A day in Saltaire

Up at my mum and step-mum's house this weekend, Thomas and I had a day to ourselves and decided to take ourselves off to Saltaire to explore. I love Saltaire; it was a regular haunt of mine as a teenager, when my little gang of friends and I would convince a parent to take us to visit the art gallery and bookshop in Salt's Mill.

A UNESCO World Heritage site, Saltaire is a model village built by Sir Titus Salt in 1851 to provide homes for the workers in his wool mills (revolutionary at the time for their huge windows, the natural light therefore providing a safer working environment). Beautiful streets of Victorian worker's cottages lead down to the canal and a huge park, and the mill complex has been redeveloped to house businesses , shops and the world-famous David Hockney gallery.

It's fitting, then, that Saltaire Canteen are doing something equally revolutionary in the town. Their mission is to reduce food waste by using what they call 'intercepted' food: surplus food that would otherwise be thrown out by local supermarkets and food producers. The food is cooked on-site to provide an ever-changing vegetarian menu for which customers can then 'Pay As You Feel' after eating. In other words, pay what you can afford and what you think the meal was worth. Even better, if you can't afford to pay anything, you don't have to. As their mission statement says, "Spending time in a cafe, eating a good meal, watching the world go by, is a simple thing, but it's often outside the means of many people we live in community with." All profits are fed back into the parent company, Shipley Food Project, which runs the local foodbank and healthy food initiatives in the area. Pretty awesome, right? The food was great, too, and there was a lovely atmosphere in the light-filled space.

After stuffing ourselves with pizza, stew and cake, we went for a wander round the many lovely independent shops that the village has to offer. I particularly love the Saltaire Vintage Shop, which is an absolute treasure trove stuffed full of homewares, records and books. We picked up the perfect vintage 60s magazine rack for our living room, and I was sorely tempted by the printing blocks, until I realised that the last thing my house needs is more letters. Finally, a quick wander around the art gallery before we drove home rounded off a lovely afternoon out.

 

When I grow up, I want to be...

My mum came to stay a couple of weeks ago and with her help I had a bit of a clear-out.  While excavating under the stairs (how can I have acquired so much crap in the three short years I've lived here?!) I found a box of delights: my old fanzine stash!  Looking through them transported me back to being seventeen again, a time when I had two goals:

a) to be a music journalist, or

b) to be a glamourous rock star casualty, a la Courtney Love.

My fanzines were these two aims writ large; one was page after page of self-indulgent whining and nervous breakdown poetry, while the other featured really quite good music articles and interviews. 

The fanzine years were both the best and worst of my life.  I was miserable a lot of the time, as is de rigeur for a 16- and 17- year old (especially one living in Bradford), and spent rather too many nights hacking away at my arms, gazing at pictures of dead rock stars and mooning over my girlfriend.  But many happy days were spent trailing around indie record shops or trawling jumble sales for 70s shirts, satin nightdresses and corduroy flares, the best of which we'd wear and the bits left over, sell on our secondhand stall in Huddersfield Market.  Easy access to the PR companies of Britpop bands (a simple phone call introducing myself and my fanzine usually sufficed, "Hi, I'm Janet from Venus".  Took me a while to work out that that could cause misunderstandings) meant my postbox was usually bulging with promo CDs, free gig tickets and interview offers.  And so our evenings were spent in Leeds or across the Pennines in Manchester, watching every great new band the mid-90s had to offer.  And Sleeper.  It was a truly exciting time to be writing about music and I was lucky for the ease with which I gained access to my favourite bands.

When I got my A Level results I was shocked - genuinely shocked - that two years writing gig reviews and faffing around with page design didn't translate to good results.  In fact, I failed spectacularly.  When I came to Leicester to university I discovered alcohol, and boys and girls who were actually allowed to be seen with me, and clubs, and friends who didn't consider self-harm to be an enjoyable way to their spend free time.  I abandoned my ambition to be a writer and instead concentrated on my second goal: to be a rock and roll fuck-up.  My fanzines were abandoned and it wasn't until I started this blog last year that I began writing again. 

Now, 15 years on, I look back on the fanzine years with real fondness and nostalgia, so it was a surprise to me to realise, on looking through my old copies, how truly unhappy I was for much of that time. 

 

1. How great is this little cartoon?  Drawn by Mark, the bassist from Ash, of his bandmates when I interviewed them backstage in Manchester (and nearly passed out from fangirl nerves).

2. Does anyone still remember Strangelove?  I'm actually pretty impressed with the quality of the writing in this interview with their lead singer.  

