Bringing Out The Big Guns

Marcel Proust says that most of us end up doing what we’re second best at, which begs the question: What was his real talent? Poker? Stand-up comedy? Or fixing the propellers on vintage WWI bombers?

I’d probably know if I’d ever read any Proust but sometimes big books can intimidate me. Not always. Wilkie Collins gets a fair crack of the whip. And I’ve read Dhalgren twice and if I live long enough I might try my luck a third time at wounding the autumnal city of Bellona.

But what if you’re not best at anything? Spare a thought for Jo(e) Average. They’ve drawn up a list which they have to present to some mythic careers advisor – “I’m sorry, sir, but it turns out I’m pretty mediocre at all these things.”

North Wales, Barmouth, could’ve been my second best. That neglected top floor flat with its spectacular view across to the railway bridge. Because what had come first, a year earlier, had been a trip up north in search of somewhere new to live. It started with a notion for Cleethorpes, but wiser heads than mine had talked me down from that particular ledge. Try Scarborough or Bridlington. It might be ‘grim up north’ but at least it’s not Lincolnshire.

Scarborough was another long trek from Penzance. Up through Manchester (so much to answer for, The Smiths reminded me as I passed through but did not alight at Picadilly station.) Sheffield was in heat and there was a shimmering water feature to be found in the station forecourt. Hadn’t Manchester and Sheffield been my first and second choices for university before my A-level results reduced them to flat images I couldn’t see with my 3-D glasses? (A D for Maths, a second D for Geography and a third D for Computer Science).

In York (lovely but way beyond my price range) I had time to wander a few pretty streets and alongside the river before I headed eastwards to the coast. I didn’t like Scarborough, though I’d fancied it when I saw it on TV a few years earlier on some programme or other that I was only half watching. This realisation didn’t come to me at once, it seeped its way into me like a strange smell that at first you don’t notice and then you find you can’t shake off.

The Airbnb that I stayed in was friendly and it located itself close to the famous cricket ground where I wandered one evening and watched a few overs of some random league match before heading on further out of town. I fear it might’ve been the people – or maybe just the teenagers tearing around the sea front loudly on motorbikes – that soured it for me. Scarborough wasn’t big, as places went, but it wasn’t intimate either.

I’d bought a Northern Rover ticket from Sheffield station (the southernmost point this ticket covered), so I had free reign to go where I wanted over the next few days. I left Scarborough behind (the station itself was quite nice and boasted the longest railway bench in the country if sitting around watching trains was your thing) and set off for Bridlington.

I liked Bridlington. There the station had a charming (or perhaps twee) tea room filled with railway memorabilia and decked out in a style that seduced you into thinking it was still the 1950s and that the shortsighted Beeching report might never happen. Bridlington was more compact. It felt like a lot of different places I’d known, cut down to size and then awkwardly glued together. An art installation on the beach that could’ve come from St Ives and a modest fun fair and arcade that had Southend running through it like a stick of cheap rock.

Inland were some typical suburban neighbourhoods that led eventually to an old town centre that had seemingly been preserved in formaldehyde and now found best use as set dressing for parochial films like the lamentable 21^st century reboot of Dad’s Army.

Unlike when I visited Wales a year later, I didn’t yet have the money to buy a property outright, so my plan was to rent somewhere as a staging post to a more permanent move up north. In Bridlington I scoured the local estate agents and arranged to view a range of potential properties. Rather than do this on the following day, I’d set that aside for a trip to Whitby (to scout its potential) and a ride out on the Esk Valley line to go walking in the Yorkshire Dales.

Scarborough to Whitby was an hour long bus ride alongside some pretty coastal roads with pleasing views from the top deck of a crowded double decker. Whitby itself was magnificent, but cursed much like its south western cousin St Ives to be overwhelmed by tourists for the majority of each year. I might’ve lived with that, but preliminary investigations suggested limited opportunities for places to rent or buy. Out in the Dales the weather continued to bless my trip. The small stations on this scenic route that wound its way eventually to Middlesborough were captivating, more likely to be populated by sheep than people. I’d pre-planned a walk that took me from one such station to the next, passing through mostly deserted countryside that was in full spring bloom. Words wouldn’t do it justice, but the scenery and company (more sheep) were exemplary. By the time I made it back to Scarborough it was late, I was tired, but with a sense of having made the most of my ‘day off’.

Returning to Bridlington a day later, I had some cause to regret my outing to the country. The most promising rental property that was booked in as my first port of call turned out to have been snapped up in my absence. (The rental market in Brid appeared to be more competitive than I’d assumed.) I had two other places to visit, the first of which was central to the old town, a rather (to my eyes) dowdy area inland from the sea. It took me a bit of peering at maps on my phone to find the property, located close to an old church somewhere in a land that time appeared to have forgotten. There was no estate agent to show me around, just the current tenant who arrived like a weary ghost when I rang the doorbell.

I was invited into what turned out to be the grimmest looking room in the grimmest looking house in the grimmest part of the town where the grimmest of news (a terrorist attack at a concert in Manchester the previous evening) was being picked over by one of the rolling news channels. This older man (shrink wrapped in gloom) was watching it all unfold with the jaded nature of someone who had predicted all this suffering many years before. I struggled to make small talk with this backdrop (and a part of me was uncharitably remembering ‘mad’ Eddie and his daily dose of bleak news back in my tax office days.)

I did get a full tour of the property – it was all on one level, which didn’t help to dispel the sense of despair that consumed everything. Where’s the light? Where’s the air? Somewhere else, that was the answer. I left like a prisoner, blinking into the May sunshine. Tenant and property seemed so perfectly matched that I wondered where he was moving to next – the nearby church yard, perhaps.

The second flat was closer to the sea, which was immediately more promising, but the property somewhat reminded me of that divided house in Sommerville Road where my neighbour had blasted Jimmy Nail at insane volumes. I wasn’t convinced that even for a short term let (which might still have been 12 months or more) it was quite what I was looking for.

With half of the day gone, I availed myself of my access all areas train ticket and made a brief trip down the line to Hull. The tragic events of the previous evening meant the country was on a heightened state of emergency and in the centre of Hull I was somewhat disconcerted to find policemen patrolling the main shopping thoroughfare replete with very visible and very large guns. Down by the water things seemed more chill, the sun was still rampant and the vibes reminded me a bit of Bristol harbour.

Hull wasn’t on my radar as a place to relocate, but I actually rather liked the parts of it I saw on my brief visit. It wasn’t a fashionable city – Hull, that sounds like hell – but who wants to be fashionable? I returned to Scarborough via Filey, soon to be recipient of the Times best beach of the year award in 2018. (Although I noted that at high tide there seemed to be precious little beach to see.) Filey was small and the sort of place people of a certain age retired to. I kind of liked it, but like Whitby, opportunities for places to rent seemed limited.

Ultimately I returned to Cornwall after four days away having made no progress. It had been my first foray into new territory and I hadn’t been eager or battle hardened enough to secure the only property that seemed to offer what I might’ve been looking for. Further investigations for relocation options spread to Berwick, the far north of Scotland (cheaper property prices, but a lengthy amount of travel to view anything) and North Wales.

The trip had not been without merit though. If viewing properties had been my main intent, that walk in the Dales had been a delightful ancillary success.

Second best, so to speak. We’ll settle for that, Mr Proust.