This was an interesting experience for me. This was the first time that I felt like a part of something bigger. Most everyone in the flat has fallen into the trap of living our lives out of the flat and making short excursions to campus to study or go to class and then come back to our home immediately. We aren't a part of the rest of the student population in that way that you live in halls and are always on campus. It's like living a dual life. Student, and traveller. Doing this job placed me in an involved role of student happenings. My face was out and familiear to people as someone who is involved in university activities and not only that but I am running the event. Even got a free t-shirt out of the deal...always a plus.
On the way to work, one day, or maybe it was play practice, but either way I was able to witness a very beutiful sunset. If only I could have been in Wollaton Park or The Arboretum so that a beautiful landscape coupled with these rosy skies instead of the row of houses, but it is in classic Nottingham style.
Last thursday Kevin, Emily and myself made our way just outside of Nottingham to Eastwood. We had a great time gathering in the sights and locations of all the different homes of D.H. Lawrence the author of the novel we currently reading.
What a great pic of Mark and I. I needed a picture with the man who supplied me beer at 11:45 in the morning. What a good man. Whew, look at my hair! It's getting longer and lookin good I should say!
Old mining works, made entirely of wood. This shaft is what created this town and gave a living to the men and women who lived there.
WARNING! THE REST OF THIS BLOG IS A JOURNAL ENTRY I WROTE FOR VISITING EASTWOOD. THOUGHT IT WOULD HAVE SOME NICE REFLECTOIONS THOUGH A BIT LONG AND DRY SEEING THAT I WROTE IT FOR AN ASSIGNMENT.
March 15, 2007: Eastwood- Hometown of D.H. Lawrence Brandon Becker
When you have lived in an area long enough, you become so accustomed to it that you feel that you have become quite the expert. It takes very little to shock us into the realization that we don’t know this place we live as well as we should. In the city of Nottingham itself, there are so many parts of the city that haven’t felt the ginger footstep of a timid American Norseman. Sadly, I think we have failed a little in exploring all that this city has to offer. West Bridgeford for one is an entire area on the fringes of the city, yet easily accessible by a city bus that I have always been meaning to visit and I am sure has much to offer.
Stretching ourselves further, when exploring our villages and green spaces, we were able to expand the limits or boundaries of what was to be seen here in our area of Nottinghamshire. I certainly realized that the opportunities to see knew things are exceedingly endless. Even so, without some gentle prodding from Mark or Carole Gilbertson, we may never have realized what lays just outside the city limits. I would venture to say that none of us have really seized it upon ourselves to become explorative and seize hold of our free days to make the most of them. I was proud to discover the little old village a while back in Strelley, and you would think that discovery would have spurned me on to bigger and grander circles of exploration. Another simple one is to ride the tram all the way out to it’s opposing limit in Hucknall. It’s a long ride and goes to show just how much space, people, and places are to be seen. I wouldn’t like to lie and pledge that once I return from our month holiday, I will tackle the city with new vigor but I wouldn’t be afraid to pose the thought that I will not take my last moments in such a new and strange (as it always will be when looking back at it from the comforts of the old home) for granted and that last month will be spent absorbing every bit of life untouched or unseen by myself from the city before I go.
Today was just another one of those moments where your mind gets shocked into a wider and broader range of thinking. I’ve grown comfortable thinking Nottingham to be just a big old city of Industry, and a large and prosperous as well as renowned University harbored in it increasing its nightclub appeal. No one really worth mentioning came from here except the exaggerated persona of good ol’ Robin Hood. Yet a great English 20th century writer live just outside the city in a small village, and gave the world a lot of good literature ranging from poetry and essays, through to a few of his well known novels, and even touching on painting and art. We are all familiar with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy’s writings about Grasmere, and the pleasure that landscape brought to them. Easily understandable. It’s the Lake District, and millions of people flock there each year to hike in its beautiful hills and valleys alongside the many lakes dotting the landscape. Surely Nottinghamshire has nothing to offer like that.
David Hubert Lawrence wrote about Eastwood and the surrounding area as it offered as much joy and beauty to him as any grand sight on the top of a peak above Ambleside could offer. This was his home, and he loved it. “The country of my heart”. Our entry into the past world of Lawrence began at the Durban house renovated to house a museum to the man that had made this region seem special, and to the respect he paid to the mining industry. It was an enjoyable museum in that I felt that we were getting a nice intro into being able to understand this man and where he came from-the people that influenced his life, and the personal touches that made him unique. Complete with separate rooms dedicated to the wakes, and mining itself these were important things that made their way into his writing in Sons and Lovers.
His academic abilities must have been surprisingly far ahead of most of his class in the small town of Eastwood. What an achievement it must have been to be the first child to earn a scholarship to the Nottingham High School from that area. This was particularly interesting to me, and especially unique since I had taken a formal tour in January of the Nottingham High School today and sat in on classes. Another piece of history that I have a real mental image to associate with. I especially liked the quotes from his writing scattered throughout the museum. Little snippets of his voice were found there and on plaques all throughout the town. His voice emanated from the randomness of places and square blocks in the ground. The townspeople truly embraced what claim to fame they have.
“If I think of my childhood, it is always as if there was a sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal, in which we moved and had our real being.”
Mining was a tough way of life. I have a very arrogant, if that’s the word, sense of how different my life has been being a farmer. I am a tad haughty as to how properly a person’s character and work ethic is built about and beyond the “urbanite”. I have gone to school enough and met enough people to know this isn’t true, but there always lies a deep-set pride that isn’t easy to be rid of. The life of a miner, as seen through the eyes and feelings of Lawrence make me feel as if I have no reason to puff up so. Mining is the true tough life, and that is tough to argue with. I don’t like that he makes the farming community out to be one full of flowers, sunshine, ropes in haymows. There is all of that, but the work is tough too. I do admit, ashamedly that it is nothing compared to working in the heat and filth deep underground.
Eastwood has been able to throw off much of the tainting affects of a mining town. Today, it is a modern village with all technological advantages and rather clean. Seeing it and thinking of the book and the scenes described in it, my mind was able to play out different scenes with in the different settings we encountered. The beautified princes street did have some of the looks still of what would have been a more rugged and rough row of blockhouses. At the Breach I was almost able to imagine Mrs. Morel locked out of the house, or the little blue sack on a stick lying outside the backdoor as a reminder of Mr. Morel’s pathetic attempt of running away. Seeing that first home helps me now to have a place for all the characters to run within in my head. Though it has been altered much to represent a more typical late Victorian family life, one only needs to dirty up the house a bit in their heads, drop the temperature significantly and image black soot everywhere and I think we get the idea.
On our walk down main street, we passed an outdoor farmers market that was packing up, and one could really see that as the way it may have been 80 years ago. Vendors selling various goods usually produced by their own hands. This was just before we arrived at what was once the Moon and Stars or something like that. Out front where the Wakes would have been it is now a small parking lot. Not a very large area for a festival, but it was a small village back in the day, so they may not have needed the space. Ultimately with walking out to Hagg’s farm, seeing the homes Lawrence lived at various times in his life, and walking in and out of different parts the novel as they exist today, I think we get a pretty good idea what his world may have been like, and with his explicit descriptions in Sons and Lovers, our imaginations can be more vivid than ever.
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