1. My confessional zine, Release The Pressure, makes me cringe when I read it now.  Quite cool musings on riot grrrl, feminism and queer politics are, unfortunately, overshadowed by solipsistic teen angst about self-harm.

2. This page shows either the beginnings of some kind of breakdown, or a typical page from a teenager's diary: you decide.

About a girl

At the Nirvana exhibition in Seattle there was a booth in which you could be filmed sharing your personal 'Nirvana story'. Unfortunately, as my camera phobia extends to video cameras, I didn't go in, but my story's been buzzing round my brain ever since, so here it is.

Me at 16.  As you can see from the pissed-off look on my face, I was pretty camera phobic even then.  This was pretty much my go-to outfit for a whole summer: band t-shirt, grandad cardigan from M&S (but actually from a charity shop), satin nightdress from a jumble sale that I wore as a skirt, handmade bead necklaces and dyed red hair (a la Angela Chase from My So-Called Life).  Just off-camera: Doc Martens with rainbow laces.

I was thirteen and living in an insular working class suburb of Bradford when Nevermind was released.  I was the oldest child, so no elder sibling to pass on tapes to me.  Bradford was lacking any alternative culture, so no band t-shirts to spy on the streets. And my school was utterly filled with what we later termed 'sheep'  or 'townies'; kids who listened to house music and for whom a couple of years on the dole followed by a stint in Armley jail was about the best to hope for.  So it was about two years later, just prior to the release of In Utero, that I first actually heard Nirvana. 

Remember The Chart Show?  If you do, you're showing your age.  But it was on this Saturday morning ITV show that I was first exposed to The Breeders, Belly, The Lemonheads and, of course, Nirvana.  Already an outcast for so many things - my southern accent that eight years of living in Yorkshire hadn't softened, my habit of coming top of the class in every subject, the shyness I couldn't shake and which came across as aloofness - I had reached the point of deciding to stop trying to fit in.  Grunge music was the music that said it was ok to be different, ok (desirable, even) to be an outcast.  I began listening to Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and, on constant repeat, the Nevermind and Bleach albums.

Out went my baggy denim shirts and leggings and in came long floral skirts, Doc Marten boots and flannel shirts.  I kid you not, the first day I went into school with my 'new look' (the day we went for sixth form induction in August 1994) was like a scene from a film.  Jaws dropped, insults were shouted in the corridor but the comments didn't hurt like they used to.  I felt insulated from the bullies because now I knew how lame they were and how cool my music was.  Even coming to it late, grunge changed my life because it empowered me to be myself and revel in my differences.

Interestingly, of all the bands from that time Nirvana are probably the one I listen to least now.  Smashing Pumpkins are still my all-time favourite band and on constant rotation on my iPod and CD player.  The Lemonheads and The Pixies get regular plays, as do Hole.  But Nirvana, who meant so much to me then, barely get a look-in.  In some senses, their music was so of it's time that it hasn't stood the test of time, but as the press-appointed figureheads of the 'grunge' movement they will always be important.  And when I hear Breed I still feel like that 16 year old, screaming along in her Bradford bedroom to the one thing that made being in that godforsaken town feel ok.

What about your Nirvana memories?  Or is there another band who were key to your development as a teenager?

From fanzines to the blogosphere...

When I was 16 I started a fanzine (that should give you some idea of how long it's been since I was 16!). It was called 'Venus', and reflected my major preoccupations at the time: music, charity shop clothes (this was pre-'vintage'), music, bad poetry, music, books, music, A-Levels and music. The tagline for Venus was 'Please understand. We don't want no trouble. We just want the right to be different. That's all'. A plea (taken from a Pulp song) that I now find heartbreaking in what it reveals about life as an indie kid growing up in Bradford.

Anyway, I left Bradford for university and Venus (which by then had become 'V', after I belatedly realised that phoning up record companies to blag gig tickets with the words, "Hi it's Janet from Venus" could easily be misconstrued!) sort of petered out. Technology moved on and fanzines became, if not totally obsolete, then certainly a dying breed. Blogs took over. I wasn't interested.

But... I've been reading so many great blogs lately, ones that inspire me in all sorts of ways: the music I listen to, the crafts I make, the outfits I wear, the books I read. So I thought maybe it was time to start writing again.

It turns out that 15 years later, my interests are still music, books, charity shops (now vintage) and A-Levels (I'm a teacher). And with the addition of a newly-rediscovered love of crafting, that's pretty much what this blog will be about. I'm looking forward to exploring the world of blogging. If it's as much of a blast as the fanzine world, I'm in for a good ride.