? Beacuse when I look out of my window all I can see is the hideous fungoid growth of our neighbouring town advancing across the last remaining field to my house, which is at the outside edge of our village, and advancing on us in the other direction with the demolition of all the unspectacular but architecturally pleasing houses in order to stick up nine horrible unaesthetic boxes per plot on the same site. Apparently this is to meet the huge demand for houses in the area, although the vast majority of them will remain unsold for yonks because nobody wants to live here on account of it being turned into an amorphous, characterless shitehole. Now I am not averse to building houses for people who need them (although I question our local council's commitment to "the right of every person to live within walking distance of their place of work" - OK, squire, I'll have a nice house next door to Battersea Arts Centre. I'd like that.) But the wretched town is filled with nasty badly-designed office blocks with no tenants in - one has been vacant since I drove past it on the way to audition for the job at which I met my husband; surely if this was such a thriving locality they could find the odd tenant in the time it has taken us to strike up a relationship, get married and produce two children. Apparently not. But where is it written that cheap-ish housing has to be so bloody horrible? Nasty houses pretending to be big and spacious parked on plots three inches wider than the walls, and so badly constructed that once the original gloss has worn off they start falling down? GIve me a Victorian terrace with walls that actually stay up any day.
What has this got to do with Restoration? Well, on one level, nothing at all. But if that programme achieved anything it was to make the people who sat down and watched it more conscious of their own surroundings, and become aware that they do have a stake in the environment in which they live. So many people even in my relatively small acquaintance got involved in it, and it seemed to spark off an interest in conserving those few bits of our town that haven't been flattened. I can't think of much more important than encouraging us to take more responsibility for our own living environment and preventing the elements that are valued from being lost in a vague and badly thought out progression to a characterless future.
And to all those snotty specimens on the some of the history messageboards who thought it might have been better had it not been presented by an entertainer (which in itself is a limiting appelation I could quarrel with for some weeks) but should have been fronted by an eminent historian, I do wonder if that would have pulled in quite the variety of audience that Restoration managed. Anyway, I feel that someone who has spent a lot of their time and money when they had enough of both not to need to do anything of the kind on conservation projects - been to the Hackney Empire recently? Well, if you didn't get rained on and nothing fell on your head you know who to thank - gets my vote. And I may be a sucker for a nice smile, but I am a total pushover for anyone who devotes that amount of time to a subject that in my view matters immensely to everyone who plans not to live in a tree for the rest of the century. So shoot me.
