“I like to think I am reasonably intelligent” I said to Paddy the office manager.
“You must work hard at hiding it then!” he replied.
These last few weeks I have been helping out a local dental tycoon as a part-time driver. I am Amazon Man, delivering pearly white smiles the length and breadth of Yorkshire.
It offers a fascinating bird’s eye view of everyday life. Whether it be flying up and down the motorway, paying keen attention to Ms. Sat Nav, or negotiating the varied states of several Yorkshire cities and villages, there is always something to catch the attention.
One minute you can be staring – not too obviously – at someone a bit too far down on their luck, opening a budget can of full strength for breakfast.
Then, seemingly in a breath, a cosy village greets you and all is well again as coiffeured old ladies peer into well-stocked shops not knowing what they want but knowing they want.
Levelled
It blows apart Boris’s bluster about leveling up because some of these places are so far behind, even in Northern terms, it is tempting to wonder where to start.
A grey-bearded old man sat behind a plastic hood, “revving” his mobility scooter at the traffic lights as I watched a sleek Jaguar F-Pace cruise almost silently past, the two oblivious to each other, destinations worlds apart.
Boom Town?
Of all the places that fascinate me, Goole stands out. It seems a bit like Bradford, in that it seems to have had better days; yet things appear to be turning with the tide.
A giant Siemens factory is under construction to bring skilled and presumably well-paid jobs flooding in. And there is lots more land for others to follow plus a dock; perhaps the good times will come again.
One street in Doncaster – Adelaide Street – looks so typical of many Northern streets. Formerly glorious properties, now not good enough even to attract low-rent landlords. If we have a housing crisis why is this street so typical of many, just left to rot?
Show Me The Money
On the flip-side, I confess I’m not sure what to make of Wakefield and, given my propensity to pay scant attention to Ms. Sat Nav, I have done more than a few circuits as I’ve searched for elusive dental practices. Ms. Thunberg would not be pleased.
It is also easy to see how Leeds dominates as cranes tower above the already constructed buildings, striving higher and higher. On the periphery, giant estates seem almost detached from the glitz of the centre. Industry is all around, the place appears to be booming.
I work my way through the giant Middleton estate, almost a small city in itself as it merges into Belle Isle, a bit harder down the hill.
And then you catch Leeds with its towers of opulence. What must you think living here in Belle Isle, the land of Harvey Nicks but a hop away?
Service With A Smile
Each practice visit the staff are all masked up; what must it be like to have to wear one all day? I skip in and out as fast as I can keen not to engage some power-mad traffic warden and have my minimum wage efforts cancelled in a breath.
As I sat in a seemingly never-ending traffic jam the other morning it struck me that many of the positives we could have taken from lockdown had already been forgotten. Gridlock was back.
And despite hundreds of miles travelled, cycling as the new mode of transport to work still looks like the deluded dream of dopey councillors. Albeit few seem so obsessed as Bradford appears to be.
Black Friday Cometh
The end of the week and a bombardment of Black Friday ads from the plethora of commercial radio stations assaulted me. So thin is the quality spread in radio land that I hopped hopefully from station to station.
Mouthy sports broadcasters with fake wisdom; the sickly 5Live’s Nicky Campbell; and Radio Leeds who only seem to employ noisy retards. A breathless woman claimed she was a “retail expert” and that people would be out spending like mad. I secretly resolved to spend sod all just to spite her.
The one bit of solace was the timeless Desert Island discs. This week it was an equestrian Olympic gold medalist. True, I’d never heard of him and his music was pretty bland; but what eight tracks would you choose?
As I rolled back to base my mind wandered the musical archives of a lifetime.
The Bow
Our yoga teacher taught us The Bow this week. On maneuvering one elderly lady into position her student gasped. “Don’t let me go these are the only teeth I have!”
Happy weekend all.
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