Last updated at 10:13, Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Maryport can’t make up its mind whether it’s a dump which modern life has turned its back on, or a little gem slowly and slyly now being discovered

I eventually found somewhere half decent looking to have a coffee but was totally confused by its name. Her Citi, said the name above the little caff in a Maryport side street. What on earth could it mean? Please have a guess. If just to humour me.
I was in a bad humour as I’d gone especially to Maryport to visit one of my favourite junk shops – only to discover it had closed two months earlier. All the rubbish, sorry treasures, I could have bought for almost nothing last time I was there, if only I’d known it was going to pack up.
Maryport is a strange, pretty, shabby, lifeless, stunning little town which can’t make up its mind whether it’s a dump which modern life has turned its back on, or a little gem slowly and slyly now being discovered.
The heart sinks at the handful of cheap, useless shops and tatty greasy caffs, the pale, grey, flabby deprived-looking youths with nothing to do, the once handsome buildings, bruised, battered, boarded up. And yet when you walk up to Fleming Square, with its polished cobbles and lovingly cared for Georgian houses, it could be Chelsea or Kensington, best part. When you cross the bridge and explore the different layers and sections of the wonderfully renovated harbour, you think goodness, this must be a wealthy town, look at all the posh boats in the marina, the millions of pounds that have clearly been spent renovating the harbour walls and piers.
Every time I go to Maryport, no humans seem to be walking on the sea walls, tending to the boats. Where have they all gone? I know I know, Maryport explodes into life for the Blues Festival – for I’ve seen the photies in the Times & Star – but it always seems to be dead when I go there. Which of course is a plus, how I like it. I can pretend it’s a film set.
So I enjoyed walking the whole town, checking out old favourite bits, hoping for new delights, going to the end of the harbour. I gave the Aquarium a miss, though that did at least look quite busy. I’ve taken the family, several times, and they’ve enjoyed it – though not as much as John Murray. He’s that excellent Cumbrian novelist, based now in Brampton. In his novel John Dory, he has his hero falling in love and becoming obsessed with an exotic fish in the Maryport Aquarium. Well, there’s not a lot to do in Maryport.
I did manage to spend some money at the Tourist Information Centre in Senhouse Street. Usually these TIC places, if they sell anything, it’s overpriced twee tat, but they were selling postcards of a Lowry painting I’d never seen before, a view of Maryport harbour done in the 1950s. The price was 20p. I couldn’t believe it. Usually repro postcards of famous artists can cost from 50p to £1. The original belongs to the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House. Maryport, apparently, got special funding to reproduce it cheaply. So well done. I went mad and bought 20 postcards. I do like to help.
It was at the Tourist Office I asked for somewhere to get a decent cappuccino – and got directed to Her Citi. “You what?” I said. “How do you spell it?” No-one seemed to know where it got its name from.
Her Citi, in Crosby Street, is one of those home-made caffs – where the food is home-made and also the interior, as if they have done it all themselves, that they’re playing at running a caff, using up unmatching chairs, tables, ornaments. It was bright, colourful, clean, friendly and cheerfully amateur. How I hate the professionalism of Starbucks and Costa Coffee – and the impersonality and uniformity that go with it.
There was some fresh apple tart coming out of the kitchen, so I had some of that as well. The woman who served me was called Debbie. She said she’d been living in London for 10 years, working as a nanny for Annie Lennox, amongst others, and had recently come back home to West Cumberland and had opened the caff. Her Dad, Terry, a retired Pearl Insurance man was helping out at the till, beaming away.
So was the name Her Citi perhaps a reference to some Annie Lennox song title, or a trendy moveie, perhaps a cult cartoon? Nope. When they took over the premises, she and her brother were clearing out the cellar and found the letters R I T C H I E lying in a corner. It had formerly been a shop, owned by a man called Ritchie, and his name had been over the shop front.
“We decided to use up the old letters, so we played around with them till we had re-arranged them different ways. Her Citi was the best we came up with…”
So Maryport can now boast an interesting Anagram, as well as a literary Aquarium…

First published at 09:32, Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Published by http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk