Stuart Maconie's October 2008 column
Last updated at 09:40, Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Stuart Maconie's October 2008 column
There’s no mobile phone signal?!” said my boss at Radio 2, her hand moving nervously and protectively toward her Blackberry which, for the benefit of any confused fruiters, is a fancy mobile phone type thing.
That’s right I replied. There’s no mobile phone signal, no wi-fi, no land line… in fact, no electricity at all.
There was a silence. My boss looked as if she might faint and told me that just the thought of not being able to pick up her messages for a week made her feel panicky. She looked at me with an air of aloof pity, as an anthropologist might whilst watching a primitive tribesman dressed in a loincloth and trying to write with a potato.
I had just told my boss that I was taking a week off and sojourning in one of the most remote houses in the Lake District, the Bungalow in Martindale, a former hunting lodge built in 1910 for the Earl Of Lonsdale for the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm.
The Bungalow has seen better days, some of it unavoidable – there’s no way gas mantles and brownish bath water can ever be made to seem cutting-edge design – and some of it nothing that an IKEA settee or two couldn’t cure.
But perhaps this is missing the point. The Bungalow gets a little shabbier with every visit but what it retains is an unmistakeable, intoxicating and utterly unique atmosphere. If you want to get away from it all, then the vast, twinkling canopy of stars, the lonely, imposing valley head, the utter silence broken only by the whisper of grass and the roar of the occasional stag, will assure you that you have gotten as far away from it all as you possibly can on this crowded
little island.
Initially this is why I fell in love with Cumbria. As a teenager I’d come here on boozy camping and fishing trips, staying at Farmer Brass’s campsite in Hawkshead (campsites were more relaxed about six teenage punk rock Lancastrian lads in a white transit van then), drinking Hartleys XB in the Drunken Duck – before its elevation to top gastropub – and night fishing on Esthwaite.
Then it was what the Irish would call “the craic” (or north Cumbrians “the crack”) that brought me up the M6; fishing, beer and possibly girls, though my cagoule and woolly hat ensemble signally failed to turn any heads back then. It wasn’t peace and quiet I was after, let’s put it that way.
Later though, when I’d become a music writer for the weekly rock and roll bible NME, other things lured me back. Spending my life hobnobbing backstage at rock venues or crossing the world in planes or staying up far too late with dissolute musicians sounds great fun. And it is. But it means that the last thing you want to do in your spare time is see another check-in desk or hear another loud record by some rum looking bloke in a leather jacket.
I came back to the Lake District after a long time away, revisited old haunts, found lots of new ones and became drawn by the siren call of the high lonely hills and the things I would have once found frightening, just as my boss at Radio 2 does. Things like seclusion, remoteness, isolation.
I realise that these are not always good things, especially when they are not a matter of choice. The fact that my local bus service, leaving from my corner of the north eastern fells to Penrith runs once a week on a Tuesday morning is, frankly, a pain. My friend Liz who runs Patterdale School told me recently that her kids face two long bus trips and an 11-hour day when they go to “big school” in Penrith. I can sympathise and I know it’s no consolation to a 12-year-old in the depths of midwinter to tell them that they may have the most lovely commute in England when there’s snow on the ground and a lovely, shiny Nintendo DX waiting at home.
I spend half my time here now, a fraction that’s continually growing and will one day soon be 100 per cent, and I’ve come to realise that I love Cumbria for more than just the lonely beauty. I love the big-hearted friendliness of the people, the lovely, quirky, characterful towns and villages, the great food and, of course, drink.
But I thought for my first column, coming as it did right after a week when no phones rang, no texts bleeped and hardly an engine revved, I’d sing the praises of serenity and space. It may make my boss twitchy but it is one of Cumbria’s great natural resources and it should be treasured just as fun and frivolity and raucousness should.
Which reminds me. If you ever camped next to us at Farmer Brass in Hawkshead in 1979. I am truly sorry.
Writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie
co-presents Radcliffe & Maconie on Radio 2 on Monday to Thursday evenings.
His latest book, ‘Pies and Prejudice’, explores what it means to be a northerner. He has homes near Penrith and in the midlands
First published at 11:52, Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Published by http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk
