Great Hair; Bad Teeth

O Plymouth! I will never love you in an instinctive way. What I feel, gazing back at you from the top of Donkey Lane, toward the Hamoaze as it winds past the Type 45`s and Crayola tower blocks of Demport, is glad to be by the seaside, far enough removed to love you in a generalised, intellectual manner, like a photograph of some dotty, cruel, old Aunt who is dead. You send me mixed messages; `Love and look after me for I am helpless!`, and `Dont even think about feeling sorry for me or I`ll punch your head in, and might punch it in anyway, just for the hell of it.`

It ocurred to me that the only authentic way to love this city would be to move into North Prospect, where every other house has piled it`s old furniture in the garden to rot, but equally and confusingly, every other house to that has lovingly colour-schemed it`s rendering with the window boxes, picket fencing and tubs of spring bulbs. One ex-authority/council house I pass regularly has morphed into a delightful cottage. It`s raspberry pink, with a gothic trellis arch over the front doorway, and years worth of cared-for clematis and honeysuckle partially screening mullioned panes. Kitsch, ridiculous maybe, but so loved it makes my heart do a funny hiccup.

But what about the folk who live in this place? This is another difficulty. In Toni Morrison`s Beloved the sense of dispossession and fractured or missing identity is palpable. I think it`s the only book I`ve ever read which deals with issues of lost culture, heritage, birthright, self and the rest, as something shared rather than thrown at the reader. The idea of having to create an identity or way to be out of such (psychic and actual) violence, with a past that enslaves everyone, regardless of race, is something I can transfer to here and now. I do transfer it. To the majority of Plymouth`s residents. Radical? Maybe. I`m not confusing issues of race with poverty, but the negative effects of deprivation on the soul of a city are evident. Deprivation isn`t just about cash flow. It`s about imagining, and that`s what Toni Morrison seems keen to encourage, as her character Baby Suggs (holy) warns the folk gathered in the clearing; `the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine...if they could not see it, they would not have it.`Serious stuff.

The dock yard is pretty much done. The houses of the area huddle and cling, limpetlike, but the life inside those houses is different now. And the vast swathes of authority housing stock, especially the squat grey hulks called flats, are victims of a lack of imagining also. It appears that there`s not much grace in Demport, Keyham, Ham or Swilly. But then there are the painted window boxes ... It`s a difficult equasion. Outside one of the old dock gates, a grubby pub advertising, on a skewed slip of A4 :`Topless from 6pm every evening.` The word `topless` has a dot in the centre of the `O`. It makes me wish So Much I were a man, so`s to be able to go in there and see who is the person doing this sad job of work. Can it be true? What is that like? Can you imagine it, really? The kind of pub where you know the average punter would say things like `Don`t get yer tit in me beer luv` and think that was amusing. Grace? And yet...

The youth must be keen to have a future, mustn`t they? The F.E. college is overflowing with trainee hairdressers and mechanics and chefs. The hair and beauty brigade can be seen every day, marshalling forces at bus stops, their brightly coloured wheelie cases shaking the pavements as they pass. Which brings me to the title of this posting; great hair, bad teeth. This would be the average alien`s postcard home from Plymouth. Every third shop is a hairdressers or beauty salon, but smiling is just not an option, as it`s far too costly. First there`s the rotten teeth and then the cost to the psyche. I know this isn`t all true or even factually correct, but that`s not what I`m doing here. Anyway I`m going now. Goodbye.