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Poet Simon Armitage:
an extract from British Airways 'HIGH LIFE' Magazine
"a kind of Tardis...even Radio 4 has been coaxed out of the metropolis to record arts programmes from The Shed"
 The
Shed's Autumn Programme 2007 |
"It's all right knowing a place like the back of your hand, but did you ever take a close look at the back of your hand? You might well have lived with it all your born days, but actually it looks a lot like every other hand, unless you study it closely, even then it's something that changes every day - with time, weather, in different light and so on. Enough of the hand metaphor. What I'm trying to put my finger on are those alterations to the everyday environment that mean a person can travel through different landscapes and worlds just by staying put.
Example. There's a village in North Yorkshire by the name of Brawby. I say village, it's really half-a-dozen houses on a bend in the road, somewhere between the middle of nowhere and the back of beyond. It might have a phone box, although I don't remember seeing one. It certainly doesn't have a shop, unless it's one of those shops that people have in a hut at the side of a road, where passing customers have to ring a bell or leave money in an honesty box. And I'm certain it doesn't have a pub.
Anyway, [a very nice chap] called Simon Thackray runs an arts venue in the miniscule village hall - a kind of Tardis, which somehow manages to combine a toilet, a kitchen, a stage and seating for a few dozen people. It's called The Shed. Not surprisingly, given its size (or surprisingly, given its location), it's full to the rafters for every event, and I've given readings there, accompanied on one occasion by a didgeridoo player. Even Radio 4 has been coaxed out of the metropolis to record arts programmes from The Shed.
Well, I like going there, not least because the journey involves a drive through the grounds of Castle Howard, the huge stately home and estate with a long, straight road through the middle. At night, that stretch of the trip can be a solitary and meditative experience, usually with owls criss-crossing between the trees. The road takes in an archway, through which most modestly proportioned vehicles may pass, so long as the driver holds his breath and keeps a close eye on both wing mirrors.
Going to The Shed one night, Castle Howard was draped in a fog so thick I could have taken some home as a present. I squeezed through the archway, and was just accelerating towards 15mph when I came smack up against a huge stone obelisk in the middle of the road. Presumably it has been there for centuries, but I'd never noticed it before, and must have swerved around it many times without registering its existence. Suddenly it was very real indeed, rising from the front bumper of my VW to somewhere up in the clouds, like a giant exclamation mark, warning against complacency. They say the blind see more than the sighted. I'd always thought that was some claptrap Buddhist aphorism until I came face-to-face with the stone pillar of Castle Howard in a pea-soup of a fog. Go take a look for yourself, but get a weather report first."
Extract from: 'Where I belong'
© Simon Armitage
British Airways 'HIGH LIFE' magazine June 1999
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